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International air carriers and tourism-industry representatives are concerned that there may not be enough flight capacity available to satisfy demand for travel to the city during the jubilee celebration next summer. "The current situation with the airlines will influence [the flow of international tourists for the 300th anniversary]. International tourism to St. Petersburg has been hampered in recent years by the poor transportation infrastructure," said Sergei Korneyev, head of the St. Petersburg department of the Russian Association of Tourism Operators. "Some operators have had to turn away [clients] seeking to travel to St. |
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 MOSCOW - The State Audit Chamber said Friday that the Severnaya Verf shipyard had failed to pay $6 million to the federal budget after completing two destroyers for China. |
All photos from issue.
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 MOSCOW --The Justice Ministry has only one thing to say about President Vladimir Putin's announcement that legislation aimed at cracking down on racial violence will be sent to parliament: It's about time. In early 1999, when Putin was head of the Federal Security Service, the ministry noticed an alarming growth in racism among teenagers and drew up an anti-extremism bill for the State Duma. |
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Venyamin Iofe - a well-known local dissident, historian and head of the St. Petersburg branch of the human-rights organization Memorial - died of an apparent heart attack on Saturday. |
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MINSK, Belarus - Riot police beat opposition protesters marching through Minsk on Friday, using batons to break apart their clasped hands. At least one person was injured and more than 100 detained, many of whom remained in prison over the weekend. The clash came the same day a fire burned down a tent inhabited by anti-government protesters in Kuropaty outside Minsk and injured one of the demonstrators, opposition members said. |
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IRA Arms MOSCOW (SPT) - The Federal Security Service has alerted British intelligence that Russian army officers are selling arms to the Irish Republican Army, the British Sunday Telegraph reported. |
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MOSCOW - With just months to go before the much-anticipated sale of a government stake, LUKoil presented a drastic restructuring plan on Monday that could add $500 million a year to its bottom line. Analysts, however, were skeptical of LUKoil's ability to stick to the ambitious plan, saying real change would probably only become evident in about a decade. As part of the restructuring operation, the oil company, Russia's largest, plans to cut costs from $3.50 a barrel to $2.60 to $2.80 a barrel by shutting down 5,000 wells, or 24 percent of those in operation. While the LUKoil's cost structure should shrink, production should not because 30 percent of all wells account for 85 percent of the oil company's production. |
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 MOSCOW - Russia's plans to export oil to the United States may have run into a hitch. The state-owned Croatian pipeline operator, Jadranski Naftovod, put forward on Wednesday new conditions for its participation in integrating two east European pipeline systems, said Igor Solyarsky, vice president of Transneft, Russia's state-owned pipeline company. |
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MOSCOW - The Railways Ministry will become Russia's second-largest taxpayer by the end of the year, contributing $3 billion to the federal budget, Railways Minister Gennady Fadeyev said Monday. Taxes became a major problem for the railways sector last year, when 293 criminal cases were opened against companies within the ministry for nonpayment, Fadeyev said at a news conference. "Today all railways and all companies within the ministry are fully paying taxes," he said. Fadeyev had said earlier this year that the ministry would take measures to strengthen companies' discipline in paying taxes, and he threatened to fire the heads of railway companies that do not pay up. |
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 MOSCOW - As the European Union brings countries from eastern and central Europe into its fold over the next few years, its political clout in the region is expected to strengthen and its influence on Russian economic life is set to grow. |
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LONDON - As Russia approaches the final stage of negotiations with the World Trade Organization, the head of the WTO said it was crucial not to lose momentum. "Now all parties involved should redouble their efforts to make sure that it happens as soon as possible," Mike Moore said in addressing the fifth annual Russian Economic Forum in London on Friday. |
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MOSCOW - Gazprom said Friday it will ask the government to approve a long-term domestic gas-pricing program that envisages an annual 25 percent hike in prices from 2003 to 2006. |
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Is Russia's spectacular growth spurt already over? As 2001 drew to a close, nearly all economic indicators dipped for the first time in nearly three years and, as staff writer Ben Aris reports, the period of effortless improvement has clearly come to an end. |
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THE central aim of Russia's current and medium-term economic policy is to create the conditions for rapid economic growth while restructuring the country's economy along post-industrial lines. |
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PRESIDENT Vladimir Putin last week took the government to task for its pessimistic economic forecasts and highlighted the need for greater growth in his state of the nation address. Now, I don't want to suggest that we have an ideal government, but there are a few mitigating circumstances that need to be considered. |
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ONE of the last unsettled financial questions of the Cold War is Russia's $42 billion of Soviet-era debt to official creditors. Since the Soviet collapse there have been calls to forgive all or part of it. |
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REGIONAL tax concessions and their issuance, as is often the case, are hot topics right now in the local business community. On March 14, the St. Petersburg branch of the Tax Ministry issued a short, three-line letter advising that, pursuant to the St. Petersburg Law No. 422-52, On Amendments to the Law On Tax Concessions, of June 1 of 2001, the capital-investment concession for the portion of profits tax payable to the St. |
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In response to "Cabinet Says Yes to Long-Term Tourist Plan," April 12. Editor, I found your article on the Russian government's new-found interest in promoting tourism ironic, having just been mugged by police officers in Ulitsa Arbat in Moscow the evening before I read it. |
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WASHINGTON - For Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Sept. 11, 2001, turned out to be a decisive day in ways few could have imagined. Just moments after the terrorist attacks on the United States, U. |
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ON the surface, the changes that have swept Russia over the past decade have also reached customs checkpoints - at least those located on the northwest border. Checkpoints such as Ivangorod on the Russian-Estonian border, or Torfyanovka, Brusnichnoye and Vyartsila on the Finnish border, have new customs offices built in Lego-like blocks of green and gray that look more or less modern, stylish even. |
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The Valley Gaius Aelius Messala, legatus, XVII Legion, to his brother, Quintus. Germania Magnia.
19 October [8 A.D]. Brother! Warmest greetings from the River Elbe. |
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Extinction Certain SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Singapore's only unique wild animals - one of the world's largest squirrels and a monkey that lives high in the forest canopy - are perilously close to extinction, a researcher said last week. Peter Ng, the director of a museum on biodiversity at the National University of Singapore, said the Cream-colored Giant Squirrel and the Banded Leaf Monkey have fallen victim to urbanization and shrinking forests. "In the old days both animals were listed as common. They numbered in the comfortable thousands," he said. Less than 20 Banded Leaf Monkeys and no more than four squirrels still live in what is left of the tiny island nation's forests, Ng said. |
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 Maybe life without Yury Morozov is possible. From his hostpital bed, Zenit's head coach saw his side, under senior trainer Mikhail Biryukov, produce a thrilling display to hold league leader Lokomotiv Moscow to a 1-1 draw at the Petrovsky Stadium on Saturday. |
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