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MOSCOW - After six hours of half-hearted debate, the State Duma on Friday approved a bill in the crucial second reading allowing Russians to buy and sell farmland and restricting foreigners to 49-year leases. Liberals slammed the limitation on foreigners. The only protest from the Communists, who oppose the sale of farmland altogether, came from a crowd of about 200 people rallying outside the Duma building. Most lawmakers appeared to be more interested in following two World Cup soccer games that were being played, and the Duma hall was all but empty during the debate. The bill, which had the support of the four centrist factions that make up the majority of the parliament, was quietly passed, 245-150, with three abstentions. |
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 In film portrayals of sea ports during wartime, the scene portraying the local brothel is a cliche. But plans by one Russian director to make a brothel the central focus of a film have angered Foreign and Russian World War II veterans and Russian citizens who lived in Murmansk during the war. |
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MOSCOW - Six military officers have been arrested on suspicion of providing the land mine that killed 45 people - mostly soldiers - during Victory Day celebrations in the southern town of Kaspiisk, Deputy Prosecutor General Vladimir Kolesnikov said Monday. Wrapping up an unusually swift investigation into the May 9 attack, Kolesnikov also said eight of 18 suspects detained in connection with the explosion have been charged and 10 suspects remain at large. |
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The head of the St. Petersburg Audit Chamber, Dmitry Burenin, was to come before a board on Tuesday that was to assess his performance as Audit Chamber president. But, while such revues are standard for the city's civil servants, Burenin says that his position is among the list of those automatically exempt from such procedures, and that the move on the part of Legislative Assembly Speaker Sergei Tarasov to have him undergo the review counters federal law. |
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MOSCOW - A group of scientists began a 100-kilometer march to Moscow on Monday to protest against low pay and a lack of government funding. Forty protesters set out from Pushchino, a small town south of Moscow known for its scientific institutes, in an attempt to draw attention to the chronic underfunding of science in the country and the low pay - even by Russian standards - of scientists. |
 One hundred years after it was first installed in St. Petersburg, the organ at the Shostakovich Philharmonic is to be rebuilt, in a deal between the Russian and German governments, worth over 1.5 million euros ($1.45 million). According to a protocol signed Saturday by the Russian and German culture ministers, the organ - which was originally installed in 1903 at the Ott Gynocological Institute on Vasilievsky Island - will be installed in time for the beginning of the concert season in fall 2004. |
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MOSCOW - A controversial bill allowing alternative civil service, which the State Duma approved in the key second reading last week, dashed the hopes and efforts of a group of pacifists in Nizhny Novgorod who had been participating in an experimental alternative service project. |
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 KHARKIV, Ukraine - Gazprom and Ukraine's state oil-and-gas monopoly Naftogaz signed an agreement Friday to transport gas across Ukraine, easing a decade-long dispute on gas exports. The deal will give Russia the right to transit 110 billion cubic meters of gas through Ukraine every year from 2003 until 2013, and ends Kiev's defiant denial of any foreign access to its huge and aging pipeline system. |
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MOSCOW - With little debate, the State Duma late Thursday passed, in the crucial second reading, a draft of amendments to the 1998 bankruptcy law designed to end the use of the law as an asset-grabbing tool. |
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MOSCOW - A Moscow Arbitration Court judge has thrown out five lawsuits that minority shareholder activist William Browder filed against Big Four auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. "We hope we're at the end of it," said PwC managing partner Richard Buski. "These decisions are pretty definitive." Earlier this year, Browder, CEO of investment fund Hermitage Capital Management, asked the court to declare PwC's audits of gas monopoly Gazprom "false and misleading." PwC officials say they stand behind their auditing of Gazprom's 2000 statements, as well as their examination of the relationship with Itera, a Florida-registered gas trader suspected of being owned by former Gazprom managers. |
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 St. Petersburgers are in the habit of heading off to the banya with veniki - bundles of birch or oak twigs - in order to flog themselves, and each other, to their heart's content. |
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MOSCOW - While World Trade Organization General Director Mike Moore was saying Thursday that Russia was making "significant progress" toward joining the global trade body, other delegates at the sixth annual St. Petersburg Economic Forum were wondering what membership will mean, exactly. |
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In an effort to keep inflation in check, the Cabinet agreed last week to let Gazprom, the Railways Ministry and Unified Energy Systems hike their prices, but not by as much as the natural monopolies had hoped. |
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MOSCOW - With its wealth of computer programmers and solid reputation for scientific study, Russia has the potential to emulate some of India's success as a center for offshore software development. To achieve this, however, a lot will have to change. It was during the twilight months of communism in 1991 that computer programmer Arkady Dobkin formed a small software company in Minsk. |
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If the U.S. economy is growing at anything like the 5.6 percent annual clip reported last quarter, why are U.S. stock markets sagging and economic confidence still shaky? Corporate accounting skulduggery, and fear of terrorist attacks are commonly cited reasons. |
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"A sexual revolution has taken place in Russia - the organs have seized power." This old chestnut from Soviet times gulped down an elixir of youth and got a new lease of life recently. |
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So, Arthur Andersen has been convicted, Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco has been indicted, Samuel Waksal of ImClone has been arrested, and even his friend Martha Stewart has become embroiled in an insider-trading investigation. And now the U.S. Justice Department is examining Enron for criminality. |
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Editor, Recently, the U.S. State Department sent me on a five-day speaking engagement in Moscow to deliver a series of presentations to government press secretaries, reporters, leaders of national political parties and journalism students. |
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IN his recent and spellbinding book "Across the Moscow River," former British Ambassador Sir Rodric Braithwaite warns of the perils of judging Russia. Pushkin's friend Prince Vyazemsky (Braithwaite recalls) remarked that if you want a foreigner to make a fool of himself, just ask him to make a judgment about Russia. |
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"President [George W.] Bush told Americans today to exercise more and to eat less, and to stop using drugs, tobacco and excessive amounts of alcohol. |
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Southern Cross So who's next on the Bush team's hit list? Beside Iraq, of course. It's abundantly clear that the Chickenhawk-in-Chief and his corporatic cronies will be slapping hot iron all over Saddam Hussein just as soon as the poll numbers are right. The whole saucy crew has been on a sustained propaganda offensive for weeks, methodically preparing the public to accept the wholly un-American notion of aggressive war. |
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FRANKFURT - The euro rose sharply against the dollar Monday, topping $0.98 in a rally that economists say is fueled by doubts about the greenback and U.S. stock markets. The shared currency reached 98.13 cents in morning trading in Europe, then slid back just below $0.98. The last time the euro was that high against the dollar was in February, 2000. The euro, which was trading around $0.87 just 11 weeks ago, reached $0.9705 on Friday but had fallen back to $0.9687 in early trading Monday before the sudden spike of more than $0.01. Economists say the shift in exchange rates is driven more by pessimism about the dollar than by new confidence in the economies of the 12 countries that use the euro. |
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 The doctors and residents of Anapa like to say that the southern city's clean, salty air has healing potential. And they are usually quick to add that the best place to take advantage of Anapa's air is not on its sandy beaches, but atop the bluffs that overlook the city's little corner of the Black Sea. |
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RAMALLAH, West Bank - Israeli forces surrounded Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's headquarters before dawn Monday, barricading the front gate with debris and fanning out to take control of a sixth West Bank population center. The latest incursion into Ramallah came as the Palestinian leader ordered Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin placed under house arrest in the Gaza Strip. |
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"Mother, where are you? Why are you buried in the dirt?'' he cried. When rescue crews and dogs found her body, it was more than Taheri, 40, could bear. |
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Voice of al-Qaida BEIRUT (AP) - Osama bin Laden and his main advisor are both alive and well and their al-Qaida network is ready to attack new U.S. targets, bin Laden's spokesperson said in audiotaped remarks aired Sunday. The message also claimed responsibility for a deadly April fire at a synagogue in Tunisia. |
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CHICAGO - On a night when Darryl Kile was supposed to be on the mound, the St. Louis Cardinals mourned their lost teammate and honored him at the same time just by taking the field. |
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TORONTO - It's not often the Detroit Red Wings and hockey's other high-profile teams take a back seat. This weekend's NHL draft belonged to the league's have-nots. Highlighted by Florida and Columbus swapping two of the top three selections, the league's 39th annual draft ended with a whimper when rounds four through nine were completed in Toronto on Sunday. |
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Phantom To Appear? YOKOHAMA, Japan (Reuters) - Brazil and Germany, the two most successful World Cup countries, are just two semifinals away from ending the remarkable sequence of events which has prevented them from ever playing each other in the finals. |
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