|
|
|
|
The city budget for 2003, although it was passed in first reading by the Legislative Assembly on Oct. 2, has become the center of heated debate in the corridors of the Mariinsky Palace, following threats from city Governor Vladimir Yakovlev that, should the budget be passed as it stands, he will not sign it. In an interview broadcast on the TRK Peterburg television station on Tuesday evening, Yakovlev said that he would not sign the 2003 budget if a financial reserve fund for Legislative Assembly lawmakers was one of the items included. "The governor has always been against the reserve fund," said the governor's spokesperson, Alexander Afanasyev, in a telephone interview on Wednesday. |
|
 It's census time in Russia and, while the first statistical investigation of the country's population will provide valuable answers for governments at all levels, it presents thousands of workers - most of them students - sent out to gather the information, with several particular difficulties. |
|
During the first two days of the week-long national census, police registered at least four robberies in which people got into apartments by posing as census takers, RIA-Novosti reported Thusday. Con artists in St. Petersburg snatched $20,000 in the biggest robbery, RIA-Novosti said. In Moscow, a 23-year-old woman was robbed of jewelry worth $1,600. |
All photos from issue.
|
|
|
|
|
WASHINGTON - The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday voted to grant President George W. Bush the power he wants to launch a possible U.S. military attack on Iraq, a step that the Senate was expected to follow either later in the day or on Friday. |
|
MOSCOW - The head of the World Food Program got what he came for - a promise from the government to become an official donor of the UN agency that supplies food to more than 70 million people around the globe. |
|
MOSCOW - A 55-year-old Australian schoolteacher found dead near Sheremetyevo Airport this week was nicknamed "Mr. Russia" by his students because of his love for the country, The Australian newspaper was to report Friday. English and history teacher Peter Julian Hughes also appeared to have led a double life, with a wife and children in Australia and a girlfriend in Russia, Moscow police and Australian officials said. |
|
Nine Die in Chechnya ROSTOV-NA-DONU, Southern Russia (AP) - An explosion ripped through a police building in the Chechen capital Thursday, killing at least nine people and injuring several others, an emergency official said. |
|
|
|
 MOSCOW - After months of fierce debate and horse-trading, lawmakers on Wednesday passed a new electricity bill that allows for the carve-up of Unified Energy Systems, the world's largest power producer. By a vote of 261 to 152, with one abstention, State Duma deputies passed in first reading the bill that frees the government to overhaul the monopoly and liberalize electricity prices if, as expected, it passes two more readings and is approved by the Federation Council and the president. |
|
The attractiveness for investors of the Northwest Region of Russia has fallen significantly, according to Lyubov Sovershayeva, deputy presidential representative for the region. |
|
MOSCOW - The Transport Ministry said Wednesday that it has banned flights on Il-18 aircraft and is planning further measures to boost aviation safety. The four-engine plane, in service for 40 years, will no longer be allowed for passenger services, Vladimir Rudakov, head of the flight-safety department at the State Civil Aviation Service, said at an aviation-safety meeting. |
|
MOSCOW - The government intends to sell its entire stake in one of the country's most scandal-ridden oil companies, a turnaround that has prompted ferocious bidding ahead of the actual auction. |
|
MOSCOW - The government on Tuesday backed away from plans to restrict imports of cars with right-hand drive, just a week after it raised tariffs on car imports older than seven years. Speaking at a two-day auto-industry conference in Moscow, Deputy Science and Industry Minister Sergei Mitin said that his ministry "will not differentiate between right and left-handed steering wheels. |
|
|
|
|
THE United States wants to remove Saddam Hussein from power; its main allies would be content with his disarmament. The United States, therefore, wants to keep the United Nations weapons inspectors out of Iraq; its allies want to get them back in. To reconcile these aims - at least formally - is the point of the intense jockeying now going on at the UN. |
|
WHILE it is always risky to make predictions, U.S. military action against Iraq appears to be pretty much a given. The prevailing mood in Washington continues to be radical and President George W. |
|
|
|
 The word "classic" is often used to describe St. Petersburg, a city of classic architecture and home to a great deal of Russia's classic writers and composers. Now, the Northern Capital is about to get a radio station specifically designed to bring the classics - the musical classics, that is - together. Radio Klassika Peterburg will start broadcasting toward the end of December, on the frequency 88. |
|
 Theater audiences have always wondered what goes on behind the scenes. To some of the spectators, the world of the backstage is even more attractive than the performance itself. |
|
The dramatic opening of Peter Huchthausen's "K-19: The Widowmaker" signals readers to strap themselves in for a chilling 243-page ride. But forget for a moment all the elements that promise a suspenseful, page-turning read, and anything to do with the film of the same name that opens on Thursday (see story, p. ii). Shortly after the first page and a half, it becomes clear that this book is not going to be a thrill ride. Rather, it is an examination of the Soviet Union's efforts to become a naval power to be reckoned with in the nuclear age. This is not the story of one sub, but of the tragic events of a whole fleet, from the K-19 to the Kursk, which exploded and sank in August 2000. |
|
 The Mariinsky Theater opened its 220th season on Sunday with its new production of Mussorgsky's opera "Boris Godunov." Although the production premiered in May, Sunday night was the first time that Vladimir Vaneyev, one of the Mariinsky's leading basses, sung the title role. |
 History and travel books often present St. Petersburg and Amsterdam almost as twins. After all, Peter the Great was inspired by the capital of the Netherlands when he began building his city on the banks of the Neva River in 1703. According to best-selling Dutch writer Geert Mak, however, the two cities do not have that much in common. "The two cities are surrounded by a lot of water, canals, beautiful clouds and sky, but that is about the only thing they have in common," he said in an interview last week. |
|
 It's not that Hollywood doesn't know a good story when it sees one, it's that it doesn't trust that others will be equally discerning. For proof of that theorem, look no further than "K-19: The Widowmaker. |
 Over the past six years, Griboyedov has become a St. Petersburg legend, and established itself as one of the city's top underground clubs - literally and metaphorically. Now, the club located in a bunker is planning to surface from its lair, as it gears up to celebrate its sixth anniversary next weekend. |
|
London band Nigel Burch and The Flea-Pit Orchestra is set to bring its hard-edged skiffle and bar-room ballads to Russia - but their five-date tour includes only Moscow and, surprisingly, Obninsk, a town 106 kilometers southwest of Moscow that boasts the world's first nuclear-power plant. |
|
To subtitle this piece "A Tale of Two Lunches" almost necessitates that the sentence "it was the best of lunches, it was the worst of lunches" be present somewhere in the text, so there it is. In this case, my experience in writing a lunch review actually came in the opposite order, saving the best for last. |
|
|
|
|
Sergeant Wilko Returns SUNDERLAND, England (Reuters) - English Premiership club Sunderland opted for the tried and tested experience of Howard Wilkinson when it named the former Leeds United manager as the replacement for Peter Reid on Thursday. Sunderland lies 17th in the 20-team premier division after winning just two of their first nine matches. |
Temp: 0°C partly cloudy 
Issues Archive