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 MOSCOW - Eight hostages, including three children, were released and one woman was found dead in the theater where about 50 Chechen separatists kept several hundred people hostage for a second day Thursday in one of the most dramatic crises the country has ever seen. |
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MOSCOW - Cornered in the rugged mountains, Chechen separatists lose hope of winning the war by conventional means and seize hundreds of hostages to force Moscow to suspend its military campaign in Chechnya. |
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MOSCOW - Up to 65 foreigners were being held hostage Thursday inside the theater, including three Germans, two Britons and two Americans. Representatives from foreign embassies flocked to the theater Thursday morning to try to secure the release of their citizens. As the hostage crisis went into a second day, hopes that the foreign hostages would be released were raised, dampened and raised again as the armed Chechens wavered over their fate. |
All photos from issue.
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Security was boosted Thursday on all points of entry to Moscow, and the almost empty streets in the capital suggested that many drivers had decided to stay off the road. Security officials in St. Petersburg, meanwhile, said on Thursday that they were also bolstering security efforts in the city following Wednesday night's takeover of the Moscow theater by terrorists. Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov ordered extra police and Interior Ministry Troops to be on duty at airports, train stations, metro stations, government buildings and power plants accross the country. Additional traffic-police checkpoints were also set up on roads leading to Moscow and within the city limits. |
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 MOSCOW - Movsar Barayev, the Chechen warlord said to be commanding armed rebels holding hundreds of hostages in a Moscow theater, has been reported dead at least twice - most recently, less than two weeks ago. |
 Four hundred and eighty buildings on Vasilievsky Island were left without electricity on Wednesday, after a five-alarm fire swept through an obsolete electricity substation there on Tuesday evening. While no one was injured in the fire at unlucky substation No. |
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Despite continued grumbling over two of its contents, a solid majority of Legislative Assembly deputies voted for the city's 2003 draft budget on the all important second reading on Wednesday. |
 Local poet Oleg Chuprov got a big surprise and a little bit of advice on Thursday, when a panel of nine St. Petersburg luminaries chose his submission as the winner of a contest held to provide words for the city's anthem. But the voting was close, said members of the panel, and none of the entries was what they would have described as perfect. |
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Radioactive Scare NEW YORK (NYT) - Acting on a tip from Russia that a New York-bound jetliner might have radioactive material aboard, U.S. authorities on Wednesday met the plane from Moscow on the tarmac at Kennedy International Airport, but nothing harmful was found, officials said. |
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MOSCOW - Twenty-two of 25 top companies by market capitalization violated either the law or shareholders' rights at their annual meeting this year, the Institute of Corporate Governance and Law said Tuesday. Despite the violations, however, companies committed to corporate governance continue to improve, the ICGL concluded in its quarterly report on governance, released Tuesday. |
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MOSCOW - Russia's business leaders hold high hopes for Russia's quick accesssion to the World Trade Organization after meeting with European Union Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy Thursday morning. |
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The sports-clothing giant Adidas has broken its contract with T.A.K.T., its exclusive dealer in St. Petersburg and the Northwest region. Adidas claims that T.A.K.T. violated the terms of its contract with Adidas. T.A.K.T., in turn, claims that the breaking of the contract is part of Adidas policy - relationships with dealers are ended after the dealers have established the brand in the marketplace. Adidas and T.A.K.T. have been working together for ten years, with the local dealer's turnover for that period amounting to $80 million. Adidas will now take over the operation of the city's two Adidas shops, on Malaya Sadovaya Ulitsa and Bolshoi Prospect on the Petrograd Side, said Yelena Voronina, spokesperson for the company. |
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 The armed takeover of the Northwest Shipping Company (NWSC) on Monday has led to rivals for control at the company claiming that the affair will be settled in court. |
 MOSCOW - Prosecutors turned up the heat on exiled magnate Boris Berezovsky on Wednesday, indicting the former Kremlin insider and two of his business associates for "large-scale fraud" at flagship automaker AvtoVAZ. Deputy Prosecutor General Vladimir Kolesnikov said that Berezovsky, together with Badri Patarkatsishvili and Yuly Dubov, used Berezovsky's LogoVAZ dealership in a complicated scheme to defraud AvtoVAZ out of more than 2,000 cars worth $13 million in 1994 and 1995. |
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THE discovery that North Korea has been secretly enriching uranium for the nuclear-weapons program it promised to freeze in 1994 demonstrates the dangers of putting faith in a confirmed and practiced liar. So does the news that Pakistan provided the nuclear technology, and perhaps uranium, to Kim Jong Il's regime. |
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PRESIDENT Vladimir Putin faces perhaps the most crucial test of his presidency as the hostage crisis unfolds in Moscow. Would it be too much to hope that the way he handles the crisis could improve the prospects for finding peace in Chechnya? Putin's political career got a big boost from his tough stance on Chechnya. |
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WHILE Washington is insisting that Pyongyang unconditionally and completely halt its nuclear program before any new negotiations can begin, North and South Korea issued a joint statement that they will resolve all outstanding problems, including the nuclear one, through dialogue. Japan is the only country in the world that has actually been hit by nuclear bombs (in 1945) and South Korea was ravished by invading North Korean armies in 1950. |
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 "My collection isn't something I hide in boxes and carefully keep dust-free. I make use of it almost every day. It is my life's passion," says Mariinsky Theater percussionist Mikhail Peskov of his treasures. Peskov is the proud owner of one of Russia's largest collections of bells. |
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Following its success as the official cafe of the recent festival Earlymusic, and its first experience as an exhibition space ("Looking at Five Years of Life in Petersburg," Oct. |
 Among St. Petersburg's many musical theaters, the Zazerkalye Theater is unique. Its name is a tip-off: "zazerkalye" means "through the looking glass" - an obvious reference to Lewis Carroll's novel. The Zazerkalye was founded in 1987 as a children's theater, although the original concept has now been stretched in imaginative directions. |
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Hot on the heels of last weekend's BLICK festival ("Video-Art Party-Fest Breaks the Mold," Oct. 18), this weekend, Mirage cinema hosts another unusual event. |
 Chufella Marzufella, probably the best live rock-and-roll band in St. Petersburg, has resumed its performances after a car crash late last year that sent two of its members to the hospital. Heavily influenced by early Rolling Stones and The Who, the band, which now plays with a slightly different lineup to its pre-crash days, recorded a new album earlier this month and is now increasing the number of concerts it gives at local clubs. |
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 Although it has, traditionally, lived in the musical shadow of its neighbor, Sweden, Finland has, recently, started to generate its own international success stories, with rock acts, such as HIM and Nightwish, and dance-floor fillers, such as Bomfunk MC's and Darude - all of which have toured in Russia recently. |
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Folksy art-rock band Vermicelli Orchestra will play its biggest concert to date at the 2,000-seat Lensoviet Palace of Culture on Friday. Formed by former Akvarium accordion player Sergei Shchurakov, the band has recently been experimenting, performing with both a chamber orchestra and the electronic band EU. |
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I had been meaning to check out Delfin's for some time. The stylish-looking eatery caught my attention this summer, with its promise of fresh fish from Portugal, cooked by a Portuguese chef, for whom the place is named. |
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 A disastrous day for the organizers of the St. Petersburg Open saw top seed Andre Agassi crash out in the second round on Thursday, just hours after home favorites Marat Safin and Yevgeny Kafelnikov had lost. All three players lost in straight sets to unseeded opponents, as did No. |
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Howe About That? NEW YORK (AP) - Art Howe will be the next manager of the New York Mets, three newspapers reported Thursday. One of the papers also said that Lou Piniella agreed in principle to manage Tampa Bay. |
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