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MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday appointed a young businessperson who was once deputy governor of the Moscow region as the new Chechen prime minister, a move that keeps the republic's financial flows out of the hands of ethnic Chechens. Mikhail Babich, 33, replaces Stanislav Ilyasov, whom Putin recently promoted to the post of federal minister in charge of the reconstruction of Chechnya, the presidential press service said. |
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MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin's diatribe against radical Islam at a press conference in Brussels ended in embarassment when he rounded out his reply to a French reporter with a crude joke, inviting anyone wishing to be circumcised to come to Moscow, where the operation would be done in such a way as to make sure that "nothing grows back. |
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MOSCOW - At a State Duma hearing shunned by top security officials Thursday, lawmakers and law-enforcement authorities conceded that no physical or economic security was being provided for Chechen refugees returning home and that abuses by the military were steadily replenishing the rebels' ranks. Also Thursday, the International Red Cross said two of their Russian drivers had been forced out of their truck at gunpoint outside Grozny and kidnapped. |
All photos from issue.
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The prime suspect in last week's thefts of a first edition of Isaac Newton's most important work and at least one other valuable book from St. Petersburg libraries was detained by police on a train from St. Petersburg to Astrakhan on Tuesday. A first edition of Newton's "Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica," ("Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy"), published in 1687, and a 1913 illustrated edition of poems by Russian Futurist Konstantin Bolshakov, "Le Futur," ("The Future") were stolen from the Russian National Library on Nov. |
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Just one week after the campaigning for the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly elections got underway, the date for the elections, set for Dec. 8, has been called into question. |
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One man was killed and another two, including a police officer, were wounded Wednesday evening when two armed men opened fire in a city police station. 33-year-old Senior Lieutenant Oleg Ulakov was on duty at a Kalininsky district police station at 38 Ulitsa Karpinsovo when, at around 9:30 p.m., the assailants, 29-year-old Andrei Novikov and a 31-year-old, whom the police identified as I. Kochkov, entered the room. The men, who were armed with a Winchester rifle and a Makarov pistol, opened fire, wounding Ulakov in the leg. Ulakov returned fire, killing Novikov and severely injuring the other. "Ulakov received one gunshot in the leg but managed to draw his pistol. |
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 ELISTA, Kalmykia - For a tiny opposition newspaper in an autocratic republic, Sovietskaya Kalmykia Segodnya has survived a great deal: a shut-out by local printers and distributors, threats, arson and, most harrowing of all, the brutal murder in 1998 of its editor, Larisa Yudina. |
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Going to Court ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The City Prosecutor's Office has turned over the criminal case against Vice Governor, and former head of the city administration's Health Committee, Anatoly Kagan to the city courts, Interfax reported Thursday. Kagan is charged with abuse of office resulting in severe consequences and with negligence. |
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 MOSCOW - Baltika fans in the Holy Land could soon be quaffing kashrut-compliant beer, as Russia's No. 1 brewer prepares to go kosher. Rabbi Berl Lazar, one of Russia's two chief rabbis, was given a personal, two-hour tour of Baltika's sprawling St. Petersburg plant by company president Taimuraz Bolloyev two weeks ago, and they discussed the certification of Baltika's many labels. |
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MOSCOW - The cabinet on Thursday gave the thumbs-up to a long-awaited plan to insure private bank deposits and gave preliminary approval to a new law liberalizing currency controls. |
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MOSCOW - Three years after Russia received its last loan from the International Monetary Fund, the organization Thursday warned that the state remains too dependent on revenues from oil. The IMF said in its first quarterly report on Russia that the government has, so far, been largely unsuccessful in steering the economy toward non-commodity sectors. "We don't see any immediate problems in the economy, but the country remains highly dependant on the natural-resources sectors, primarily oil and gas," Poul Thomsen, head of the IMF's Moscow office, said at a news conference. He added that "some of the reforms which are important for the investment climate still lie idle. |
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 MOSCOW - KamAZ will open its third plant abroad this month at a former repair shop for military equipment in Kiev, the No. 1 truckmaker said Tuesday. The plant has already begun producing a few batches of trucks, KamAZ spokesperson Fagim Viganshin said. |
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MOSCOW - Russia is one of the most investor-unfriendly places in the world, according to a recent ranking. The country took 135th place out of 156 on the Index of World Economic Freedom, compiled by the Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal, with an overall score of 3. |
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MOSCOW - The federal commission established to bring about the financial renaissance of Russia's ailing agricultural sector unveiled sweeping new plans Wednesday for restructuring the debt of at least 10,000 of the country's insolvent farms. |
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AT their latest summit in Brussels, Russia and the EU clinched a landmark deal on transit to and from Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave soon to be surrounded by the territory of EU member states. That deal will have a strong positive impact on the future of Russia-EU relations and will usher in a new era of close cooperation on some very sensitive issues. |
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HUNDREDS of U.S. and Russian political and business types were set to gather at Harvard University last Thursday for the latest on the annual merry-go-round of conferences devoted to investing in Russia. |
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AFTER many months of protests, Russia approved a British-American UN Security Council resolution that will apparently soon serve as legal backing for a U.S.-led military intervention to oust Saddam Hussein. Other long-time critics of U.S. plans for regime change in Iraq - France, China and Syria - also voted yes. |
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 What associations does the word "Genoa" conjure up? The two most likely answers are probably Christopher Columbus, who "discovered" America, and virtuoso violinist Niccolo Paganini. Now, however, St. Petersburgers have a good opportunity to learn more about the city in northwest Italy and, in particular, about its art. All it takes is a visit to the State Hermitage Museum. "Genoese Art: Paintings and Drawings from the State Hermitage Museum and Genoese Museums" is the name of a new exhibition that opened this week and is slated to run through Jan. |
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 Although held in the middle of the working week, the Wednesday-night parties at popular bunker-located club Griboyedov have been a huge hit, and draw a larger crowd than Friday nights. |
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Dva Samaliota will dedicate a plaque to the memory of the late underground poet Oleg Grigoryev on Friday. The local ska-influenced band played a fundraising concert at a Moscow club in June and commissioned artist Oleg Kotelnikov, a friend of Grigoryev's, to create the plaque. |
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Last week's trip to the high-class sushi restaurant Shyolk ("Silk") left our faultless reputation for small-minded, penny-pinching meanness in tatters. |
 As the new theater season got underway in October, one company was looking forward to moving into a permanent home. The St. Petersburg Opera, which opened its 16th season last month, has, at long last, found a building of its own, at 33 Galernaya Ulitsa. Renovation work is proceeding apace, and the new stage will host its first performances in early May 2003. The building, a former mansion belonging to Baron von Dervis, has long been a fixture on the local arts scene. |
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 Half a century ago, James Stewart, at that point the most beloved of Hollywood leading men, decided it was time for something completely different. In a series of bitter, disturbing, early-1950s westerns directed by Anthony Mann - "Winchester '73," "The Naked Spur" and "The Man From Laramie" - Stewart began playing ruthless loners bent on revenge, men capable of rages so terrifying that to experience them is to forget that the sentimental Stewart of "Mr. |
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Any egomaniac with an audience can do a live stand-up in an alleged combat zone these days, but Jon Lee Anderson is a war correspondent's journalist. On Sept. 11, 2001, while most Americans were still either looking up or glued to their television sets, Anderson sent an e-mail from southern Spain to his editor at The New Yorker in Manhattan. |
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One of the fun parts of Russian is "word formation" - taking a root and adding a variety of prefixes and suffixes to get separate, but related, meanings. |
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SHANGHAI, China, - Australia's Lleyton Hewitt clinched the year-end world No. 1 ranking without lifting a racket on Thursday, as his only rival for the top spot, Andre Agassi, slumped to a 7-5, 2-6, 7-6 defeat to Juan Carlos Ferrero in the Tennis Masters Cup. |
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Lazio on Market MILAN, Italy (Reuters) - Serie A club Lazio was put up for sale by struggling Italian company Cirio on Wednesday as part of an emergency restructuring, after the canned foods maker was declared in debt default last week, the company said. |
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