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 Sunday's elections for the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly turned out light in terms of voter turnout, but was not without surprises with the defeat of a number of high-profile candidates. While the official posting of the results of the vote were not due to be announced officially by the City Electoral Commission (CEC) until Tuesday, initial reports late on Sunday and on Monday were that the races in the city's 50 districts had all been decided and would stand, even though the percentage of eligible voters who took part was less than 30 percent, according to the latest reports. |
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MOSCOW - In a continuing, sometimes embarassing test of the Russian justice system, Chechen rebel envoy Akhmed Zakayev was detained by British police for several hours upon his arrival in London but released on bail early Friday pending an extradition hearing. |
 Even though the unofficial results from Sunday's Legislative Assembly elections indicate that the races in each of the city's 50 electoral districts had been decided, the election seems to have left everyone with questions. Analysts disagree over the causes of the low voter turnout on Sunday, politicians remain divided on what the results mean for Governor Vladimir Yakovlev's future, and many voters are left scratching their heads and wondering for whom exactly they voted. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW - New rules will require police to go door-to-door to collect information on residents of the areas they patrol, the Interior Ministry said Monday. New instructions call for beat officers to visit everybody who lives in their neighborhoods once every three months. Answering such police inquiries would be voluntary and the information collected will be confidential, Deputy Interior Minister Alexander Chekalin said, according to Itar-Tass. The beat officers will keep a close eye on former convicts, gun owners, suspected drug addicts, mentally disturbed people as well as those residents who are members of teenage gangs or have participated in public disturbance, he said. |
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 MOSCOW - As if to confirm the fabled addiction of television people to scanning their ratings numbers, the first thing Savik Shuster did when he came to his office for an interview last week was to switch on his computer and look at that day's graphs of how many people watched NTV's news programs, which he helps run as deputy chief of news. |
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MOSCOW - Russia's top trucking union said Monday that it has no choice but to continue selling its members special permits that let their trucks sail through customs without inspection, despite a decision by the issuer to suspend the practice indefinitely. |
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MOSCOW - Sibneft bought out Belarus' 10.85-percent stake in Slavneft for $207 million on Friday, bringing it a step closer to victory in next week's auction for Moscow's 75-percent stake. |
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Stocks were pinned lower in light trading on Monday as a ratings cut for computer maker International Business Machines Corp. and jitters about the economic fallout from the bankruptcy of United Airlines kept a lid on sentiment. Fears about the costs of a possible attack on Iraq also weighed on minds as U.S. officials began poring over Iraq's 12,000-page weapons declaration. Iraq says that it has no weapons of mass destruction, though U.S. officials say that they have evidence of nuclear, biological and chemical programs. "The foundation of the U.S. economy is shaken by that UAL headline. It's going to have a ripple effect," said Steve Kolano, equity trader at Mellon Growth Advisors. |
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 MOSCOW - Russians continue to rank among the world's most powerful businesspeople. This year's World Economic Forum list of the 100 global leaders of tomorrow, announced this week, includes two natives - Vneshekonombank chairperson Vladimir Chernukhin and leading mobile operator MTS first vice president Mikhail Susov. |
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The much disputed existence of a Russian middle class was the subject of an international conference held in St. Petersburg last week, entitled "Middle Class - the Myths and the Reality." With income per capita in Russia currently amounting to $155 per month, the COMCON research agency suggested that $155 be taken as the dividing line between lower class and lower-middle class. |
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Telecom Merger ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The St. Petersburg-based Comincom and Moscow's Combellga, two telecommunications companies providing hardware lines and Internet-provider services, are merging to form Combellga, Alexander Kozhanov, the president of the new company, announced at a press conference in St. |
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As Islamic extremists strike now in Bali, now in Mombasa, working their way toward the next big attack on Western soil, it would perhaps be salutary to recall once more how we got to this dire point in our common human history. Terrorism itself is nothing new, of course - not even suicidal Islamic terrorism. |
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IN an effort to ensure smooth debt payments in the future and enforce budget discipline, the Russian government established a stabilization fund, or financial reserve, last year to hold excess budget revenues from high world oil prices. |
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ASK just about anybody who was involved in the campaign leading up to Sunday's Legislative Assembly elections what was the central issue and, sadly, they'll give you the same answer: A third term for Governor Vladimir Yakovlev. This is sad for three reasons. |
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BORIS Jordan, the American-Russian general director of NTV, has proven to be an exceptionally ungrateful person. Rather than appreciating what was done for him, he denied the assertions of his benefactor. |
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Inhabitants of the Petrograd Side, native or otherwise, are a proud bunch and, with the construction, renovation and retailing boom that is running at full tilt on Bolshoi Prospect, they have had much to cheer over the last year or so. A new clothing or furniture boutique or salon appears to be opening on this central thoroughfare every other day, the Mirazh cinema complex turns the entire Prospekt into an up-market parking lot for its evening screenings and real estate agents whisper that a square meter of retailing property on Bolshoi now costs more than a square meter on Nevsky. |
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Devics, the dark, atmospheric, Los Angeles-based band that will play St. Petersburg on Saturday, has incorporated a wide range of diverse influences in order to create its own special musical blend. |
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Holding Serve MOSCOW (Reuters) - Yevgeny Kafelnikov has scrapped his retirement plans and will now try to regain the form that made him the first Russian world No. 1 tennis player. "Hopefully, my physical conditioning will allow me to regain my top form, to be the player that I was not so long ago," the 28 year old said on Friday. |
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