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MOSCOW - The cabinet on Thursday approved the largest single loan ever granted by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, a $245- million credit to finance the completion of the St. Petersburg flood barrier. The barrier, colloquially known as damba, or the dam, and which has been under construction since 1979 but is only 70-percent finished, is crucial to the structural survival of the city. |
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MOSCOW - The usually sharp-tongued President Vladimir Putin appeared in a conciliatory mood during a 2 1/2-hour call-in show Thursday as he fielded questions ranging from pension reform and the Chechen war to the viability of reintroducing monarchy and why he wears his watch on his right hand. |
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Alexander Vasilyev, an assistant to State Duma Deputy Mikhail Grishankov, was shot dead on Wednesday on Ulitsa Beregova, in St. Petersburg's Vyborgsky district. The 47-year-old Vasilyev, who lived in St. Petersburg, was a volunteer assistant to Grishankov, who is the chairperson of the State Duma Commission for Battling Corruption. |
All photos from issue.
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 MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin fired one of Russia's most popular and outspoken commanders, Gennady Troshev, on Wednesday over his blunt refusal to accept a transfer from the high-profile North Caucasus Military District to a far-flung command in Siberia. |
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MOSCOW - Three Russian companies have sold missile and helicopter components to Baghdad in violation of the UN arms embargo, a German newspaper reported Thursday, citing Iraq's declaration on chemical, biological and nuclear programs. |
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MOSCOW - The State Duma's budget committee on Monday recommended that lawmakers vote to raise to $10,000, from $1,500, the amount of cash foreigners and Russians can carry out of the country without special Central Bank permission. The recommendation by the influential committee comes ahead of Friday's crucial second reading of amendments to the law on currency controls, which passed a first reading in October. Currently, foreigners cannot take out a single cent without a declaration stamped upon arrival or a special bank receipt, while Russians can take out up to $1,500 without questions. A source close to the committee, who requested anonymity, said the recommendation to raise the limit to $10,000 is unlikely to pass due to pressure from the government and the Central Bank. |
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 With the thermometer reading minus seven degrees Celsius and the wind whipping the large, old-fashioned umbrella that protects her and her goods from the snow and sleet, 79-year-old Nadezhda stood bundled up in layers of clothing at her little newspaper stand on Wednesday. |
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MOSCOW - While scrambling to safeguard nuclear materials after Sept. 11, authorities should also boost security at more conventional municipal facilities that, if attacked or sabotaged, could explode and cause widespread damage and a large number of causalities, the editor of a new book on terrorism said Wednesday. Facilities such as fertilizer and industrial refrigeration warehouses could under certain conditions be turned into "means of mass destruction," according to the book, titled "Terrorism in Metropolitan Areas: Assessment of Threats and Level of Protection." The book, edited by Vladimir Dvorkin, a senior adviser at the PIR Center, the country's leading nuclear-security think tank, contains a list of industrial and other facilities with estimates of what damage they would cause if sabotaged. |
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 MOSCOW - Last year, Tanya Weaver visited a family of eight living in a home that had so much mold on the walls that every single child had asthma. "The doctor's advice was: 'Get a better house,'" Weaver said. |
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Like other residents in his apartment block, 81-year-old Nikolai Bobkov was used to the bitter cold that comes with the eastern Siberian winter in Ust-Kut. This year, the World War II veteran lived in his one-room apartment without central heating for a second winter in a row, patiently waiting with several hundred other residents for the city to make good on promises to repair the heating system. |
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 MOSCOW - Any Unified Energy Systems assets sold off in the course of restructuring the monopoly will get a fair price and lead to lower electricity prices for consumers, President Vladimir Putin said Thursday. "[UES reform] should be conducted according to a unified plan, and this plan has to be balanced and realistic," Putin told the country during a live television appearance in which he answered questions from all over the country. |
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A St. Petersburg micro-brewery has unveiled ambitious plans to develop the Russian market for ultra-premium beer. Local brewery Tinkoff has begun testing production at its new plant in Pushkin, Oksana Grigoriyeva, Tinkoff's public-relations director, said in a telephone interview on Thursday. |
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MOSCOW - A day after paying nearly $1 billion each to win complete control of Slavneft in a farcical auction, Sibneft and TNK said Thursday that they still hadn't agreed how to divvy up the spoils. Sibneft President Eugene Shvidler told journalists that there were two options - either the two oil majors would split Slavneft's assets down the middle, or Sibneft would swallow it whole and give TNK a piece of itself. "Slavneft will not be an independent company. We will either split it 50-50 with TNK or we will consolidate it with Sibneft and TNK would receive a stake in Sibneft," Reuters quoted Shvidler as saying. Later, however, TNK chairperson Viktor Vekselberg said that bringing Slavneft under his company's umbrella was still very much an option. |
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 MOSCOW - GAZ this week will halt production of its once-popular Volga sedan in a demand-driven shutdown that could last weeks or even months, the company said Tuesday. |
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THE European Union had a big day in Copenhagen last Saturday, when leaders of the 15 member states agreed to admit 10 new aspirants to membership. As with most EU events, there was a great deal of last-minute haggling before the deal was struck. Turkey, which has been stiff-armed for 40 years, was finally promised a chance to begin negotiations in 2004, if all goes well. |
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THE year that was did not bring the Kremlin victory in Chechnya, but it did see the government chalk up a series of victories in its ongoing battle with the free press. |
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 q:At the opening of the festival, you will perform Brahms' Second Piano Concerto. Why did you choose to perform this work? a:I chose this concerto because it is one the most recent things I have learned, and I have already performed it with maestro [Yury] Temirkanov conducting. |
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Inattentive service was a standard feature of Soviet cafes and canteens. But, when privately owned restaurants became the norm, owners began training their staff to adhere to the Western maxim that "the customer is always right. |
 The dazzling jewel in the crown of the Mariinsky Theater's new production of Verdi's "La Traviata" is undoubtedly Anna Netrebko as the heroine, Violetta. The theater's artistic director, Valery Gergiev, has often said that, if an opera company has a Violetta, it would be a sin not to stage the opera. Netrebko's performance ensures that, after five years without "La Traviata" in its repertoire, the Mariinsky no longer needs to offer prayers for forgiveness. |
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 The end of 2002 is turning out to be very busy for veteran St. Petersburg band Akvarium and its legendary founder, Boris Grebenshchikov. Akvarium has just completed a four-date tour of the west coast of the United States, is currently working on a new album, and has just re-released four old albums. |
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Radio Inferno, advertised as St. Petersburg's first goth-rock festival, provides a rare treat at Red Club on Saturday - a set by re-formed 1990s guitar trio Jugendstil. The band quit the local club scene five years ago, but re-formed following a request from festival promoter Leonid Fomin, who combines playing in goth-rock combo Para Bellum with a day job as associate editor of local rock magazine Fuzz. Jugendstil, one of the finest acts from the time of TaMtAm Club, was not really a goth band at all but, rather, a post-punk affair with a few gothic elements. The group folded in 1997, a year after the seminal alternative club closed. |
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 "Quite simply," Chris Columbus, director of "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets," just about purrs in a press kit quote, "if you loved the first film, you are going to absolutely adore this one!" If things were truly that simple, what a fine world this would be. |
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Toward the end of the 16th century, Siberia fell to the Russians as an unexpected prize. At the time, European Russia stood deep in its own ashes after a half-century of war, famine, plague and despotic rule under Ivan the Terrible. Ivan's ambitions had been thwarted to the west by Poland and Sweden and to the south by the Crimean Tatars backed by the Ottoman Turks. |
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Ballotirovatsya v deputaty: to run for parliament. Present-day legislative-branch (zakonodatelnaya vlast) terminology is a somewhat uneasy mixture of old Russian standards and new Western imports. |
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Hartley Sacked DENVER (AP) - Bob Hartley led the Colorado Avalanche to four straight Western Conference finals, and a Stanley Cup championship in 2001, but it wasn't enough to save his job. Citing a slow start and a lack of passion in his team, Colorado General Manager Pierre Lacroix fired Hartley on Wednesday after 4 1/2 seasons. |
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