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 Amid accusations of vote buying and Kremlin tampering, the Legislative Assembly, in only its second week of sitting, managed to do on Wednesday what the previous assembly took almost two and a half years to do - elect a speaker. And the assembly's choice is unlikely to please Governor Vladimir Yakovlev. Vadim Tyulpanov, the head of the pro-Kremlin United Russia faction in the chamber received the support of 28 lawmakers, easily defeating the incumbent, Sergei Tarasov, a member of the Our City faction and traditionally a Yakovlev ally in the assembly, who garnered 19 votes. |
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 The architectural make-up of St. Petersburg's historic center has barely changed over the last 150 years. But its ensemble of imperial palaces and baroque mansions, many in a desperate state of repair, will soon be joined by a grandiose arts complex that would radically alter the status quo. |
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MOSCOW - In an emotionally charged legal battle that promises to last for months, a Moscow court on Thursday began hearing evidence in an unprecedented, multimillion-dollar complaint filed against the city government by victims of October's hostage crisis. So far, 61 former hostages and relatives of those who died have filed suits, claiming nearly $60 million in damages, and many more have expressed interest, lead lawyer Igor Trunov told reporters outside the Tverskoi District Court. |
All photos from issue.
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VYBORG, Northwest Russia - Finnish tourists are thinking twice about visiting the border town of Vyborg after a surge in brazen muggings over the past two months that the police don't seem to be able to stop. Thieves are spraying tourists with pepper gas on the streets in broad daylight and making off with wallets, passports and cellphones, tour operators said. |
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MOSCOW - A public conflict between Chechnya's prime minister and his boss, Akhmad Kadyrov, has escalated and raised doubts about just how much support Kadyrov has in Moscow. |
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Explosives Found MOSCOW (AP) - Security agents found explosives in two cars in a Moscow parking lot Thursday, just days after reports of new threats of terrorist attacks by Chechen rebels in the capital, Russian media reported. The Interfax-Military News Agency reported the explosives, which were rendered powerless by sappers, were equivalent to about 20 kilograms of TNT. They were found in the fuel tank of one car and in the trunk of another, the news agency said, citing police sources. Dagestan Trial MAKHACHKALA, Dagestan (AP) - A court in Dagestan gave sentences ranging from seven years to life on Thursday to seven members of a criminal band who were convicted of carrying out 13 bombings, including a land mine blast that killed seven Russian soldiers. |
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 Just last month of weeks ago, unemployed engineer Nikolai Medvedyev, 52, buried his cousin Alexander, who died of a heart attack at the age of 59. The funeral was the second Medvedyev attended for a male relative this year as another cousin, only 45 years old, also died from heart disease in August. |
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 The City Administration has filed a lawsuit against Lenenergo, claiming that the 1992 privatization of the local energy monopoly was not legitimate. In response, Lenenergo has claimed that the legal action is being brought for purely political reasons. |
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MOSCOW - Russians can now invest their rubles in hard currency bonds for the first time since the Central Bank was forced to ban the practice in the aftermath of the 1998 economic collapse. |
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MOSCOW - Russia will be the first country to get a look at one of the most closely guarded corporate secrets in the world: the blueprint for Microsoft's omnipresent Windows operating system. The U.S. software titan said Wednesday that it would open the source code for Windows to governments and international organizations worldwide to enable them to beef up the security of their software, used for everything from designing weapons to managing money supplies. The first two entities to sign up for the initiative, dubbed the Government Security Program, are Russia and NATO, but the company hopes that governments and international organizations in some 60 countries will eventually be involved. |
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 MOSCOW - The State Duma voted to go ahead with the crucial second reading of a controversial package of bills next week that will radically alter the country's power industry - one day after the deputy speaker of the lower house said that it would be delayed indefinitely. |
 MOSCOW - One of Russia's largest forestry concerns has taken its long-running feud with some of the country's most powerful businesspeople to Britain. St. Petersburg-based Ilim Pulp said Tuesday that it had filed suit in London against Russian Aluminum co-owners Oleg Deripaska and Roman Abramovich, Sibneft president Eugene Shvidler and other parties involved in an ownership dispute with Deripaska's industrial holding, Base Element, over forestry assets in Irkutsk. |
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MOSCOW - As positioning for a slice of the world's second biggest oil patch heats up, top executives from LUKoil descended Wednesday on Baghdad to plead their case for winning back a multibillion-dollar contract to develop a vast oil field. |
 MOSCOW - Investor fears over the lack of a clear restructuring plan for Gazprom pushed its shares down 2.7 percent on Wednesday, following news that the natural-gas monopoly was fiercely resisting government plans to begin the breakup of its mammoth structure. |
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MOSCOW - Despite efforts to keep him quiet, independent Sberbank board member Vadim Kleiner on Tuesday reiterated accusations of poor management at the retail-banking monopoly and raised more concerns about its inefficiency. |
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CALLS for a diplomatic settlement of the current North Korea crisis are largely based on the premise that the North Koreans are simply interested in exchanging their nuclear-weapons program for the largest possible quantity of political and economic benefits. |
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IF ever there was an opportunity to find a compromise between the classical and the modern, it is the new design project for the Mariinsky Theater. The voices that have, in the past, called for at least a modicum of modernism to be introduced into the city's architectural landscape have, so far, been drowned out by those determined to preserve the city's rococo architectural traditions. |
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It is becoming increasingly obvious that the deadly truck-bomb attack in Grozny on Dec. 27 that virtually leveled the pro-Moscow Chechen government building, killing or wounding almost 200 people, has not led to a change in Moscow's policies in the region. The Kremlin is continuing to press forward with a referendum in March to adopt a new Chechen constitution, to make the republic a "normal" province of the Russia Federation with limited autonomy. |
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 VIENNA - At first sight, it seemed like a super high-powered gathering of St. Petersburg luminaries. Governor Yakovlev was at the opening gala; Mariinsky Theater Valery Gergiev had taken over the airwaves; popular band La Minor was playing in the streets; and the public saunas played host to people such as Viktor Mazin, the director of the city's Freud Museum. Yet this was Graz, and the reason that brought these people together - and will bring over 100 more - was the European Culture Capital. |
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 Punk from Myanmar and Thailand, underground rock from Indonesia, Macedonia and Nepal, and countless bands from all the distant places in which it is hard to believe that rock exists - all brought together on one label. |
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The new Cynic continues to win back its old public with a series of "official openings." This Friday will see yet another opening party - the fifth since Jan. 6, according to the venue's management. Local ska-punk outfit Chirvontsy will headline the evening. |
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Midday was perhaps not the best time to sample the atmosphere and cuisine at Platinum. With a stage for live music and at least four cavernous, brick-lined rooms and a stage, you could easily imagine that, in the evening, it would be a great venue for locals looking for a night out in the vicinity. |
 In Russia, the number of countertenors, or male singers who can sing as high as female altos and even sopranos, can literally be counted on one hand, and not all of them are even willing to identify themselves as such. While Oleg Ryabets prefers the term male soprano and Erik Kurmangaliyev calls himself a male alto, St. Petersburger Oleg Bezinskikh uses the word countertenor. Bezinskikh, 37, whose vocal range encompasses 3 1/2 octaves, was the first and only countertenor student in the history of the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory. |
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 The Golden Mask awards, Russia's top performing-arts festival, are usually held in Moscow but, this year, are coming north, and kick off at the Alexandriinsky Theater on March 27. |
 HOLLYWOOD - When the final chapter closes on Peter Jackson's adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings," the whole extravaganza may well be heralded as one of the more heroic ventures in commercial cinema. Launched last December to enormous success with "The Fellowship of the Ring," the ongoing epic has now entered an awkward adolescence with its middle feature, "The Two Towers," on its way to its concluding volume, "The Return of the King. |
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The question of "what is to be done?" - which was immortalized by 19th-century radical Nikolai Chernyshevsky and, subsequently, Vladimir Lenin - has plagued intellectual and popular discourse about the fate of Russia since the time of Peter the Great. |
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Sekvestr: budget cutting My New Year's resolution is to stop speaking Ruslish - the lazy use of literal translations or transliterations. For example, in this hybrid language, zhenskaya konsultatsiya becomes "women's consultation." When you hear Ya reshila proveritsya i poshla v zhenskuyu konsultatsiyu, you find yourself translating it as "I decided to check it out and went to the women's consultation," which is nonsense to anyone not familiar with the Russian health-care system. |
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