|
|
|
 A protest march by 200 people from the British Consulate to the U.S. Consulate as part of a worldwide day of actions against a possible U.S.-led war against Iraq ended surreally on Friday, as law-enforcement officers and protesters struggled over possession of a dead pig's head. The police, who had followed the events of the two-hour long, officially sanctioned protest from a distance in a bus, stepped in when a group of young men identifying themselves as members of the Anti-Globalization Patriotic Youth Union tried to set an Uncle-Sam style hat on the pig's head in front of the U. |
|
 As the State Duma prepares for the first reading of a bill to return Russia to its pre-1930 standard time, a St. Petersburg group last week released the results of research that, it claims, demonstrate the positive impacts the proposed change will bring. |
|
The St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast police department detained three skinheads last week that it says are connected with the fatal beating of a 23-year-old student at the Mechnikov State Medical Academy on Feb 1, Interfax reported on Monday. The police have initiated a criminal investigation on charges of hooliganism against the suspects. |
|
MOSCOW - Pavel Borodin, the chief executive of the Russia-Belarus Union and on old friend of President Vladimir Putin, is considering running for the post of Moscow region governor in December, Interfax reported. |
All photos from issue.
|
|
|
|
|
MOSCOW - While there is little Russia can do to stop U.S. military action against Iraq, Moscow should position itself as a "responsible partner," pushing Washington to abide by international law and avoiding rash moves that could jeopardize Russian interests in a post-war Iraq, a group of experts said Monday. |
|
MOSCOW - Nikolai Dudov, a former deputy to slain Magadan Governor Valentin Tsvetkov, came from behind to beat Magadan Mayor Nikolai Karpenko in a runoff Sunday for the governor's post. |
|
MOSCOW - Hot on the heels of a controversial Tax Police instruction permitting preventative action against people it considers likely to evade taxes, Tax Police first deputy director Sergei Verevkin-Rakhalsky has put his signature on regulations allowing lie detectors to be used on suspects. |
|
Mordovia Vote ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Mordovian President Nikolai Merkushin won re-election in a vote held in the Volga River republic over the weekend, Interfax reported Monday, citing local election officials. |
|
|
|
 MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin squashed market hopes of quick reforms at Gazprom on Friday, saying that the government opposes plans to break up the gas giant. "The state does not support any plans to split or break up Gazprom," Putin said at a reception held to celebrate the monopoly's 10th anniversary. |
|
A British company, OSG Records Management, has set up shop in St. Petersburg to offer a novel service, although some potential clients maintain that, for the time being, there is little demand for document-storage facilities. |
|
MOSCOW - Storm clouds are gathering over BP's landmark $6.75-billion deal with the Tyumen Oil Co., as once-burned minority investors dig up old allegations of extortion, cutthroat-takeover tactics and financial fraud being used to create TNK and redirect them at its new global partner BP. |
|
MOSCOW - Megafon on Saturday will become the first cellular operator to launch services in Chechnya, a move the company hopes will help end hostilities in a war-torn region virtually devoid of telecommunications infrastructure. |
|
MOSCOW - The government is fully on board for making Primorsk the country's biggest crude-oil port, the head of national pipeline monopoly Transneft said Friday. Semyon Vainshtok said that Transneft plans to boost Primorsk's oil throughput from the current 12 million metric tons per year, or 240,000 barrels per day, to 42 million tons by 2005. |
|
MOSCOW - Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov on Friday suspended the compromised head of the State Fisheries Committee, Yevgeny Nazdratenko, whose battles with Far Eastern governors over the distribution of quotas has paralyzed the fishing industry there. |
 MOSCOW - It took years, but lawmakers finally gave the government what it wanted Friday, approving by an unexpectedly comfortable margin the key legal components required to begin reconstructing the world's largest power company. The State Duma passed in the key second reading a total of six bills that pave the way for industry-wide modernization, the creation of a free market for electricity and the breakup of Unified Energy Systems' sprawling monopoly. |
|
 To hear manufacturers tell it, the economy is in crisis and recovery is nowhere in sight. After 49 consecutive months of production growth, the manufacturing sector contracted in January for the first time since the economy was temporarily shellshocked from the debt default and steep ruble devaluation of 1998, according to the latest seasonally adjusted Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) conducted by Moscow Narodny Bank. |
|
When Theresa Tollemache started bringing back towels from the Soviet Union for her friends in England in 1989, she had little idea that a decade later she would be importing linen from Ivanovo, Vologda and Kostroma for politicians, celebrities and even for the king of Swaziland's bed. Before setting up her upscale mail-order service - the Volga Linen company - Tollemache worked with the BEARR Trust bringing medicines into the Soviet Union. |
|
|
|
|
THE notion that Russia's small-business climate has improved of late seems to be gaining currency. From research and my own experience, however, I can say that this isn't the case. Business daily Vedomosti reported in late January, for example, that the small-business climate has improved, and relations between government and small-business owners have taken a turn for the better. |
|
In response to "Asian Student Dies in Racist Attack," on Feb. 4. Editor, As an Indian student who has been studying here in St. |
|
ONE is a frail old Russian, moving through the West like a ghost whom everyone would rather forget. The other, Russia's defense minister, is ramrod straight and self-confident as he strides purposefully, meeting nothing but deference and respect. That the ghost speaks the truth and the defense minister the opposite has no impact on this equation. |
|
WHATEVER the actual reason for Yevgeny Nazdratenko's suspension as head of the State Fisheries Committee, one can only hope that this temporary measure is followed by something a little more permanent - such as dismissal, with the words "this man is not fit for public office" being indelibly branded on his forehead. |
|
THE Soviet Politburo hoped that some day the Franco-German axis, initiated by French President Charles de Gaulle some 40 years ago, would break up NATO and deliver Western Europe into Soviet hands. Many in Moscow are happy to see that the dream of a "multipolar" world seems to be materializing. |
|
Cold Fronts The opening of a long-delayed civil suit in a London courtroom; a brief, buried article on a judicial nomination; a fluctuation in the commodities market: three mundane, seemingly unrelated items in the news last week that combined to give a fleeting glimpse of the ugly reality behind the frantic, diversionary facade of the "civilized world. |
Temp: 0°C partly cloudy 
Issues Archive