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BOSTON - Although invited to the seventh annual U.S.-Russia Investment Symposium to discuss economic diversification, participants are mainly talking about the Yukos crisis, with investment guru George Soros even calling for Russia's expulsion from the G-8 over the "political persecution" of oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky. "The G-8 is supposed to be a democratic organization, but it is becoming questionable whether Russia qualifies for it," Soros told a packed hall Wednesday night. Soros said Russia would do little to change and urged the West to try to intervene. "[This responsibility falls] particularly [to] President [George W. |
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 A unique and beautiful statue that admirers have dubbed Aphrodite, after the Greek goddess of love, is out of the public eye while its future is decided. |
 The Nabokov Estate in Russia has filed a suit against Nezavisimaya Gazeta for publishing several texts by Vladimir Nabokov without permission and defaming the author's name. The publication in question is "Nabokov About Nabokov Etc.: Interviews, Reviews and Essays," printed in Russian by the Nezavisimaya Gazeta publishing house in 2002. |
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VILNIUS, Lithuania - All the Lithuanian chief presidential advisers have begun announcing their resignations, presidential press secretary Rosvaldas Gorbaciovas told Interfax on Thursday. |
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Since the early 1990s, St. Petersburg has had the reputation of being the crime capital of Russia. Then came the television series "Banditsky Peterburg," which painted the city as a den of corruption, betrayal and violence. But those images of the city may soon have to make way for a new project called Erotichesky Peterburg, or Erotic Petersburg, that aims to highlight the city's sensual pleasures. |
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MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin on Thursday reiterated his position that the legal assault on Yukos and its top shareholders is not part of a wider campaign to redistribute property - just as the Prosecutor General's Office suggested otherwise. "There is no basis to suppose that the use of laws is selective or will be selective," Putin told visiting International Monetary Fund chief Horst Koehler, according to the president's top economic advisor Andrei Illarionov, who attended the meeting. |
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SEOUL, South Korea - The cost of building a proposed BP-led pipeline that will transport Russian gas more than 4,000 kilometers to China and South Korea may swell two-thirds to $18 billion, a Korea Gas Corp. |
 MOSCOW - A defiant Moody's on Wednesday staunchly defended its landmark decision to award Russia investment-grade status, saying that even the nationalization of Yukos would not change its mind. "If you look back five years from now you will find the market will have converged with the assessments we made," predicted John Rutherford Jr. |
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Vimpelcom Gaining ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The number of subscribers to Vimpelcom's Bee-line network in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast grew to 245,000 in October, a company press release announced Wednesday. |
 MOSCOW - The government will slash costs for traders of shares and bonds by 50 percent or more before the end of next year, seeking to bolster investors' confidence and stimulate investment, Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref said Tuesday. |
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MOSCOW - Gazprom said Thursday its management had approved a plan to increase borrowing by 40 percent in 2004 to 217 billion rubles ($7.3 billion). The firm also plans to cut costs by at least $1 billion, after cost cuts of $1. |
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MOSCOW - The Tax Ministry is pressing the government to give it a range of police powers that only the Interior Ministry enjoys. Tax Minister Gennady Bukayev told the latest issue of Russian Tax Courier, the ministry's in-house publication, that he wants his ministry to be able to "inventory taxpayers' property, interrogate witnesses [and] seize documents and objects," Vedomosti reported Tuesday. |
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MOSCOW - After orchestrating a hotly contentious and occasionally violent campaign to forge the aluminum industry's choicest assets into a single global giant, Oleg Deripaska is moving on. |
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For the past few weeks nearly half of Russia's regional leaders have found themselves in a rather interesting position. Although officially "on vacation" as they tend to their own re-election or the United Russia party's parliamentary campaign, they remain "at their posts" when it comes to pressing business or direct orders from the president. |
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Arbitrary power versus illegitimate wealth: That is the essence of the conflict between President Vladimir Putin and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, estwhile chairman of Yukos. |
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 Artist Robert Houle uses eagle feathers in his installations and describes himself as a "classical" Indian, a descendant of the "feather Indians" who painted their faces before a fight and lived in wigwams. He is one of thirteen artists, whose artworks are part of a new display at the State Ethnography Museum. Called "Transitions," the exhibition brings to Russia contemporary Canadian Indian and Inuit art for the first time, and aims to break the notorious stereotype that such art is primitive, lacks depth and philosophy, and limits itself to animalistic and domestic subjects. |
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 For the past 11 years, Myllarit, arguably Karelia's leading folk band, has done its fair share in putting Karelia's capital Petrozavodsk on the world music map. |
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With autumn, the season for new albums, in full swing, the weekend starts with a launch of folk-punk band Iva Nova's long-awaited debut. The eponymously-titled album will feature 16 songs and two bonus tracks. Iva Nova has been busy with the album, recorded at a Moscow studio, for the past six months. |
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The menu at Seoul Garden, a relaxed and cheerful Korean-Japanese restaurant on Kanal Griboyedov, is priced in "y.e." or "conditional units. |
 British pop superstar Robbie Williams took time out from his European tour to visit disadvantaged children in Moscow this week in his role as UNICEF Special Representative, according to the organization's website. Williams visited a UNICEF-supported shelter in the city on Saturday, where he heard about the plight of three-year-old Sabrina. When Sabrina arrived at the shelter, she was unable to speak or stand up, as her alcoholic mother had been unable to feed or take care of her. |
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 Back in the early 1990s, when hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews were pouring into Israel, people used to joke that three out of every four people who got off the airplane were carrying musical instruments. |
 Neo, schmeo! In "The Matrix Revolutions," directors Andy and Larry Wachowski give up on character; instead, they try havoc and let slurp the dogs of war. The film is a soggy mess, essentially a loud, wild 100-minute battle movie bookended by an incomprehensible beginning and a laughable ending. |
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No other writer in the English language has more often been likened to a saint than George Orwell. His contemporaries and subsequent hagiographers lauded his self-denial, integrity, physical and intellectual courage, and - Orwell's favorite quality - "decency. |
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Shapochnoye znakomstvo: a nodding acquaintance with someone. Friendship in Russia is more than just friendship. It comes with responsibilities (staying in touch, lending money, lending a hand) as well as benefits (knowing there is always someone to help you get through the bad times and celebrate the good ones). |
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'Ghost Ship' Irks Brits HARTLEPOOL, England (Reuters) - The first of 13 U.S. ships due to be scrapped in Britain sailed into port Wednesday, to cries of protest from environmentalists who have won a first round in their campaign to stop the vessels being dismantled. The environmentalists say the old ships, built with asbestos and possibly containing traces of other chemicals, are toxic and poisonous, and the government has suspended permission for scrapping, a decision now under appeal. |
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