|
|
|
|
Vladimir Yarmin, head of the Kirov district administration and Nadezhda Shuvalova, head of Kirovets, the municipal housing repair company, were detained on bribery charges Thursday, the Prosecutor's Office announced Friday. Recently elected St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko hailed the action as a sign that corruption has no place in the new administration that she heads. |
|
MOSCOW - A fire roared through a five-story dormitory at the Peoples' Friendship University early Monday, killing at least 36 trapped foreign students and injuring 197 others in Moscow's deadliest blaze in almost a decade. |
|
MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin came out swinging hard at ousted Georgian leader Eduard Shevardnadze on Monday, accusing him of driving Georgia to the brink of collapse and urging the triumphant opposition to improve the country's strained relations with Russia. "The change of power in Georgia is the logical result of a series of systemic mistakes by the previous leadership of the country in its domestic, foreign and economic polices," Putin said at a Cabinet meeting. Those policies have left Georgia with a foreign debt of $2 billion, or 60 percent of the country's gross dometic product, he said. Georgians "stopped seeing light at the end of this long tunnel," he said, stressing that Shevardnadze had failed to eradicate corruption. |
|
 The smell of incense wafts through the air, a gong rings and the rhythmic murmur of monks reading a Tibetan Buddhist prayer fills the temple, but the intense spiritual atmosphere is not enough to keep a boy no older than seven from losing his place in a religious text. |
 VOLOTOVO, Novgorod - Tamara Anisimova strains to swing open the heavy door to the small church. Inside it is pitch black, but Anisimova keeps moving forward in search of the light switch. Since the start of restoration here in 1991, she has come to know every centimeter of the building by heart. The light is just there for guests. |
All photos from issue.
|
|
|
|
|
Population Falls 0.4% MOSCOW (AP) - Russia's population fell by 623,000 over the first nine months of the year, dropping by 0.4 percent to 144.3 million, the State Statistics Committee said in a statement. Despite the decline, the statement posted on the committee's web site, registered some positive demographic trends that could be attributed to Russia's economic revival over the past few years. |
|
City police on Monday detained the two security guards who blocked 150 staff scientists from entering the All-Russia Science and Research Technology Institute, or VNITI. |
 St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko has asked the U.S. ambassador to consider complaints by city residents about the American Consulate's frequent refusals to issue them visas to the United States. "It has become more difficult to get a visa, and we get a lot of complaints from St. |
|
MOSCOW - Yukos billionaire Vasily Shakhnovsky has dropped plans to represent the Siberian region Evenkia in the Federation Council, a move which would have given him immunity from prosecution, Interfax said on Monday. |
|
MOSCOW - An erstwhile business partner of ex-Yukos chief Mikhail Khodorkovsky faces a potential battle with prosecutors in Russia, unless the U.S. immigration authorities are persuaded to reverse a decision to strip him of his political refugee status. |
|
MOSCOW - Campaigning politicians got into a fistfight Friday night after a debate on NTV, with liberal and leftist politicians fending off what they described as an attack by Vladimir Zhirinovsky and his bodyguard. |
|
MOSCOW - With a little over two weeks to go before State Duma elections, a poll has found that 12 percent of Russians think that United Russia has performed best in televised campaign debates - despite the fact that the pro-Kremlin party has not actually taken part in the programs aired by the country's three main national television channels, refusing to appear in debates with its opponents. |
|
|
|
|
MOSCOW - International property consultants Knight Frank have entered the Russian market through a merger with local company Property Marketing Consultants, or PMC, the company announced last week. "The Russian economy is driving an extremely dynamic property market and the link up with Knight Frank is very exciting," Kirill Starodubtsev, managing director of PMC, said in a statement. "We will be able to offer international clients more sophisticated services in the areas of leasing, acquisition, valuation and investment." PMC, which will change its name to Knight Frank Russia, will continue to offer realty services from its nine offices around the country. |
|
 St. Petersburg builders gained a new source of modern and affordable building materials with the opening Friday of the Besser concrete masonry block manufacturer in Gatchina, to the south of the city. |
 MOSCOW - The 2004 draft budget passed by the State Duma in the third of four readings Friday may provide another surplus, but changes to the new stabilization fund designed to cushion against plunging oil prices may do just the opposite, many economists said. |
|
MOSCOW - Federal Security Service officials seized documents from Alfa Bank's headquarters in downtown Moscow on Friday in an investigation that the bank said it had initiated itself. |
|
MOSCOW - The State Duma on Friday closed a loophole in the Criminal Code that allowed tax dodgers to avoid punishment if they agreed to pay up, a move that could affect the fate of Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Khodorkovsky, the biggest shareholder of oil giant Yukos, is in jail pending trial on charges of tax evasion and massive fraud. |
|
MOSCOW - It took eight months, some $150 million and the personal intervention of the prime minister for Alexander Lebedev to get a seat on Aeroflot's board. |
 Editor's note: This is the second of two articles about taking money out of Russia. MOSCOW - In 2003 any dollar or euro that finds itself in a private pocket in Russia and wants to go home electronically is going to have a hard time. Individuals cannot send hard currency out of Russia by wire or bank transfer without showing a slip to prove that it was bought by them in Russia for rubles, or a stamped currency declaration to prove that they carried it into the country. |
|
MOSCOW - The Cabinet approved next year's investment programs, totaling nearly $18.3 billion, into the power, gas and railway sectors on Thursday. The state monopolies - gas giant Gazprom, the national power grid Unified Energy Systems, the nuclear power concern Rosenergoatom and Russian Railways Co. |
|
MOSCOW - Merger talks between Russia's largest food group Wimm-Bill-Dann and French food giant Danone have ended, WBD said Friday. Danone has been negotiating a takeover of WBD, a dairy and juice producer with a market capitalization of $800 million, for two years. |
|
DETROIT - Russian steelmaker Severstal agreed to pay about $215 million for Rouge Industries Inc., the Michigan-based steel company announced Friday. Rouge, which had previously signed a letter of intent with Russia's Severstal, said the companies signed a purchase agreement for basically all of Rouge's assets. |
 Within three minutes of meeting Jukka Timonen, he is leaping in the air, arms folded, legs akimbo karate style. Kari Vatanen, his business partner since 2002, has a split lip which he explains came from a battle with Jukka the night before. Neither man will confess to having lost the play-fight but Kari admits "the force is strong with that one. |
|
|
|
|
In the last decade it became commonplace for U.S. diplomats to criticize a foreign government by saying that some outrageous action it had taken would not sit well with global investors. Obviously the world's superpower can't take on all the hard issues, so why not get Moody's to help it out? The Bush administration continues to treat the jailing of billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky in this spirit, by fretting aloud about its impact on business confidence. |
|
President Vladimir Putin showed up at the Nov. 14 congress of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs. This was a little inconsistent, as immediately after Mikhail Khodorkovsky's arrest the president called on everyone to calm down and announced that he would not be meeting with the oligarchs to discuss the matter. |
|
Exactly who first conceived the tactic of multiple-strike terrorist attacks is not known, but among jihadists, the idea is at least a decade old. "Boom, boom, boom and America is on standby," one participant in the 1993 conspiracy to destroy landmarks, bridges and tunnels in New York was fond of saying to his fellow plotters. |
|
TBILISI, Georgia - For one awful moment, I thought the army had begun firing on protesters outside parliament. There was a series of deafening explosions and people craned out of windows to see what was happening. |
|
Gag RuleAlthough the "conquest" of Iraq has unraveled into murderous chaos, at least the Bush Regime is winning its ferocious battle against another dangerous foe: American soldiers who were captured - and tortured - by Saddam Hussein's forces in the first Gulf War. The Bushists' relentless fight to block the American captives from receiving any compensation from Iraq has eerie echoes of a similar move, more than 50 years ago, to prevent American victims of Japanese torture from filing legal claims against their tormentors. |
|
|
|
|
ISTANBUL - Police have used DNA samples to confirm the identity of an Islamic militant who rammed an explosives-laden pickup truck into the British consulate in Istanbul, a Turkish newspaper said Monday. The man was identified as Feridun Ugurlu, a Turk believed to have fought with Islamic radicals in Afghanistan and Chechnya, the Milliyet newspaper said, citing unidentified police sources. |
|
LONDON (AP) - George Harrison's first guitar - "a real cheapo" his parents gave him - has sold at auction for more than $469,200. The guitar was part of an annual Beatles sale by music memorabilia firm Cooper Owen, conducted Thursday at the Hard Rock Cafe in London. |
Temp: 0°C partly cloudy 
Issues Archive