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MOSCOW - At the request of the intelligence services and the written instruction of NTV's deputy general director, an interview with the widow of Chechen separatist leader Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev was cut from the Sunday night broadcast of "Namedni," Kommersant reported Monday. "I do not know what level the instruction came from, but I can say that the request came from people on a level that you don't argue with," Leonid Parfyonov, the anchor of the weekly current affairs program, was quoted as saying. During the five-minute segment that was scrapped, Malika Yandarbiyeva spoke of sitting in on the trial of two Russian secret service officers charged in connection with her husband's killing in a car bomb explosion in Qatar in February. |
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 Baghdad-born British designer Zaha Hadid, whose work is inspired by the Russian avant-garde, received the Pritzker Prize, world's top architectural award at the Hermitage on Monday. |
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Environmental Rights Center Bellona on Thursday won a court case over a dispute with the Defense Minister and the Navy Commander on declassifying information about accidents on board Soviet nuclear submarines. The presidium of the Moscow City Court said that the information requested by environmentalists cannot be classified and that Bellona can demand its release. "This ruling establishes a precedent," said St. Petersburg lawyer Ivan Pavlov, head of the Institute for the Development of Freedom of Information, who was hired by Bellona to work on the case. "In the past the courts had no idea at all how to get documents declassified. |
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 Two provincial Finnish cities are the closest pieces of the West to St. Petersburg and offer recreation, medical treatment, dentistry, car registration, shopping, postal, banking and trade facilities to visitors from just over the border. |
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Imatra was the site of an unusual meeting between Adolf Hitler and Finnish military leader Marshall Karl Mannerheim in 1942, about a year after Germany launched its attack on the Soviet Union. Mannerheim, an aristocratic former officer in the Tsar's army who was trained in St. Petersburg, was little impressed by the German dictator. Fiercely independent Finland was caught between two aggressive great powers. It had lost many lives and much territory when Stalin attacked it in the Winter War of 1939-40 and, presented with an offer to receive some captured armaments in exchange for allowing German troops to cross its territory, Finland had agreed in 1940 and became a somewhat reluctant ally of the Nazis. |
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 St. Petersburg marked its 301st birthday over the weekend with a string of high-spirited events including a colorful carnival along Nevsky Prospekt, and the premiere of a new production of Mikhail Glinka's opera "A Life for the Tsar" at the Mariinsky Theater. |
All photos from issue.
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Plaque to U.S. Envoy ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The unveiling ceremony of a memorial plaque to John Quincy Adams, the first official U.S. envoy to Russia, will take place in St. Petersburg on Thursday, Interfax reported. U.S. Ambassador Alexander Vershbow will attend the ceremony. |
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Greenpeace has filed a lawsuit against city water utility Vodokanal, saying the state-owned monopoly has failed to provide information about its planned waste disposal plant northwest of St. |
 The Culture Ministry on Saturday finally signed a contract with French architect Dominique Perrault to use his design for a state-of-the-art building housing a second stage for the state-owned Mariinsky Theater. Perrault won an international competition to design the building almost a year ago, but the government has been in no rush to get things started. Some insiders say this embarrassing procrastination is due to a lack of money. |
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 The Amber Room, for years the world's most valuable missing art treasure was restored with the help of German financing and reopened a year ago in time for St. |
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MOSCOW - Kidnapped Dutch aid worker Arjan Erkel was freed after the Kremlin arranged a ransom payment of 1 million euros, a source close to his employer, Medicins Sans Frontieres, said Monday. Erkel, the MSF mission head in Dagestan, was released unharmed near the Dagestani capital, Makhachkala, on April 11 after being held hostage for 20 months, in what local security services said at the time was "a special operation. |
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The findings of a three-year research project into the fate of the original Amber Room have been sent to the State Duma and the German Culture Ministry, the publishers said Friday in a statement. |
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Eliseev Palace Hotel, which opened last year at the former merchant Eliseev's house at 59 Moika embankment, has become Russia's first hotel to join the prestigious Leading Small Hotels of the World association. Completed in the spring of 2003, the hotel boasts 29 rooms and provides the only opportunity in town to enjoy the atmosphere of 19th century tsarist era. |
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$52 M Nokian Plant ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The Finnish tyre manufacturer, Nokian Tyres plans to start construction of a new factory in Vsevolozhsk, located in the Leningrad Oblast on June 23. |
 Dan Kearvell, a rugby player at heart and the former commercial manager of the Russo-British Chamber of Commerce in Moscow, came to head the St. Petersburg branch of the Chamber in April this year. The Chamber started operating the same month Kearvell arrived in St. |
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Private banking services, aimed at helping the wealthy conserve and multiply their assets, are beginning to emerge in Russia. But while such services have an exclusive image it is often difficult to distinguish private banking from other widely available consumer banking services. |
 There exist a limited number of efficient investment projects available in the Russian market today. At present, banks can only invest in projects that pay off quickly, such as construction of trade centers. Without state support or any defined governmental policies to back them up, banks are limited to short-term projects that bring profit within two to three years. |
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The RTS index decreased 7.01 percent to 583.17 points in the period from May 24 to 28, the press service of the RTS exchange reported. Tatneft with a 10. |
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In response to "Police Checking Roma to Protect Tourists," an article by Vladimir Kovalev on May 25. Editor, I am from Australia, and have toured your beautiful city on two occasions. Once in 1996 and again in 2002. I loved it very much, however, both times as a traveler, we were warned about the local police. |
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President Vladimir Putin's state of the nation address could be called the "speeding troika" speech. His vision may well be that of Gogol in the classic "Dead Souls": "Russia, are you not speeding along like a fiery and matchless troika? Russia, where are you flying? Answer me. |
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Despite all the beauty of the scheme for reforming communal housing services that City Hall is implementing, the reform is being handled highly questionably. Officials have begun, as they did last time under former governor Vladimir Yakovlev in 1997, by increasing tariffs. |
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Down by Law "Thou marshall'st me the way that I was going." - William Shakespeare, "Macbeth." In January 2002, official White House legal counsel Alberto Gonzales warned George W. |
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Bush Holds Saddam Gun WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A handgun that Saddam Hussein was clutching when U.S. forces captured him in a hole in Iraq last December is now kept by President Bush at the White House, a spokesman confirmed on Sunday. Time magazine, which first disclosed the gun's location, said military officials had it mounted after it was seized from Saddam near his hometown of Tikrit last year, and soldiers involved in the capture gave it to Bush. |
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MOSCOW - There can have been few sports occasions in Moscow as dramatic, politically charged or surreal as Saturday's Russian Cup soccer final. Chechen club Terek Grozny joined the likes of Newcastle, Millwall and Monaco in Europe club competition after a last-minute goal snatched a stunning 1-0 victory over Krylia Sovietov Samara. |
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