The Moscow Times

The Crisis: Electricity Providers Face Bankruptcy
Electricity suppliers across the country are cracking down as the number of delinquent private and corporate customers surges, as the dilapidated industry is mired in debt linked to unpaid consumer bills and the multibillion-dollar investment programs that investors signed onto during the privatization of Unified Energy System, which wrapped up just weeks before the financial crisis struck.

News

Deripaska Gives Up Magna Stake
By Max Delany / Staff Writer Basic Element's CEO says liquidity woes have also meant a freeze in the hiring of new staff.

Rice Denies Trying to Undermine Moscow
Combined Reports U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Sunday rejected any suggestion that U.S. efforts to build closer ties to Kazakhstan are meant to undermine Russian influence in Central Asia.

Bill Returns Powers to Prosecutors
By Francesca Mereu / Staff Writer The State Duma is considering a bill that would restore to the Prosecutor General's Office the right to open criminal cases against certain categories of senior government officials, a deputy said Friday.

Troops Dismantling Positions in Georgia
The Associated Press Russian troops began dismantling positions Sunday in the so-called security zones inside Georgia they have occupied since August's brief but intense war, a Georgian Interior Ministry official said.

Black Sea Residents Evicted for Olympic Village
By Miriam Elder / Staff Writer Valery's eyes burn ice blue as he stares toward the Black Sea coast just meters from his house. The local government has given him three months to pack up and leave as the country begins preparing to turn Sochi and its environs into an Olympic playland.

News in Brief
Olmert to Discuss ArmsChinese Dry Milk SeizedYevloyev Inquiry Wraps Up20 Years for Child's Murder3 Slain in North CaucasusEU Invites Minsk Diplomat'Nazarbayev Offers Bounty'

Malevich Expected to Smash Record
Reuters Sotheby's expects a painting by avant-garde painter Kazimir Malevich to shatter the auction record for a Russian work of art when it goes under the hammer in New York on Nov. 3.

Time Running Out for U.S. Voters
By Nikolaus von Twickel / Staff Writer While regulations for absentee ballots differ from state to state, most voters will have to hurry to make their voices heard.

Former Commander Arrested in Graft Case
The Moscow Times A former deputy commander of the Railway Troops was arrested on corruption charges Friday, the same day that the Kremlin submitted anti-corruption legislation to the State Duma.

Russian Tipped for Nobel Prize
The Associated Press Human rights activists from Russia and China are considered front-runners to win the Nobel Peace Prize this week. The Nobel announcements kick off Monday with the medicine prize.

Pro-Kremlin Youth Slam Washington
By Svetlana Osadchuk / Staff Writer About 80 young people gathered outside the U.S. Embassy on Sunday, chanting anti-American slogans and demanding that a former U.S. diplomat be tried over a car crash that paralyzed a Vladivostok student 10 years ago.

Kiev Coalition Sought
The Associated Press Lawmakers loyal to Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko made frantic last-minute efforts Friday to revive their pro-Western coalition and avoid early elections.

Lavrov Calls for Pirate Fight
The Associated Press The foreign minister signals that momentum is growing for coordinated international action against piracy off Somalia's coast.

Business

Sechin Set to Join Inter RAO Board
By Anatoly Medetsky / Staff Writer Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin is set to join the board of state-controlled electricity trader Inter RAO, boosting his influence over the sector at a company with operations in Finland, Turkey and across the former Soviet Union.

Falling Nickel Prices Slash Norilsk's Profit
By Aleksandras Budrys, Robin Paxton / Reuters Norilsk Nickel's net profit fell by one-third in the first half of the year as the world's largest nickel miner succumbed to rampant inflation in Russia and a 40 percent decline in the price of the metal.

Business in Brief
CTC Buys Moldova StationsStake in Ile de Beaute Sold$50Bln Package in DumaRosUkrEnergo's DebtNovatek's $117M DividendUAC, Airbus in A350 Talks

Sberbank Revises Credit Growth Plans
Reuters Sberbank is no longer targeting lending growth and will concentrate instead on the quality of its loans, Kommersant reported Friday.

Russia Records 2nd-Highest Quarterly Capital Outflow
Bloomberg Russia's net capital outflow was the second-highest in the country's history in the third quarter because of the global financial crisis and the country's war with Georgia.

VTB Group Drops on Trading Losses
Bloomberg VTB Group, the country's second-biggest bank, fell Friday after trading losses reached 9.31 billion rubles ($360 million) in September because of ""negative market dynamics.""

Pankin Says Turmoil Won't Change Fund
Reuters The government does not plan to change the draft investment strategy for its $49 billion National Welfare Fund because of market turbulence, Deputy Finance Minister Dmitry Pankin said Friday.

Regal Denies Receiving $1.2Bln Bid From Shell
Bloomberg Regal Petroleum, a British-based explorer focusing on Ukraine, on Friday denied a report that it got a $1.2 billion offer from Shell. The company's shares jumped the most in more than four years in London trading.

TNK-BP Says Feud Is Resolved
Combined Reports TNK-BP said Friday that it had fully resolved a shareholders' dispute threatening to hurt output at the country's third-largest oil producer.

InBev and Carlsberg Say Russian Sales Drooping
By Meera Bhatia / Bloomberg Brewing giants InBev and Carlsberg on Friday reported weakening sales in Russia as cold weather and turmoil in financial markets affect demand for beer in one of their fastest-growing consumer markets.

Sedmoi Kontinent Profit Expected to Drop
Bloomberg Sedmoi Kontinent, the country's fourth-largest publicly traded food retailer, is expected to post a drop in second-quarter profit Monday on costs for store openings and as a year-earlier gain is not repeated.

Nokia's iPhone Rival Expected in '08
Reuters Nokia's answer to Apple's iPhone will go on sale in Russia and six other countries -- across Asia, the Middle East and Europe -- this year but will miss the Christmas shopping season in most developed markets.

Opinion

Vladimir Frolov: Making Strategic Assets Accessible to Investors
The Russian government has demonstrated its readiness to bolster the financial system with billions of rubles, including plans to refinance outstanding corporate loans to prevent margin call sell-offs of collateralized stocks of major Russian companies.

Destroying by Co-Opting
The Union of Right Forces is trying to transform its platform and image. Most voters have long associated the party, known as SPS, with the two poster children of the painful reforms of the 1990s -- former Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar and privatization chief Anatoly Chubais.

Alexei Bayer: Brezhnev Comes to Washington
I have repeatedly drawn parallels in this column between President George W. Bush's United States and the Soviet Union during the rule of Leonid Brezhnev.

The Polluters Must Pay
It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the United States' financial system -- indeed, global finance -- is in a mess. The problems in the U.S. economy and financial system have been apparent for years.

City Wise

Kremlin Cup Brings Top Tennis Stars to Moscow
By John Wendle / Staff Writer Despite the tournament's name and the red brick towers emerging from a sea of tennis balls on its web site, the Kremlin Cup will not be played on or anywhere near Red Square.

Community Bulletin Board

Market Matters

RTS Has Toughest Week Since '99
By Courtney Weaver / Staff Writer Trading on the dollar-denominated RTS exchange was suspended three times on Friday as anxiety deepened over whether the U.S. House of Representatives would pass a $700 billion financial sector bailout package and share prices on Russian and international markets plummeted.

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