The USA-Russia Investment Fund celebrated its fifth anniversary yesterday and announced the official opening of a division that specializes in mortgage lending, the DeltaCredit company. By the time of opening, the company had already concluded cooperation agreements with 12 Russian banks and approved about 430 loans totaling $13.5 million. Now the company plans to ease the conditions for obtaining a mortgage loan.

The Ural Transport Inspectorate is ready to license everything Ekaterinburg entrepreneurs began to fight with the local branch of the Russian Transport Inspectorate (RTI). Representatives of medium-sized businesses providing services in the transport sector believe that RTI infringes on their rights by forcing them to obtain licenses.

The Kemerovo chemical plant fell into the orbit of Gazprom Last Friday, a meeting of shareholders of Kemerovo Azot, the largest chemical enterprise in Kuzbass, took place. Shareholders elected a supervisory board and an audit commission and approved the report of General Director Anatoly Gubkin. Behind the seemingly routine decisions, however, lies the end of an entire era in the history of the plant. After this meeting, Azot finally and irrevocably fell into the orbit of Gazprom’s influence.

It was under this headline that Russian news agencies released reports yesterday about how the Russian president spent Monday evening. In fact, this headline contains almost the whole news or, as the Jews say, the whole tzimmes. More precisely, the point is that the unexpected headline “Russia - Putin - Jews” refers to reports about an event of a purely peaceful and even celebratory nature.

Gazprom and Media-Most made the secret explicit The negotiation process between Gazprom-Media and the Media-Most holding has ended. Both sides went all-in by making public the confidential details of the agreement they signed on July 20. These agreements, according to the documents presented on NTV, consisted in the fact that Vladimir Gusinsky was given freedom and the right to leave the country in exchange for agreeing to sell Media-Most to Gazprom.

Today, a group of Norwegian divers, who arrived the night before at the Northern Fleet base in Severomorsk, should begin training on the Orel nuclear submarine of the same type as the Kursk. Rescuers must learn to move through the compartments of the boat, as they say, blindfolded. But the departure of Russian divers to Norway for training, scheduled for September 16-17, has been postponed indefinitely. Our rescuers are still based at the state research institute No. 40 near St.

The best breaststroker in Russia is ready to exchange “bronze” for “gold” Four-month-old Roma Sludnov watched his first Olympics, held in Moscow... lying in his dad's arms. And 20 years later, he went to the start of the Games in Sydney himself, winning a bronze medal for the Russian team in swimming at a distance of 100 m breaststroke. However, the swimmer is dissatisfied with this result.

Walt Disney Co is introducing a new version of its web portal to users. According to The Wall Street Journal Europe, it took just over eight months to finalize the initial version, launched in early 1999. If in the initial version Disney's Go.com was built as a “horizontal portal of general interest” and was close in structure to the products of Yahoo!

Ukraine is moving towards Europe again Last Saturday, going to Paris for a meeting with the EU leadership, Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma signed a program for integration into the European Union right on the plane. For nine years of independence, Kyiv postponed the final choice of foreign policy priorities, balancing between Moscow and Brussels. Now there is a year or two left to catch up, no more.

Today the name of the new owner of ONAKO will be known A special commission of the Russian Federal Property Fund (RFFI) is to sum up the results of the investment competition for the sale of an 85 percent state stake in the Orenburg Oil Company (ONAKO). Four companies are participating in the tender, which closed on September 14. However, the RFBR has not yet disclosed information about them. Potential participants also preferred to refrain from public comments on the eve of the competition.

Rosbank plans to attract half a billion dollars from private investors Formally, yesterday's press conference by the head of the holding company Interros, Vladimir Potanin, and the president of ONEXIMbank, Mikhail Prokhorov, was timed to coincide with the decision made at the end of last week to merge the two main banks of the group - Rosbank and ONEXIM - and to complete the restructuring of the latter. However, the conversation turned to the group's plans in the banking business.

The Chairman of the National People's Congress, Comrade Li Peng, almost canceled his visit to Vladivostok, which was the end of his Russian tour, due to bad weather. This is due to another typhoon, the fourth since the beginning of summer, that hit the Primorsky Territory. On Sunday, September 17, the regional center received two weeks' worth of precipitation. On the main street of the city, a strong wind knocked down a giant poplar tree, which, falling, tore the tram wires to shreds.

The Russian National Unity (RNE) movement of Alexander Barkashov two years ago, thanks to the efforts of the media, and especially television, was perceived in the public consciousness as a very real threat of fascism. Footage of marching nationalists and Mr Barkashov's face have become a fixture on most political television. However, after television left RNU its attention, passions subsided. The other day information appeared that some of Mr.

The President of Kyrgyzstan is not required by the constitution One of the main rivals of Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev in the upcoming presidential elections on October 29, former vice-president of the country Felix Kulov yesterday made a very decisive demarche in defense of his constitutional rights. At a meeting of the linguistic commission created by the Central Election Commission to test the knowledge of the Kyrgyz language of presidential candidates, Mr.

The International Olympic Committee continues its anti-doping campaign. According to IOC Vice-President Richard Pound, during the year leading up to the Games, more than 2 thousand tests were taken from athletes from different countries. Nevertheless, both the start of the Olympics and its first days are accompanied by doping scandals. First, weightlifter from Taiwan Pou Pi-Chen and swimmer from Kazakhstan Evgenia Ermakova left Sydney, whose tests turned out to be positive.