According to senior officials of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the strict Soviet-era restrictions on possession of hard currency will finally be deleted from Russia's criminal code. The new, liberalized rules punish only buying and selling hard currency from unregistered vendors. Approximately 1,000 persons were... MORE

The "Russian Business Roundtable," an association representing the interests of numerous commercial and banking firms, has adopted a voluntary code of corporate conduct. The code calls for: refusal to deal with criminal entities seeking to launder money and legalize criminal income; renunciation of unfair business... MORE

Russia's Nuclear Energy Ministry has announced that it is close to signing a contract on the construction of a nuclear power plant in Kudankulam, India, as part of Russian-Indian cooperation in peaceful uses of nuclear energy. Russian specialists are already prospecting the Kudankulam area and... MORE

Russia's first test of U.S.-style offshore private petroleum production looms off the coast of Sakhalin Island and construction awaits only the legal nod from Moscow, an executive with the agency overseeing oil development said. Vladislav Shcherbakov, first vice president of the State Committee on Geology... MORE

The Duma's Ecology Committee has scheduled hearings next month on the security of Russia's nuclear power plants. Presumably the hearings are in response to recent charges from the International Chernobyl Foundation's Information and Analysis Center for the Prevention of Accidents at Nuclear Power Installations, which... MORE

Col.-General Boris Gromov and other leaders of the "My Fatherland" party defined themselves as "left-of-center" at the party's inaugural news conference. Gromov and the number two candidate on the list, economic reformer and perestroika architect Stanislav Shatalin, called for a "socially-oriented" economy, giving priority to... MORE

President Boris Yeltsin plans to create, as part of the presidential administration's legal department, an office to vet laws passed by the federation's constituent republics and determine whether those laws are compatible with the federal constitution and federal laws. Presidential administration head Sergei Filatov informed... MORE

Russia's Foreign Ministry has drawn up unified rules for the CIS member countries regarding the entry, stay, exit, and transit of foreign citizens, and proposes to create a single center which would control the foreigners' entry to and exit from CIS countries. Moscow further proposes... MORE

Chinese Vice-Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Qian Qichen arrives September 21 in Moscow on an official three-day visit. Qian will hold talks with Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev and Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin before leaving for the United Nations General Assembly in New York. The visit... MORE

Russia has cautiously welcomed the September 19 UN Security Council statement demanding an immediate halt to all military activities in Bosnia, but officials in Moscow say that it did not go far enough. At Russia's request the Security Council held consultations on efforts to halt... MORE