In the framework of her Chess Fund, Alexandra travelled to South America and conducted two totally free simuls in the city of Cali, Colombia, one in a home for children with limited means called "Fundacion Trasceder", and one in the Liga Vallecaucana de Ajedrez. The children and adults were most happy to meet Alexandra, and to receive the gifts she brought them (Alexandra’s book "How I became GrandMaster at Age 14", in Spanish). Alexandra loved the city of Cali, and so we took even more photos than usual (more than 100!), including beautiful portraits of the children of Cali enjoying a game of chess with Alexandra. Please help Alexandra continue such good actions by contributing to a good cause. Any help is welcome! If you know of any good action Alexandra could do anywhere in the world, or if you want to help in any way, please contact us.

Alexandra is resting a little in Miami (see photos), and preparing for the World Open in Philadelphia, which will take place on July 2-6, 2003. In between, she will leave tomorrow for Cali, Colombia, and will conduct 2 charitable simuls there, one for the children of the Fundacion Transcender, and one for the general population of Cali. We will make sure to give a full report when we come back. By the way if you want to see all the news of the whole year 2003 click here.

After the tough last few days (56-board simul in the Urals, Viennese ball in Moscow, Defense of University Thesis, Movie Premiere), Alexandra just spent 3 days in one of her favorite cities, Paris, taking advantage of good food and some shopping. She just left for the USA where she will first rest a little in the South then play in the Philadelphia World Open on July 2-7. Before the World Open she will visit the South American country of Colombia. You can be sure we will post some interesting news about that trip. For now let us give Alexandra’s fans some photos of her couple days in Paris.

On June 18 we had two celebrations! First it was Alexandra’s Dad’s (Konstantin) birthday, and also the Premiere of the movie by Stanislav Govorukhin in which Alexandra played. It is called in Russian "Blagoslovite Zhenshinu", litteral translation "Bless the woman", a beautiful love story of a Russian woman from 1935 to 1957 (We originally thought it was called "The Hotel Manager", and previously photos were posted here). The official Premiere in the movie theaters in Russia will be on the 27th of August, and we hope we will be able to get for you some video cassettes and DVD of that movie with English subtitles in due course. Look at the official movie poster, and the invitation. All of the top of Russia was there, including Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov, ex-president Mikhail Gorbachev, Central Bank Chairman Viktor Gerashenko, and many others.

Alexandra graduated today with a "red" diploma (that means she was at the top of her class), and received her University Bachelor’s Degree. At just 19 years and 2 months, she is one of the youngest students to get her University diploma. She successfully presented her thesis to a group of 5 experts and answered their questions to their outmost satisfaction, so that she got a "5 out of 5" (that’s an "A")! Bravo, Alexandra! You see her on the photo having a celebration dinner with her friends and family in a Japanese restaurant of Moscow. In two days she will leave Moscow to go to the World Open in Philadelphia, then to two tournaments in Switzerland (Silvaplana and Biel), see you there!

Alexandra was invited as a guest star (along with Pop star Alsu and gymnast Alina Kabaeva) to the First Moscow Viennese Ball, at the sumptous Gostiny Dvor in Moscow, right next to the Red Square. She walzed to the tunes of Tchaikovsky, Strauss, and Chopin, until 5 in the morning the next day! It goes without saying that we have a photo album for you to look at.

Alexandra was yesterday at the city of Lesnoi in the Urals (it used to be called Sverdlovsk-45 and is a "closed-city"), 3 hours north of Ekaterinburg. The city was celebrating their 56-year anniversary, and Alexandra congratulated the city by performing a record 56-board simul! It was quite strong (18 of them were experts), and she nevertheless achieved 47.5 points! Bravo, Alexandra! As usual, you can watch the photos. Keep coming to visit us, we’ll have lots of interesting news in the coming days!

We could not resist showing you two new photo albums, one from May 27 in Moscow and one from May 28 in St. Petersburg. Alexandra was a special guest to the 300th Anniversary of St. Petersburg (Russia), and witnessed the win of the St. Petersburg team against the NAO Chess Club team, in the first "distant" chess event ever. Enjoy!