|
|
|
|
MOSCOW - A consortium of international banks has reportedly put on hold plans to lend Gazprom $13 billion for a bid for Yuganskneftegaz amid fears over the legal repercussions of Yukos' emergency petition in the United States to stay the oil unit's sale. |
|
St. Petersburg sociologist Olga Tsepilova has written to newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda asking it to explain why it printed an article last month accusing her of being a spy. |
|
A campaign called "Roma Community Against Drugs" was launched in St. Petersburg this week with the support of the French consulate and international nongovernmental organizations. The campaign aims to clean up the image of the Roma community by getting rid of a prejudice that Roma are "gypsy drug traders," organizers said Tuesday at a briefing. |
|
A new partially-completed suspension bridge, the first bridge over the Neva River that will allow vehicles to cross 24 hours a day without having to open to allow ships to pass and making cars wait for it to close, opened Wednesday. |
|
A 21-year-old St. Petersburg man was found guilty Wednesday of murdering a Syrian student by pushing him into the path of a metro train in March and was sentenced to 10 years in prison for murder. The city's Kuibyshev district court jailed Valentin Bulanov for killing Abdel Qader Al Badawy, 22, a student at St. |
All photos from issue.
|
|
|
|
 Finland supports Russia's quest for its citizens to have easier access to all European Union countries, Finnish President Tarja Halonen said Tuesday. "Six million people cross the border between Russia and Finland each year," Halonen said at a meeting with the President Vladimir Putin in the city's Konstantinovsky Palace. |
|
Estonian President Arnold Ruutel is prepared to sign a border treaty with Russia during a visit to Russia on Jan. 21, Interfax reported Thursday. "Estonia has been ready to sign a border agreement since the mid-1990s," Ruutel was quoted as saying in an interview published Thursday in the newspaper Eesti Paevaleht. |
|
MOSCOW - About 40 members of the radical National Bolshevik Party seized a presidential administration office just off Red Square on Tuesday and demanded that President Vladimir Putin resign, a police spokeswoman said. Federal Guard Service officers and riot police broke down the door of the office on the first floor of the building at 21 Ulitsa Ilyinka and detained 39 people, said the spokeswoman, Yelena Persilova. |
|
MOSCOW - A Moscow district military court convicted a former border guard officer of spying for Estonia and sentenced him to 10 years in prison. The sentence on charges of state treason is considerably milder than the 14 years handed to Krasnoyarsk physicist Valentin Danilov last month on similar charges and the 17 years handed to scientist Igor Sutyagin in April. |
|
|
|
|
Opportunities for banks and industry in the St. Petersburg region to interact continue to be limited, local representatives of both sides have said. Furthermore, banks are as yet failing to turn accumulated savings into investments, participants at the "Banks and business of the Northwest Russia: ways of development" conference agreed Thursday. |
|
MOSCOW - Swedish retail giant IKEA finally was allowed to open its huge new shopping center just north of Moscow on Wednesday, ending two weeks of mudslinging that startled foreign investors and made international headlines. |
|
The Spanish government is ready to finance a feasibility study on the construction of a Moscow-St. Petersburg high-speed railroad, Spanish Ambassador to Russia, Francisco Javier Elorza Cavengt said Tuesday. Speaking during a meeting with Russian Transport Minister Igor Levitin, the ambassador said: "The Spanish government is ready to sign an agreement on allocating 1,300,000 euros to conduct a feasibility report for the high speed railway. |
|
Gazprom Worth $72.2 bln ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Morgan Stanley has evaluated gas and oil monopoly Gazprom at between $60.1 bln and $72.2 billion, said a representative of the investment bank, Interfax reported. |
 MOSCOW - Taimuraz Bolloyev resigned as president of Baltika on Tuesday after 13 years at the helm of Russia's largest brewer. "I am sure that Baltika's management team and staff will continue to work honestly and reach high results in the future," Bolloyev said in a statement, which did not elucidate the reasons for his resignation. |
|
Up to 90 percent of all audio and video sales in Russia are of illegal, pirate copies, Alexander Sokolov, culture and mass communication minister has said, Prime Tass reported. |
|
|
|
|
Recent developments in Russia all point in one direction: The Kremlin's energy sector policy has shifted to more aggressive efforts of direct control. Moves by Gazprom to acquire the Yukos subsidiary Yuganskneftegaz at auction and increasing pressure on Russia's oligarchs to play by Kremlin rules suggest that, even if the Mikhail Khodorkovsky case is unlikely to be repeated, President Vladimir Putin's government has not finished tightening its grip on the oil industry - and possibly on other strategically important areas of the economy. |
|
When reading local newspapers over the last two months, I have been pleasantly surprised to learn that the St. Petersburg authorities have finally understood that they need to do something to boost public interest in municipal elections. |
|
During the first week of November, two events occurred that have a bearing on the fate of the Russian Service of Radio Liberty. At first glance, these events are not related to the re-election of George W. Bush, but should be perceived in the same time frame and context. The first event was the emergence of a Radio Liberty document called, "Radio Svoboda. |
|
|
|
 Twenty years ago a young musician from America came to Russia and played a small but significant part in ripping down the Iron Curtain. Now, after a stranger-than-fiction life that included bringing Russian rock to the West, a career as a singer and television host in Russia, a wedding that even became a matter of international diplomacy and an abrupt return to the U. |
|
Iva Nova, the all-girl folk-punk band that was to introduce its new vocalist to audiences last week because Vera Ogaryova, its current singer, is leaving to have a baby, failed to do so since its would-be singer Tatyana Dolgopolova called briefly before the show to say she was not coming, said Iva Nova drummer Katya Fyodorova. |
|
It was Saturday, and although it was getting on for late afternoon, we thought it would be a nice idea to investigate a new French restaurant whose name is so beguiling to a speaker of the language. In fact, "Le Mon" (The Mine) doesn't mean much in French or Russian, although in English it is perhaps a pun on a certain type of citrus fruit. |
|
A Chechen terrorist is killed when a Russian rocket homes in on a signal tracked through his satellite phone; a group of Chechen terrorists hold dozens of men, women and children hostage as they are watching a circus show, before the Spetsnaz storm in to save the day; a Russian oligarch with shady business connections, afraid of arrest if he lands his private jet in Russia, decides to head to London. |
|
Ç++ÎflÚ, o/ooÛ@++Í++: to play the fool, to act like an idiot A fun little list of mistakes we foreigners make in Russian is making the e-mail rounds, causing you to wonder, "Hmm ... That sounds right - what's the problem?" The problem is usually that we non-native Russian speakers mix up our metaphors and expressions, definitely have a problem with prefixes, find prepositions problematic, and cheerfully fracture 'ÂÎËÍËÈ Ë ÏÓ"Û~ËÈ @ÛÒÒÍËÈ flÁ(o)Í (the great and powerful Russian language). |
|
Here's one thing that Moscow and New York have in common: If you want to get the lay of the land, the best person to ask is your proverbial taxi driver. |
 A new exhibition at the State Hermitage Museum is bridging four centuries of art and bringing together contemporary and classical works through the images of mannerism and postmodernism. "Robert Mapplethorpe and the Classical Tradition: Photographs and Mannerist Prints" is the most recent fruit to be bourne of the collaboration between the Hermitage and the U. |
|
The St. Petersburg Ska-Jazz Review is giving two concerts, in Moscow and St. Petersburg, to launch its long-awaited second album. But it emerged last week that the album will not be available for some months yet. |
|
|
|
|
Bus Hostage Siege ATHENS (Reuters) - A Greek bus hostage siege ended peacefully on Thursday when all 23 passengers were freed and police revealed the two armed Albanian hijackers had been bluffing when they threatened to blow up the bus. Speaking after the end of the siege, which had lasted from dawn on Wednesday until just after midnight on Thursday morning, Greek police chief George Angelakos said the gunmen did not have any explosives despite telling hostages they had dynamite. |
|
To the dismay of FC Zenit St. Petersburg's legions of "Crazy Fans," TSV Alemannia Aachen gave the performance of the night in the UEFA Cup on Wednesday as they went through thanks to a 2-0 win away at AEK Athens, who fielded a second string side in front of a virtually empty stadium. |
Temp: -2°C overcast 
Issues Archive