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 A descendant of celebrated St. Petersburg writer Fyodor Dostoevsky, who struggled to overcome a gambling addiction, is suing a lottery company for using the writer's image on its tickets. Dmitry Dostoevsky, 59, the writer's great-grandson said Moscow-based company Chestnaya Igra's use of an image of the author of "The Gambler" is unauthorized, immoral, insulting and tactless. |
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Foreign students in St. Petersburg have welcomed City Hall's decision this week to set up a foreign students' council intended to help them with security, visas and other problems. |
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Finnish Economic Zone HELSINKI (SPT) - A Finnish law on its exclusive economic zone came into force on Tuesday that will allow it better means to protect the environment outside Finnish territorial waters, the Finnish Foreign Ministry said in a statement. According to the UN Convention, the exclusive economic zone shall not extend beyond 200 nautical miles. |
All photos from issue.
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The head of City Hall's construction committee, Yevgeny Yatsishin, resigned Tuesday for reasons that local politicians say are mainly linked to his alleged involvement in a business lobby that backed Governor Valentina Matviyenko during her election campaign in the fall of 2003. |
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St. Petersburg pensioner Alexander Pechnikov, 75, died while standing outside in a line to get his pension and a certificate to receive free medicine near the office of the Russian Pension Fund in the city's Nevsky district on Monday. |
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Pavel Stekhnovsky, one of the suspects charged in connection with the 1998 assassination of State Duma deputy Galina Starovoitova, admitted in a St. Petersburg court Tuesday that he bought the gun investigators believe was used to kill her. Stekhnovsky, who was extradited from Belgium in January, said that in 1998 he knew all the people prosecutors say organized the assassination, but could not remember how he got to know them. |
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MOSCOW - The State Statistics Service announced Wednesday that the economy expanded by 7.1 percent last year, well above the 6.5 percent to 6.9 percent forecast by market watchers and the government itself. The reported growth, however, nearly meets the 7. |
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AFK Sistema, owner of Russia's number one mobile network MTS, agreed to invest $450 million to buy a stake in an Indian mobile-phone service provider as part of its move to expand abroad. |
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Svyazinvest to Be Sold MOSCOW (Bloomberg) - Svyazinvest, the national telephone monopoly, will be sold this year after the Russian government approved a plan to sell the state's entire stake in the company, said Prime-Tass, citing Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref. Russia plans to sell its 75 percent minus one share of the company this year, said Prime-Tass today, citing Gref. The government has drafted a presidential decree necessary for the sale. A sale will take place in the second half of the year, said Communications Minister Leonid Reiman Wednesday, without specifying how much would be sold. Svyazinvest controls the nation's seven regional fixed-line providers and the national long-distance provider. |
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 Swedish manufacturer Electrolux will not invest in its second factory in the Northwest region until it can find enough parts producers locally to make the project worthwhile, general director of Electrolux St. |
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Re-instatement of the five-day period for the official registration of city real estate deals - as opposed to the currently enforced one-month term - appeared to be just wishful thinking as city officials denied possible legislature change, Rosbalt reported Monday. |
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Swedish Ferry Deal ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Swedish ferry line company Stena Line Freight said it will establish direct routes between Sweden and one of the ports in the Kaliningrad region, Interfax reported. |
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Today, many believe that economic growth and state social policy are incompatible. I am convinced, however, that improving the quality of people's lives is no less important than the ups and downs of economic indicators. It is not only important from a moral perspective, but also for profoundly practical reasons. |
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I don't want to insult the people in charge of Russia's foreign policy, but the recent behavior of officials toward the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe resembles a bull in a china shop. |
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A Lenin double tossing and turning restlessly in a coffin. A Chechen man armed with a long knife and a Nazi soldier, seen from above, form a hammer and sickle, the notorious Soviet symbol. These artefacts, and a dozen more installations, performances and artworks equally mocking of Communist ideology, are currently on show at, of all places, a former Lenin Museum on Revolution Square in the Russian capital, part of the first Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, which runs to the end of February. |
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Last week brought two major disappointments for Petersburg concert-goers. What was advertised as a concert by the reformed Orbital, turned out to be a DJ set by ex-member Phil Hartnoll, while R. |
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Gluttony shouldn't be on everybody's mind after the Christmas and New Year round of festivities, but you have to get back in the saddle and go out some time - even if the metaphoric horse is buckling under the weight of one too many festive dinners. The austere but cozy interior of Vongole is just the place to finally and guiltlessly put those New Year's slimming resolutions quietly to sleep. There, the international-standard staff silently, almost conspiratorially, settle down dish after dish of tempting fare, refill your glass and remove the evidence as if to say, "Just leave it to us." The austerity of Vongole comes with its "minimalist" decor - whitewashed walls and a blue and white colour scheme, and perhaps this restaurant only really comes into its own during the summer - it certainly has a summer house feel to it, with its rows of shuttered windows and delicate tones. |
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 A semi-documentary film shot at a St. Petersburg retirement home for actors and theater professionals is winning critical praise in Germany, where it has been screened this week at Berlin's Kino Krokodil cinema. |
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The maker of "Apocalypse Now" and "The Godfather," U.S. film director Francis Ford Coppola, attended the Golden Eagle film awards ceremony to collect a trophy for his contribution in world cinema in Moscow on Saturday. Hours before, Coppola also met with President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin. Putin congratulated him on the honor in a televised portion of the meeting. "In Russia, your works are well known and highly valued," Putin told Coppola. He added that he was not just referring to "The Godfather" but also to films "that so accurately tell of the horrors of war." "Apocalypse Now," an adaptation of Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" that is set in the Vietnam War, was shown at a Moscow film festival in 1979. |
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 LONDON - Celebrating its tenth anniversary, the St. Petersburg Ballet Theater, a commercial troupe founded in 1994 by the impresario Konstantin Tatchkin, embarked last November on a 14-week extensive provincial tour of Britain. |
 The experimental British choreographer Russell Maliphant twists his artists' arms into Celtic knots, finds inspiration in ancient Oriental exercise techniques and gets cutting-edge composers to write music for his ballets. Maliphant's company to town for is performing this week at the Theater For Young Spectators (TYuZ) on Feb. |
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Ref Scandal Spreads BERLIN (AFP) - Gerhard Mayer-Vorfelder, president of the German Football Federation (DFB), has vowed to carry on until the 2006 World Cup despite calls for his head over a match-fixing scandal. Mayer-Vorfelder, 71, is feeling the heat after it came to light that bookmaker Oddset sent a fax to the DFB on Aug. |
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Issues Archive