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St. Petersburg tour operators are predicting a drop in visitor numbers this season, blaming the gloomy outlook on high prices, negative media coverage, complicated processes to obtain visas and inconsistent international promotion. Svetlana Fedotenkova, general director of travel agency Favorit, forecast a 40 percent decline in foreign tourists and a 20 percent to 30 percent drop in the numbers of Russian visitors this season due to said increased prices for accommodation and services. |
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As what would have been the 65th birthday of Joseph Brodsky, the only St. Petersburg-born Nobel prize winner in literature, approached on Tuesday, an ownership battle raged for his former city apartment. |
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MOSCOW - United Russia won control of the Magadan legislature in weekend elections even though fewer people voted for the pro-Kremlin party than in December 2003 State Duma elections, according to preliminary results released Monday. United Russia garnered 29 percent of the vote in elections Sunday, about 5 percentage points less than it received in Duma elections - in an indication that the party's popularity is sliding. |
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MOSCOW - The elder son of Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov struck and killed a pedestrian crossing the street while driving in southwest Moscow on Saturday night, police said Monday. |
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MOSCOW - A U.S. report on nuclear security has called on Russia to contribute more money and resources to safeguard its nuclear weapons stockpiles at home and abroad, rather than relying on U.S. funding. "We call for transforming the U.S.-Russian cooperation from a donor-recipient relationship into a genuine partnership in which Russia would contribute more of its own resources and more openness and the United States would fully integrate the ideas and expertise of Russian experts," said Matthew Bunn of Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, presenting the report in Moscow on Monday. |
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The trial of six men accused of assassinating liberal State Duma Deputy Galina Starovoitova in 1998 ended Monday with the six defendants making their final statements. |
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Sakharov Honored ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Members of St Peterburg's Yakbloko youth movement on Saturday laid flowers at a statue to human rights campaigner Andrei Sakharov, Interfax reported. Leading Soviet nuclear scientist and dissident Sakharov won the Nobel Prize in 1975. |
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MOSCOW - The State Duma on Friday tentatively approved a raft of bills that would prohibit parties from creating electoral blocs, make it easier to ban a party or a candidate from running, and restrict media coverage of elections and referendums. |
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KIEV - Resisting attempts by the Ukrainian government and opposition to hijack it, the Eurovision Song Contest kept the cameras focused on the performers as favorite Greece earned the dubious honor of its first win in Europe's biggest kitsch-fest. None of the possible distractions - the 300,000 people on Independence Square, opposition pickets or a tent city organized by pro-Orange Revolution youth group Pora - could distract Europe's 120 million television viewers from rooting for their favorite act. |
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Russians most fear famine and terrorist attacks, according to a recent state-sponsored opinion poll. When asked to pick from a pre-selected list of 20 threats faced by Russia, 70 percent of respondents in a survey by the state-controlled VTsIOM polling agency chose famine. |
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MOSCOW - Some 1,500 protesters demanded greater press freedom and more access to state-dominated television networks at a Yabloko-organized rally Sunday near the Ostankino television tower. Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky told protesters wearing masks reading "Shut Off" and carrying signs reading "News Is Propaganda" and "Down With Censorship!" that Russia had no freedom of the press. |
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MOSCOW - A shabby, prerevolutionary building near the Kremlin has become an unlikely piece of evidence in the widening investigation into the UN oil-for-food program. |
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MOSCOW - Former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov stepped up his criticism of President Vladimir Putin on Thursday, warning that unless pro-democratic political forces unite, the nation could revert to "a Soviet system with elements of state capitalism. |
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MOSCOW - U.S. President George W. Bush predicted more democratic changes across the Caucasus and Central Asia and pledged Washington would help new democratic governments. |
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ZURICH - A Russian citizen has been charged with the premeditated murder of the air traffic controller whom he held responsible for a midair collision above southern Germany in 2002, local media reported. Vitaly Kaloyev's wife and two children were killed in the collision that cost the lives of 71 people, the majority of whom were children from Bashkortostan bound for a holiday in Spain. |
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LSR, a large St. Petersburg construction holding, said Monday it is looking for an international partner to build a cement plant and widen the market of cement producers in the Northwest region. Speaking at a news conference outlining the company's plans for 2005, vice president Igor Levit said the new plant's capacity should reach between one million to two million metric tons of cement per year. |
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Trade union workers at the St. Petersburg Coca-Cola plant have threatened to strike if the company management does not take steps to settle employment disputes. |
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The Cabinet on Thursday signed off on a roadmap that sketches out the strategy for the country's automotive industry through 2008. Industry and Energy Minister Viktor Khristenko said the plan would bring Russia into line with import and safety standards used around the world. |
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MOSCOW - Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former chief executive of Yukos, may have to wait until June to hear the final verdict from judges reading out their conclusions in his 11-month trial for embezzlement, fraud and tax evasion. |
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Although they may sometimes be joked about as being authentically Russian, medical services offered at state-run Russian institutions are not an option for the majority of foreigners in St. Petersburg. The language barrier, the service level and general differences in the Russian medical system to that at home narrow the pool of medical service providers to those who visit, study or work in St. |
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The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) has proposed that a two-tier compulsory medical insurance system be created in Russia to boost market competitiveness. |
 MOSCOW - Millions of Russians may in the near future become Green Card holders. But Americans need not panic over a sudden immigration influx. Russia is preparing an application for transitional membership in Europe's Green Card car insurance system. The Green Card, or international motor insurance certificate system, was introduced in 1953 under the aegis of the United Nations' Economic Commission for Europe and is managed by the London-based Council of Bureaux. |
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The main principle of the St. Petersburg legislation regulating procedures for granting rights to renovation and new construction is that such rights are to be granted under tender. |
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Will Russia's people, who recently celebrated their victory in World War II, ever again be heroes? In a battle against the pure evil of Nazism, the ordinary citizens of the Soviet Union, overcoming appalling leadership, deployed moral qualities that changed the course of history. |
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President Vladimir Putin is quickly becoming a classic example of a politician who was very successful during his first term, when he tried to do all the good things people wanted in order to consolidate his power, but a disaster in his second term, when he had consolidated power and could do all the bad things he wanted to do. |
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The events in eastern Uzbekistan raise a tangled knot of questions for Russia and the United States - as the main international players in Central Asia - about the war on terror, the role of Islam and the balance between a concern for human rights and a desire for stability. |
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Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently stated that foreign radical fundamentalist forces with links to the Taliban were behind last week's uprising in Uzbekistan. |
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If the government really wants to improve the quality and accessibility of medical services, it must first of all recognize that no cosmetic reforms, such as those in St. Petersburg or the ones planned by Health and Social Development Minister Mikhail Zurabov, will do that. |
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They keep going through the motions in Washington, much like the Roman Senate used to meet in solemn conclaves and pretend that their flatulent oratory had some effect on the real engines of imperial power. |
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First Lady Heckled JERUSALEM (AP) - Laura Bush waded into Middle East tensions on Sunday during chaotic visits to sacred religious sites, where crowds and hecklers grew so rowdy that armed guards had to restrain them. America's First Lady said what she witnessed showed that passions are running high among Palestinians and Israelis. |
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BEIJING (Reuters) - China has rushed more than 3 million doses of bird flu vaccine to a remote western province after migratory birds were found dead from the H5N1 strain which can be fatal to humans, state media said Monday. |
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Issues Archive