|
|
|
|
Although the Southwest Wastewater Treatment Plant or SWTP was opened with great solemnity on Thursday, the city’s ecologists say the arrival of the new facility has its disadvantages as well as advantages. “On the one hand, it’s a great project, which will indeed allow us to purify 85 percent of the city’s wastewater, but on the other hand it may have dangerous consequences for the city,” said Dmitry Artamonov, head of St. Petersburg’s Greenpeace office, in a telephone interview on Friday. He said the SWTP project’s biggest drawback derives from the fact that it plans to burn the sediment left by wastewater. The construction of the facility for this burning process is to be completed in 2007. |
|
NORTHERN VIENNA
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Part of the decorations for the spectacular Viennese Carnival held at the Catherine Palace in Tsarskoe Selo on Saturday. The event attempted to recreate the atmosphere of the Austrian capital in the 18th Century, and featured a Viennese ball for invited guests. |
|
MOSCOW — A senior aide to President Vladimir Putin confirmed Monday that the Kremlin was considering allowing parties that win regional parliamentary elections to submit candidates for governor. But Igor Shuvalov, Putin’s economic adviser, failed to say whether the plan had advanced any further than when Putin mentioned it in his address to the Federal Assembly in April.
|
|
With the City Hall expected to submit a draft of the St. Petersburg 2006 budget to the Legislative Assembly this week, politicians are gearing up to debate where the $5 billion in predicted revenue for the coming year is to be spent. According to the City Hall’s Finance Committee, the city budget’s revenues increased from 75. |
All photos from issue.
|
|
|
|
|
MOSCOW — Migration cards will soon be replaced with a Russian-only version that promises to create headaches for travelers and flight attendants and perhaps ultimately discourage foreign investment, the Association of European Businesses said Sunday. The new cards will replace the current ones, which are in Russian and English, as of next Saturday, said Andreas Romanos, the head of the lobbying group. |
|
MOSCOW — Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s Canadian-born lawyer was expelled from Russia on Friday and prosecutors demanded that three of his Russian lawyers be disbarred for “dragging out” his appeal. |
|
St. Petersburg’s Medem International Clinic & Hospital this month became the first Russian medical facility to win a top European quality award, the clinic said Monday in a statement. The city-based clinic was presented with a “European Quality” award by the European Business Assembly at a Sept. |
|
MOSCOW — Lithuania said Friday that the crash of a Russian fighter jet in the NATO member country was almost certainly an accident. However, in a sign that the heated diplomatic dispute between the two countries was far from over, it sharply criticized the state of the Russian military, saying similar incidents posed security threats to the whole Baltic region. |
|
MOSCOW — Social problems are the main theme of the questions that are being telephoned and e-mailed to a call center set up for President Vladimir Putin’s televised call-in show Tuesday, a Kremlin web site said Monday. Putin will answer the questions and take others by phone during the video-link conference, which will start at noon and be broadcast on state-run Channel One and Rossia. |
|
A charity concert for the victims of Hurricane Katrina featuring New Orleans jazz, traditional zydeco music and cajun food will be held on Friday. The event aims to raise funds for charities assisting Americans affected by the massive storm that hit the U. |
|
MOSCOW — Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s campaign team said Monday that they would name another candidate later this week for a State Duma by-election in Moscow’s Universitetsky District in December. Khodorkovsky, the jailed Yukos billionaire, was barred from running for the seat after the Moscow City Court on Thursday rejected his appeal to a lower court’s conviction on fraud and tax evasion charges. |
|
MOSCOW — At least 11 mothers of children who perished in last year’s Beslan school attack have turned to a cult that promises to resurrect the dead for money. |
|
Canon Guy Smith was officially licensed by the Church of England to lead the institution’s local English-speaking congregation in St. Petersburg in a move that the local Anglican community is describing as a new era in its history. In attendance for the Sept. |
|
MOSCOW — Dmitry Kozak, the presidential envoy to the Southern Federal District, said Friday that his office had finished drafting a bill that would allow federal authorities to confiscate powers from provincial leaders who fail to raise standards in their regions. |
|
|
|
|
City-based Eurosib group will launch the biggest logistics center in the Northwest by the start of 2006, the company said last week. Market analysts said the biggest draw of the center is not likely to be its size, however, but the working relationship Eurosib aims to establish through the project with the customs service. |
|
Swedwood, an industrial division of Swedish furniture retailer Ikea, said it is considering closing its factory in the Leningrad Oblast because of increasing bureaucratic complications and the mounting costs they incur. |
|
Despite a quiet stability on the Russian cigarette market for the last three years, last week all major foreign tobacco manufacturers announced heavy investments in domestic facilities. The producers say the competition for premium-class clients is just beginning. |
|
MOSCOW — One out of five Russian lenders has failed to qualify for the national deposit insurance scheme and starting Tuesday will be phased out of retail banking. |
|
MOSCOW — Russia should approve foreign investment in the development of natural resource deposits on a case-by-case basis rather than draw up a list of off-limits fields, a senior government official said Monday. “Criteria will be put in place so as not to have a concrete list but to be able to qualify a deposit as strategic in the future,” said Deputy Economic Development and Trade Minister Andrei Sharonov, Interfax reported. |
|
As companies from the retail, development and construction sectors lined up for their annual industry awards, two general trends stood out: In commercial real estate bigger means better, and the Northwest region has emerged as the country’s leader in innovation. |
|
Over the last three years, St. Petersburg constructors and developers have turned to work largely on the commercial real estate market, spurning residential projects as low-profit. Realtors, however, say it’s too early to write off the residential market as dead: Elite housing is starting to bring the constructors back to apartments. |
|
With Gazprom’s securement of a record $12 billion loan now appearing to be a mere formality, the gas giant looks set to buy out Roman Abramovich’s stake in Sibneft — the biggest state buyout in post-Soviet history. |
|
With the Western financial boom of the ’80s, an investment banker, as an image and a profession, emerged as trendy, exciting, and a must-have for all truly fashionable American girls. It doesn’t take Candace Bushnell, or the countless paperbacks orientated to female readers, to work out why, though they do it well. |
|
|
|
|
Gref Talks of WTO MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref arrived in Washington on Monday to step up talks with the U.S. as Russia seeks American approval for its bid to join the World Trade Organization this year. Gref will visit the U.S. from Sept. 26 to Sept. 28, said Alla Borisenkova, head of the press service at the Economy Ministry. |
|
|
|
|
All but invisible to the wider world, a crisis is developing within Azerbaijan that could threaten regional stability and the future development of Caspian basin oil and gas. Though largely self-created, by a combination of endemic corruption and institutional underdevelopment, the emerging calamity is being greatly aided by opportunistic measures by others, including Russia, the United States and especially Iran. |
|
Let us turn, once again, to the problem of preserving cultural monuments, specifically the protection of archaeological monuments during construction. It’s an issue that’s particularly pressing in cities, towns and villages with centuries, if not millennia, of history under their belts, such as Novgorod, Pskov, and Staraya Ladoga. |
|
The sea was pink with sunset, the last light draining as high tide slowly reclaimed the beach. A huge harvest moon, flecked with clouds, was hanging just above the horizon in a sky still barely blue. On the distant line where the world curved away, you could see the white speck of the Channel ferry, bound for Calais. |
|
|
|
|
IVOLGINSK, Buryatia — The road to the heart of Russian Buddhism starts in Ulan-Ude, 100 kilometers due east of Lake Baikal. From the Buryat capital, the road winds past bare wooden homes with brightly colored shutters and a lone Yukos gasoline station, where traffic stops to let a Buryat cowboy drive his herd across the street. |
|
|
|
|
Cheney ‘Doing Well’ WASHINGTON (Reuters) — U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney was released from a Washington hospital on Sunday, one day after he underwent surgery to treat aneurysms behind both knees, a spokeswoman said. “The vice president left the hospital at 10 a.m. He will work from home tomorrow. He is doing well,” said Cheney spokeswoman Jennifer Mayfield. |
|
|
|
MOSCOW — Fluent passing, a dashing winger and brute force helped the Moscow Dragons run off with rugby’s Capitals’ Cup in Moscow on Saturday. In an all-Russian final against the White Knights of St. Petersburg, the Dragons prevailed 19-0 to retake the crown they won when they last hosted the Cup in 2000 and reclaim the city’s place at the top of the Central and Eastern European expatriate rugby scene. |
|
Russia Coach Quits BELGRADE, Serbia-Montenegro (SPT) — After being knocked out of medal contention with a quarterfinal loss to Greece on Friday, the Russian national team lost its final two games of the European basketball championships, resulting in the resignation of its head coach after the team failed to secure a spot in next year’s World Championships in Japan. |
Temp: -2°C overcast 
Issues Archive