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MOSCOW — The spectacular investment returns of the past few years are unlikely to be repeated, and future growth will depend on investing heavily in industry and infrastructure and on overcoming government greed and corruption, the country's top economic officials said Wednesday.Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref told an investor conference Wednesday that the country had a deep "hunger" for investment. But the government will keep resisting the temptation to put budget surpluses into economic development as it needs to save oil revenues for the future and avoid stoking inflation, officials said.
Kremlin adviser Arkady Dvorkovich highlighted the country's shortage of skilled workers, while Central Bank deputy chairman Alexei Ulyukayev decried the dependence on petrodollars that he said put the country's economic wellbeing at risk. |
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MATERIAL GIRL
alexander nemenov / Reuters
Pop superstar Madonna performing at Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow on Tuesday as part of her "Confessions" world tour. The concert went ahead despite a change of venue and protests by Russian Orthodox believers. For a full account of the concert, see All About Town inside. |
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MOSCOW— The country has seen a spike in the number of people who have died or suffered illnesses in the past six weeks from drinking disinfectants following a government campaign to purge stores of fake liquor.The anti-bootlegging effort stalled production and inadvertently drove up prices.
Seeking a cheaper substitute to real, officially approved vodka, 20 homeless or unemployed men and women opted for alcohol that had been explicitly labeled as not fit for consumption, officials said.
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A 46-year-old man in the Leningrad Oblast is attempting to break a world record by fasting for 50 days.Agasi Vartanyan of Shlisselburg, a town on the Neva River to the east of St. Petersburg, has been fasting in an elevated, glass-encased box since Aug. 27, St. Petersburg-based newspaper Smena reported this week. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW— A shootout between Ingush and Chechen policemen Wednesday left seven dead and 21 wounded, news agencies reported.Five Chechen OMON special forces officers died in the skirmish, along with two Ingush policemen. Eleven Chechen officers were wounded, including Buvadi Dukhiyev, a deputy commander in the Chechen OMON, or riot police. |
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KONDOPOGA, Karelia — In the aftermath of the ethnic explosion here that left two men dead, destroyed numerous businesses and kiosks, and forced hundreds to flee, Russians across the country are asking the same question: Could it happen here?Aside from its picturesque setting on Lake Onego, Kondopoga — with its Soviet-era streets names, Lenin statue and World War II memorial — differs little from thousands of towns struggling to stay afloat. |
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A local construction company, UNR-427, succeeded in its attempt, Thursday, to build a transformer substation within 24 hours, thus staking its claim for a place in the Guinness Book of Records.The company also managed to receive all the necessary approvals in just two weeks. |
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n ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Amsterdam Trade Bank has opened a 30 million euro ($35 million) credit line for the "36.6" chain on drug stores, Interfax reported Monday. |
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MOSCOW —Russia will not join the World Trade Organization before the end of 2007 at best, Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref said Wednesday.Addressing the State Duma during the monthly "Cabinet hour," Gref said he hoped rocky talks with the United States — the only main roadblock to Russia's accession to the WTO — would be concluded by a late October deadline. |
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MOSCOW — Federal Security Service director Nikolai Patrushev's 25-year-old son has been named an adviser to Rosneft chairman Igor Sechin, Kommersant reported Wednesday. |
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MOSCOW —Painting a grim picture of pension reform, financial markets watchdog chief Oleg Vyugin said Wednesday that the Health and Social Development Ministry was stalling on much-needed changes and that the pension fund was seeing returns dwindle."The only correct decision would be to replace those carrying out this reform because they have proven their inadequacy," Vyugin said during an investment conference organized by UBS. |
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Systema-Gals has started construction of what it claims will be the city's largest shopping mall. Occupying a total of 17.6 hectares on the Pulkovskoye highway, the 100,000 square meter LETO shopping and entertainment center hopes to attract customers from all over the city, the managers said Wednesday at a press conference. |
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Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov told a Cabinet committee Monday that he believed the time was ripe to start "stimulating industrial production without concentrating too much on the cost."Thus Fradkov handed another point to his Cabinet's economic liberals. |
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Walking into the corner shop near my house in west London the other day, I found the Kashmiri woman behind the counter absorbed in a book. Its title was "Teach Yourself Polish. |
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Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref said Monday that the government would stick to an economic policy that was as liberal as possible. Has something changed, or is this simply the public expression of disputes going on within the government? A look at recent events helps to clarify the situation. |
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The Priyut Komedianta theater company invites a Moscow actress to star in a new production.As theaters open their doors for the 2006/07 season, the Priyut Komedianta theater company embarks on its 20th anniversary season with premieres, plans and a project to broaden the appeal of the theater by holding different events at the venue. |
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The soon-to-open second incarnation of the legendary local underground rock club Moloko tested out the new premises earlier this month by celebrating local musician Seraphin Selenge Makangila's birthday with a concert by his band's Simba Vibration. |
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The annual Earlymusic festival, which highlights the musical legacy of Europe by embracing works created between the medieval era through to early classicism, opens on Friday.The Earlymusic festival — founded by Marc de Mauny and Andrei Reshetin — opens this year with a concert by the distinguished Belgian ensemble Il Fondamento, one of the most highly acclaimed baroque ensembles in Europe, with the musicians performing a selection of Johann Sebastian Bach's suites in the Atrium of the Commandant's House of the Peter and Paul Fortress. |
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Among numerous ordinary flashy advertisements for boots and clothes, sausages and IT services, passengers have noticed unusual posters on St. Petersburg's metro trains from the beginning of September. |
 If your daring and experimental musical work lacks commercial potential, even for your fellow musicians in the U.K., go to St. Petersburg.That is exactly what Marcus Godwyn, a British drummer, percussionist and composer, did.
"St. Petersburg is a good place to start something," said the city-based Godwyn in an interview with this newspaper last week.
Godwyn, who leads his own band Noise of Time and is one of two drummers with Nado Podumat, the band led by the former Markscheider Kunst trombone player Ramil Shamsutdinov, will be performing this week with FIGS, an experimental quartet of local drummers and percussionists. |
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 Melomane, a Brooklyn-based indie-pop band that has come to Russia to promote “Glaciers,” its third and the most recent album which has been released locally on the legitimate Moscow-based label Soyuz, has frequently been described as the “most European band in America. |
 An eye-witness report of Madonna's much-hyped concert in Moscow earlier this week.MOSCOW — In short, it happened. Madonna delivered an astounding performance in Moscow on Tuesday. Despite everything that stood in the way of the show taking place, 50,000 concertgoers at Luzhniki Stadium had a chance to confess their love for one of world showbiz's most celebrated icons. |
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MONTREAL — A gunman dressed in a black trenchcoat opened fire in a downtown Montreal college on Wednesday, killing a 20-year-old woman and leaving a trail of blood and injury as he sent students fleeing for their lives before he was shot dead by police. |
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WARSAW — Poland said on Thursday it would send 1,000 troops to Afghanistan in the first offer since a NATO appeal for reinforcements, but it was unclear whether any would go to the dangerous south and none would go until February. |
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BERLIN (Reuters) — Authorities have searched the Swiss home of German cycling star Jan Ullrich as part of an investigation into alleged doping, state prosecutors in Bonn and the country's federal crime office (BKA) said in a statement.
Officials from the BKA and a team of investigators raided the cyclist's home in Scherzingen near the German border on Wednesday in the course of a broader international probe into suspected doping abuses in the sport, the BKA said. |
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LONDON — The accusations and insults are flying, a sure sign that Formula One's title battle is reaching boiling point.Renault's world champion Fernando Alonso accuses his Ferrari title rival Michael Schumacher of being the most unsporting driver in the history of the sport, as well as the most successful. |
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