|
|
|
 A new children’s hospital dedicated to the memory of the late wife of Mikhail Gorbachev was opened by the former president of the Soviet Union himself in St. Petersburg on Thursday. The Raisa Gorbachev Center for Children Hematology and Transplantology will treat children with certain forms of cancers such as leukemia. “The families who have children suffering leukemia are in a particularly hard situation. |
|
 MOSCOW – Russia’s new Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov displayed a tough Soviet style of management at his first government meeting on Thursday, barking orders at underperforming ministers and calling one of them “comrade. |
|
The news that Viktor Zubkov had been promoted to the job of prime minister caught kremlinologists by surprise. But according to a recent poll, the former head of the Federal Financial Monitoring Service who was hitherto an obscure figure to most ordinary Russians, is already enjoying a staggering approval rating. Forty percent of St. Petersburgers polled by the Agency for Social Information on Sept.14-16 said they trusted Zubkov. By comparison, Sergei Mironov, head of the Council of Federation, is trusted by 36.9 percent of respondents, and State Duma speaker Boris Gryzlov enjoys a 41.1 percent trust rating. The same poll shows that 53 percent of those questioned hold a positive opinion about the efficiency of former prime minister Mikhail Fradkov’s government. |
|
 A Russian teenager has been detained for trying to use a metal cup to burrow under the border between Belarus and the European Union, Belarussian border guards said. |
All photos from issue.
|
|
|
|
|
A U.S. doctor arrested in 2004 for suspected child sex offences allegedly committed against Russian boys in a St. Petersburg hotel, has been sentenced to 35 years in a federal jail by a court in Atlanta, Georgia, on different charges of producing, receiving and possessing child pornography. Gregory Kapordelis, 46, was convicted in May of six counts of downloading child pornography and using boys to produce pornographic pictures between 2001 and 2004. He was acquitted of a seventh charge of making a video of himself having sex with a person under 18. Kapordelis, who was arrested after landing at a New York airport in 2004, had acknowledged traveling to the Czech Republic -— where the age of sexual consent is 15 — to have sex with teenage boys and spending time with teenagers both overseas and at his home. |
|
 At a time when virtual reality seems increasingly to replace real life, the 12th International St. Petersburg PhotoFair brings photographs from cyberspace back into real world, as the “Unknown Petersburg” exhibition, to be held for the first time on Oct. |
|
COPENHAGEN - Former chess world champion Garry Kasparov won the newly established Pundik Peace Prize in Copenhagen on Wednesday. The prize is given to a person, “who courageously and with a straight back takes responsibility in the fight for fundamental liberty and human rights,” and comes with 100,000 Danish Crowns ($20,000). |
|
|
|
|
The St. Petersburg government plans to auction off over 40 large land plots in several of the city’s districts starting from January next year. City officials expect investors to redevelop the territories, replacing dilapidated buildings with new ones. |
|
MOSCOW — The ruble soared 0.6 percent to an eight-year high against the dollar Wednesday amid heavy dollar selling. The currency strengthened to 25.2 against the dollar by Wednesday evening, a level at which it last traded in October 1999. |
|
BRUSSELS — The European Commission took on Russia and dominant European power giants Wednesday in a new move to open gas and electricity markets to more competition while limiting foreign ownership of EU assets. The European Union executive adopted hard-fought energy proposals aimed at forcing big utilities such as Germany’s E. |
|
|
|
|
Is it possible to use the Kremlin’s administrative, media and public relations resources so that an unknown such as Viktor Zubkov can be elected president in March 2008? After surprising everybody by appointing the former head of the Federal Financial Monitoring Service as prime minister, President Vladimir Putin said last week that Zubkov could not be ruled out as a presidential contender. Skeptics claim that six months is not enough time to turn a relative unknown into a real presidential candidate. One week ago, 90 percent of the public had never heard of Zubkov. It is true that former President Boris Yeltsin appointed the then-unknown Putin as prime minister in the summer of 1999, but it required a special media campaign and the wars in Dagestan and Chechnya to boost Putin’s ratings. |
|
 The newly appointed prime minister, Viktor Zubkov, told journalists in Sochi on Tuesday that acting Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov had submitted a letter of resignation to President Vladimir Putin. |
|
Anatoly Serdyukov has resigned as defense minister for the right reason. His father-in-law is the new prime minister. The appearance of nepotism is never good, but it threatens to be lethal when the relatives involved are anti-corruption campaigners. Serdyukov had been cleaning house at the Defense Ministry, while his father-in-law, Viktor Zubkov, had been fighting money laundering on a government task force. |
|
|
|
 The renowned Mariinsky Theater which began its 225th season on Sunday with a performance of Mikhail Glinka’s opera “A Life for the Tsar,” has revived its system of selling season tickets that offer discounted packages of seats to five shows over the course of the year. |
|
What Morrissey dreamed of might become reality in St. Petersburg. Well, they won’t start hanging DJs immediately, but the word “squares” has already been pronounced, as Governor Valentina Matviyenko attacked certain local nightclubs for drug trafficking. |
 MOSCOW — The Russian art collection of the late cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and his wife, soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, is going home. Steel magnate Alisher Usmanov preempted a Sotheby’s auction by buying the collection, reportedly for more than the $40 million it was expected to fetch. He said he will turn over the entire purchase to the state. Russians have developed a passion for collecting, but it has also become a political gesture that can burnish the reputation of the country’s wealthiest with the Kremlin. |
|
 MOSCOW – Turn on the sitcom that is the hottest television show in Russia, and it all seems so familiar. Moored to his living room couch is a shoe salesman who is more interested in watching sports than conjugal relations. |
 These days Mikhail Gorbachev is being airbrushed out of history. When Boris Yeltsin died a few months ago, Western obituarists rushed to hail him as the man who ended the Cold War, dismantled the Soviet Union and introduced democracy into the New Russia. |
|
In Ellen Litman’s touching debut story collection, “The Last Chicken in America,” bewildered Russian-Jewish immigrants in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, feel their way around brand-new lives in an unfamiliar culture. |
 While one powers his way through the waters of the Caspian, slaying Russia’s marine resources with a single blow of his spear, the other lolls in a jacuzzi sprinkled with rose petals, his attention equally divided between a porn channel and a lissome brunette. |
|
Carl’s Jr // New branch: 8 Malaya Sadovaya Ulitsa (from Friday, Sept. 28) // Other branches include: 47 Liteiny Prospekt, Rodeo Drive Mall, and Piter Mall // Fast food/burger meal: approximately 200 rubles ($8) Remember the fuss that was made when McDonalds opened its first restaurant in Russia on Moscow’s Pushkin Square in 17 years ago? As a symbol of the abandonment of the command economy and the apparent triumph of the U. |
 Russell Crowe, who wears the black hat in “3:10 to Yuma,” is a native of New Zealand. Christian Bale, the good guy, was born in Wales. Lou Dobbs and other commentators who have lately been sounding the alarm about outsourcing, immigration and the globalization of the labor market may want to take note. |
|
|
|
|
LONDON — Jose Mourinho’s three-year reign at Chelsea came to an abrupt end on Thursday as the Portuguese manager’s fraught relationship with the club’s Russian owner, Roman Abramovich, finally reached breaking point. An announcement that sent shockwaves through English and European football came in the early hours of Thursday morning with Chelsea claiming that Mourinho had left “by mutual consent. |
|
BEIJING — Lindsay Davenport continued her remarkable return to tennis by beating Greek Eleni Daniilidou 7-5 6-3 to reach the quarter-finals of the China Open on Thursday. |
Temp: -2°C moderate or heavy snow showers
Issues Archive