LOCAL NEWS

ECOLOGISTS DECRY ARRIVAL OF NUCLEAR WASTE

About 30 members of St. Petersburg’s ecological organizations protested on Thursday the transportation of nuclear waste from other countries to Russia.

“No to the Import of Nuclear Waste!” read the slogan held by a group of ecologists in front of Avtovo metro station — the area of the city through which trains transporting nuclear waste from Europe usually pass.

“We are protesting nuclear transportation through St. Petersburg,” said Rashid Alimov, co-chairman of the ECOperestroika ecological organization at a press conference on Thursday. “We also declare the start of a public campaign against the construction of a terminal for receiving radioactive waste cargo in the port of Ust-Luga,” he said.

LOCAL YOUTH FIGHT BACK AGAINST WIDESPREAD XENOPHOBIA

While Russian authorities are stepping up nationalist rhetoric with Kremlin-backed youth organizations organizing rallies against migrant workers, a massive campaign against xenophobia has been launched by independent activists in St. Petersburg.

Called Xenophobii.NET, or No to Xenophobia, the campaign kicked off with street performances by Vykhod (Way-Out), a gay rights organization, and the Russian Union of Social-Democratic Youth (RSDSM) followed by a Food Not Bombs event that saw anarchists and anti-Nazi activists distributing free vegetarian food to homeless people at Vladimirskaya Ploshchad last Sunday.

NATIONAL NEWS

STEM CELL REGISTER TO BE HELD IN CITY

A register of donors’ stem cells — special human cells that can help combat illnesses, including some forms of cancer — will appear in St. Petersburg by 2012, it was announced this week.

The register of donor cells taken from the umbilical cords of new-born babies will consist of 10,000 samples, and will take from three to four years to develop, said Alexander Smolyaninov, general director of Pokrovsky Stem Cells Bank, Interfax reported.

This time period is required in order to process and prepare the stem cells for storage.

Stem cells are unique cells that are able to multiply quickly and mature into the cell elements required to make blood and repair the cardiovascular system, endocrine organs, bone, cartilage and muscular tissues.

IN BRIEF

$3 Million Lottery

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A lottery ticket purchased in St. Petersburg has won its owner a 100 million-ruble ($3 million) jackpot in the 36th All-Russian State Lottery, Interfax reported Thursday.

The winning ticket was purchased in the suburb of Kolpino, south of St. Petersburg, according to an announcement on the lottery web site.

OPINION

WHY RUSSIA SHOULD RECOVER FASTER

Global economic and financial news remain disappointing. There are no signs of economic recovery, and expectations of negative growth for the global economy this year have only risen. Meanwhile, an increasing number of observers expect further contraction of world equity markets.

A CREDIBILITY CRISIS

The Russian government has developed a new anti-crisis plan. Although nobody has seen it yet, we can be 100 percent certain that it is a good one and that it will enable Russia to fulfill its strategy for development through 2020, offer solutions to new problems and provide for overall stability.

CULTURE

BEAUTY IN MOTION

At the opening night of this year’s Mariinsky Ballet Festival last Saturday, the Mariinsky Ballet presented a major world premiere of a full-length ballet, “The Little Humpbacked Horse” by Alexei Ratmansky, the former artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet who is one of the most sought-after classical choreographers in the world today.

CHERNOV’S CHOICE

Local promoter PMI’s announcement last week that Madonna would perform on Palace Square on Aug. 2 was immediately followed by a statement by the director of the State Hermitage Museum, Mikhail Piotrovsky, and St.

FINDING ART IN THE EVERYDAY

St. Petersburg’s State Russian Museum unveiled an exhibition Wednesday of a “21st century sarcophagus” that local artist Vadim Grigoryev-Bashun, 48, has made for himself.

The coffin, which looks more like a combination of an airplane and a submarine, features a button that when pressed, opens the folds of the sarcophagus like wings.

A TALE OF TWO LEOS

Vying for attention amid Ulitsa Rubenshteina’s eclectic array of well-heeled restaurants, Leonardo, has, it seems, turned to the old-fashioned principle that any theme, no matter how zany, will draw in a clientele.

Gothic man

Artistic work in the style of “Russian Gothic” icons is currently on display at the Anna Akhmatova museum until April 3. Its creator, Valery Valran is a renowned artist who typically designs abstract, still life and city landscape pieces.

“I lived in an epoch of totalitarianism, and it is from this basis that I consider myself, albeit in a small way, a ‘gothic period’ man,” Valran said last week.

WORLD

BIN LADEN ADDRESSES MUSLIMS IN SOMALIA

DUBAI — Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden urged Somalis in a new audio tape on Thursday to topple the new president, who is already struggling to deal with insurgents in the lawless Horn of Africa country.

Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, a moderate Islamist elected this year in the 15th attempt to form a central government, has been trying to reach out to rebels who have waged a guerrilla war for the past two years and control large swathes of territory.

NORTH KOREA ARRESTS TWO

SEOUL — North Korean security officials have detained two Korean-American journalists who were filming across the Tumen River from the Chinese side of the border, South Korean media and diplomatic sources said on Thursday.

In-Flight Baby Born, Binned

WELLINGTON, New Zealand — A woman who gave birth in mid-air left the baby behind when she disembarked in Auckland, Television New Zealand reported Thursday.

Police and Pacific Blue, the airline, were saying little about their investigation Thursday, but mother and child were said to be recovering in hospital.