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MOSCOW — The world’s governing body for Internet domain names voted Friday to allow the use of non-Latin characters, clearing the way for the .ðô suffix and web sites named in Cyrillic. The first step in a long effort to make the Internet less reliant on the Latin alphabet allows “nations and territories to apply for Internet extensions … made up of characters from their national language,” the not-for-profit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, said in a statement following a weeklong summit in Seoul, South Korea. President Dmitry Medvedev — who has his own video blog and claims to be conversant in Russian web slang, known as Olbanian — made acquiring Cyrillic web addresses an early priority of his administration. But commercial web site operators in Russia shrugged off the changes, saying they would provide more flexibility but were unlikely to attract masses of new users. |
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GOLDEN AUTUMN
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A blustery wind blows the leaves by the Clock Tower in Vyborg, 150 kilometers to the north of St. Petersburg. Forecasters are predicting snow toward the end of the week. |
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The March Against Hatred, an annual rally against neo-Nazi and racist violence held on Saturday, was raided by the Federal Migration Service. Officers started to single out participants of African descent and check their residency permits as the demonstration reached Ploshchad Sakharova, where the platform for the speakers had been installed. Ella Polyakova, the local head of the Soldiers’ Mothers organization climbed the platform to demand that immigration officers, who left a minibus marked “Immigration Control” parked on the square, stop harassing rally participants.
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All photos from issue.
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Nine cases of the H1N1 flu virus have been registered at the St. Petersburg State University of Civil Aviation, the Russian Consumer Watchdog told Interfax on Monday. "A hotbed of sickness is developing in the university," the spokesperon said. Two other cases of swine flu have been reported in local institutions of higher education. A fourth-year student at the Shtiglitz Academy of Applied and Industrial Arts fell ill on October 20 and was hospitalized two days later with H1N1, said Valentina Badanina, who manages the university clinic. A second-year student at Bonch-Bruevich University is also sick with the virus, Badanina confirmed. |
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KEEP ON RUNNIN'
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A jogger unlikely to be accused of overdressing runs close to the Peter and Paul Fortress on Sunday, with the Neva River and St. Isaac's Cathedral in the background. |
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MOSCOW — A military cargo plane crashed Sunday shortly after taking off from a Sakha republic airport, killing all 11 crew members on board, emergency officials said. The cause of the crash of the four-engine Il-76 jet was unknown. It came just weeks after aviation authorities temporarily grounded all Il-76s after one of them lost an engine during takeoff.
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Debate surrounding the dismissal of a controversial city ombudsman and member of United Russia party Igor Mikhailov is becoming more heated. The St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, which removed controversial city ombudsman Igor Mikhailov from his post last week and promised that it would quickly elect a successor, has now been paralyzed by a decision of the Oktyabrsky District Court. |
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In a move that would leave Russia as one of the few countries with HIV travel restrictions, U.S. President Barack Obama said Friday that the United States would overturn a 22-year-old travel and immigration ban against people with HIV early next year. |
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BERLIN — Helmut Kohl, George Bush, and Mikhail Gorbachev hailed their excellent relations at a Berlin cabaret on Saturday, 20 years after the Cold War leaders watched over the Wall’s fall. The German ex-chancellor (1982-1998), US former president (1989-1993) and last Soviet leader (1985-1991) took the stage to share their memories of 1989 in front of a silvery curtain at a historic cabaret venue the Friedrichstadtpalast. “Mikhail Gorbachev and George Bush were Germany’s most important partners,” said Kohl, 79, who has been wheelchair-bound since fracturing his hip in February 2008. “There has never been a relationship that reached the level of my relations with these two gentlemen,” he said. |
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 Che Bar&Gallery on Friday unveiled “Photo Book About Sweden,” an exhibit of contemporary Swedish photography. Presented in conjunction with the Swedish Consulate in St. |
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MOSCOW — Somali pirates seized a Thai-flagged fishing trawler with 23 Kaliningrad sailors and were sailing it Sunday toward a pirate base off Somalia’s coast. Pirates on two skiffs captured the Thai Union 3 ship Thursday as it was fishing for tuna about 200 nautical miles north of the Seychelles archipelago and 650 miles off the Somali coast, according to the EU’s anti-piracy naval force. |
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 MOSCOW — The Russian government is only making alcohol consumption worse by increasing taxes for brewers, according to Jorgen Buhl Rasmussen, president of Carlsberg, which owns Baltika brewery. Last year was extremely successful for Danish Carlsberg. Together with Heineken, it managed to take over U.K. company Scottish & Newcastle (S&N) and as a result of this acquisition — the biggest in the history of the company — its beer sales have risen by one third. |
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 MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Friday that Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko blocked a money transfer for Russian gas and risked provoking a new supply crisis that could disrupt flows to Europe. |
 MOSCOW — Customers at a discount grocery store in northern Moscow have been gathering around the newest automated terminal there, a bright-green machine with a flashing touch-screen and a slot for “prizes.” Emblazoned with the words “Charity Lottery,” the terminal accepts rubles and instantly rewards the lucky in kind. The proceeds go to an unspecified charity fund and the machine is licensed by a local branch of the tax service, according to barely visible print at the bottom of the screen. |
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 On Friday, City Hall signed an agreement with VTB, Fraport and Copelozus, granting the consortium control of Pulkovo airport by May 2010. The agreement places Pulkovo under the management of Vozdushnie Vorota for thirty years, beginning before May 2010. |
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 They say the devil is in the details, but if you listen to leading Russian politicians and conservative journalists and analysts you would think the devil is in NATO. Despite the fact that NATO has radically changed its military structure and heavily demobilized since the Soviet collapse, Russia continues to demonize NATO. |
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I am sitting in the Akademiya Cafe reading a newspaper and sipping a cappuccino, which I would give the title of “Best in Moscow” if I still practiced the fattening profession of food critic. |
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 Although often referred to as Russia’s Cote d’Azur, don’t come to Sochi expecting to find the French Riviera. You’ll soon realize your mistake when you land at the airport, which, despite preparations for the Olympics, remains something of an embarrassment. Sochi is a chaotic mix of a spectacular natural setting and Soviet and post-Soviet overdevelopment. |
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Issues Archive