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 Alexei Dymovsky, the police officer who was fired and sued after he spoke out against police corruption in his YouTube address to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin last month, announced the creation of a grass-roots movement for police reform in St. Petersburg on Sunday. Later in the day, his bodyguard and two supporters were detained as they drove in a car in the city, having been followed by unmarked cars, he said. |
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 MOSCOW — Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu banned fireworks at many New Year’s festivities and President Dmitry Medvedev ordered a review of fire safety legislation after a pyrotechnics show ignited a fire at a Perm nightclub that killed at least 113 people. |
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At least 28 people who were seriously injured in the deadly fire at a Perm nightclub on Friday remained in two St. Petersburg hospitals Monday. The injured people were taken from Perm to St. Petersburg on two special planes during the weekend. Almost all of them are breathing with the help of artificial ventilation machines. |
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MOSCOW — President Barack Obama will receive the Nobel Peace Prize this week without achieving a key step toward his vision of a nuclear-free world, which helped him win the award in the first place. |
All photos from issue.
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As the country’s Defense Ministry decides the fate of the legendary Avrora Cruiser, billionaire tycoon Mikhail Prokhorov has offered to become a patron of the historic vessel if it is handed over to the St. Petersburg government. The Avrora is currently part of the Russian Navy, but it may soon be turned into a branch of the Russian Naval Museum. |
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Russian Railways, or RZD, replaced all of the 61-4192-model passenger carriages previously used on the Nevsky Express train for carriages of another design from Saturday, Interfax reported. |
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In a highly unusual decision, a Dagestani court has overturned the results of a mayoral election in the city of Derbent, making a repeat of the vote a real possibility. The ruling, made late last week by the Derbent City Court, also sends a strong message to the Kremlin, which must soon decide whether to re-appoint Mukhu Aliyev as the president of the volatile North Caucasus republic. In the Oct. 11 vote, Aliyev had backed incumbent Mayor Felix Kaziakhmedov, who was also United Russia’s candidate. Kaziakhmedov won the election with 67.52 percent of the vote. The election was marred by violent protests that prompted presidential envoy Vladimir Ustinov to fly to the city to restore order. |
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 The first two classical recordings released by the newly founded Mariinsky label this year have been nominated for five prestigious Grammy awards. The recordings up for nomination are “Shostakovich: Symphonies No. |
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MOSCOW — Unidentified hackers destroyed the web site of Moskovsky Komsomolets in a mysterious attack, said editors for the popular national tabloid. A virus coming from a server based in South Korea “erased” the contents of the web site in 10 minutes, MK web editor Albert Shchegrov said by telephone Friday. |
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MOSCOW — Film actor Vyacheslav Tikhonov, known for his roles as the Soviet spy Shtirlitz and a Russian prince in War and Peace, died Friday. He was 81. |
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 Despite the global economic crisis, Russian entrepreneurial activity in Finnish border territories, close to St. Petersburg, continues to develop steadily. The Kotka-Hamina region, Lappeenranta, Lapland and other Finnish territories close to the Russian border continue to accumulate Russian capital, according to the Kotka-Hamina regional development company Cursor. |
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MTS Relents On Fines MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Mobile TeleSystems will cut the size of penalties for subscribers who don’t make regular calls after customers complained, Vedomosti reported. |
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St. Petersburg’s General Motors plant is shutting down one day a week to avoid overproduction. The local GM plant stopped its conveyer last Thursday and announced a “non-production day,” a company representative said. Employees were on site at the time, preparing to launch the new Opel Astra model, he said. |
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MOSCOW — Belarus on Friday downplayed fears that a new customs union with Russia and Kazakhstan will lead to widespread duty hikes but said an agreement on oil tariffs remains a sticking point in negotiations. |
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MOSCOW — A Finance Ministry proposal could cut by half the salaries of some regional governors, as the federal government tightens control over the regions while trying to rein in excess spending. The proposed legislation, which could come into force starting next year, would amend a law on the organization of political power in the regions by giving the federal government the power to set salary caps for governors. The salaries of other regional officials would be prohibited from exceeding those of the governor, who would receive the authority to set salary caps for municipal officials in the region, according to the draft of the law, which is posted on the Finance Ministry’s web site. |
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 The State Duma is considering a bill that would ban advertisements from historic buildings. If the law is passed, the center of St. Petersburg will be left with almost no large-format advertising space. |
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MOSCOW — The State Duma is planning to extend indefinitely on Wednesday the deadline for about 90 percent of the country’s companies to reregister their incorporation papers, a requirement that caused “gigantic” lines and “fistfights” outside government offices, a lawmaker said. |
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MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev made his third trip to Italy this year on Thursday, discussing energy and politics with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. |
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MOSCOW — Two senior KD Avia managers have been arrested on suspicion of driving the Kaliningrad-based airline to bankruptcy, investigators said. KD Avia chairman Sergei Grishchenko and executive manager Leonid Itskov face charges of abuse of office and the deliberate bankruptcy of a company, the Interior Ministry’s southwestern regional branch said. |
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 There is, of course, pure fiction by Vladimir Nabokov — “The Gift,” “Lolita” and “Ada.” His novels were biographical and nonbiographical at the same time. He never wrote about politics, yet he did. Then there is his own fiction of his own writing and his own past — “Speak, Memory” and “Strong Opinions. |
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Russia has found a great way to be complacent about its deficiencies. No matter how extraordinary or hair-raising events are in Russia, parallels can be found with events and trends in the West. |
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 MOSCOW — Multiple Grammy award-winner Whitney Houston starts her worldwide comeback in Moscow on Wednesday, followed by a concert at the Ice Palace in St. Petersburg on Saturday. Houston’s Russian concerts will serve as a rehearsal for the pop diva’s World Tour, which starts in Japan in February 2010. |
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SHANGHAI — Chinese regulators have closed down hundreds of video sharing websites in a new push to control Internet content, reports said Monday. Several well-known websites were either closed down or ordered to delete all links to downloaded films or TV series in the past week, the China Business News said. |
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Issues Archive