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MOSCOW — A U.S. government delegation will arrive in Moscow next week to discuss rules for American parents who want to adopt Russian children, setting the stage for a resolution of a years-long irritant in U.S.-Russian relations. Russia suspended all adoptions to U.S. families on Thursday until the two countries can agree on procedures, the Foreign Ministry said, the Associated Press reported. Adoptions, a hot-button issue after several Russian children died at the hands of their U.S. parents in recent years, jumped to the forefront last Thursday when a single Tennessee mother sent her 7-year-old Russian son to Moscow with a note saying she no longer wanted him. President Dmitry Medvedev denounced the action as a “monstrous deed” by a “bad family.” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said it was “the last straw” in a series of bad adoptions and threatened to suspend all adoptions to American families. |
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LENIN LIVES!
Alexander Demianchuk / Reuters
To mark the 140th anniversary of his birth, workers install a restored statue of Vladimir Lenin, which was damaged by a blast in 2009, outside the Finland Station on Thursday morning. |
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MOSCOW — It’s not yet clear what shape the advertising market will take once new anti-monopoly laws come into effect next year, but market players are scrambling to prepare for the shakeup. In December, the State Duma passed a bill that will prohibit nationwide television channels from signing contracts with sales houses whose market share exceeds 35 percent.
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 MOSCOW — Moscow and Washington began openly negotiating to secure their interests in Kyrgyzstan on Wednesday, offering money and assistance to the interim government, even as it negotiated an uneasy truce with supporters of ousted President Kurmanbek Bakiyev. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Robert Blake arrived in Bishkek for talks with interim leader Roza Otunbayeva, while Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin held talks in Moscow with her top deputy, Almazbek Atambayev. |
All photos from issue.
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WARSAW — Poland’s chief prosecutor promised Thursday to release details of the cockpit voice recorders from the plane that crashed near Smolensk on Saturday, killing the president and dozens of top officials, Reuters reported. President Lech Kaczynski, his wife, Polish military leaders and senior opposition figures were traveling to mark the 70th anniversary of the massacre of thousands of Polish officers by Soviet secret police in the Katyn forest when the plane went down. Air traffic controllers in Smolensk say they urged the pilot to divert to another airport because of thick fog but he ignored the advice and made four attempts to land before hitting treetops and crashing. |
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JUST SAY NO
Simon Eliasson / The St. Petersburg Times
The Greenpeace ship Esperanza, pictured in the foreground, stands moored on the River Neva on Thursday. The ship is in the city to protest against the import of French nuclear waste. |
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MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev has refined his anti-corruption campaign by topping up his “National Plan Against Corruption” with a new “National Strategy.” Both are contained in a 4,500-word presidential decree published Wednesday. The strategy portion lays out a midterm government policy, while the plan is to be updated every two years, the Kremlin said in a statement published on its web site.
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MOSCOW — Air traffic controllers directing planes flying over half of Russia’s European territory and hundreds of other workers have gone on a hunger strike to demand the ouster of their boss over “totalitarian” working conditions, their union said Wednesday. The union said flight safety would not be affected. |
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MOSCOW — The International Olympic Committee praised construction work for the Sochi Winter Games after an inspection of the site Wednesday, and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin promised to respect the environment. But environmental groups complained that their advice was being ignored and warned of dangerous consequences. |
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St. Petersburg legislators and quality control specialists are working on a draft law aimed at supporting the production and distribution of food items for people with special nutritional needs. |
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MOSCOW — U.S. producers agreed to stop using chlorine to treat poultry in order to resume supplies to Russia, Gennady Onishchenko, head of the Federal Consumer Protection Service, said Tuesday. “We have information that U.S. factories are intensively working to give up treating poultry with solutions containing chlorine,” Onishchenko told Interfax, adding that poultry producers said they were ready to resume exports as soon as possible. |
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MOSCOW — A U.S. institute hasn’t yet coaxed Grigory Perelman out of his apartment to accept a $1 million prize, but billionaire Viktor Vekselberg would like to do one better: convince the reclusive St. |
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 The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama has been caught flat- footed once again — this time in Kyrgyzstan. Last April 7, as the opposition stormed the presidential palace in Bishkek, not far from where the strategic Manas U.S. air force base is located, Washington was celebrating its New START arms control treaty with Russia. |
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During Putin’s rule, Katyn has become the main obstacle in Russian-Polish relations. In 2006, relatives of the Polish officers killed in the Katyn massacre of 1940 filed a lawsuit to force the Russian government to release its archives on the tragedy, but the prosecutor general rejected the case. |
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 A dilapidated former textile factory complex designed by the expressionist German architect Erich Mendelsohn in the early 20th century is getting a second life thanks to the inspiration and enthusiasm of a local developer, who nurtures a plan to turn it into an international center for arts and culture of the caliber of London’s Tate Modern or Paris’s Centre Pompidou. |
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Øàïêà: hat, letterhead, headline My way of dealing with the recent tragic events in my adoptive country is completely childish: whenever possible, I try to distract myself. |
 The descendant of one of the most acclaimed jazz bands in the world, the Duke Ellington Orchestra, will take to the stage of the city’s Oktyabrsky Concert Hall this weekend. Judging from the posters advertizing the event around the city, if you know nothing about Duke Ellington, who is ranked as one of the greatest jazz musicians of all time, then you might be forgiven for thinking that he was on his way, too. |
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Enjoying Spanish tapas is an inherently social experience. These small dishes are designed to be eaten with one’s fingers — like a crostini topped with smoked ham — or popped straight into the mouth — like olives — so that diners can focus on the company of their friends, rather than on their food. |
 MOSCOW — Russian rap has shown its social conscience in recent weeks, highlighting how local performers are willing to deal with local problems rather than parade the babes and in-your-face oligarchic bling of the likes of Timati. Following from rapper Noize MC’s song “Mercedes 666,” which damned LUKoil vice president Anatoly Barkov to hell after he was involved in a car crash that left two women dead, there comes Dino MC 47’s “Song About Explosions in the Metro,” which criticizes the government elite for hypocrisy over the two bombings that killed 40 people late last month. |
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 ZHUKOVSKY — An aviation museum, a cathedral that looks like a rocket and the Volkonsky Estate — spring is the time to visit the town of Zhukovsky and its surroundings. |
 ZHUKOVSKY — An aviation museum, a cathedral that looks like a rocket and the Volkonsky Estate — spring is the time to visit the town of Zhukovsky and its surroundings. Zhukovsky, which is located 40 kilometers southeast of Moscow, is a city of 100,000 that was founded in 1947. The city was named after aero- and hydrodynamics pioneer Nikolai Zhukovsky. |
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 REYKJAVIK — A volcanic eruption in Iceland fired ash across northern Europe on Thursday, bringing chaos to air travel, and melted a glacier, causing severe floods. About 800 people have been forced to evacuate their homes around the Eyjafjallajokull volcano because the flooding cut roads and risked bringing down a bridge. |
Temp: -1°C clear 
Issues Archive