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The St. Petersburg Interior Ministry is looking into the actions of officers who beat and arrested people while dispersing a peaceful rally in defense of the right of assembly on Saturday, July 31, a police spokesman said this week. The statement came in the wake of a large number of reports about the actions of one officer in particular who beat people with his police baton and dragged a young woman by her hair. |
All photos from issue.
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 Local residents have collected four tons of humanitarian aid for the victims of forest fires in central Russia. Clothes, bedding, children’s items and other necessities will be sent off to the needy on Friday. Aid collection stations have been operating in all of the city’s districts during the past week. The humanitarian aid drive is being coordinated by the St. Petersburg Center for International Humanitarian Initiatives. An unusually long period of abnormal heat and an absence of rain have led to a fire epidemic in Russia. At present, dozens of new forest fires are being identified in the country every day. |
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DON’T BANK ON IT
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Workers begin repairs on a section of the stone embankment of the Griboyedov Canal that collapsed last week. The 18th-century paving was due to be repaired later this year. |
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“Tolko Pobeda” — “only victory” — said the pre-game posters all over the city. And, indeed, only a victory against Romania’s Unirea Urziceni would allow Zenit St. Petersburg to advance to the UEFA Champions League, Europe’s most prestigious club soccer tournament. Zenit, currently topping the table in the Russian Premier League and coming off an impressive 8-game winning streak, entered Wednesday’s game as the favorite.
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Traffic Cop Shot ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A traffic policeman was shot dead and another was seriously wounded during a document check Wednesday on Prospekt Udarnikov in St. Petersburg, Interfax reported. The policemen came under fire after trying to check the documents of two unidentified men in a Chevrolet sedan, a law enforcement official told Interfax, adding that the assailants fled, taking both officers’ guns. |
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 MOSCOW — Oleg Deripaska does not want to lose his stake in Austrian construction firm Strabag, so he is willing to trade in his Russian assets, such as Transstroi and Glavmosstroi. Deripaska’s Rasperia Trading bought a 30 percent stake in Strabag for 1. |
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MOSCOW — Officials who are to work in anti-corruption departments will undergo special training, which will focus on curtailing the appearance of new bribe-takers, rather than finding and punishing existing ones. |
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 Can Russia escape the “resource curse” implied by high oil prices, or will it succumb to what we call a “70-80” scenario? That is the question confronting Russians today, and we fear that their fate will be the “70-80” scenario. If oil prices remain at $70 to $80 per barrel, Russia is likely to relive key features of the Brezhnev era of the 1970s and 1980s — with a stagnating economy and 70 percent to 80 percent approval ratings for its political leaders. |
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Since the first wildfires started a month ago, 125,000 hectares of Russia’s forest have been destroyed in 17 regions, and 40 people have died. Russia’s statistics on casualties from fires have always differed drastically from those in the West. |
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 More than 100 artists from 22 countries will exhibit their work at the Manezh Central Exhibition Hall from Saturday for the 18th Festival of Experimental Art. This time, the organizers have decided to focus visitors’ attention on video art. “Every year we try to focus on one specific type of art, because we want to demonstrate global trends in art,” said Larisa Skobkina, the festival’s curator. “For example, we have already held festivals dedicated to installations and photography. Today, video art is extremely popular; it features in all the leading exhibitions and festivals of modern art. |
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/ For The St. Petersburg Times
Angelina Jolie stars as a CIA agent who goes on the run after being accused of being a Russian spy in Phillip Noyce’s thriller ‘Salt,’ now showing at local movie theaters. |
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Musicians and artists are demanding the immediate release of Noize MC, a hugely popular rapper sentenced to 10 days in prison after performing an anti-police song at a heavily-policed open-air festival in Volgograd. The judge found the musician, whose real name is Ivan Alexeyev, guilty of the charge of disorderly behavior. Alexeyev performed the song and described policemen, who were present in large numbers at the show, as “beautiful animals with red emblems” after a police officer tried to stop a stage routine in which the audience was urged to throw coins into a hat, accusing the band of panhandling.
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 The death masks taken from some of Russia’s most famous poets are the centerpiece of the Language of Masks exhibition that opened Friday at Loft Project Etazhi. Posthumous portraits of Alexander Pushkin, Vladimir Mayakovsky and Sergei Yesenin have been created by Alexei Pakhomov, a young artist from St. |
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Flanked by the flashy signs of Carl’s Junior and a hairdresser’s salon, Limoncello can be easy to miss. We only noticed the restaurant when a jubilant traffic policeman caught our attention by signaling a reckless driver to come to a halt in front of its inconspicuous sign. |
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The summer always brings an influx of stars from around the world to St. Petersburg, who if they’re not treading the boards of the Mariinsky or giving rain-soaked performances on Palace Square, are no doubt simply eager to see what all the fuss is about. Last month saw an “incognito” visit to the city by Hollywood dinosaur Michael Douglas and his buxom Welsh wife Catherine Zeta Jones. |
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 TEHRAN — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was unhurt on Wednesday after an explosive device, officially described as a firecracker, went off near his motorcade. Ahmadinejad was on his way to a sports arena to make a speech in Hamedan, south of the capital, when the explosion occurred. Conservative web site Khabaronline, the first source to report the incident, initially said a hand grenade was thrown at the hardliner’s motorcade but later in the day dropped “grenade” in its report and used the word “firecracker” instead. |
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Issues Archive