|
|
|
|
While the St. Petersburg authorities continue to promote the Okhta Center skyscraper by publishing interviews in support of the controversial building in a City Hall-owned newspaper, the project’s opponents continue to lose their cases in local courts and have criticized UNESCO’s recent decision on the project as a “compromise.” Last week, the City Court upheld a ruling of the Smolninsky District Court rejecting the claim of opponents to the planned Gazprom Neft headquarters that City Governor Valentina Matviyenko’s decision to permit the 400-meter height contradicted laws prohibiting the construction of buildings taller than 100 meters on the site. |
|
ART ATTACK
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A visitor attends the opening of the 8th International Experimental Art Festival at the Manezh Exhibition Hall on Saturday. Featuring artists from 22 countries, the event will run through Aug. 16. |
 MOSCOW — A first step in President Dmitry Medvedev’s reform of the notoriously corrupt police force will be to replace its Bolshevik-imposed name “militia” with the tsarist-era “police.” Medvedev rolled out his much-anticipated bill to reform the Interior Ministry on Saturday, but it remained unclear whether the legislation would bring about any change more substantial than a name change.
|
|
Temperatures in St. Petersburg broke yet another record Saturday when the mercury soared to 37.1 degrees Celsius, while the smog that has been choking the capital for the past few days also caught up with the city at the weekend. Weather forecasters say Saturday’s temperature is the highest registered in the history of meteorology in St. |
|
MOSCOW — The Foreign Ministry accused the United States on Saturday of breaching its obligations over the nonproliferation of weapons, a sign of strained relations between the two powers, Reuters reported. |
|
Poker Den Busted ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — An illegal poker club has been discovered operating in one of the city’s shopping malls and shut down, the press department of the St. Petersburg police announced Monday. “Despite a complete absence of any advertising, it was operating as a rather busy underground casino when raided,” the statement read. |
All photos from issue.
|
|
|
|
|
MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev visited Abkhazia to defend Moscow’s recognition of the breakaway republic Sunday, two years after a war with Georgia over the territory and nearby South Ossetia. In a further show of support, the Russian government said Friday that it would donate nearly $330 million to the two breakaway regions next year to build roads and power plants, while asking South Ossetia and Abkhazia to model their economic legislation after Russia’s. Medvedev told Russian tourists that the country had prevented a much more dramatic turn of events by recognizing the regions as independent on Aug. 26, 2008, two weeks after the war ended. “The decision was difficult, but I don’t regret anything,” he said. “If it hadn’t been for the recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, we wouldn’t be having coffee here now. |
|
SMOKE SIGNALS
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Smoke obscures the view of Prospekt Stachek in southern St. Petersburg in a photograph taken from the 15th floor of a towerblock on Sunday evening. |
|
Armenian Base MOSCOW (SPT) — Armenia will allow Russia to extend its lease on a military base in the city of Gyumri because the base contributes to the country’s security, Armenian Security Council chief Artur Bagdasaryan said Thursday. Bagdasaryan said the 25-year lease, which was signed in 1995, might be extended to 49 years or even more, the Novosti-Armenia web site reported.
|
|
MOSCOW — Firefighters scored a small victory in their battle against wildfires Sunday when they finally put out blazes that had threatened the Sarov nuclear research center, Reuters reported. But wildfires continued to ravage other areas, and the opposition accused authorities of being in denial. |
|
MOSCOW — A top doctor implored foreigners not to be scared off by the thick smog that has blanketed Moscow for the past three days, even as embassies evacuated staff and at least one closed altogether. |
|
MOSCOW — Two years after a brief war with Georgia, the Defense Ministry still has not provided a final account of the casualties, while its reports of lost military hardware widely differ from estimates by experts. By contrast, it took Georgia’s Defense Ministry a month to compile a detailed list of its losses in the August 2008 hostilities and post it online. |
|
MOSCOW — A veteran soccer coach who recently defended his boss in a major embezzlement trial was gunned down in central Moscow, investigators said Thursday. |
 MOSCOW — Taking a new tact in fighting wildfires, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Thursday granted a fire bell to a blogger who published a profanity-laden post accusing the government of incompetence. In a rare deviation from his tough public image, Putin said he agreed with the blogger’s harsh criticism, which included a dig at President Dmitry Medvedev by asking, “Why the [expletive] do we need an innovation center in Skolkovo if we don’t have common firefighting vehicles?” Medvedev hopes to create a Russian version of Silicon Valley at Skolkovo, outside Moscow. |
|
|
|
|
Average salaries in St. Petersburg are 24 percent lower than in Moscow, with the biggest discrepancies seen among advertising and marketing managers and IT specialists. Case research agency, together with Ancor recruitment agency, surveyed 588 companies in 17 Russian cities, finding that average salaries in St. |
|
The Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology has prepared an amendment bill to the federal law on Russia’s continental shelf. If the bill is passed into law, oil companies will have to provide mandatory funding for dealing with the consequences of oil spills. |
|
Grain Export Ban MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — The Russian Grain Union is seeking a delay to the export ban on the produce to Sept. 1 from Aug. 15 to avoid damaging the country’s reputation as a supplier and ease port and rail bottlenecks, said Arkady Zlochevsky, the head of the industry group. |
|
MOSCOW — Moscow tax authorities charged the Bloomberg news agency 120 million rubles ($4 million) in profit tax in 2006 to 2007, but the company refused to pay, saying it does not have a regular representative office in the country. |
|
MOSCOW — The country’s top sanitary doctor said Friday that he was seeking criminal charges against a firm providing food services at the ExxonMobil-led Sakhalin-1 oil and gas project after 70 people suffered mild to moderate food poisoning. The Federal Consumer Protection Service’s branch on the island of Sakhalin said 70 cases of intestinal infection were registered from Tuesday to Thursday, including three “moderate” illnesses that required hospitalization. Food poisoning cases are extremely common in Russia and often hit poorly funded summer camps, schools and other state institutions. Gennady Onishchenko, the consumer protection service’s director, told a Moscow news conference that the ill workers on Sakhalin included 49 Russians and three Americans. |
|
 MOSCOW — Despite the thousands of homes destroyed by fires raging throughout central Russia, insurance firms are weathering the disaster as few homes are insured and even fewer claims are made for damaged property. |
|
MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev met with his South African counterpart, Jacob Zuma, on Thursday in Moscow, where the two oversaw deals in the metals and nuclear industries. Under the deal, Russian state uranium trader Tenex will sell enriched uranium to Eskom Holdings for use at South Africa’s Koeberg nuclear station, which accounts for 5 percent of South Africa’s energy needs. |
|
MOSCOW — CTC Media indicated that there are signs of increased activity in the advertising market in the second quarter, Reuters reported. “The level of growth in the Russian TV advertising market has accelerated in the second quarter, and we have captured this growth with a fully sold-out position and 8 percent year-on-year Russian advertising sales growth in ruble terms,” chief executive Anton Kudryashov said Thursday. |
|
|
|
 Most people probably spend the evening before their birthday either cooking or going over the menu at the restaurant where they plan to celebrate. I spent the entire evening of July 31 — the day before my birthday — sweating in a police van and then discussing charges at the Basmanny police precinct. |
|
Some of my colleagues — or rather former colleagues in search of career development, or simply of a better life — have gone over to the other side to become PR managers. |
|
|
|
 MOSCOW — The idea is simple and effective: Take a photo from World War II and mix the action into a photo from the present day so that you see defensive sand bags being put up on glossy, modern Tverskaya Ulitsa in Moscow, or tourists standing on the same steps as victorious Russian soldiers at the Reichstag. The photos are meant to remind people of the sufferings of war, said Sergei Larenkov, whose collage photos have won praise around the world. |
|
 In mid-July, the ancient city of Pskov, located on the far western edge of Russia near the borders of Estonia and Latvia, marked the 500th anniversary of its accession to the Grand Principality of Moscow. |
Temp: -1°C clear 
Issues Archive