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MOSCOW — Russia has the worst record in Europe and Central Asia on homicides of young people, ranking ahead of Albania and Kazakhstan, and the world’s highest youth suicide rate, according to recent reports. Experts attributed the grim statistics to social problems such as violent programming on state-run television, which they said undermines young people’s sense of value for human life. The rate for violence-related deaths among people aged 10 to 29 in Russia is 15.85 per 100,000 individuals — 34 times higher than in Germany, the World Health Organization’s European bureau said in its first report on youth violence. The findings, presented Tuesday in London, said 40 young people are murdered daily in the 53 countries surveyed, bringing the annual number of killings for the age group to about 15,000 in the greater European region. |
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HELLO SAILORS
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
The Mir tall ship sailed into St. Petersburg on Tuesday, along with the Akela yacht. Both vessels, to an orchestral accompaniment, moored up on the Lieutenant Schmidt Embankment. The Mir set off from Kaliningrad five-and-a-half months ago and took part in two regattas over the summer. |
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Trumpeters dressed in white uniforms and long-legged drummer girls in blue jackets and cocked hats were playing marches Tuesday as Hyundai Motor launched its first Russian car assembly plant in St. Petersburg. The company invested a total of $500 million in the facility, which will work in pilot mode until the end of this year and start commercial production in January.
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As a police officer under investigation for beating peaceful demonstrators during a rally was hospitalized after allegedly being attacked, activists claim they had nothing to do with the incident and suggest it was a trick to hinder the investigation. |
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A 19th-century building in the city center is under threat of demolition, preservationists said this week. Unofficially known as the Jurgens House, after the architect who built it, the three-story building was earlier this month surrounded by a fence, closing off half of the road in that section of the street. |
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MOSCOW — Working as a judge is a dangerous job, with 13 Moscow judges seeking police protection since January and the city’s top judge receiving threats, the top judge, Olga Yegorova, said Tuesday. “For the first time in many years, threats have been directed against me,” Yegorova told a packed news conference of about 45 reporters and several television channels, including Channel One, TV Center and Ren-TV. |
All photos from issue.
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 Several police cars were overturned in St. Petersburg in a stunt taken credit for on Monday by the same group of artists that painted a huge penis on a drawbridge in June. An artist with the group, Voina, or War, published photos on Monday on his blog of what he called an anti-police “Palace Revolution” in the vicinity of the downtown Mikhailovsky Palace. |
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MOSCOW — Teplotekhnik, the company contracted by the federal government to clear part of Moscow region’s Khimki forest for a new highway, has sued environmental activists for a quarter million dollars for blocking its work this summer, Interfax reported Tuesday. |
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In a throwback to pre-revolutionary days, Russian Railways this week will kick off a regular train service between Moscow and Nice, a southern French city popular among Russian glitterati and wealthy businessmen. The route operated during tsarist times but was canceled almost 100 years ago, according to Italia-ru. |
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A U.S. lawyer and arts philanthropist has gone on trial in Philadelphia on charges that he sexually abused a Russian ballet dancer he helped support, the Associated Press reported. |
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Woman Abducted ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A St. Petersburg woman stated that unidentified assailants abducted her from the parking lot of a shopping center on Murmanskoye Shosse, after which they robbed her and threw her out of the car near Rybatskoye metro station, Fontanka.ru reported. At about 9.15 p.m. Monday, unknown attackers put a bag over the woman’s head in the parking lot of Mega Dybenko shopping center and forced her into a car, the 28-year-old woman reported. They then threw her out at Rybatskoye, taking her purse, which contained 29,000 rubles ($934). Police: Crime Down ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The St. |
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 A mixed martial arts champion who fled a St. Petersburg psychiatric facility has been detained in Norway after applying for asylum. An Oslo police official said Vyacheslav Datsik was detained Wednesday on suspicion of violating the country’s law on gun ownership and having possible links to organized crime. |
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MOSCOW — A Siberian man took a female cook hostage and stabbed her and several police officers early Wednesday after gaining access to a deserted kindergarten in central Moscow by convincing the sole security guard that he was thirsty. The attack is the latest in a series of incidents that have raised questions about the ability of private security guards to ensure safety. |
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Two St. Petersburg scientists have been arrested on spy charges that signal the resumption of criminal cases by a resurgent Federal Security Service against researchers accused of divulging state secrets. |
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 Jan Dunning, one the two chief executive officers of St. Petersburg-based hypermarket chain Lenta currently embroiled in a shareholder conflict, denied allegations that he is not legally permitted to work in Russia at a press conference held in the city on Thursday. |
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MOSCOW — The Economic Development Ministry is drafting a law to encourage small business by allowing more businesses to simply notify the authorities of the start of their operation, rather than apply for permits before starting, Minister Elvira Nabiullina said Wednesday. |
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 Some of my friends and colleagues are still talking about Russia’s “shame” when it decided to allow troops from NATO-member countries to take part in the Victory Day parade on Red Square, although the event happened more than four months ago. “What is going on?” they still cry. |
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On Saturday, pages from the English version of the Russian Academy of Sciences web site contained several amusing translation errors. For example, the renowned Institute for Protein Research was incorrectly named “Squirrel Institute. |
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 Since his death in 1975, both the popularity and critical reputation of Shostakovich’s music have climbed steadily. This is especially remarkable, given that the terrible historical realities that shaped it are fading from the world’s collective memory. In spite of the controversy over the composer’s political allegiances that has raged over the years — the Soviet regime bestowed several prizes on him, and he joined the Communist Party in the early 60s — it now seems clear that Shostakovich was an unhappy man who loathed his Kremlin masters, and that he voiced his outrage at the terrors of his era in his music. Nevertheless, the music has proven able to stand on its own. Knowledge of the historical circumstances that produced it will certainly provide a deeper understanding of certain details, but its anger and pathos speak eloquently enough for themselves. |
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/ For The St. Petersburg Times
One of the watercolors on display at the St. Petersburg Union of Artists exhibition center as part of a solo show by artist Sergey Makarov. The exhibition runs through Oct. 10. |
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Îòîâàðèòü: to buy or sell something with a chit or coupon, to hit someone (slang) Mr. Putin gave another of his language lessons recently. This lesson was about the verb îòîâàðèòü, which is derived from the noun òîâàð (merchandise, commodity). As far as I can tell, the verb îòîâàðèòü appeared during the Soviet period. It meant either selling or buying food and other goods for ration cards or certificates.
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 Europe Day comes to town on Saturday with a string of film screenings, gastronomic feasts, intellectual discussions, classical music concerts and cutting-edge art exhibitions. Organized by the Goethe German Cultural Center and the French Institute in St. |
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With its innovative, two-story location just seconds from the Gostiny Dvor metro station, ParmaSushi could have probably squeezed the last few drops from the saturated downtown sushi market with any respectable offering of Western-style sashimi and rolls. |
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 UNITED NATIONS — U.S. President Barack Obama called for greater urgency in the fight against the world’s social ills as a UN poverty summit ended with tens of billions of dollars of pledges but lingering pessimism about the impact. Obama unveiled a new “big hearted” but “hard headed” U. |
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NEW YORK — U.S. President Barack Obama on Thursday told world powers at the United Nations they could help seal a deal within a year to welcome a new member — Palestine — by backing his Middle East peace drive. |
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NEW DELHI — India’s prime minister convened a crisis meeting on the Commonwealth Games on Thursday, facing warnings of a mass pullout and frantic work to save the event from disaster with just 10 days to go. Manmohan Singh summoned top ministers as more teams delayed their athletes’ departure for the Indian capital and eight countries reportedly told organizers they will withdraw if their concerns about security and hygiene are not met. |
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PARIS — French unions staged another day of protests and strikes Thursday, hoping to bring more than two million onto the streets to defy President Nicolas Sarkozy’s plan to hike the retirement age from 60 to 62. |
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Issues Archive