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 French landscape designers and architects who won an international competition to build a new zoo for St. Petersburg last December shared more details and pictures of their project last week.
The design for the new zoo, created by the French designers Bruno and Jean Christophe Nani from TN Plus and architects Aldric Beckmann and Francoise N’Thepe from Beckmann company, looks back to the early history of the Earth, “when its surface was just one single super continent, known as Pangea,” the authors of the design said in a press release. |
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A high-tech nuclear safety information center opened in St. Petersburg last week, equipped with a 3-D cinema and computer room that will plunge residents into what the project’s organizers call “the world of nuclear energy. |
 Opposition figures are criticizing City Hall’s refusal to authorize traditional Mayday marches on Nevsky Prospekt, St. Petersburg’s main street, for several political and social groups. Critics have condemned the move, deeming it an attempt on the part of the authorities to further restrict civic freedoms in Russia. |
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City Hall has approved maximum rates for the city’s toll roads. The price chart will be used by a private investor who will manage the city’s only toll road: The as-yet uncompleted Western High-Speed Diameter Road (WHSD), Fontanka reported. |
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ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The subsidiary of Gazprom responsible for planning the ill-fated, controversial Okhta Center skyscraper has set up a new web site for its latest project in the city’s Lakhta district, Interfax reported Monday.
The web site, www. |
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Waterbuses Launched
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Waterbuses will begin operating along the Neva River from May 29 through October 31, Fontanka reported. |
All photos from issue.
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 MOSCOW — A bizarre conflict between a renowned pediatrician and the Health and Social Development Ministry has stirred talk about an imminent Cabinet reshuffle and even evoked memories of Stalin’s infamous Doctors’ Plot.
Analysts said Friday that the dispute with pediatrician Leonid Roshal could signal that Health and Social Development Minister Tatyana Golikova might be on her way out. |
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MOSCOW — The Moscow City Court authorized on Monday the arrest of five people, including an elderly ex-convict, on suspicion of kidnapping the son of software tycoon Yevgeny Kaspersky to pay off their debts. |
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MOSCOW — A Kazakh diplomat tried to hijack an Alitalia flight from Paris to Rome, demanding it be flown to Libya, but was quickly overpowered and arrested when the plane landed.
Witnesses said Valery Tolmachev, 48, put a small knife to the throat of a flight attendant and held her for a few minutes during the Sunday night flight. |
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MOSCOW — Moscow region investigators have detained a 45-year-old convicted serial rapist nicknamed “The Elevator Man” on suspicion of targeting teenage girls by pretending to be blind and poisoning at least one victim. |
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MOSCOW — The main suspect in a weekend explosion that maimed a guard on the set of the “Dom-2” reality television show is a wannabe contestant who claimed that he was roughed up by the guards, media reports said Monday.
But the Moscow region’s branch of the Investigative Committee said a probe was ongoing and no charges have been filed, Interfax reported. |
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 A new children’s amusement park belonging to the Happylon international chain of 10 modern theme parks opened in St. Petersburg’s Galeria shopping mall last weekend.
Investment in the park totaled 12 million rubles ($430,000), and the company expects the pay-back period to be from four to seven years. |
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Innovation in management, energy efficiency, information technologies and healthcare are some of the key topics of the forthcoming EU-Russia Innovation Forum, which will be held in the Finnish town of Lappeenranta on May 25 to 26. |
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Lufthansa saw a 10-percent increase in passenger volumes from St. Petersburg last year, prompting Germany’s national carrier to introduce bigger airplanes for its six daily flights from the city to Frankfurt, Dusseldorf and Munich beginning this summer. |
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MOSCOW — Mail.ru Group denied reports in the media about the company’s proposal to unite the country’s two most popular social networks, Odnoklassniki and Vkontakte, Mail. |
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Hyundai Motor Company, which started producing cars at its St. Petersburg plant in January this year, increased prices for its Russian-made vehicles starting Monday.
The price of the Hyundai Solaris, which used to be 379,000 rubles ($13,615), is now 399,000 rubles ($14,333) — a price hike of 5.2 percent, Interfax reported. |
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 MOSCOW — Despite a lavish opening party in 2009 and a commitment to “aggressive” growth, HSBC’s dreams for the Russian retail banking market ended Monday with a tacit acknowledgement by the bank that it could not compete against state-owned heavyweights like VTB and Sberbank. |
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MOSCOW — The Cabinet agreed on April 21 to boost spending by 4 percent this year as soaring oil prices push revenues up.
Federal expenditures would grow by 420 billion rubles, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said, bringing the total to about 11. |
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MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev reiterated on Monday his desire to see Skolkovo become a new global brand name — possibly in part because he hopes to work there after retiring from the Kremlin.
Medvedev, a former university law professor, told the Internet-based Dozhd television channel that he would like to teach at the innovation hub one day. |
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 It began as a gray and muddy spring day, like so many others in my homeland. It ended in dread and mourning.
Of course, none of us knew the precise moment when catastrophe struck at Chernobyl 25 years ago. Back then, we lived under a system that denied ordinary people any right whatsoever to know about even essential facts and events. |
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Everything in life comes at a price. In March, many of Moscow’s sick and elderly were reminded of that sad truism in the form of a huge monthly bill from the city’s social services for bathing them, taking them for a walk, or helping them to dress, cook, or clean. |
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.jpg) Seraphin Selenge Makangila, the St. Petersburg-based musician who originally hails from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, has been invigorating the Russian music scene with African beats for nearly 20 years, ever since he first formed a band with a group of African students in 1991. |
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Having tried to intimidate artists (Voina) and musicians (Noize MC and Barto), the authorities launched an offensive against music journalists last week, when Artyom Troitsky found himself under criminal investigation for allegedly insulting a traffic policeman. |
 Frank Sinatra, the Beatles, Brigitte Bardot, Nelson Mandela, Queen Elizabeth II. Other than being famous across the globe, it might seem that they have little in common. But at various times, they have all been in the camera lens of Terry O’Neill.
While his subjects are popular among the general public, O’Neill is famous in celebrity circles, which may be twice as precious. “I’m pleased,” he says. |
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 Last week, everyone was transfixed by President Dmitry Medvedev’s moves on the dance floor after some rat leaked a video from his university reunion to YouTube. |
 NEW YORK — Families walk their children to school. Teenage girls smile backstage before a concert. Couples work out at a gym not far from villages where subsistence farmers draw well water and raise crops.
Welcome to the present-day Chernobyl region. |
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This year as both Western and Eastern Christian churches prepare to celebrate Easter (Ïàñõà), it seems like a good time to seek answers to some of the cultural and linguistic puzzles of the season. |
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Russia’s wine-drinking culture is not, to put it mildly, the country’s strongest alcoholic tradition. For centuries, vodka was the national tipple, though several years ago, sales of beer overtook those of vodka. Wine traditions in Russia and the Soviet Union were generally limited to Soviet champagne, and in the absence of a national viniculture, sweet wines from Moldova and Georgia were the favorites in Russia, until they were banned in 2006 amid a series of diplomatic spats between the countries, allegedly for failing to conform to health and safety standards. |
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 The spiritual journey began with a young man, who was yet to serve in the army, cutting grass in a village just outside Veliky Novgorod, almost 30 years ago at the end of the Soviet era. Little by little, Vladimir Mikhailov, who was studying to be a lapidary, worked his way to the edge of the field where he stumbled across an old, crumbling wooden house next to a derelict church. |
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PRIPYAT, Chernobyl’s Exclusion Zone — Once built as the model of a perfect Soviet town, Pripyat is now the perfect model of undisturbed silence.
“We thought we were living in the best city,” said Natalya Oleinichenko, 50, a former Pripyat resident. |
Temp: -1°C clear 
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