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 City Hall has dismissed the UNESCO World Heritage Committee’s criticism of the treatment of St. Petersburg’s historic center as having nothing to do with either City Governor Valentina Matviyenko or the city administration, and demanded that two Russian publications run corrections.
In a statement published on its web site Friday, City Hall’s Heritage Protection Committee (KGIOP) criticized the Moscow-based news agency Regnum for stating that the World Heritage Committee is gravely concerned by Matviyenko’s planning policy. It also censured local daily newspaper Sankt-Peterburgskiye Vedomosti’s use of the word “city” [City Hall] when writing about the assessment.
Dismissing the published information as “false” and “biased,” the KGIOP said there “was not — and could not be — any critical remark” about the St. Petersburg authorities in the committee’s findings, because according to the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, preservation of world heritage sites such as the historic center of St. Petersburg is the responsibility of the state that signed the convention, rather than the city on whose territory the world heritage site is located. |
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ALAS, POOR YORICK
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
The annual festival of sand sculptures held on the beach of the Peter and Paul Fortress, seen above with the Winter Palace and St. Isaac’s Cathedral in the background, opened to the public Tuesday. The theme of this year’s festival is masterpieces of world culture. |
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Six Australian red claw crayfish have been recruited to work at St. Petersburg’s southwest water treatment plants (YuZOS), Interfax reported this week.
Scientists will assess the quality of cleaned waste water by monitoring the crayfishes’ condition and pulse before the water is discharged into the Neva Bay, said representatives of Vodokanal, the city’s municipal water utility.
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An architecture-themed mass nocturnal bike ride will take place on the Petrograd Side of the city this weekend.
All cyclists are welcome to take part in the five-hour bike ride, during which participants will learn about the architectural masterpieces and historic monuments of the Petrograd Side and see places connected with Nobel laureates such as Joseph Brodsky, Ivan Pavlov and Pyotr Kapitsa. |
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“The Day of Family, Love and Faithfulness, an official city event, will be celebrated in Tavrichesky Garden with various shows and entertainment,” was how last week’s event was announced in the local media. |
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The company in charge of a dumping ground for snow located near the Gulf of Finland has been fined, but continues to pollute the waters, according to the local branch of Greenpeace.
The state enterprise Tsentr, which operated the site inside the protected area around the Gulf of Finland, was fined 335,000 rubles ($11,800) in June for violating environmental legislation. |
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Killed by Lightning
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Two people were killed when they were struck by lightning during a thunderstorm in the city center on Friday evening. |
All photos from issue.
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 MOSCOW — Police on Tuesday detained the head of the company that leased the Bulgaria riverboat for a weekend cruise on the Volga River, where more than 120 people drowned when it sank.
But the ship’s Canadian-based owner said it could only assume “moral responsibility” for the worst disaster in Russian waters in post-Soviet history. |
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A twin turboprop passenger plane carrying 37 people made a crash-landing on the Ob River on Monday after one of its engines caught fire, killing seven. |
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MOSCOW — Investigators denied on Saturday that ethnic tensions were behind a mass brawl in a Sverdlovsk region village where locals fended off an attack by visitors from Yekaterinburg, most of them purportedly Caucasus natives.
Residents of the Sagra village said they had to fight thugs, who arrived July 1 in a column of 10 to 15 cars, armed with knives, chains and guns, to punish them for forcing a Gypsy drug dealer to move to the village outskirts, RIA-Novosti reported. |
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AURILLAC, France — A French official said police didn’t find doping evidence in a search of Russian rider Alexandr Kolobnev’s hotel room.
Jean-Pascal Violet, the public prosecutor for the town of Aurillac, told The Associated Press that he has opened an investigation in connection with Kolobnev’s failed Tour de France doping test. |
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TBILISI, Georgia — The personal photographer to the Georgian president was shown on television Saturday confessing to supplying a colleague with secret information that was then sent to Russian military intelligence.
Irakli Gedenidze confessed to giving another photographer, Zurab Kurtsikidze of the European Pressphoto Agency, details of the president’s itinerary, motorcade route and offices for unspecified remuneration. |
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MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev on Monday reviewed a plan that would more than double the size of the capital and establish an international financial district west of the current city limits. |
 MOSCOW — A Russian court on Monday handed down sentences ranging from 10 years to life in prison to 12 members of the country’s most vicious neo-Nazi gang convicted of 27 hate killings, which included a videotaped decapitation of one of their own gang members and other crimes.
The Moscow City Court sentenced five members of the group, the National Socialist Society North, to life, giving another seven members between 10 and 23 years. |
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 MOSCOW — The State Duma approved additional restrictions on alcohol sales in the country Thursday that will end sales of beer at night and from kiosks.
The law is expected to fully enter into force by January 2013, but it is already causing shock waves in the industry. |
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MOSCOW — The government will not abandon or trim down its $16.5 billion plan to buy medical equipment and raise doctors’ salaries, even as it reduces the tax that was intended to fund the move, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Thursday. |
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Meat importer Agro-Line will invest 1.7 billion rubles ($60 million) in a hothouse complex in the Leningrad Oblast town of Pikalyovo.
In fall 2012, a 12-hectare hothouse complex for growing vegetables will be launched in Pikalyovo, said Konstantin Grankin, the project’s manager. |
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Russia’s richest are more focused on the opportunities generated by the financial crisis than its downside. They look to separate their personal wealth from their business interests and are largely opposed to involving their families in their business activities. |
 MOSCOW — Alfa Group’s investment arm A1 decided to sell its 51 percent stake in Avianova in late 2010, said Dmitry Chernyak, former managing director of the investment group, who quit in March this year.
The discount airline, which is involved in a scandal concerning locked-out foreign employees, has been on the block for several months, a source close to the carrier confirmed. |
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 The theory that free trade and free capital flows are always good is increasingly under attack. Even at the International Monetary Fund, the old orthodoxy is on the way out.
Markets usually produce desirable results, but not all the time. In some situations, it pays to control them. |
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At the height of the Cold War in the 1960s, some political scientists predicted that the Soviet Union and the United States would eventually come to resemble each other. |
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As Nashi’s Seliger camp continued its activities this week, another rock band found its reputation in tatters after performing for the pro-Kremlin movement gathered at Lake Seliger near Tver.
Last week, Mumiy Troll reluctantly rejected a seemingly lucrative offer from Seliger’s organizers, albeit after some consideration: It appears that the band, which once refused to perform at a concert promoting Putin’s United Russia party, decided its reputation was more valuable.
Meanwhile, Alexei Kortnev, frontman of the Moscow band Neschastny Sluchai that did perform at Seliger last week, proclaimed that performing for the various youth movements was “right,” going as far as to describe the pro-Kremlin activists as “the cream of today’s Russia. |
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ALEXANDER BELENKY / The St. Petersburg Times
ERARTA MUSEUM PAYS
HOMAGE TO THE ’80S WITH
AN EXHIBIT OF OUTFITS
COLLECTED BY ALEXANDER
VASILIEV. |
 Mod is a rarity in St. Petersburg: A club that combines live music and a relaxed atmosphere. It’s a place for people to feel comfortable in and free, says its owner Denis Cherevichny.
Hidden in a long courtyard off the Griboyedov Canal, a five-minute walk from Nevsky Prospekt, the premises include a large concert room with a capacity of some 700 people and — particularly popular during the recent hot days and nights — an open terrace overlooking old buildings now occupied by offices, behind which the crosses of the Church on the Spilled Blood can be seen.
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 Rivers of wine and mounds of delectable French cheese and crispy baguette, as well as haute couture and chanson music will be brought to the city’s Yusupov Garden on Thursday as part of local Bastille Day celebrations.
July 14 — France’s national holiday — has been designated a day of French culture in the city, and a picnic accompanied by musical entertainment dedicated to the holiday aims to create the atmosphere of an authentic French street party. |
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 An exhibition devoted to fashion from the 1980s comprising pieces from the private collection of Alexander Vasiliev opened at the Erarta museum of modern art Monday. |
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Êóäà óæ òóò: not likely!
At a dacha outside Moscow on a sunny afternoon, a group of friends are sitting around a table, telling áàéêè (tall tales) and bragging about their financial acumen. You don’t believe a word of it. So what do you say?
Thank goodness, you’re all speaking Russian, which has a plethora of phrases and exclamations to express extreme doubt, refusal or absolute negation.
Let’s say you’re listening to a pitch to put your life savings in a no-risk, high-yield investment. The pitchman is your neighbor who has gone through three fortunes in 10 years and is occasionally visited by minions of either the mafia or law enforcement (so hard to tell the difference, they all dress alike). |
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 This weekend’s 7th annual PetroJazz festival will continue the series of summer music events being held in St. Petersburg, showcasing musicians from all over the world, as well as some of the city’s finest local jazz talent. |
 The charity fund that persuaded Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to sing “Blueberry Hill” — and prompted those awkward questions about money — did it again at the weekend, this time with Moscow concerts at which they promised Woody Allen would play jazz. |
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Illusions of Grandeur
There is nothing very grand about Grand Cafe Bazilik (Basil).
It may have aspirations above its simplicity, such as a pork dish rather extravagantly titled “Madame Bovary,” yet on a recent Friday evening, it was entirely lacking in the staple part of any Caucasian cuisine (the cafe’s supposed speciality): Meat shashlyk. |
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 PERM — The picture on a city sign shows a white stick figure wielding a baseball bat, clearly on the verge of doing some hideous violence to an unseen victim.
In case you don’t quite understand, there is a black line drawn through the club, as in a “no smoking” sign.
The message is unmistakable. It’s a disturbing sight for a visitor to come across in a city center late at night.
But after a glance over one’s shoulder and a cautious visual check of passers-by, it produces a question. |
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 MOSCOW — Russia celebrated the 450th anniversary of St. Basil’s Cathedral on Tuesday by opening an exhibition dedicated to the so-called “holy fool” who gave his name to the soaring structure of bright-hued onion domes that is a quintessential image of Russia. |
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MOSCOW — “I used to think, what can the blind do? But then they fixed my back,” said Sergei Ogarkov, finance manager of the Lights of the Lighthouse, a grocery store in northern Moscow.
Ogarkov is talking about blind masseurs who after three sessions eliminated back pain that he had endured for 15 years. |
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