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 ST. PETERSBURG, Russia (AP) -- A Russian court Thursday dismissed a lawsuit that sought millions of dollars in damages from Madonna for allegedly traumatizing minors by speaking up for gay rights during a concert in St. Petersburg.
The ruling came after a one-day hearing that bordered on the farcical. During it, plaintiffs claimed that Madonna's so-called "propaganda of perversion" would negatively affect Russia's birthrate and erode the nation's defense capability by depriving the country of future soldiers. |
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 MOSCOW — Jailed Pussy Riot band member Maria Alyokhina has been placed in solitary confinement for her own protection, prison authorities said Friday.
Alyokhina, who is serving a two-year prison sentence at a prison colony in the Perm region, was moved to a safe room at her own request. |
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MOSCOW — Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko has called on St. Petersburg authorities to "demonstrate will" and finish the construction of a new football stadium by 2017, RIA-Novosti reported Wednesday.
"The governor in St. Petersburg must demonstrate will and finish the construction of the stadium; I believe it will be done," Mutko said at a press breakfast held by the organizing committee for the FIFA World Cup, which will be held in Russia in 2018.
Mutko added that work on the new stadium was under way and promised strict control over construction deadlines. "It is out of the question that St. Petersburg will miss the deadline," the minister said. |
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 MOSCOW — On the day that a much-criticized "foreign agent" law came into force, at least four nongovernmental organizations that spearheaded the opposition against it were harassed with graffiti and pickets Wednesday. |
 MOSCOW — Russia's delegate to the Miss Earth beauty pageant this week made international waves with an essay eviscerating her home country as a "beggar" and a "sinking ship" being bled dry by the greed of a "chosen few."
Kursk native Natalya Perverzeva began her essay on "what makes you proud of your country and what can you promote about it?" routinely enough, saying Russia is "all that I have, all the people I love, all that is dear to me. |
All photos from issue.
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 A new online environmental monitoring project aims to fight corruption and challenge the regional authorities. Conceived by the Russian Geographic Society together with RIA-Novosti news agency, the nationwide multimedia project is titled “The Ecological Map of Russia.”
The detailed map was launched in October and can be viewed at http://ria.ru/ecorating. Updated round the clock seven days a week, it allows environmentalists in each region to draw attention to ecological blackspots as well as unfolding disasters. Internet users can post information about accidents, pollution, illegal garbage sites and violations of environmental laws on the website, and also upload photos and videos as proof of their allegations.
“It is not uncommon for regional authorities to ignore people’s complaints for ages and stick their letters in a pile in their offices,” said Lina Zernova, editor-in-chief of the Ecology and Law environmental magazine, speaking at the project’s presentation on Monday. |
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HOME TIME
RUSSIAN MUSEUM
One of the two swans on the lake in the Summer Gardens resists capture last week. The pair had lived on the lake since being moved there from the zoo in June, and
were far from keen to return to the zoo for the winter. Zoo staff have promised that the same pair will return to their spacious summer residence next year. |
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The authorities of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast, which spreads out from its city limits, are playing up a newfound level of cooperation and talking about blurring the lines between them.
Speaking at a recent intergovernmental meeting, St. Petersburg Governor Georgy Poltavchenko raised the idea of uniting the city and the whole region, which extends across the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga coastlines and surrounds St.
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Authorities in the German state of Baden-Wurtemberg have declined to host the annual Petersburg Dialogue German-Russian conference in 2013.
The suggestion to hold the conference in Baden-Baden was made by the organizers of the event. The authorities of the state said the conference would involve expenditure that the region could not afford for the moment, web portal Fontanka.ru reported.
The region’s authorities reportedly calculated they would have to spend 3 million euros ($3.8 million) on the event and additional policing.
However, sources with links to the organizers of the conference said the government of the region would not have to cover too many expenses, as businesses interested in good relations with Russia would cover the major costs, Fontanka reported, citing German magazine Der Spiegel. |
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 The city’s much-lamented mid-range hotel sector got a boost last week with the opening of the three-star Red Stars hotel at 30 Naberezhnaya Reki Pryazhki. |
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This year’s annual Winter Charity Bazaar, organized by the International Women’s Club (IWC), will feature two lotteries as well as the traditional food and crafts stalls selling goods from all over the world.
Proceeds raised at the Winter Bazaar, which will take place at the city’s Astoria Hotel this Sunday, Nov. |
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PM Slams Soccer Crime
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said crimes like those committed during Saturday’s match between Moscow’s FC Dinamo and St. |
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Prominent science fiction author Boris Strugatsky died in a St. Petersburg hospital late Monday after a serious illness, media reports said.
Strugatsky, who was 79 at the time of his death, wrote several dozen books with his late brother Arkady between the 1960s and 1980s. Their books were printed in 321 editions in 27 countries, according to the website of the Strugatsky Brothers Foundation. |
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MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel traded barbs over Pussy Riot, human rights and democracy during Kremlin talks Friday that marked a turn in Berlin’s policy toward Moscow.
Merkel, who had been under pressure not to be soft on Putin, seemingly enjoyed confronting her host about the ongoing onslaught on the opposition.
During an at times fulminant panel debate in the Kremlin, she said that a series of recently passed legislation curtailed freedom and that the two-year prison sentences for Pussy Riot activists were too harsh.
A jovial Putin played down the criticism, saying the country’s partners hear about events in Russia “from far away. |
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 MOSCOW — A member of female punk band Pussy Riot may ask for her former lawyers to be stripped of their legal status, a news report said Tuesday.
The news came a day after the band’s lawyers terminated their contract with the musicians, saying the publicity they had attracted to the case could harm their defendants. |
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MADISON, Wisconsin — Newly declassified documents show the FBI kept close tabs on Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s only daughter after her high-profile defection to the United States in 1967, gathering details from informants about how her arrival was affecting international relations. |
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MOSCOW — Investigators said Tuesday that a fire that killed seven dogs in a Moscow animal shelter in early November was the work of arsonists.
Experts are continuing to examine the area surrounding the Alma shelter, which was engulfed in flames in the early hours of Nov. |
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MOSCOW — Although much-debated amendments for nongovernmental organizations go into force this Wednesday, do not expect foreign-funded NGOs to rush to re-register as “foreign agents” with the Justice Ministry.
Prominent rights activists have announced they would boycott the new law, which they have lambasted as imposing an insulting title that makes them look like traitors or spies, whereas supporters say it merely raises transparency by showing citizens the origin of funding.
While observers say that much depends on how the new law is implemented in practice, some fear that the noncompliance declarations mean that the situation is bound to escalate because they force authorities to retaliate in order to save face. |
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 MOSCOW — Head of state-controlled lender VTB, Andrei Kostin, was ranked the highest paid executive in the country, having earned about $30 million last year, according to a list published by Forbes magazine Monday. |
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MOSCOW — Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday discussed NATO plans to build an anti-missile shield in Europe, the Magnitsky list and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at their first meeting since U.S. President Barack Obama’s re-election on Nov. |
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MOSCOW — The government needs to do more to protect the rights of Russians abroad, including convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout, the head of the State Duma’s International Affairs Committee said Monday. |
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Employers in St. Petersburg are only raising employees’ salaries to match inflation, but almost half plan to take on new staff in the coming year.
Sixty-nine percent of Russian companies intended to increase salaries in the second half of 2012 and in 2013, according to analysts at the recruitment consulting company Case, who collected data from 80,000 employees from 618 companies, including 15,000 workers from 89 companies based in St. Petersburg. The average raise in St. Petersburg will be 8 percent in the second half of this year and 10 percent in 2013. On average, salaries in Russia will increase by 8 and 9 percent respectively in the same period. |
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 MOSCOW — The federal government is proposing to increase the minimum retail prices for hard alcohol, which may cause the price of vodka to skyrocket 36 percent starting Jan. |
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MOSCOW — A British executive was appointed to MegaFon’s board of directors Monday, in an apparent move to boost the cell phone operator’s corporate governance outlook on the eve of its London IPO, Itar-Tass reported.
“[Paul] Myners’s experience and previous work as top manager and member of the board of directors of public companies is very valuable to us,” said Ivan Tavrin, MegaFon’s director general. |
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MOSCOW — Russian companies appear eager to gain new ground in Africa and plan to build two pipelines on the continent.
These would be the longest pipelines ever built by a Russian company in Africa. |
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MOSCOW — Opposition and human rights groups on Monday urged Western consumer products giants to stop “financing politically motivated persecution” by advertising on a Kremlin-friendly TV network known for its biased coverage of government critics and demonstrations against President Vladimir Putin.
In the wake of unprecedented anti-Putin protests that followed last December’s rigged parliament vote and Putin’s return to the Kremlin in May, NTV has run dozens of news reports, talk shows and pseudo-documentaries accusing opposition leaders of plotting coups and terrorist attacks, of receiving money from Western governments, and of hiring migrant workers and neo-Nazis to participate in anti-Putin rallies. |
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16.jpg) Carmaker Ford Sollers suspended manufacturing at its Vsevolozhsk plant near St. Petersburg on Friday amid a strike by employees protesting decisions by the factory’s management. |
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 Many believe that the accusations against the Defense Ministry and former Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov indicate that President Vladimir Putin has launched an anti-corruption campaign. But this is far from the truth.
For starters, there are conflicting opinions as to whether Putin initiated the public corruption investigation of the Defense Ministry or simply allowed rival political clans to attack each other. |
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President Vladimir Putin chided German Chancellor Angela Merkel during a meeting last week for supporting Pussy Riot members, especially considering that “one of them had hanged a Jew in effigy and said Moscow should get rid of such people. |
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 A serial imposter — and a hugely successful one at that — is the central character of an extraordinary new British documentary that starts screening at Dom Kino on Nov. 22.
“The Imposter” is the story of a lie that became larger than life. Lies are what makes the main character tick. The story unfolds as we learn about the disappearance of Nicholas Barclay, a carefree 13-year-old boy with blue eyes and blond hair from San Antonio, Texas. The boy went missing in 1993, and the film shows us his sudden resurface three years later in Linares, Spain. Here is when the breathtaking con begins. The man who claimed to be Barclay was Frederic Bourdin, a 23-year-old French-Algerian man of frighteningly strong manipulative skills. With deep brown eyes and a hint of dark black stubble, a heavy accent and flawed English, and at seven years older than the lost boy, he effectively convinced the boy’s relatives as well as investigators — and later on, when he appeared on national TV channels, millions of ordinary Americans — that he was indeed Barclay. |
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V. AKHLOMOV / LUMIERE BROTHERS PHOTOGRAPHY CENTER
THIS IMAGE OF THE LATE AUTHOR
ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN,
CAPTURED IN 1998 AT THE FIRST
AWARDS CEREMONY OF A PRIZE
SET UP IN HIS NAME, IS PART OF
THE NEW ‘ICONS OF THE ’90S’
EXHIBIT AT LOFT PROJECT ETAGI. |
 A photo exhibit portraying the inscrutable and troubling world of autistic children opened last week in the city, under the title “Another Facet of Reality (Children’s Album).”
Held at the Rachmaninov Garden photo gallery, a venue better known for shows focusing on high culture and photography than socially relevant themes, the exhibit transports visitors emotively into an alternative reality through 25 black and white photographs of autistic children from around Russia, raising awareness about an issue that is largely marginalized and ignored by Russian authorities and society.
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 A photo of a sulky-looking pre-teen Ksenia Sobchak dressed in a party frock pictured with her father hangs a short distance from an image of Kino frontman Viktor Tsoi walking a dog in front of a backdrop of high-rise apartment buildings, while another snapshot captured in 1991 portrays a youthful Vladimir Putin. |
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From the people who brought the city the Unified Documents Center, that bureaucratic Mecca that aims to allow long-suffering Russians to resolve all their official document-related nightmares under one roof (for a price), now comes an unlikely follow up: Buddha-Bar. |
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Âîïðîñû è îòâåòû: questions and answers
Over 100 years ago, Mark Twain wrote a very funny piece called “English As She is Taught,” which chronicles American schoolchildren’s hilarious misapprehensions about the world, science and literature.
Some of them are clever in a wrong sort of way: Capillary is defined as “a little caterpillar” and mendacious is “what can be mended.” Some are very confused: “The two most famous volcanoes of Europe are Sodom and Gomorrah.” And one or two are so wrong they’re almost right: “The United States is quite a small country compared with some other countrys but is about as industrious.”
Since then, it seems like trumpeting American ignorance has become something of a national tradition, like the annual poll that shows about one-third of the population has no idea who the vice president is. |
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.jpg) Video art meets period costumes and psychological drama in the new production of “Don Carlos,” one of Giuseppe Verdi’s darkest operas, that premieres on Nov. |
 An exhibition of the 35 nominees for Russia’s most prestigious award for contemporary art, the Kandinsky Prize is now on at the former cinema Udarnik.
The prize, now in its fifth year, saw a record 385 submissions this year. One of the distinctive features of the prize is that artists are able to nominate themselves. |
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Trappist temple
As the old adage goes, ask someone to name five famous Belgians and inevitably they will struggle to formulate a list that doesn’t consist largely of long-dead Flemish painters and storybook characters such as Tintin and Poirot. |
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.jpg) Berlin, a city of immigrants from all over the world, where historical buildings sit side by side with squats and modern business centers, can be defined as a melting pot of cultures, nations and cuisines.
The initial surprise that first-time visitors to the German capital are likely to notice is the fact that it has no real city center — every district in Berlin has its own center and its own life and differs significantly from the rest of the city. |
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 VISAGINAS, Lithuania — The parking lot outside the atomic power plant is weedy and potholed. Bus stops that once teemed with hundreds of workers are eerily empty. |
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 JERUSALEM— Egypt’s president predicted Tuesday that Israel’s nearly weeklong offensive in the Gaza Strip would end within hours, and Israel’s prime minister said his country would be a “willing partner” to a cease-fire with Hamas aimed at ending relentless Israeli airstrikes and Palestinian rocket attacks. |
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PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — President Barack Obama’s attendance at an annual summit of Southeast Asian leaders Tuesday thrust him right into the eye of the region’s most stormy dispute: The long-raging rivalry between China and five neighbors for control of strategic and resource-rich waters in the South China Sea. |
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GOMA, Congo — A spokesman for a rebel group in Congo believed to be backed by neighboring Rwanda confirmed that his fighters have entered the border city of Goma and have taken the city’s international airport. The assault was punctuated by heavy gunfire. |
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HAVANA — Colombia’s main rebel group announced a unilateral ceasefire Monday as it began much-anticipated peace talks, but the Bogota government responded that it would continue military operations. |
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Issues Archive