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MOSCOW – Enterprising businessmen in the Urals city of Chelyabinsk lost no time in finding a way to capitalize on the meteor strike that shook the city Friday morning.
By early afternoon, several websites were already selling "fragments of meteorite."
Two-centimeter fragments of the celestial body that hospitalized dozens and injured hundreds more in the Urals early on Friday were being offered for 500 rubles a piece by 2 p.m. Moscow time.
"I'm selling it because it's useless to me. There are several scratch marks, but in general it's in excellent condition," wrote one Internet user calling himself Alexei and claiming to be from Magnitogorsk in the Chelyabinsk region. |
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 MOSCOW – A meteor shower in the Urals Federal District in central Russia shattered residents' windows, shook the ground and caused several injuries Friday morning, the Emergency Situations Ministry reported. |
 MOSCOW – President Barack Obama's pledge to pursue new cuts to the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals appeared to be under way Wednesday, with the State Department's arms control chief in Moscow amid talk of a visit later this month by another high-level official. |
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MOSCOW – The Constitutional Court on Thursday ordered lawmakers to rework parts of a law toughening protest rules that was passed last year in response to a wave of anti-Kremlin demonstrations. |
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MOSCOW – Deputy Vladimir Pekhtin has asked to temporarily be relieved of his duties as chairman of the State Duma's Ethics Committee pending an investigation into allegations that he failed to declare more than $2 million in real estate holdings in the U. |
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YORBA LINDA, California — Richard Nixon, in the final months of his life, quietly advised President Bill Clinton on navigating the post-Cold War world, even offering to serve as a conduit for messages to Russian President Boris Yeltsin and other government officials, newly declassified documents show. |
All photos from issue.
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 Human rights organizations in Russia, Tajikistan and Georgia on Tuesday protested mass arrests and reported harassment and beatings of mostly Central Asian and North Caucasus migrant workers during Friday’s raid on a marketplace in central St. Petersburg.
They are demanding a thorough investigation by Russian and Tajik authorities into the actions of law-enforcement officers who raided Apraksin Dvor, the marketplace in downtown St. Petersburg, during a service at a mosque on the market’s territory.
The Investigative Committee put the number of those detained at 271, but Fontanka.ru reported that “no less than 700” had been arrested, while human rights activists say that the number of arrests could be as high as 1,000.
Officially, the raid was part of a criminal investigation into “public incitement to terrorist activities or public justification of terrorism” and “inciting hatred or hostility as well as humiliation of human dignity” and was conducted jointly by several law enforcement agencies, including the Federal Security Service (FSB) and counter-extremism Center E. |
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TWO LITTLE BOYS
ALEXANDER BELENKY / SPT
Young visitors to the Ice Sculpture exhibition at the Peter and Paul Fortress examine an illuminated figure of Russian fairytale witch Baba Yaga on Tuesday. This year’s
show, titled ‘Winter Water Fantasy,’ also includes the word ‘water’ written in 15 different languages. The exhibition will remain open for two weeks, weather permitting. |
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A man has been charged by the police and put in pre-trial custody as the result of last week’s police raid on an occupied warehouse at the now-defunct Warsaw Railroad Station. The group of anarchists and preservationists who were squatting in the historic building in an attempt to save it from impending demolition have expressed concern that more arrests and charges could follow.
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After a lengthy two-month winter break, local soccer team FC Zenit will be back on the field Thursday in a European fixture at the Petrovsky stadium against the legendary English soccer team Liverpool FC.
The game will see Zenit continue its European campaign in the UEFA Europa League round of 32, after a premature third-place exit from the first-tier competition, the UEFA Champions League, last winter. |
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Cheaper Roaming
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The Ministry of Mass Communications hopes that legislative amendments that would end roaming charges inside Russia for callers on the same cell network will be passed in 2013, the ministry’s head Nikolai Nikiforov told Interfax on Monday. |
 The long-awaited second stage for the city’s world-renowned Mariinsky Theater is currently going through acoustic tests amid waves of public criticism of its exterior appearance.
While the company is enthusiastically planning new titles for its repertoire made possible by the new state-of-the-art stage, local preservationists lament that the new venue designed by the Canadian company Diamond & Schmitt architects has failed to make a harmonious pairing to the historical venue with which it is connected by a bridge over the Kryukov Canal. |
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The international fashion film festival A Shaded View on Fashion Film (ASVOFF) will take place in St. Petersburg for the first time this year. Attending the festival of short, fashion-themed films will be the festival’s founder herself, the fashion blogger and critic Diane Pernet. |
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Architectural excavation work on Sennaya Ploshchad aimed at the possible rebuilding of the Church of the Assumption (also known as the Savior on Sennaya), which was located on the square until it was demolished in the 1960s, will begin next month, Interfax reported. |
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Pharmaceutical companies Gerofarm, Neon and Samson-Med are all planning to begin construction of pharmaceutical production facilities in the city’s Pushkinskaya industrial zone at the end of spring or the beginning of summer, Interfax reported. |
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 MOSCOW — Nashi, the controversial pro-Kremlin youth group known for fierce campaigns against government critics at home and abroad, will be split into several projects under a new name, the All-Russian Youth Society, the Izvestia daily newspaper reported on Feb. |
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Moscow — The Investigative Committee opened a probe against Novaya Gazeta reporter Irek Murtazin, claiming that he might have revealed secret details of the investigation against opposition leader Alexei Navalny and his brother Oleg, the committee’s spokesman, Vladimir Markin, said Monday. |
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MOSCOW — A pocket of methane gas exploded in a coal mine in the far northern Komi republic on Monday morning, killing at least 17 miners.
The blast at the Vorkutinskaya mine, owned by steel giant Severstal, occurred at 10:28 a.m. at a depth of about 800 meters, the Emergency Situations Ministry said.
Authorities cited differing numbers of fatalities from the explosion. Emergency officials said that 23 miners were in the area of the explosion and that 17 died and one was missing. Federal investigators said that in addition to the fatalities, two miners were injured in the blast.
A total of about 250 workers were in other areas of the mine at the time of the explosion and were evacuated, local prosecutors said. |
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 MOSCOW — After weeks of anxiety plodding through the opaque Russian legal system, two U.S. women have custody of their adopted Russian children and are preparing to take them home to start a new life together. |
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MOSCOW — The U.S. needs to conduct its affairs based on “mutual respect,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Feb. 7.
“The U.S. will not change overnight. They must get used to the fact that affairs can only be conducted on the basis of equality, a balance of interests and mutual respect,” Lavrov said during an interview set to air the next day on Rossia-2 television. |
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MOSCOW — Russia’s premier technology hub became the site of the nation’s latest high-level corruption scandal on Tuesday after investigators accused two officials of using a fraudulent tender to make off with 23. |
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 On Jan. 25, the State Duma passed a bill on the first reading that prohibits homosexual propaganda aimed at children. This obscurantist legislation is part of a broader attack that Russia’s political and ideological reactionary forces have waged against dissenters since President Vladimir Putin returned to the Kremlin last May. |
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The plans to make the Moscow stock market into a major international exchange and Moscow into a major international financial center are, unfortunately, one big pipe dream as long as the regime of President Vladimir Putin continues to trample over private property rights. |
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 In the pantheon of intellectual power couples, world cinema has yet to come up with a better match than filmmakers Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullmann. And just in time for Valentine’s Day, a new exhibition celebrating their love opens Thursday at Rosphoto.
“Liv Ullmann and Ingmar Bergman. Photographs” brings together images of the couple from the mid-1960s onwards, many of which have never been displayed to the public before. |
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 “I can’t understand why people are frightened by new ideas. I’m frightened by the old ones.”
This famous quote by the U.S. composer John Cage, renowned for his unorthodox use of musical instruments in search of a new sound, is the motto of a bold new exhibition that has opened at the Engineer’s House of the Peter and Paul Fortress. |
.jpg) Twenty years after Spitfire formed, the St. Petersburg band that became a major underground success as Russia’s leading ska-punk band singing in English has stepped aside from the ska-punk idiom and now writes songs in Russian.
The anniversary concerts are set to be held at Dusche club — co-owned by Spitfire members and Leningrad frontman Sergei Shnurov — on Friday, and at the Moscow club Gogol the following night. |
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 In a city renowned for its countless grandiose, record-breaking sights and museums, the Cat Republic is not listed in Top 10 guidebook recommendations. |
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Micro dining
The latest gem on the city’s Pan-Asian dining scene is the tiny UMAO, hidden away on Konnogvardeisky Boulevard behind the Manezh Central Exhibition Hall, and opposite the row of expensive eateries such as Stroganoff Steak House that lines the other side of the boulevard.
UMAO is a model of simplicity — think plain cream-colored walls and wooden tables — and contemporary Asian chic, with its brown paper placemats, transparent plastic chairs, glass lampshades, and branches and fairy lights adorning the capacious windowsills. |
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 Russian men are among those eagerly making use of the services of a French entrepreneur offering a helping hand in making unforgettable romantic gestures.
Proposing marriage from outer space or declaring your love with a shower of 1,000 red roses falling onto the deck of a yacht during a romantic cruise in Paris are just a couple of the ways that French company ApateoSurprise can help men to surprise their sweethearts on Valentine’s Day, and Russians are among the most active users of these services. |
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 A new Erotic Museum is opening in St. Petersburg just in time for Valentine’s Day.
The Museros museum of erotic art will open its doors on Feb. 14, making it the city’s first museum entirely dedicated to the history, art and aesthetics of sex. |
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“Blood for Love” is the name of a charitable event with a romantic twist with which volunteers from the local branch of the Red Cross, the members of Club 25 — a local association of young blood donors — and like-minded locals will mark St. Valentine’s Day in St. Petersburg.
The local branch of the Red Cross has made a tradition out of its blood donation initiative on Valentine’s Day as part of a campaign to encourage blood donation among younger people. |
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