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MOSCOW – Russia's small Catholic community greeted the election of Pope Francis with elation and hopes that the new pontiff will continue to improve ties with the country's Russian Orthodox majority despite a rocky history and lingering disagreements.
Congratulations to the new pope, formerly the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, 76-year-old Jorge Mario Bergoglio, poured in from ordinary Catholics as well as senior political and religious leaders in Russia, which has an estimated 700,000 Catholics, or about 0.5 percent of the population.
President Vladimir Putinsaid he hopes ties between the Vatican and Russia will continue to develop "on the basis of the Christian values that unite us," according to a statement posted on the Kremlin's website. |
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 British actor and celebrity Stephen Fry sat down on Thursday for an interview with Vitaly Milonov, the author of St. Petersburg's controversial gay propaganda law. |
All photos from issue.
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 On March 7, local officials shuttered new arts and performance venue Morye (Sea) on its opening day, citing a review of management procedures.
In a report by local website The Village, the founders of the venue claim that inspectors let slip that the real reason for the closure was a planned exhibition by Andrei Kezzin titled “Leningrad 2012. |
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Last weekend St. Petersburg hosted a group of 37 business students and alumni from McGill University, Montreal, Canada, as part of the institution’s “Hot Cities” initiative. |
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Baby on Board
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A woman gave birth at a traffic police checkpoint on Tallinnskoye Shosse on Monday, news website Fontanka.ru reported.
The woman’s husband was driving his wife to a maternity clinic, but she began to give birth while they were en route. With few options available, the man decided to stop at a traffic police checkpoint, where the policemen on duty assisted in delivering the baby. Paramedics were called to the scene and were reported to have arrived promptly.
The woman gave birth to a boy.
G20 Access
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — St. Petersburg plans to build a separate access road for government corteges from the city’s Pulkovo airport for this year’s G20 summit, to be held in St. |
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 With 15 percent of Russian couples experiencing problems of infertility, and in face of the country’s looming demographic crisis, healthcare providers are seeking opportunities to offer wider access to in vitro fertilization programs, or IVF therapy. |
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An investigation against anti-Kremlin demonstrators in Moscow spread to St. Petersburg after three local activists had their homes raided and were then interrogated at the local Center for the Prevention of Extremism (Center E) last week.
Three investigative units entered the apartments of the three activists simultaneously at around 6:40 a. |
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ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Russian scientists based at Antarctica’s subglacial Lake Vostok, claimed to have found an unknown group of bacteria in samples of ice taken from the lake last week. |
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 MOSCOW — With less than a year to go before the Sochi Winter Paralympics, government officials are talking up the games as a celebration of disabled athletes’ dedication and sporting prowess.
But the Sochi games are also likely to draw global attention to Russia’s treatment of its roughly 13 million disabled citizens, who have long struggled for access to essential public services and employment opportunities. |
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MOSCOW — The Bolshoi Theater’s general director has said he believes that dancer Pavel Dmitrichenko, who last week confessed to ordering an attack on the theater’s ballet director, Sergei Filin, was only an “executor and a pawn in someone else’s hands. |
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MOSCOW — Head of the Liberal Democratic Party Vladimir Zhirinovsky has demanded that Just Russia deputy Dmitry Gudkov be arrested for traveling to the U.S. to speak at a Freedom House forum, a news report said Tuesday.
The forum, titled “New Approach or Business as Usual? US-EU-Russia Relations After Putin’s Crackdown,” was held in Washington D.C. on March 4.
Human rights activist Lyudmila Alexeyeva and Mikhail Kasyanov, co-chairman of the Republican Party of Russia-People’s Freedom Party, also spoke at the event, where the main topic of discussion was how to stop corruption in the Russian government.
In comments to RIA-Novosti, however, Zhirinovsky said that Gudkov, as a representative of the Russian government, cannot travel to other countries and conduct negotiations, and should be deprived of his mandate for betraying his country. |
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 MOSCOW — Irina Yarovaya, head of the State Duma’s powerful Anti-Corruption and Security Committee, on Monday became the latest United Russia deputy to face embarrassing allegations of ethics violations with the publication of a report accusing her of de facto owning a multimillion-dollar apartment. |
 MOSCOW — A Moscow court on Monday postponed the trial of dead lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who accused law enforcement authorities of massive corruption and whose case sparked a dispute between Washington and Moscow.
Magnitsky was jailed in 2008 on charges of tax evasion. |
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MOSCOW — Russia has topped Europe in terms of teenage suicides, the Federal Consumer Protection Service said Monday.
“In recent years, the number of suicides and attempted suicides among children has climbed 35-37 percent. |
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MOSCOW — Homophobic attitudes are widespread in Russia and fewer people appear tolerant of homosexuality than eight years ago, a survey released Tuesday said.
Eighty-five percent of respondents surveyed by the Levada Center said they opposed same-sex marriages in Russia and 87 percent said they did not want gay parades to take place in Russian cities, Interfax reported. |
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 The death of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has forced Russian leaders to worry about the fate of billions of dollars in contracts it holds there, primarily in the oil and weapons sectors.
Moscow’s trade and economic relations with Caracas were typical of those it has established with similar, autocratic regimes elsewhere; that is, they hinged almost completely on relations with one person at the top. |
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One of the organizers of last Saturday’s rally against the adoption of Russian children by U.S. citizens was Irina Bergseth, head of the Russian Mothers movement. |
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 Riding on the success of last year’s sell-out event, the second annual Festival of Traditional American Music is back to wow audiences starting March 14 at the St. Petersburg Jazz Philharmonic Hall. Appearing in nine different cities over a two-month period, the festival, which has been curated by the American Folklore Center at the Library of Congress, aims to introduce Russian audiences to idiomatic American music that highlights different aspects of the American experience. |
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 Forty-nine years to the day after the trial of Soviet-era poet and writer Joseph Brodsky on charges of “parasitism” took place in Leningrad, the governor of the Arkhangelsk Oblast, Igor Orlov, is today due to make public the government’s plans for an educational and cultural tourism project dedicated to the poet’s exile in the region. |
 GusGus, an internationally recognized top-selling act noted for its passionate, high-energy shows, and one of Iceland’s best-known bands, launches its six-date Russian tour this week.
Formed in 1995 in Reykjavik, Iceland, the electronic soul band, which balances its concerns between commercial pop and underground dance music, reemerged in 2011 with its seventh full-length studio album, “Arabian Horse,” which has been described by their current German label, Kompakt, as “Icelandic Hi-Tech Soul. |
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Unloveable and Unloved
If further evidence were needed that quantity rarely equals quality, Ulitsa Rubinshteina — which has become the city’s de facto restaurant row — would be proof positive. |
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 The creative connections between Russia and fashion brand Chanel are diverse and multivalent. The meeting between Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel and Prince Dmitry Romanov in Biarritz in 1920 sparked the designer’s genuine interest in Russian culture, art, history and costume, resulting in the creation of her famous “Russian collection” and the iconic Cuir de Russie perfume, as well as her contribution to Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes. |
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Issues Archive