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 Alexander Zakharov stopped wearing clothes with buttons to work years ago. There is an old Russian superstition that by tearing off a chimney sweep's button, you can ensure a lifetime of happiness. "After I lost about 10 buttons like that, I decided there should be some other way I could make people happy," Zak harov said with a smile. |
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President Vladimir Putin proposed on Wed nesday that all the leaders of the European Union be invited to St. Petersburg for a grand summit next year, when the city celebrates its 300th birthday. |
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Governor Vladimir Yakovlev has created a Regional Pardons Commission in accordance with a decree issued Dec. 28 by President Vladimir Putin that devolved responsibility for pardons from the central government to the regions. The commission, which will consider pardon applications from local prisoners only, held its first session last week. |
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If you'd like to install a fireplace in your apartment, you should know that the 2000 Russian Construction Norms and Rules (or SNIP) say that heating stoves and fireplaces are allowed only in buildings of two or fewer floors. |
All photos from issue.
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A daylong bloody rampage in central Russia by two runaway paratroopers who killed at least nine people, four of them civilians, ended early Tuesday after both deserters were shot dead during a gunfight with police, law enforcement officials said. Military prosecutors were investigating the conscripts' motives, with versions ranging from a drunken thirst for violence to a love affair gone sour. Almaz Shageyev and Mikhail Suk ho rukov, both 20, fled their elite unit north of the Volga River city of Ulya novsk early Monday armed with two Kalashnikov automatic rifles and 135 cartridges. The young men first killed the drivers of two Zhiguli sedans and drove the hijacked cars to neighboring Tatar stan, Yelena Kovtanyuk, a spokesperson for the republic's Interior Ministry, said by telephone from Kazan. |
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 Krasnoyarsk businessman Vilor Stru ga nov took the stand Tuesday at the trial of metals magnate Anatoly Bykov, who is accused of plotting his murder, and testified that a key witness was offered millions of dollars to change his testimony. |
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Embattled Legislative Assembly deputy Sergei Shevchenko, who was convicted of extortion last year, resigned his seat this week, saying that he was tired of "media speculation" surrounding his name. "[Local] political stability has begun collapsing because of me. |
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MOSCOW - Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Moscow's top arms negotiator on Wednesday applauded a U.S. pledge to sign a legally binding agreement on nuclear-arms cuts. |
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 MOSCOW - Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov led a trade delegation to New Delhi on Tuesday to talk economics and negotiate arms deals with senior officials of the Russian defense industry's second-biggest client. The four-day trade mission is being closely watched at home as tensions between India and Pakistan are running high over the disputed territory of Kashmir, spurring New Delhi to seek new weapons, which Russia is only too happy to supply. |
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MOSCOW - Russian air traffic soared last year despite a global slump, but airlines are facing a tough haul to match that growth in 2002 in the face of looming European restrictions and a shattered aviation manufacturing sector, aviation officials said Wednesday. |
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Cellular-phone users can now put their handsets to good use, making money receiving advertisements in the form of short-messaging services. North-West GSM began offering the service last week. After signing up, a subscriber receives three to 10 SMS advertisements a day - and North-West pays each subscriber 2.4 cents per advertisement. A subscriber could make a maximum of $7 per month - or enough to cover fully monthly subscriber fees for direct numbers, the company said. Clients using federal numbers can earn $2. If the telephone is off, outside the coverage area or the memory is full when the message is sent, the SMS will not be received and the subscriber will not get paid. |
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 MOSCOW - Vodka lovers could soon be seeing double - to the ire of the Soyuzplodimport alcohol company. In the latest battle in a war between Soyuzplodimport, or SPI, and the Agriculture Ministry for the rights to 43 vodka labels, including the world-famous Stolichnaya, a company registered by the ministry to manage its vodka interests unveiled its first batch of Stolichnaya at the Prodexpo foodstuffs exhibition in Moscow this week. |
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Alrosa's Best Friend ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Brillianty ALROSA, a subsidiary of the ALROSA holding, reported sales of $130.7 million in diamonds in 2001, Alexander Novosyolov, the general director of the company, announced Wednesday, according to Interfax. |
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Ducking Questions WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Lawmakers said Thursday a picture was emerging of falsified earnings and self-enrichment by company officers that preceded a Dec. |
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IN the wake of the horrors of Sept. 11, it is well to remind ourselves that people evolved, culturally and genetically, as small-group animals. For millions of years, human groups consisted of a few dozen individuals, mostly close relatives with the same skin color and other obvious physical characteristics. |
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SINCE the arbitration court delivered its final verdict on the liquidation of TV6, the behavior of the parties to the conflict (and the coverage of it) has seemed totally schizophrenic. |
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PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil - The World Social Forum in Porto Alegre was conceived as an alternative to the Davos World Economic Forum. While Davos has become a symbol of the globalization of markets, Porto Alegre was intended as a symbol both of resistance to this and of progressive social reform. |
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WE have won the war in Afghanistan, but President George W. Bush refuses to declare victory. Why he won't is not a mystery. Congress has not authorized a global war against all rogue states, and once the president recognizes that the Afghan war is over, his larger ambitions lack adequate legal foundation. |
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 Last Friday's concert at the Shostakovich Hall of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic will certainly go down as this year's "event of the season." And not just because American Murray Periah - one of the most outstanding contemporary pianists - was playing, but also because the program was constructed with what was, for the Philharmonic, a rare sense of integrity, even though the pieces were stylistically diverse. |
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 LONDON - What tireless troupers the dancers of the St. Petersburg Ballet Theater are! Returning to the United Kingdom for the fourth straight year, this company - founded in 1994 by the young 34-year-old impresario Konstantin Tachkin - is now in the final month of its 16-week tour covering 18 cities in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. |
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Marc Almond - who last month made another of his sporadic visits to the city to add vocal tracks to what will be his "Russian" album - has posted photos taken during his stay in Moscow and St. Petersburg to his official site: Theater of Marc Almond. |
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For months last fall, I watched in eager anticipation as Magrib came into being in a prime location on Nevsky Prospect right between the Corinthia Nevskij Palace and the Radisson hotels. |
 Russian literature boasts an impressive list of great writers from Pushkin to Pasternak, but does Russia have an equivalent for "Bridget Jones' Diary"? This question will be just below the surface as two of Britain's hottest young authors come to St. Petersburg between Feb. 8 and Feb. 14 for the Contemporary British Fiction Festival, a joint project of the British Council and the local publishing house Red Fish. |
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Fergie Blames the Wife LONDON (Reuters) - Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson says his change of heart about retiring at the end of the season was a consequence of discussions with his family over Christmas. "It was really [wife] Cathy's idea," Ferguson told The Scotsman newspaper. "If she hadn't come up with it and the boys [their three sons] hadn't given full support, I would not have considered a change of mind. |
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