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The full-scale road-construction season kicked off this month, with the major share of efforts concentrated on the city center ahead of next year's 300th-anniversary celebrations, the City Hall Maintenance Committee said on Thursday. "This year, more of the activity has been transferred to the center so that the city will be prepared [for the celebration]," Vladimir Kuznetsov, the Maintenance Committee spokesperson said in a telephone interview on Thursday. |
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The leaders of organizations representing over 20,000 Dagestanis living in St. Petersburg spoke out on Wednesday in support of a call by the republic's government for harsh measures to deal with terrorists there, and asking for the lifting of Russia's ban on capital punishment. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW - The State Duma approved in first reading Thursday a government-backed bill allowing the sale of farmland. The vote marks one of Russia's most radical steps to liberalize the economy since the collapse of the Soviet Union. If adopted into law, Russia's farmland will become a commodity for the first time since the October 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. |
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MOSCOW - Using language that President Vladimir Putin is sure to understand, the World Bank warned on Wednesday that AIDS is threatening not only the health of Russians but the health of the whole economy. |
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Myanmar Reactor MOSCOW (AP) - Russia has agreed to help Myanmar's military regime construct a center for nuclear studies and a research nuclear reactor, the Russian government said Wednesday. Under the agreement, the two countries will cooperate in designing and building a nuclear-studies center that will include a research nuclear reactor with a thermal capacity of 10 megawatts and two laboratories, Russian authorities said in a statement. |
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 Two can-producing companies, the Polish-based Can-Pack Group and Russian ROSTAR, are both planning to build aluminum-can-producing facilities in the region, and they have both applied to the Leningrad Oblast Administration for the same construction site near Vsevolozhsk. |
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MOSCOW - The government intends to broaden its definition of "small business" giving more enterprises a lighter tax burden. Finance Minster Alexei Kudrin said this week that the Cabinet is preparing amendments to the Tax Code that would benefit all companies with yearly revenues of less than 30 million rubles, a figure three times higher than the government's original proposal by the government. |
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MOSCOW - Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov said Wednesday that his Cabinet might decide to push for the higher economic-growth rates sought by President Vladimir Putin, but cautioned that there are no quick fixes. Speaking to State Duma deputies, Kasyanov also said the faster growth demanded by Putin could be achieved only after structural reform and he warned against any artificial efforts to speed up expansion. |
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MOSCOW - Among the world's 21 leading exporting nations, Russian companies are the most likely to pay bribes to win or retain business in emerging-market countries, a Berlin-based watchdog group said Tuesday. |
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IN his annual address to parliament last month, halfway through what is still widely expected to be only his first term as president, Vladimir Putin announced a major reform of the government administrative machine and of the country's civil-service system. |
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U.S. PRESIDENT George W. Bush and President Vladimir Putin have agreed to sign next week in Moscow a treaty to cut strategic nuclear weapons over a period of 10 years from their present level of 5,000 to 6,000 warheads each to 2,200 to 1,700. |
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 Modest Mussorgsky's opera "Boris Godunov" has a tortuous history. The composer wrote his own libretto, based on Alexander Pushkin's tragic drama in verse of the same name and on Nikolai Karamzin's monumental history of Russia, and began work on the score in 1868. In 1869, he completed it and submitting it to a committee of his fellow composers for scrutiny. They took two years to return the manuscript and were not impressed. |
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 Anyone who has lived through one of St. Petersburg's winters will tell horror stories about its blizzards, black ice and biting winds. It sometimes seems that nowhere on earth has a crueller climate than the "Venice of the North. |
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The usual round of big-name spring and summer concerts starts this week, with Manu Chao playing at the Yubileiny Sports Palace on Sunday. The provocative, ethno-punk bard will be backed by his band, the Manu Chao Radio Bemba Sound System. |
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Ever go out to lunch and get back to work the next morning? Get your dessert first and entree last? Find out a new president got elected? The best way to avoid inconsistent Russian food service is to avoid it entirely, and the buffet at BBQ Bistro fits the bill nicely. |
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On Easter Sunday, a concert took place for the cream of society in the hall of the Menshikov Palace. For this special project organized by the Pro Arte institute, seven composers from St. Petersburg, Moscow and other countries wrote music, which was united and inspired by Haydn, whose "Seven Last Words of Christ From the Cross" - one of the most famous Easter-themed pieces of music ever written - became the basis for a multi-section, multi-authored, 90-minute composition. |
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The 38th running of the annual "St. Petersburg Musical Spring" festival, which opened on May 12, this year comprises 18 concerts at a number of venues around town - including the Capella, the Sheremetyev Palace and the Beloselky-Belozersky Palace, as well as the more predictable Shostakovich and Glinka Philharmonic halls. |
 The cellist, conductor and pianist Mstislav Rostropovich is a wondrous teller of anecdotes. Many of them concern his late friend, the composer Dmitri Shos ta ko vich. Despite his air of uproarious amiability, Rostropovich clings to certain formalities. So Shostakovich figures respectfully in these stories as Dmitri Dmitriyevich, or, in Rostropovich's distinctive pronunciation, "Meet Meech," with a sharp staccato attack on each syllable. |
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ETA Attack Foiled MADRID (Reuters) - Spanish authorities said on Wednesday that they had foiled a plan by armed Basque separatist group ETA to attack a summit of Latin American and European leaders in Madrid this week. Francisco Javier Ansuategui, delegate for Madrid for Spain's ruling Popular Party, said two suspected ETA members detained Tuesday had stockpiled 200 kilograms of explosives, a limpet mine, automatic weapons and forged documents in an apartment in Madrid. |
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Hingis Hanging Up? ZURICH (Reuters) - Former world No. 1 Martina Hingis may be forced to quit tennis due to a serious foot injury, the doctor treating her indicated on Wednesday. |
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Issues Archive