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 While the run up to Sunday's vote for St. Petersburg's Legislative Assembly has turned out politically to be just as loud as previous elections, a number of politicians are expressing concern that the response of the electorate has been largely apathetic. |
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While stone-layers were still hurrying to complete the paving work, Sennaya Ploshchad was officially reopened on Wednesday after four months of renovation work. |
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Lawyers representing the families of more than 40 of the 118 sailors who died when the nuclear submarine Kursk sank on Aug. 12, 2000, say they are preparing a complaint for submission to the Russian Prosecutor General's office, protesting the decision to close the investigation into the tragedy. The complaint questions the official version of the events surrounding the submarine's sinking, particularly over questions of how long some crew members survived after the initial explosions on board and the training readiness of the ship when it left port, and argues that the criminal investigation into the catastrophe should not have been closed in July without charges being filed. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW - In a slap in the face of Russia's justice system, Denmark refused Tuesday to extradite Akhmed Zakayev, saying the evidence provided against him was insufficient, vague and gathered mostly after his arrest. Although Russia's foreign and justice ministers accused the Danish Justice Ministry of basing its decision on political factors, many politicians in Moscow focused their criticism on the Prosecutor General's Office for its handling of the case. |
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AKI-YURT, Ingushetia - Having engineered the closure of one camp for Chechen refugees in Ingushetia, authorities have turned their attention to another one in their determination to drive thousands of people back to Chechnya. |
 SARATOV, Volga Region - Writer Eduard Limonov has never been one to keep his thoughts to himself, especially when it comes to "the evil force called The System." Under Communism, Limonov's anti-Soviet views got him expelled from the country. When he returned to Russia in the mid-1990s after 20 years abroad, he headed up a fringe ultranationalist movement and railed against the new regime in the Kremlin, preaching extremism and social justice "by any means necessary. |
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 While the question of where all of the throngs of visitors who are expected to come to St. Petersburg next year remains on many minds, an injunction sought by one city resident has led the City Court last Tuesday to order a halt in the construction of a three-star hotel in the center of the city. |
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LUKoil has bowed out of the biggest privatization auction in Russian history, the Dec. 18 tender for 75 percent of Slavneft, Vagit Alekperov, the CEO of the nation's largest oil company, said Thursday. |
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MOSCOW - After 2 1/2 years, the government finally nailed the biggest Russian public-equity offering ever, raising $775 million for its 5.9 percent of LUKoil on the London Stock Exchange, the government said Wednesday. "This is a landmark deal that shows the ability of the government to make the most effective decisions," Interfax quoted Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref as saying. |
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Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov put further tax cuts back on top of the government's agenda Thursday during a cabinet discussion on amending the unified social tax and value-added tax. |
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$20Bln in Contraband MOSCOW (Prime-Tass) - Russia's contraband-trade turnover currently totals $20 billion, an official with the Interior Ministry told journalists Thursday. He said the ministry was worried about the high turnover in fake goods, especially counterfeit foodstuffs, which could cause serious mass food poisoning. |
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IN the continuum of history, Europe stands for modernization, and for the new Russia there are few alternatives to that. Territorially the largest country on earth, Russia must either modernize or face marginalization. Power in Russia is very firmly in the hands of a reformist president and a reformist-led government, but one consequence of the bloodless revolution in 1991 is that the mighty Soviet bureaucracy is still in place, underpaid, overstaffed and wallowing in corruption. |
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AFTER meeting with his "close friend" U.S. President George W. Bush in St. Petersburg, President Vladimir Putin embarked on a trip to China and India - Russia's major "strategic partners" in Asia. |
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 It may be a Moscow band, but Korabl is definitely linked to the spirit of St. Petersburg. The quintet is advertised as having the "early sound of Leningrad," and legend has it that Leningrad frontman Sergei Shnurov lifted part of a Korabl chorus for his band's hit, "Zvezda Rok-n-Rolla" ("Rock and Roll Star"). |
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A new album by Leningrad suddenly hit the stands this week - but no one seemed to expect it. Although the disc looks slightly like a pirate edition, it turns out that "Tochka" ("Period") is an official release from Gala Records, the Moscow-based label responsible for Leningrad's releases since its second album, 1999's "Mat Bez Elektrichestva. |
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"Do you expect me to talk?" "No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to dine!" If you're like me, the extensive James Bond coverage in this week's AAT has surely whetted your appetite for the latest hit in Ian Fleming's series. It has you caught in a state of panic, blurring your vision of what is real and what is fiction, in desperate anticipation of the Russian release of "Die Another Day" next Friday. It is that mental state, that transpersonalization of self and the hero we all see within ourselves, that led this secret agent (well, at any rate, anonymous to the establishment's unsuspecting henchmen) to the Tiki Bar on Nevsky, within a sniper's shot from the cupola of the Kazan cathedral. |
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 Communism fell, the Soviet Union collapsed, but some things in Moscow never change. At the State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Irina Antonova is still the director, as she has been for 41 years. |
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Herve Lewis has a lesson to teach. The French photographer, whose exhibition "Moments of Temptation" opened at the Gisich Art Gallery on Wednesday, is a professor of the delicacy of the female body. The 40-odd black-and-white photographs on display are stunningly elegant, immediate and erotic, capturing not just the delicacy of the body, but about the essential delicacy of anything seen with it - gossamer stockings, the filigree lace of a tattoo on the back, the refined slatted blind of the window on which it rests, or the drops of water in the shower cabin. Lewis has always been an artist. More precisely, he started out as a sculptor, shaping the finest examples of the female body - including stars such as Mylene Farmer, Isabelle Adjani and Emmanuelle Beart - while working as a personal trainer. |
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 HOLLYWOOD - Timely - and as demographically savvy as ever - James Bond enters his new adventure off the coast of North Korea with some fast and furious surfing designed to show the "XXX" generation that the 007 dude still has the stuff. |
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Over the past four decades, James Bond films have had a weird, almost surreal impact on the real spy world. During the opening weekend of one of the recent Bond films, the CIA set up a recruiting booth at theaters. "When the Army was putting together an urban assault vehicle called the SmarTruck, they sat down and watched Bond films," says John Cork, coauthor with Bruce Scivally of the new coffee-table book "James Bond: The Legacy. |
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Terpila: Police slang for the victim of a crime, from poterpevshy ("victim"). After my column on stealing, not two weeks went by before Menya ograbili (I was robbed). |
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JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has approved plans that would seal off northern Israel from the West Bank by extending a security fence to defend against Palestinian attacks, government officials said Thursday. Construction of the fence began in northern Israel earlier this year to try to prevent attacks by Palestinian militants spearheading an uprising for independence, and news that work is to press ahead is likely to further anger the Palestinians. |
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Dodgers Trade CHICAGO (Reuters) - The Los Angeles Dodgers traded first baseman Eric Karros and second baseman Mark Grudzielanek to the Chicago Cubs Wednesday for catcher Todd Hundley. |
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