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The relatively calm and productive atmosphere that characterized most of the first month of the new four-year term in the Legislative Assembly came to an end on Wednesday, when all 17 members of the newly formed United City bloc failed to show up for the chamber's scheduled weekly session. |
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MOSCOW - Lord Frank Judd, a European human-rights official who has spent three years monitoring the military campaign in Chechnya and has been one of its staunchest critics, announced Thursday that he would resign to protest Moscow's refusal to postpone a referendum in the war-shattered republic. |
All photos from issue.
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Citing other commitments as the rector of the St. Petersburg Humanitarian University of Trade Unions, Alexander Zapesotsky stepped down from his post as general director of the St. Petersburg 300th Anniversary Assistance Fund on Wednesday. The board of trustees for the fund, which was created by Governor Vladimir Yakovlev to raise money for projects associated with the city's 300th anniversary, which falls on May 27, announced that Zapesotsky's post would be split into two separate jobs. |
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MOSCOW - The Interior Ministry said it has broken up a racket in which hundreds of passports were sold to non-Russians in the Samara region. Sergei Sarzhan, former head of the passport office in the village of Bezenchuk, is suspected of selling 409 passports to citizens of Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia and Central Asian countries last year for $1,200 each, the ministry said. |
 MAGADAN, Far East - Inside the sumptuous offices of former Magadan Governor Valentin Tsvetkov, who was brazenly gunned down by unknown hitmen on Moscow's Novy Arbat last fall, hangs a print of a Cold War-era poster showing a Soviet peasant woman, finger to lips, whispering the warning "Ne Boltai" - the Russian equivalent of the English saying "Loose Lips Sink Ships. |
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Theater Suit Grows MOSCOW (AP) - Twenty more victims of last October's theater siege plan to join a lawsuit seeking compensation from the Moscow city government, bringing the total number of plaintiffs to 81, their lawyer said Thursday. |
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 MOSCOW - Amid fears that coming elections may stall much needed reforms, President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday told the Duma to make power-industry and housing-sector restructuring a priority this spring. "The housing and communal services sector is in ruins," Putin was quoted by RIA Novosti as saying at a meeting with Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznyov. "This should galvanize local and regional authorities and the government to change things. |
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 MOSCOW - Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said Wednesday that the government wants to get rid of the sales tax next year and later slash VAT and social taxes in an ongoing reform drive to provide much-needed tax relief to consumers and businesses. |
 MOSCOW - Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov on Tuesday plucked control of the country's 66 state-owned firms from the Property Ministry in a move intended to combat corruption in the bureaucracy. Previously, the State Property Ministry issued representatives with directives on how to vote at shareholder and board meetings. Now, under Resolution 91-r, such orders will come from Kasyanov himself or deputies acting on his behalf. |
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 MOSCOW - Aeroflot's decision to give Airbus the lion's share of its new orders, along with a global slump in aircraft demand, has not dampened Boeing's spirits. |
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MOSCOW - The government expects economic growth to hover around last year's 4.1-percent expansion or even decline. But the world's largest bank is more optimistic. In its annual market report released this week, Schroder Salomon Smith Barney, Citigroup's European investment arm, said that Russia will outperform even the world economy in coming years. |
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MOSCOW - In what could prove to be a ground-breaking step toward rooting out corruption, the Economic Development and Trade Ministry is proposing that government agencies be forced to post all internal information short of state secrets on the Internet. |
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Golden Telecom has merged two affiliated companies, Sovintel and TeleRoss, into its own structure, Stan Abbeloos, Golden Telecom Chief Operating Officer said at a press conference on Wednesday. Following the merger, Golden Telecom will provide hard-line services and Internet connections to corporate customers, while its Russia-On-Line brand will continue to provide Internet services to private customers. |
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IRAQ appears to be on a collision course with the United States. The response to this week's report from chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix will indicate just how imminent this collision is but ,in any case, the interests, real or perceived, of the United States - regime change, weapons of mass destruction, oil - have received considerable publicity in recent weeks. |
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I'M not a fan of Vladimir Putin at all. Fortunately, for private citizens and, most of the time, journalists, the days when we were only able to make comments like this without the fear of negative consequences around a kitchen table, complete with a bottle of vodka and an ashtray full of smoldering Belomorkanal cigarette butts, are gone. |
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 Fresh from a European tour including gigs in Austria, Poland and Slovenia, local band NOM brings its mix of rock music and circus-style theatrics back to St. Petersburg with a show at Faculty on Friday. Like the tour, the concert will be based on NOM's eighth, and most recent, album, "8 u.e.," which was released in late December and showcased at Red Club on Jan. 2. Released by indie Moscow label SoLyd Records, which has put out all NOM's albums since 1998, the 12-track "8 u. |
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 Armed with chainsaws, hammers, chisels, drills and bottles of hot water, 10 teams from around Europe started work Wednesday on their creations for the ice-sculpture competition on the frozen beach of the Peter and Paul Fortress. |
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Reports circulating this week suggest that Moloko, arguably the city's finest underground rock club, will be shut down before long. According to Moloko's Yury Ugryumov, the district department of the City Property Committee, which owns the building, refuses to renew its rental agreement with the club, meaning that the club will have to leave its premises. |
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There are a number special, tender - for some people, even "holy" - days that cry out for a specific character in the restaurant chosen for their observance. |
 While no successful musical career can be said to be preordained, it is fair to say that Mariss Jansons was almost born with a conductor's baton in his hands. The son of renowned conductor Arvid Jansons, Mariss, a Russian citizen of Latvian origin, was born in Riga in 1943. He says that, as soon as he could walk, his choice of toys was a hint of what would come. "Even as a toddler, I fantasized about conducting an orchestra and, in fact, the baton, rather than toy soldiers, automobiles, or a ball, was one of my favourite toys," Jansons says. |
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 Natalya Dudinskaya, one of the last surviving legends of Soviet ballet, died aged 90 on Wednesday Both on stage and in life, Dudinskaya was the personification of joie de vivre. |
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St. Petersburg's nonconformist artists have long been proud of the city's tradition of dissident, alternative art. However, "Colors and Words," an exhibition in memory of Joseph Brodsky that opened Tuesday at the Alexander Blok Apartment Museum, produces more of an impression that the contemporary "left" scene is searching for a non-existent connection to - and reflected glory from - a bygone age. |
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S pribambasom: said of someone who is slightly mad, loony, flakey, nutty or has a screw loose. There's nuts, and then there's nuts. That is, someone can be a bit eccentric, outright strange or stark raving mad. |
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Barca Rebound LISBON, Portugal (Reuters) - Barcelona notched a 1-0 friendly win over Benfica late on Wednesday, a day after the departure of the Spanish club's coach Louis van Gaal. Barcelona midfielder Gaizka Mendieta settled the victory with a 25-meter free kick in the seventh minute. The Portuguese side pushed hard to equalize in the second half, but Barcelona held on. |
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