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 The St. Petersburg Pardons Commission finally produced its first successful result this month - almost exactly a year after it was set up. Earlier this month, 30-year-old Alexander Nosakov, jailed in 2000 for alcohol-induced violent crime, was officially pardoned by President Vladimir Putin, who reduced Nosakov's six-year term to four years. |
All photos from issue.
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The corridors of the Mariinsky Palace were empty once again this week, as Wednesday's session of the Legislative Assembly was stymied for the second week running by the non-appearance of the 17 lawmakers of the pro-governor United City faction. The United City no show meant that the number of lawmakers present was 31, one short of the number needed to form a quorum to legitimize any votes taken. |
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MOSCOW - Russians may still smoke more than all other Europeans except Albanians, but a new poll shows that a growing number disapprove of the unhealthy habit, and there are signs that smoking is going out of style. |
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MOSCOW - The conflict surrounding the appointment of new management at NTV television brought its first major loss for viewers Thursday evening, when one of the country's most celebrated journalists and the face of NTV, Leonid Parfyonov, closed his top-rated "Namedni" weekly analytical show for at least three months. |
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MOSCOW - Last fall's siege of a Moscow theater by armed Chechens sparked debate on how the attack could have been prevented. A new organization believes it has the answer: Let the population arm itself. |
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Samsung Sponsorship ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - South Korean giant Samsung Electronics has pledged $1 million toward St. Petersburg's 300th-anniversary preparations Samsung representatives signed an agreement with the St. Petersburg 300th-Anniversary Fund on Wednesday, Interfax reported. Yury Skvortsov, the head of the fund's press service, said that Samsung intends to direct $400,000 to the opening ceremony of a water celebration on the Neva River, with the rest of the money going to other events of the Korean firm's choice. The fund has so far raised $12 million for the anniversary, Interfax reported. Flu Epidemic ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The flu epidemic currently spreading through Russia has already reached Astrakhan, Barnaul, Kazan, Kirov, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Roston-na-Donu, Chelyabinsk, Chita and Pskov, the State Epidemic Service reported Thursday. |
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 MOSCOW - Mikhail Gorbachev will team up with Bill Clinton and Sophia Loren for his English-language recording debut in a new narration of Sergei Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf. |
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MOSCOW - A heated debate over Russia's first tsar, Ivan the Terrible, and the mystical healer Grigory Rasputin, who scandalized the monarchy in its waning years, is threatening to create a split in the Russian Orthodox Church. At issue is a campaign to canonize the two men that is rooted in a widely embraced belief that the monarchy fell victim to a plot masterminded by Jews and Freemasons. |
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MOSCOW - The two most famous Russian teenagers in the world - the pseudo-lesbian duo in the pop group Tatu - came out Thursday ... as completely unfazed about calls to ban them from British stage, radio and television. |
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 Oleg Kuvayev, creator of the cartoon "Masyanya," which has made its way from humble beginnings on the Internet to a primetime spot on national television on NTV, has announced that he will no longer be working for the St. Petersburg Web site where the cartoon first appeared. |
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MOSCOW - MDM Group confirmed analysts' suspicions that it was the "mystery buyer" snapping up shares in Unified Energy Systems by going public with its bid for seats on the UES board. |
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MOSCOW - The management of metals giant Norilsk Nickel said Wednesday that it would appeal to employees to go on working after pay talks with trade unions collapsed. After a conciliation committee failed to find a common solution, the management of Norilsk's key Arctic division decided to call an employee conference, the company said in a statement. |
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MOSCOW - The cabinet on Thursday ordered all government agencies to publish information not regarded as a state secret - including financial data - on their Web sites in an effort to curb corruption. |
 MOSCOW - The Agriculture Ministry, which hopes its new quotas on imported meat will give Russian producers some breathing room, said Wednesday that it is turning to French cows to revive the domestic beef industry. Agriculture Minister Alexei Gordeyev presented to reporters a model ranch with French cattle in the Tyumen region that is to be replicated throughout the country over the next few years. |
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MOSCOW - A dairy crisis is looming in the next 18 months as subsidized imports squeeze domestic manufacturers' margins, Deputy Agriculture Minister Sergei Dankvert said Wednesday. |
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MOSCOW - The European Commission said Wednesday that it had expressed its concern to Russia over a tanker transporting 100,000 metric tons of crude oil in icy weather off Finland, but said that it could not stop the ship. EU member Finland has failed to persuade Moscow to prevent the Greek-registered ship from leaving the Russian port of Primorsk and braving the icy conditions of the Baltic Sea. |
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PRE-TERM elections are usually more interesting than the scheduled variety. They catch the political elite unawares, and the incumbent governor often doesn't take part, meaning that the outcome is less predetermined. The current gubernatorial election in Magadan is doubly interesting in this regard. |
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LAST month, Russian archaeologists found something that, they reckoned, is the grave of Ivan Susanin, the national hero who, in 1613, according to legend, saved young Mikhail Romanov from an invading Polish army - sacrificing his life in the process. |
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 PTVP's intense punk songs and frequent attacks on the establishment - especially President Vladimir Putin - has gained the band, which hails from Vyborg, on the Russia-Finland border, a devoted St. Petersburg fanbase. The band's political stance led it to take part in the Punk Ska Festival Against the War in Chechnya in February 2000, one of very few musical anti-war protests held in the city since the current military campaign in Chechnya started in September 1999. |
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 With an impressive 3 million items in its collection, the State Hermitage Museum will always find trying to put a representative selection of its works on display to be somewhat akin to the labors of Hercules, no matter how hard it strives and no matter how many foreign branches it opens. |
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Three of the city's clubs are having problems with their premises. On Sunday, Fish Fabrique was abrubtly closed on the orders of sanitary inspectors, according to rumor. "We closed for brief repairs, some redecoration," said the art cafe's owner, Pavel Zaporozhtsev, on Thursday. |
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You may have thought that Ms. Kseniya Onatopp ("Onatopp?" "Onatopp" is a classic exchange from "Goldeneye" - you can almost see the raised eyebrow) had got the best of my James Bond alter ego following the fiery review of Tiki Bar in December (see "food for playing the spying game," Dec. |
 Germany has always been a popular travel destination for St. Petersburg holiday-makers. Its relative proximity to Russia, combined with the number of direct flights from the city, are undoubtedly two key factors in this. So, when the recent spell of relatively warm weather transformed St. Petersburg from a magnificent winter goose into an ugly duckling - stripping it of its fancy, snow-white garments, turning its streets into treacherous ice rinks and revealing the previous few months' worth of garbage, all under a drab, grey sky - there was only one thing to be done to see off the inevitable blues and revive the suddenly absent feel-good factor: book a flight, pack a few essentials, and get away from it all. |
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 The movie biography, a tricky genre to begin with, is never more so than when the subject is an artist. The lives of creative people are sometimes dramatic, but they rarely make satisfying drama, and even well-made, well-acted biopics tend to be dutiful, decorous and lifeless. |
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When Rudolf Nureyev died of AIDS in 1993, a war broke out over his estate. In 1997, the European arm of the Rudolf Nureyev Foundation was ordered to pay $2 million to his sister and niece. "What they want is their share of the $7 million," said their lawyer, referring to the dancer's assets in New York. |
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Zhalovat: to favor someone, to bestow or grant something on/to someone, to favor someone with a visit. Time for a pop quiz. For 10 points in the category, "Fun Facts About Language," what do the words complain, pity, grant, salary, pathetic and welcome have in common? In English, not much. |
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