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 While government officials - particularly those responsible for regulating traffic in St. Petersburg - have spent recent months trying to allay the fears of city motorists, signs that recently appeared on major highways leading into St. Petersburg are unlikely to help their cause. |
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MOSCOW - Two suicide bombers drove a truck full of explosives into a government complex in Chechnya on Monday, killing 40 people in the deadliest attack since a March vote anchored the Muslim region firmly in Russia. |
 MOSCOW - After nine years of secret research, the Nuclear Power Ministry has admitted for the first time that it is working with the United States on an experimental program to turn bomb-grade plutonium into fuel for existing nuclear power plants. The idea is to help eradicate the vast stockpiles of plutonium from thousands of decommissioned nuclear warheads by mixing the extremely toxic material with thorium, a less-dangerous and naturally occurring metal commonly found near uranium deposits. |
All photos from issue.
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"It is late, please be quiet." "Sorry, there is no access at this point." "Did your belongings disappear while you were asleep or while you were absent?" Many St. Petersburg residents may have heard at least one of these phrases from members of the city's police force. But now, as a result of a Russian-English phrase book being distributed to the police by the Interior Ministry, visitors to St. Petersburg during the 300th-anniversary celebrations might end up hearing them in English for a change. The city's police, however, is not renowned for its fluency in foreign languages, and foreigners in St. Petersburg have often complained of communication problems with the police. |
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 MOSCOW - Hundreds of thousands of people on Friday commemorated the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany 58 years ago, while more deadly violence in Chechnya cast a shadow over the Victory Day holiday. |
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One of the chief projects associated with the city's 300th anniversary - the restoration of the Alexander Column, which stands in the center of Palace Square - will be completed on time, but not without having touched off a dispute between City Hall and the contractor doing the work, Itarsia. |
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MOSCOW - A Chinese airliner carrying about 100 passengers was ordered back to China after landing in the far eastern city of Khabarovsk on Sunday, three days after Russian aviation officials told airlines and cargo carriers to suspend reservations on flights to China, Hong Kong and Taiwan in connection to SARS. |
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MOSCOW - A gas explosion ripped through a two-story building on Moscow's Arbat pedestrian zone at about 8 p.m. Monday, injuring at least 10 people, the police said. The explosion probably occurred in a Georgian cafe on the first floor of 36 Arbat, destroying the first floor and causing the second floor to sag, police spokesperson Nikolai Gribakin told reporters at the site. |
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MOSCOW - Speaking two days ahead of talks with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said Monday that differences between Russia and the United States over Iraq were tactical, not strategic, and it was possible to repair frayed ties. |
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MOSCOW - An initial analysis of data from flight recorders on the Soyuz-TMA-1 shows that a technical glitch rather than human error caused the capsule to land about 500 kilometers off-course on the wind-swept Kazakh steppe on May 4, a senior Russian space official said. |
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MOSCOW - One of two rival wings in the Liberal Russia party voted Sunday to reinstate Boris Berezovsky and a number of his allies, who were ousted from the party late last year. |
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5th Test for Budanov MOSCOW (SPT) - A military court on Monday ordered a fifth psychiatric evaluation for Colonel Yury Budanov, a former tank-regiment commander on retrial on charges of killing an 18-year-old Chechen woman, Interfax reported. In December, the North Caucasus Military District Court in Rostov-on-Don cleared Budanov of criminal liability on grounds that he had been mentally ill at the time of crime. |
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MOSCOW - Russia signaled its unease on Saturday over a U.S. draft resolution that would lift UN sanctions on Iraq and give Washington and its allies control over Baghdad's oil revenues. Deputy Foreign Minister Yury Fedotov said that the draft had positive aspects, but "there are also parts that are not sufficiently clear. |
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MOSCOW - As the host of a key global-warming conference this fall, and as a potential signatory with a swing vote on the contentious Kyoto Protocol, Russia has found itself at the forefront of the climate-change debate. |
 A series of major new hotel-construction projects in the city will not be completed in time for the St. Petersburg's 300th anniversary celebrations, with market analysts estimating that the firms involved will lose revenue of around $5 million as a result of the delays. There are about 200 new hotel projects currently underway, and the three projects that have now put back their opening dates - the Dostoevsky Hotel, the Grand Hotel Emerald and a hotel-cottage project on Kamenny Island - were among the largest, with investment in the projects totaling about $40 million. |
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HIGH noon is drawing near in a contest over Eurasia's richest oil reserves. The outcome will affect world-trade patterns and the global balance of power for much of the coming century. No, it is not of post-Hussein Iraq that we speak, but of Siberia. That region's huge and relatively untouched energy prizes have already started to sparkle more brightly because of the conflict in the Gulf. |
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IN mid-April, Gazprom signed a 25-year contract to buy natural gas from Turkmenistan. In exchange, President Vladimir Putin acquiesced to Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov's demand to end the 10-year-old dual-citizenship agreement between the two countries. |
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AT first glance, the blueprint for military reform unveiled by the Defense Ministry on April 24 looked promising. It seemed that President Vladimir Putin had finally broken the resistance of Russia's top brass, forcing them to come up with a plan for converting at least part of the army to a volunteer force. |
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IN a few weeks, U.S. President George W. Bush and other world leaders will be in St. Petersburg to meet President Vladimir Putin at an informal summit to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the founding of the city by Peter the Great. |
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Group Therapy Veteran observers of the klepto-plutocracy that has, lazar-like, long encrusted the American body politic were not surprised to see the hoary name of the Bechtel Group bobbing up in the swill of sweetheart deals now being doled out by the Corrupter-in-Chief for the "reconstruction" of his new fiefdom in Iraq. |
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BEIJING - China's premier vowed that every resource would be used to stop the spread of SARS as sanitary workers in the south of the country moved onto the streets to stop the widely-prevalent habit of spitting. Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which has infected almost 5,000 people in the country, originated in China's south last year before spreading across the vast nation and overseas. |
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Issues Archive