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 The race to succeed Vladimir Yakovlev as governor of St. Petersburg took a long-expected twist on Tuesday when Valentina Matviyenko, presidential representative to the Northwest Region, announced that she will run for the post of governor of St. Petersburg. |
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MOSCOW - With an eye on Chechnya's upcoming presidential vote, pro-Moscow Chechen leader Akhmad Kadyrov has drafted his own version of a crucial treaty dividing powers between the republic and Moscow that challenges federal law and provides Chechnya with more autonomy than any other Russian region. |
All photos from issue.
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The 2 1/2-year court case against Mikhail Mirilashvili, an influential local tycoon imprisoned in January 2001 on charges of kidnapping, sparked bitter arguments between defense lawyers and judges in the case on Tuesday, when the court decided to appoint an anonymous expert to examine a tape containing threats allegedly made by Mirilashvili. When the decision was announced on Tuesday afternoon, all three of Mirilashvili's lawyers left the courtroom in protest at what they called an "outrageously unlawful event." "An anonymous witness would be understandable, but an expert ... How will the defense be able to find out if this expert is professional enough to analyse the tape?" Sergei Afanasyev, one of the three lawyers, said in a telephone interview on Thursday. |
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 Losing a beloved pet can be a traumatic event for any family, but a service that starts work next week hopes to make that unhappy occurrence much rarer. |
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MOSCOW - For over a decade, Russia has searched for an instrument to regain its influence in world politics. And now it seems to have found it - oil. The demand for crude oil is now forcing major developed countries to seek good relations with Russia, the world's second-largest producer. |
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MOSCOW - The benchmark RTS index climbed over the 500 threshold on Wednesday for the first time since October 1997, boosted by a rally of Yukos shares. |
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JAKARTA, Indonesia - Indonesia's parliament is launching a probe into alleged irregularities in the purchase of Russian fighter jets - a potentially damaging political scandal for President Megawati Sukarnoputri ahead of next year's general elections. |
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MOSCOW - A combination of cold spring weather and drought in the country's main southern grain-producing regions could threaten an already low harvest forecast, Agriculture Minister Alexei Gordeyev told reporters Wednesday. |
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In the Soviet era, St. Petersburg was known as the cradle of three revolutions. More recently, the city has given us Russia's second president, Vladimir Putin, along with the many local officials who rode his coattails into top jobs in Moscow. This lends a symbolic significance to everything that happens in the northern capital. |
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On my way to work on Tuesday, I saw a long line of cars and buses near St. Isaac's Square stuck in a traffic jam, waiting for a few black cars and their police escort to pass by. |
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 The success of last year's inaugural Stereoleto dance-music festival means this year's version, which kicks off on Saturday, is almost twice as big. Last year's four parties have increased to seven this time out. The events, each dedicated to one particular country, will feature artists from Germany, U.K., France, Finland, Sweden, Italy and Japan. The festival's musical line-up is pretty diverse, ranging from Berlin-based pop duo Stereo Total through the psychedelic live/DJ project of The Future Sound of London's Garry Cobain to Swedish crooner Jay Jay Johanson. |
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 Stereo Total's roots lie rather in French chanson from the 1960s and 1970s, but also Neue Deutsche Welle from the 1980s, and a "lot of Japanese bands," according to singer Francoise Cactus. |
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Canadian mainstream jazz singer and pianist Diana Krall is last-minute, but impressive, addition to the rich and variable jazz bill this week. Though not a breakthrough innovator, Krall, who won a Grammy for best jazz vocal in 1999, provides quality and accessible jazz songs, which have helped her to sell more records than other contemporary jazz artists can even dream of. |
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Some restaurant reviews just write themselves. Some, on the other hand, just fester and brew and never really get going. This review falls into the second category - but not through any fault of the restaurant, which was superb in many ways and to which I tender my humble apologies in advance. |
 The Anna Akhmatova Museum at the Fontanka House is an example of how a small museum can succeed without the resources of giants like the State Hermitage and the Russian Museum The institution is a center for spirited and inventive work, in stark contrast with many museums in the post-Soviet era, which are often seen as sleepy, conservative establishments, forever complaining about the drop in state financing and other shortages. |
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Utrom - dengi, vecherom - stulya!: You have to pay cash up front. Russians are fabulous quoters. The average Russian has a mental library of apt quotations and aphorisms that includes the Bible, 30 or 40 Russian and foreign poets, standard translations of Shakespeare and dozens of novelists. |
 Over a hundred years passed between the invention of photography in 1839, if its "official" birth is taken as the work of Frenchman Louis Daguerre and his daguerrotype, and photographs becoming "collectable" for museums. Leading the way was the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, which, in the 1930s, became one of the first of the world's museums to begin collecting photographs, establishing a photography department in 1940. |
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 "The Brits are coming" is the slogan for the upcoming Manchester Week in St. Petersburg, which kicks off on Saturday and runs through July 6. |
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Kangaroo Cull CANBERRA, Australia (AP) - The Australian Army will kill as many as 15,000 kangaroos to keep a southeastern army base from being overgrazed, a military spokesperson said Wednesday. The Defense Department said that the plant-eating marsupials threatened the environment in the 42,090-hectare Puckapunyal training ground 100 kilometers north of Melbourne. |
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New Real Boss MADRID, Spain (AP) - Real Madrid selected Manchester United assistant Carlos Queiroz as its new coach Wednesday. The Mozambique-born coach replaces Vicente del Bosque, who was fired Monday despite leading Madrid to a record 29th league title the previous day. |
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