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With less then a week left before next Wednesday's scheduled inauguration of Governor-elect Valentina Matviyenko, local politicians and businesses are still in a fog about the new head of the city's plans for economic development. Her election program said an economic climate needed to be created that would give new impulse to foreign and domestic investment in St. |
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The Federal Guard Service protecting Governor-elect Valentina Matviyenko on Monday harassed photographers after they tried to take pictures of guards detaining two National Bolshevik party members who struck the presidential envoy in the face. |
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St. Petersburg driver Valery Kozhukhov says he spends from one to two hours a day standing in the city's traffic jams. "Almost every morning, stuck in a jam, I get nervy worrying that I will be late for work, and I really am late now and then," Kozhukhov said. Anna, an accountant, said that her relatives had twice almost missed trains from Moskovsky Station because they were stuck in traffic jams on Ligovsky Prospekt. |
All photos from issue.
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St. Petersburg history teacher Igor Karachyevtsev, 41, this week added his name to the list of St. Petersburg celebrities who have shone on the national or world stage in the past few years. Following in the slipstream of city physicist Zhores Alfyorov, who won a Nobel Prize in 2001, policewoman Oksana Fyodorova, who was crowned Miss Universe in 2002, and, of course, St. |
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A mysterious and well-funded organization that stood behind Valentina Matviyenko in the gubernatorial elections stealthily left the scene Monday, the day her victory was announced. |
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Fewer Vice Governors ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The Legislative Assembly on Wednesday passed the third and final reading of amendments to the City Charter that will limit the powers of acting governors and reduce their number from 15 to seven, all of whom must be approved by the assembly, Interfax reported. |
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MOSCOW - A leading human rights organization on Wednesday accused authorities of staging large-scale falsification of voting in Chechnya's presidential election to ensure the victory of Akhmad Kadyrov, the Kremlin-favored candidate. |
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MOSCOW - In his office on Leninsky Prospekt, 87-year-old physicist Vitaly Ginzburg was preparing for a weekly staff seminar Tuesday morning when a call came through from Stockholm. When the voice at the other end of the line said in English that he had won the Nobel Prize for Physics, Ginzburg thought it was a joke at first. |
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YEKATERINBURG, Ural Mountains - President Vladimir Putin sharply criticized European Union "bureaucrats" on Thursday for pressing Russia to raise domestic energy prices as a condition for joining the World Trade Organization and asked visiting German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder to support him in the dispute. |
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The first new Finnish container crane is in place at the port of St. Petersburg's First Container Terminal with another crane to follow next week. An attempt to erect the second, 700-ton crane was postponed Wednesday because of high winds. |
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Gas Prices Up ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Gas prices at the pump may go up 2 percent in October, Interfax reported Petersburg Oil Club president Oleg Ashikhmin as saying on Thursday. Ashikhmin explained that the jump is due to an increase in wholesale prices on petroleum products, which have gone up 7 percent since Oct. |
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MOSCOW - Moody's Investors Service raised Russian debt to its first ever investment grade status Wednesday, lifting a surprised stock market to a new historical high and tightening risk premiums on bonds. |
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MOSCOW - Moody's surprise investment rating upgrade could trigger an influx of cash that would destabilize the market, Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov warned at a Cabinet meeting on Thursday. His comments came as traders sobered up and paused to ponder the effect of the upgrade. |
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MOSCOW - Corruption has been critically high in Russia and only worsened this year, according to a report released Tuesday by the Berlin-based corruption watchdog group Transparency International. |
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Kiriyenko Woos Toyota MOSCOW (SPT) - Toyota chairman Hiroshi Okuda was in Nizhny Novgorod this week to discuss the possibility of Toyota launching production in Russia, news agencies reported. On Wednesday, Okuda held talks with former Prime Minister Sergei Kiriyenko, now the presidential envoy to the Volga Federal District, the hub of Russia's automobile industry, Japanese agency Kyodo reported. |
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Where are we living? In what age? Can this really be the 21st century? I can't believe it! We are living either in the Soviet Union or in North Korea in the mid-20th century. In our elections, we elect the nomenklatura candidates promoted by the party and against whom there is no alternative. |
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President Vladimir Putin, in interviews given to foreign journalists just before and after his recent trip to the United States, offered his most detailed comments to date on the ongoing Yukos saga and, more broadly, on the relationship between the state and business. |
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In 1996, when Vladimir Yakovlev, then a deputy mayor of St. Petersburg, won the gubernatorial election, his first news conference as governor-elect was held in the St. Petersburg House of Journalists. When he showed up on the podium in front of a huge crowd of journalists, Yakovlev looked red, sweaty and a bit lost, as if he could not believe he had won. |
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Andrei Zvyagintsev's "Vozvrashcheniye" ("The Return"), the winner of two top prizes during the 60th International Film Festival in Venice last month, came to town this week to screen at the Aurora cinema. "Vozvrashcheniye", which received two Golden Lions as the best film and the best debut - is a highly philosophical and beautifully shot story of a week in the life of two teenage boys and their father who returns home after 12 years' absence. |
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For 30 years, Austrian singer Louis Austen was a crooner in the mold of Frank Sinatra, performing at places like Hilton hotels. Today, though, Austen, who performs at Onegin on Saturday, has switched to contemporary electronic music and is becoming a hit at techno clubs. |
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The St. Petersburg Ska Jazz Review will play a rare local concert at Red Club on Friday to showcase its long-awaited single, which was due six months ago but did not appear on time. The five-track CD includes the band's own "Night on a Bus," written by trumpeter Roman Parygin, which became sort of a hit after appearing on the band's 2002 debut CD and several compilations. |
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Press releases from restaurants here can be strange beasts. So I was intrigued this week when one arrived in my inbox last week from a new place called Porto Maltese that boasted about its chef's resume and claimed to be St. |
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FRANKFURT, Germany - The word here is that Russia's publishing industry is back on its feet, after languishing for years amid the country's economic collapse and political dislocation. But more interesting than that bit of news, perhaps, is that Russia chose the Frankfurt Book Fair, which opened Tuesday, to trumpet its literary comeback. |
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With unparalleled expansion during the past 15 years, the State Russian Museum is alone among St. Petersburg cultural institutions in challenging the scale of the State Hermitage Museum. |
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Shock prediction: "American Wedding" won't win an Oscar for best original screenplay. But it knows the rules: People want to laugh, cringe with embarrassment and shake their heads in horrified disbelief at how far this thing dares to go. Producer-writer (and original creator) Adam Herz and director Jesse Dylan (who's also Bob's son and Wallflower Jakob's brother) oblige these expectations perfectly. |
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Ordinary human beings feel an almost irresistible attraction to sagas of personal tragedy. This goes far beyond schadenfreude, the malicious enjoyment of other people's sorrow; it also goes beyond any cathartic relief that the experience of vicarious misery might bring. |
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Dat sdachi: to hit somebody in response, to give it to someone. In Russia parting with your money is easy enough to do. It's another matter, however, to do it correctly in Russian. The first trick is changing your hard currency (valyuta) into rubles. You all know by now that you do not do this with scruffy-looking men who mutter cheindzh (exchange) under their breath in poorly lit archways. |
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Baghdad Bomb BAGHDAD (AFP) - Nine people were killed, including a suicide bomber and three Iraqi police officers, in a car bomb attack on a police station in Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood, according to US military police on the scene. "Nine people were killed in the attack, including three policemen, five civilians and the suicide bomber," said Captain Sean Kirley, a US Military Police spokesman. |
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