|
|
|
 A Finnish monitoring organization tasked with ensuring that the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant is safe has been turning a blind eye on corrupt and unsafe practices, international environmental organization Bellona says. Bellona member Sergei Kharitonov presented the results of a Bellona study of plant safety at a news conference on Wednesday. |
|
DAVOS, Switzerland - Before the three almost-oligarchs walked in out of a snowy night, Georgian President-elect Mikheil Saakashvili was addressing a small dinner at the World Economic Forum of about two dozen people, including some involved in a pipeline being built across Georgian territory and other potential investors. |
 Racists in St. Petersburg have gone on a rampage, intensifying violent assaults against ethnic minorities since nationalist politicians triumphed in the State Duma last month, victims say. The campaign was marked by calls of "Russia for the Russians," suggesting foreigners should be thrown out of the country. |
All photos from issue.
|
|
|
|
|
MOSCOW - The Central Elections Commission on Thursday refused to register Viktor Gerashchenko for the presidential election in March, ruling that the former Central Bank chief was not exempt from the requirement to submit 2 million voter signatures. Gerashchenko said he was not collecting signatures because his nomination had been backed by one of the three parties that belong to the nationalist Rodina bloc. |
|
More than 70 dolls and soft toys that children played with during the Siege of Leningrad have gone in display at the city's Doll Museum. "These dolls were probably the nicest part of our harsh and hungry childhood," Maya Rudnitskaya, who brought to the exhibition the two of her favorite dolls Ira and Yura, said Thursday. |
 MOSCOW - A group of liberals including chess champion Garry Kasparov, Union of Right Forces leader Boris Nemtsov and journalist Yevgeny Kiselyov said Monday that they see no hope of challenging President Vladimir Putin in the March election and have formed a movement to find a "democratic alternative" in 2008. |
|
MOSCOW - Yury Levada, the country's top sociologist, said Wednesday that he will rename the VTsIOM-A polling agency he and his team of independent researchers founded six months ago after being ousted from state-controlled VTsIOM so no one would confuse the new agency with the original one. |
|
MOSCOW - Federation Council First Deputy Speaker Valery Goreglyad announced his resignation Tuesday, a day after Speaker Sergei Mironov said he would abolish the post as unconstitutional. The reshuffle in the usually uneventful Federation Council is an attempt by Mironov to establish full control over the upper chamber of parliament, said Andrei Ryabov, a political analyst at the Moscow Carnegie Center. |
|
|
|
 MOSCOW - The news of steady 4 percent growth in beer production over 2003 might have been expected to have a sobering effect on Russian brewers - especially compared with the heady 10 percent output surge in 2002. Yet as the Agriculture Ministry released its figures for last year, industry analysts were more upbeat, saying the real growth figure was about 6 percent. |
|
A conflict reminiscent of the post-Soviet struggles between shareholders and workers at major industrial sites has flared up at Proletarsky Zavod, a major producer of equipment for the shipbuilding industry in St. |
 MOSCOW - Value-added tax should be reduced to 13 percent if the government decides to introduce special VAT accounts, Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref said Wednesday. "If the 'VAT accounts' system were accompanied by a significant VAT cut, then such a system could be set up," Gref told reporters after his first ever round table with more than 20 of the country's top foreign and domestic retailers. |
|
MOSCOW - Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov has signed a decree approving the construction of a $5.7 billion gas pipeline that will skirt around Belarus and Ukraine in an apparent attempt to win Russia more leverage in its dealings with its two unpredictable neighbors. |
|
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The Leningrad Oblast chapter of the Party of Life has proposed creating a high-technology trade and industrial zone in the Oblast, Interfax reported Wednesday. This should help the country solve it's problems in light of planned accession to the World Trade Organization, the plan's author said. |
|
Chechen Envoy Goes MOSCOW (AP) - President Vladimir Putin has dismissed his envoy for human rights in Chechnya, Abdul-Khakim Sultygov, Itar-Tass reported Wednesday. |
 MOSCOW - World Bank president James Wolfensohn wound down a fleeting two-day visit to Moscow on Wednesday, saying he was "relaxed" about the Yukos scandal and felt confident that President Vladimir Putin would not veer away from market reforms. |
|
MOSCOW - While Russian companies in general are not particularly well respected internationally, Russian executives Anatoly Chubais and Simon Kukes have a good reputation among colleagues, a new study by consultant PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Financial Times says. |
|
MOSCOW - Squeezing oil and gas majors for so-called "rent" on natural resources is unlikely in the near future, a senior official said Wednesday. "I am absolutely convinced that it is impossible to do [that] now," said Anton Danilov-Danilyan, head of the presidential administration's economics department, Interfax reported. |
|
|
|
|
More than 55 percent of the Russian electorate took part in December's parliamentary elections. The results stunned many observers. They seemed to reflect serious changes in the country's political landscape. The political forces that dominated the 1990s were considerably weakened. |
|
The triumphal march of the victors continues. Betraying no fear of responsibility, United Russia boldly put its members in charge of all 29 committees in the State Duma. |
|
When the State Duma passed amendments to the Criminal Code's section on self-defense in February 2002, it seemed as if a big step had been taken toward developing civilized legislation in the country. Just a few new lines in the code meant more than 2,000 people who were jailed for killing their attackers in self-defense were freed. |
|
|
|
 Seva Gakkel, the man who helped to bring to St. Petersburg an array of Western artists from Tindersticks to Bryan Ferry to Paul McCartney, stumbles when asked about his job title. "What I do has no specific name, probably I can be called an 'artistic director,'" said Gakkel who has been working with the local promoters Sound Lab for the past three years. |
|
While gay men risked imprisonment a decade ago, now they dance at nightclubs in St. Petersburg and Moscow, and surf Russian-language websites. Yet unlike in the West, they can't stop by the nearest kiosk to leaf through a rack of gay-oriented publications. |
|
Local promoters Svetlaya Muzyka, or Light Music, said that week that they are redirecting their concerts of western acts from Red Club to PORT. Over the past couple of years Svetlaya Muzyka promoted gigs by many acts, including such bands as Devics and Brazzaville, with many being sell-outs. |
|
If Noah, of ark fame, were to find himself in contemporary St. Petersburg, he might look for something to remind him of Mount Ararat, the name of the mountain in Armenia he settled upon following his legendary journey. |
 If a member of Leningrad's Bolshoi Symphony Orchestra didn't show up at a rehearsal during the first months of 1942, fellow musicians would begin to feel a familiar nauseousness. They knew that nobody would pick up the phone when they rang the absentee - and that a rescue brigade sent to their home would find the musician dead. |
|
Few works of art of the last century are as indelibly linked to a specific historical tragedy as Dmitry Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7 - also known as the "Leningrad Symphony. |
|
Remont santekhniki: Plumbing repairs, an expensive, time-consuming, intrusive process to fix broken plumbing; can be translated as "the seventh circle of hell." If I were to write an up-to-date, truly useful Russian-English phrase book, right after the most basic sentence all foreigners should know - "My papers are in order" ("Moi dokumenti v poryadke") - the next phrase would be "I need a plumber right away!" ("Mnye srochno vyzvat santekhnika!") In my apartment, water is always flowing where it shouldn't and not flowing where it should. |
|
|
|
|
Bush Begins Campaign WASHINGTON (NYT) - Three years to the day after taking the oath of office, U.S. President George W. Bush began his re-election campaign Tuesday night with a State of the Union address that blended potent reminders of his role as commander in chief of a nation at war with pledges to confront the range of domestic issues that his Democratic rivals hope may keep him from winning a second term. |
Temp: -2°C overcast 
Issues Archive