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 Despite Governor Valentina Matviyenko declaring a year-long moratorium on fill-in development, the Legislative Assembly says the practice will continue and the governor's action won't halt a significant number of projects recently approved by City Hall. Stopping the apparently uncontrolled construction of shops, storage areas and offices in between residential blocks and in the city's scant green areas has irritated many residents and was one of Matviyenko's election promises last year. |
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 Fingerpint scans will be taken of all Russian citizens applying for U.S. visas in St. Petersburg starting next month, consulate officials announced Thursday. |
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MyDoom, the fastest-proliferating computer virus ever, has been traced back to Russia. Using location-sensing software, Kaspersky Labs have followed the first e-mails infected with MyDoom back to addresses with Russian Internet providers. "It's scary, but most serious viruses are written in Russia," said Denis Zenkov, spokesman for Kaspersky, the country's largest anti-virus software company. |
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Costly Clean Up Bill ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The ecological damage caused by activities of a military unit located outside the town of Gatchina in Leningrad Oblast made more than 18.5 million rubles ($650,000). The Natural Resources Ministry calculated this figure when it inspected units of the Sixth Army of the Air Force and Anti-Aircraft Defense in the village of Voiskovitsy, Interfax reported Wednesday. |
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A report on security violations on the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant, or LAES, released last week by environmental organization Bellona caused turmoil when it was considered by the environment committee of the Finnish Parliament on Tuesday, Bellona member and former LAES employee Sergei Kharitonov said Wednesday. |
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The Mariinsky Theater has withdrawn from this year's "Golden Mask", Russia's top annual theatrical awards and festival, citing its hectic touring and rehearsal schedule. The decision, announced Wednesday, means that all Mariinsky's productions and artists nominated for this year's "Golden Mask" awards, will not participate in the festival. "This year, the Mariinsky Theater is unable to perform the nominated works for the festival's jury neither in February, nor in March," said spokeswoman Oksana Tokranova. "The opera division has just returned from Baden-Baden, where it was touring with 'Der Ring des Nibelungen,' and will go on tour again - to Israel from Feb. |
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 The famed Russian icebreaker Krasin will remain in St. Petersburg, Vice Governor Sergei Tarasov said at the meeting of the city administration on Thursday. |
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MOSCOW - Minutes after the deadline passed, elections chief Alexander Veshnyakov told reporters Wednesday evening that five presidential candidates had managed to submit the 2 million signatures needed to register their bids but warned that some may not make it onto the ballot for violations. |
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President Vladimir Putin traveled to his hometown on Tuesday to take part in celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the lifting of the 900-day Nazi siege of Leningrad, an ordeal that severely affected his own family. |
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 A St. Petersburg pharmacy chain has done something regional players don't usually do: it has acquired a foothold in Moscow. With the purchase this week of the smaller Moscow chain Narodnaya Apteka, Natur Produkt will be the country's absolute leader in terms of number of outlets, with 153 pharmacies in 20 regions. Founded in 1993 in St. Petersburg, Natur Produkt is now a holding with companies in many Russian cities and abroad. |
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 Is St. Petersburg the place to be in winter? As recently as a year ago the question was likely to evoke a skeptical smile, but new occupancy figures from the leading St. |
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MOSCOW - U.S. corporate representatives in Russia asked visiting U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell to ease restrictions on high-technology trade, calling it key to business development in the country. "What we'd like to see is a more flexible attitude on high- tech cooperation," Andrew Somers, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia, said after meeting Powell Tuesday in Moscow. |
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MOSCOW - The Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, or RSPP, commonly known as "the oligarchs' union," has announced that it wants to merge with two associations devoted to small and medium-sized businesses. |
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Russia is once more frustrating all attempts at classification. Not so long ago the country was described as a managed, electoral democracy. Such definitions, based on a distinction between developed and undeveloped democracies, held out hope that with a little hard work Russia could become a full-fledged democracy, or at least that it could be regarded as a special model of democracy. |
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The World Economic Forum brings together a strong sampling of the people who shape the world we live in. Not just people who make companies, governments and international organizations tick, but people who through their writings and teachings influence the way the world thinks. |
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City Hall's Channel Five television station is planning a facelift that is to be unveiled April 1. Station management is searching for new staff and checking thousands of CVs to find presenters for brand new shows. I hear that the management intends to build a new sort of television, that, they say, will be energetic and interesting for viewers. |
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 When the local club scene is sleepy recovering after boisterous weekends, there are a whole lot of sounds, from gentle to thunderous, coming from a room on the roof in the well-known Pushkinskaya 10 arts center. Hidden in the yard of the infamous building, GEZ-21 promotes concerts by all kinds of off-the-wall musicians, from ethnic to noise and industrial, on Mondays and Tuesdays. GEZ-21 stands for "Gallery of Experimental Sound," inheriting number "21" from Gallery 21, the GEZ founders' former enterprise - which gained international fame when it was launched in 1994 as Russia's first arts center devoted to multi-media art. |
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 One of the most theatrical operas ever written, Richard Strauss's "Ariadne auf Naxos", which contrasts melancholy and frivolity and brings together operatic art with commedia dell'arte, will make its Mariinsky Theater theatrical debut on Monday. |
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One World Beat, the global music festival raising money for children with AIDS, wants musicians in Russia, wrote Mark Roach, the festival's communications manager in a letter this week. One World Beat, the festival that has Phil Collins as a supporter, has about 100 events in 25 countries on board for the festival, which takes place in March. |
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We were standing on the street. It was cold and the snow was falling. We rang the bell and were informed by the maitre d' that in order to be seated we needed to be in possession of "club cards. |
 Black and white images of wounded children, their heads wrapped in bandages, mix up with photos of women lining up for a ticket to the Leningrad Philharmonic. Wooden houses burning, military helmets with jagged holes in them and a fragile elderly woman laying flowers on a burial stone in Sologubovka village, 70 kilometers from St. Petersburg. These images are part of an extensive exhibition by two German photographers dedicated to the 60th anniversary of lifting of the Siege of Leningrad in 1944. |
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 A mentally disturbed widowed Dutchman, son of a former Nazi officer, comes across a photo of a Russian woman on the Internet. The woman - almost the twin of his late wife Eva - lives in St. |
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JERUSALEM - A suicide bomber struck a bus Thursday in Jerusalem, killing 10 bystanders and wounding about 30 in an attack near Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's official residence, police and paramedics said. Nobody claimed responsibility. The explosion coincided with a German-brokered prisoner swap between Israel and the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah, although it was not clear if the two were connected. |
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Huge Exxon Mobil Bill ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - A federal judge on Wednesday ordered Exxon Mobil Corp. to pay about $6.75 billion in punitive damages and interest to thousands of Alaskans affected by the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. |
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