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Belurussian President Alexander Lukashenko on Thursday furiously accused Russia of resorting to "terrorism" by cutting gas supplies a day earlier but then caved in to demands that Belarus pay more for Russian gas. Gazprom said gas shipments - which also travel across Belarus to Europe and the Kaliningrad exclave - were fully restored Thursday afternoon. Lukashenko said Gazprom's switch-off of supplies at 6 p.m. Wednesday was the most hideous act seen by Belarus since World War II and warned that it would "gas" relations with Russia. "I think this was an act of terrorism of the grandest scale, when in minus 20-degree cold a country . |
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 Vadim Ivanov has been trying to prove that he is "not dead" for months. Finally he became desperate and decided to tell his problem to President Vladimir Putin. |
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"Ra-Ra-Rasputin, lover of the Russian queen," and "Russia's greatest love machine" is how the Boney-M hit described Grigory Rasputin and that is how he is most frequently perceived outside of Russia. But inside Russia the name of "Father Grigory," describes a once very ordinary muzhik from a Siberian village who became a favorite of Tsar Nicholas II's family, because he appeared to be able to cure the haemophiliac Tsarevich Alexei. |
All photos from issue.
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No one has yet been arrested for the murder of a nine-year-old Tajik girl last week, police said Thursday, despite local media reporting that two teenagers had been detained. "The prosecutor's office is investigating this case," Yelena Ordynskaya, spokeswoman for the city prosecutor's office said Thursday by telephone. |
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The building housing the Alexander Blok Library at 20 Nevsky Prospekt caught fire at 3:30 p.m. on Thursday. Up to 30 fire appliances attended and the west end of the city's main thorougfare was closed to private traffic for several hours. |
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Anti-Vandalism Steps ST.PETERSBURG (SPT) - City Hall's monuments committee is inviting residents to make offers and suggestions to protect monuments from acts of vandalism, Interfax reported Thursday. The committee is said to be seriously concerned by several incidents of vandalism that struck city monuments in the last week. |
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Representatives of liberal parties Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces, or SPS, are to cooperate with the President Vladimir Putin's St. Petersburg re-election campaign headquarters in order to ensure a good turnout. |
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Two suspects have been held in the Gulf state of Qatar in connection with the car bomb last Friday that killed former Chechen President Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, Saudi Arabia's Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper reported Wednesday. Qatari law enforcers detained two men of European appearance, whose names were not disclosed, in Abu Dhabi in the neighboring United Arab Emirates, the newspaper reported. |
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Five liberal-minded deputies banded together Wednesday to make their voices heard in State Duma debates dominated by the pro-Kremlin United Russia party. |
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 "We have radically changed our approach to taxpayers." This was the message that Mikhail Mokretsov, deputy head of the St. Petersburg Board of the Tax Ministry, tried to get across to participants of a tax seminar Wednesday. The seminar - held by the St. |
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Eurosib Wins Contract ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Eurosib SPb Transportation Systems announced Thursday that it won a tender by Ulbinsky Metallurgic Works (UMZ) in Western Kazakhstan for transit rail shipments of hydrofluoric acid through Russia to the Estonian and Ukrainian borders in 2004, a Eurosib SPb press release said. |
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MOSCOW - The spread of HIV/AIDS could have calamitous effects on Russia's economy by "brutally altering" the structure of the Russian population, according to a new report released by the United Nations Development Program on Tuesday. The report warns that Russia's GDP growth could decrease by up to 1 percent due to a higher mortality rate in the labor force, while increased health expenditures for people living with AIDS could absorb up to 3 percentage points of gross domestic product. |
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MOSCOW - The economy is nearly three times more dependent on oil and gas than official statistics indicate, making the country much more vulnerable to oil price swings than previously thought, the World Bank said Wednesday. |
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MOSCOW - Russia attracted a record $29.7 billion of foreign inflows last year, led by foreign loans, as the longest economic expansion since the fall of the Soviet Union boosted demand for credit. Foreign inflows soared 50 percent from 2002. Foreign loans led the gains with $22.2 billion of the total $29.7 billion, the State Statistics Committee said in a statement. Foreign direct investment rose 69 percent to $6.8 billion and portfolio investment fell 15 percent to $401 million. Russia is attracting funds from foreign banks and companies, as well as from Russians who took their money abroad after the fall of the Soviet Union, as a sixth-straight year of economic growth fuels demand for furniture, tea and more expensive cigarettes. |
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 MOSCOW - The stock and property markets may be rising too fast as foreign and domestic investors pump money into the country, Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref warned Wednesday. |
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At the start of Vladimir Putin's first term as president, the question was: "Who is Mr. Putin?" As his first term comes to a close, the time has come to assess the results of his first and most important policy initiative: reform of the federal system. |
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Back in 1994, Grigory Yavlinsky's older son, Mikhail, was a piano player in his early twenties. Unknown assailants mangled Mikhail's hands. They also stuffed a note in his pocket warning his father to get out of politics. |
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 Einsturzende Neubauten, the Berlin-based experimental band, that first drew attention for using non-musical instruments, such as electric drills and power hammers, and has been described as "forefathers of noise/industrial music," has again demonstrated that they are still capable of creating music of subtle beauty on its new album. Released on the U.K. Mute label on Feb. 9, "Perpetuum Mobile," which Einsturzende Neubauten is promoting on its current tour to St. |
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 Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra" has been staged thousands of times but has probably never been presented in the form of historical kitsch - until now. |
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Tequilajazzz, the city's leading alternative band, will play its another traditional winter concert at Moloko this Saturday. The powerful quartet's frontman, Zhenya Fyodorov, has been busy lately composing film and TV series soundtracks as well as music for theater performances. |
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On Christmas day last year a new restaurant opened across from the ex-pat friendly Crocodile bar on Galernaya street just off Ploshchad Dekabristrov. A new restaurant is always welcome, of course, especially one that no-one seems to know much about. |
 Try this on for size: My 6-year-old daughter and I ring the bell outside the deserted Russian Embassy. Within seconds, a smiling Russian bustles out to open the gate, escorts us to a comfortable sitting room and invites us to sit, anxiously assuring us that we need only wait a few moments. |
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Хозяин: man of the house, boss, manager, owner, director, person in charge. Xозяин and his female counterpart, хозяйка, are words that make the translator sigh and reach for the thesaurus — along with a long swig of vodka. |
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No Independent Taipei TAIPEI, (AFP) - In an attempt to ease international concerns over his leadership, Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian pledged not to declare independence from China if re-elected next month . Chen, who faces a tough battle to retain his job at polls on March 20, said he already considered Taiwan independent but would stick to the promise he made when he secured an historic election victory in 2000 not to declare a permanent split from China, a move that Beijing has promised would lead to war. |
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Issues Archive