LOCAL NEWS

REACTIONS MIXED TO FILM ON SOBCHAK

A state-financed documentary film about former St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak has produced mixed reactions from politicians and human rights advocates who worked with Sobchak in the 1990s.

The film's premiere screening was in Dom Kino on Tuesday.

REACTOR AT LAES TO RESTART IN AUGUST

Reactor No. 1 of the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant, which has been out of action since 1999, will restart again in August, officials of the Federal Nuclear Power Agency said this week.

Fortress Town Kronstadt Celebrates Despite Chill

The sun failed to shine on Kronstadt this week as it celebrated its 300th birthday, but open-air concerts, midnight fireworks, memorial services, the opening of fountains and a regatta of navy cruisers went ahead despite the chilly conditions.

On Kronstadt's actual birthday, Tuesday, it was windy, cloudy and quiet.

NATIONAL NEWS

LISTS FOR PRIVATIZATION PREPARED

City Hall has prepared lists of 25 St. Petersburg historical buildings that it wants to privatize first and 17 that are out of bounds for privatization.

The privatization list, drawn up by the St. Petersburg Committee for the State Inspection and Protection of Historic Monuments, or KGIOP, includes the Bezborodko dacha on Sverdlovskaya Naberezhnaya, Sheremetyev's mansion on Ulitsa Shpalernaya and Yulia Samoilova's palace and park at Pavlovsk.

POLICE DETAIN SUSPECTED KILLERS OF TAJIK GIRL

St. Petersburg police have detained several people suspected of the murder of a nine-year-old Tajik girl in February, says chief city prosecutor Nikolai Vinchenko.

FSB CRITIC JAILED FOR FOUR YEARS

MOSCOW - Lawyer Mikhail Trepashkin was sentenced to four years in prison on Wednesday in a move that he and human rights advocates decried as retribution for his investigation into allegations linking the Federal Security Service to the 1999 apartment bombings that helped to prompt the second war in Chechnya.

HUMAN RIGHTS COURT SIDES WITH GUSINSKY

MOSCOW - The European Court of Human Rights has ruled in favor of exiled media mogul Vladimir Gusinsky, who filed a suit claiming that Russian authorities had used imprisonment to force him to sign over his Kremlin-hostile Media-MOST empire.

LOCAL BUSINESS

LAND-LEASE AUCTIONS READY

St. Petersburg's first open auction on land leasing rights will take place June 9. Auction winners will be offered 6 year leasing contracts enabling them to carry out construction in the leased areas.

The bidding will be organized in the form of a complete auction, including an auctioneer, a gavel and number plates for participants. "This is going to be a real system, auctions will be held on a regular basis," said Andrey Stepanenko, acting director of the St. Petersburg Property Fund at the city government at a press conference Thursday.

"This system will be transparent and allow us to determine the market price of the land plot accurately," he said.

A NEW READ LAUNCHED FOR ENGLISH SPEAKERS

The city is about to get Russia's first magazine that uses "real" English to attract English learners. The magazine has a label of "over 16s only," and attempts to bring relevance and entertainment to language learning.

OPINION

A RADICAL SHAKE-UP OR IS IT JUST PERSONAL?

I've got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that for the first time in 12 years the government appears poised to push forward with meaningful military reform. The bad news is that this major step forward may result not from strategic planning but from a clash between warring bureaucratic factions.

PLANNED CAR PURCHASES REFLECT ADMINISTRATORS' ARROGANCE

City Hall wants to buy 80 new Volvo cars to make life easier for 50 Legislative Assembly lawmakers and 30 city government officials, my sources told me this week.

CULTURE

SING WITH WORLDWIDE WEBLEY

Jason Webley, the Seattle-based singer and accordion player, has returned with a new album called "Only Just Beginning." Described as "by far Jason's strongest work yet" on his official web site, it contains some definite Russian influences that Webley picked up during his stay in Russia last year.

"I think you can hear the influence!" wrote Webley in an email interview from his home in Seattle.

RED CLUB WELCOMES INDIE BANDS

Two indie bands from Spain and France will perform at Red Club on Monday, the day of the week notorious for its lack of decent entertainment in the city.

CHERNOV'S CHOICE

Although rumor has had it that Moloko would perform in St. Petersburg this Saturday for some time now, the location has become known only very recently.

According to local promoters Dance Planet, the Sheffield-based electronic pop band will play at the Sixth Pavillion of the Lenexpo, the local exhibition complex on Vasilyevsky Island.

THE TASTE OF THE ITALIAN STREET

In a city supposedly brimming with world class restaurants and A-list eateries, good Italian food in St. Petersburg can still be hard to come by. Something of a institution here, La Strada serves great Italian food with a bit of Russian flare.

RUSSIAN ARTISTS THINK ABOUT HOME

The concept of rodina is a central theme in Russian culture. Along with otchizna and otechestvo, which mean "fatherland," notions of rodina ("motherland") are tied to Russia's sense of self, the "homeland" of the Russian soul.

A PAINTER'S NOSTALGIA COMES TO LIFE

The Russian painter Boris Zaborov has been living in Paris for more than 20 years and during this time there has only been one show of his work in St Petersburg - in the Manezh in 1995.

maestro's favorite quartet returns

Britain's Fitzwilliam Quartet, which became a favorite of Dmitry Shostakovich in the years before his death in 1975, returns to St. Petersburg this week to give four concerts at a number of venues including the St. Petersburg State University and the Bolshoi Dvorets at Peterhof.

Founded in 1968 by four Cambridge University undergraduates, the Fitzwilliam was one of the first of a long line of distinguished quartets to emerge from Britain's Royal Academy of Music.