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 In a wide ranging speech on the state of St. Petersburg on Thursday, Governor Valentina Matviyenko said ridding the city of poverty is the main goal of the city administration, but provided few clues as to how she will stimulate the economy to provide the money to achieve that goal. Describing St. Petersburg as in a "precarious" state, she outlined on Wednesday the program City Hall will follow for the three remaining years of her gubernatorial term in an address to the Legislative Assembly. |
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 Survivors of the Siege of Leningrad or blokadniki have called on the government to drop its plans to end their "privileges" - such as free medicine and free rides on public transport - and to "compensate" them for the loss with extra cash. |
 Former U.S. President Ronald Reagan's one-time adviser on Soviet affairs remembers him as the man who forever changed the face of Moscow-Washington relations. Suzanne Massie, Reagan's adviser from 1984 to 1988, a respected author and a Democrat at the time, said Reagan played a "very significant" role in ending the Cold War. |
All photos from issue.
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About 300 foreign students at St. Petersburg Mechnikov Medical Academy say they face an uncertain future after the firm through which they paid the academy for their education suddenly disappeared in early June. The students, most of whom are Indians or Sri Lankans with smaller numbers from Arab countries, said the office of Dubai-based Sailan International, which has been in debt to the academy for almost a million dollars of the students' payments for the last two years, was closed Sunday. |
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MOSCOW - A dispute over whether the British Council should pay taxes has escalated after the organization missed an Interior Ministry deadline to submit its financial records for an audit by Wednesday. |
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TV to Film McCartney ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The management of former Beatle Paul McCartney have agreed to allow his concert on June 20 in Palace Square to be filmed for television, Interfax reported Wednesday. "Discussions have taken place between the musician's agent Barry Marshall, who represented the organizers of Paul McCartney's concert in Russia and representatives of Channel One," an unnamed representative of the organizers was quoted as saying. |
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 Two of the four lots presented at St. Petersburg's first open land-leasing auction Wednesday were canceled due to lack of demand. The two remaining lots were sold close to their nominal prices after hardly any bidding. The two Vyborgsky district housing construction lots, roughly 30,000 square meters each, were offered at their annual rental prices of $1.56 and $1.54 million. The lots went to Pioneer Group, an affiliate of Boston's Pioneer Group, Inc. |
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 Official sales of the new Audi A6 in Russia start Friday. Dealers in Europe and Russia have already received 12,000 orders. St. Petersburg's Rus-Auto officially presented the model Thursday. |
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Yukos Shares Drop MOSCOW (SPT) -Yukos shares dropped by as much as seven percent on Thursday after the firm's chief executive said a $3.4 billion tax bill could damage production forecasts for the year. Chief Executive Simon Kukes told the Wall Street Journal that failure to overturn the tax demand at the next court hearing on June 18 would mean the company slashing investments and missing a 10 percent output growth target for this year. |
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MOSCOW - Russian gangs of spammers are so prolific that by December 2004 junk e-mails could account for 90 percent of all messages sent via the Internet, and Moscow doesn't want to do anything about it, a leading anti-spammer said Wednesday. |
 MOSCOW - Yukos has won a rare court victory. It can now legally sell Cannabis Vodka. The oil giant and its billionaire owners, who are fighting multibillion-dollar tax claims, as well as tax and fraud charges, may rest a little easier after a Voronezh court threw out a lawsuit claiming they were promoting drug use by selling the vodka at one of their gas stations. |
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Organizers of the NATO summit later this month will have their work cut out for them as they try to justify dragging the leaders of the 26 member states to Istanbul. It now seems clear that the NATO Council will not discuss two major initiatives planned for the summit - on cooperation in the Black Sea region and the so-called "greater Middle East. |
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Most Russian citizens have a specific streak in their character that distinguishes them from Europeans and North Americans. It is an unlimited trust in relation to officials, whatever they have done. |
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 Dacha, a brand new downtown art bar operated by the pairing of a local musician and a German DJ has become hugely popular over the past couple of weeks since it opened. Cozy and friendly, with music that is difficult to hear anywhere else, the place, however, aims at a limited circle of artists, musicians and expats. "I fell in love with the city immediately, but after I'd stayed here for a while I realized that I miss bars as I know them from Hamburg where I come from," said Anna-Christin Albers, who co-owns Dacha alongside Anton Belyankin, bass player for the local ska band Dva Samaliota, and Griboyedov club's art manager and DJ. |
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 Sometimes he is referred to as the "new Serge Gainsbourg," sometimes as "France's Tom Waits," but Arthur H - a big name in the French-speaking world even if not well-known in Russia - says his musical turning point was hearing Jim Morrison and The Doors. |
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A show by Diody, or ALLA, as it is now called, is this week's most intriguing gig and will unveil the much talked-about "electro-pop project" by Sergei Shnurov of the hugely popular ska band Leningrad. Shnurov came up with the idea of Diody (Diodes) some 18 months ago, but after recording a few tracks put the project on the shelf. |
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The name of this restaurant promises just a little too much. You can't help feeling slightly cynical about a place called The Optimist's Dream. Nevertheless, my dining companion and I were curious to find out what was the fantasy of the unidentified optimist, and so we decided to find out last Monday afternoon, when we were badly in need of a late lunch/early dinner. |
 The "Message To Man" International Documentary, Short and Animated Films Festival kicks off at the Rodina cinema and Dom Kino on June 15 and runs through June 22 showcasing literally hundreds of films from around the globe. This year's special program includes Russian animation from 2001-2004, early films by British director Peter Greenaway and Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski, as well as the best of European experimental films. |
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 LONDON - Some of the rhythms of a new String Quartet which, unusually, was premiered recently in an underground club in East London, pay tribute to its British composer's experience of almost ten years of making modern dance music. |
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Colors are tricky across languages and cultures. You wouldn’t think they would be — after all, yellow is yellow, right? Well, you don’t have to live in Russia long to discover that one man’s purple is another man’s blue. Let’s start with human coloring, since even this can be a linguistic challenge. Russian tends to be more specific and elaborate than English. |
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Pandas Bounce Back BEIJING (Reuters) - China's giant pandas are coming back from the brink of extinction, thanks to an improved and expanded habitat, but they are not out of the woods yet, forestry officials say. The first comprehensive Chinese study of the mammal since 1988 showed that more than 1,590 giant pandas now roam China's forests, and another 161 have been raised in captivity. |
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Russia needs to look back a long way to the last time it conquered European football. When the Soviet Union won the first Europe Cup in 1960, Khrushchev controlled the Kremlin and not one of today's Russian players had yet been born. |
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MOSCOW - In less than three months between August and November last year, coach Georgy Yartsev transformed an also-ran Russian side into a contender that beat all odds by qualifying for Euro 2004. When Yartsev replaced Valery Gazzayev, Russia was in third place in Group 10 behind Switzerland and Ireland with only three games left in its qualifying campaign. |
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