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If President Vladimir Putin intended to send a message to the business community Thursday, he let events speak for themselves. As he met with the country's most influential businessmen in the Kremlin, Putin remained markedly silent on the biggest news of the day - the announcement of an additional $3. |
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A week of confrontation between local artists and the city property committee over a proposal to privatize their studios ended Wednesday, when the Legislative Assembly passed a bill confirming the artists' rights to continue renting studios at discounted prices. |
 As Americans in St. Petersburg celebrate their most important national holiday on Sunday, few may realize that one of those who took part in the events that July 4 commemorates walked the city's streets at the same time their homeland was born. For Americans, John Paul Jones is one of their most sacred Revolutionary War heroes, the almost-legendary founder of their navy, and the speaker of the famous words: "I have not yet begun to fight. |
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Security guards at the Great Choral Synagogue on Lermontovsky Prospekt found a landmine outside the synagogue on Tuesday night. The landmine, wrapped in plastic, was discovered shortly after 4 a. |
All photos from issue.
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Indiana Jones and his father used one to outrun the Nazis. Now, Three Germans, two Englishmen and a Chinese mechanic have taken Chinese-built modern-day versions of BMW motorcycles with sidecars on a transcontinental journey from Beijing to Berlin, with a stop in St. Petersburg along the way. The four motorbikes never fail to draw a crowd in villages and tiny towns along the route. Sometimes up to 300 people gather to gawk and stare at the comical-looking contraptions. "Its just interesting. One, because we're foreigners and two, because we're a bunch of idiots on motorbikes," Richard George, one of the drivers, said with a laugh, on Thursday. |
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 Music can make the world a better place, Rock Brynner, son of the late Vladivostok-born Hollywood star Yul Brunner, said in St. Petersburg this week. In a talk given at the city's American Corner on Tuesday, Brynner focused on how music helped bridge white and black America while tracing a narrative of its roots through to the Vietnam era. |
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MOSCOW - A letter signed by five U.S. congressmen and calling for U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell to investigate the actions of former Prime Minister Sergei Kiriyenko is a forgery, four of the congressmen and the U.S. Embassy said. The June 4 letter, posted on the web site of the U.S.-based American Defense Council, which describes itself as from a conservative lobbying group, alleges that Kiriyenko recently purchased property in Illinois in a possible attempt to live in the United States. |
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 U.S. investments in St. Petersburg have been in decline, but analysts are unsure whether it is a lack of attractive opportunities or the policies of the new city administration that are to blame. The newly published statistics report by the Committee of Government Statistics for St. |
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MOSCOW - (SPT) It won't be possible for foreign banks to open branches in Russia for now, said Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin at a news-conference Thursday, Interfax reported. |
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Vodka maker Veda Holdings will invest $300 million into the construction of a new recreation center to replace the notorious pit near Moskovsky station. State-owned Vneshekonombank, that used to act as the main investor in the project, sold its stake to Veda last week. It remains unclear what led the company to take part in the overpriced burdensome project, analysts say. Veda and Vneshekonombank won the tender organized by the federal property ministry in April and bought the pit for $80 million. However, both the city Committee for Investment and Strategic Projects and Veda's deputy general director Yelena Morozova failed to answer if the money was actually paid. |
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 St. Petersburg will run out of flowers from the Netherlands this Sunday, wholesalers say. Dutch flower imports account for 90 percent of the city's flower market. |
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High City Ratings ST.PETERSBURG (SPT) - Moody's Interfax Rating Agency confirmed its St. Petersburg long-term rating at Aa2 level, and the city's short-term rating level at RUS-1. Both the long-term and the short-term ratings position the city as highly creditworthy compared to other Russian regions. |
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Who runs U.S. foreign policy? In a week of historic court cases, international summits and the imperial spectacle of a U.S. viceroy handing over sovereignty, it seems an easy question. Foreign policy, as we all know, is controlled by what the British call the Great and the Good: senior judges and top ambassadors, senators and presidents, and famous names and famous faces. |
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In slapping 25-year sentences on two Russian intelligence agents Wednesday in the killing of former Chechen President Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, a Qatari judge made a point of saying that the car bombing was approved by the "Russian leadership. |
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The formal occupation of Iraq came to an ignominious end on Monday with a furtive ceremony, held two days early to foil insurgent attacks, and a swift airborne exit for the chief administrator. In reality, the occupation will continue under another name, most likely until a hostile Iraqi populace demands that we leave. |
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 On Friday the Grand Waltz International Music Festival opens in the Pavlovsk Park's Rose Pavilion, bringing back to life a 19th century tradition when top Russian and Western European artists performed there and Pavlovsk was the summertime music capital of Russia. Johann Strauss, the King of Waltzes himself, conducted the concerts, played the violin and composed new music here during 11 summers between 1853 and 1865, which explains the motif of the festival. |
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 KMFDM, the intense U.S.-based industrial band, who describes its style as "ultraheavy beat," brings its most recent album, "WWIII," to St. |
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Berlin-based artist and musician Jim Avignon, aka Neoangin, spent four days in the city having played two exciting concerts - a planned one at Griboyedov and a surprise full-length gig at the increasingly popular Bar Datscha, using his masks and artworks for the show that he jokingly describes as the "poor man's Pink Floyd. |
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"I don't speak Japanese, but I know all the terms for the food," answered a maroon and gold kimono-clad waitress with a particularly Asian face. |
 The most recent album by Leningrad does not sound like any other album put out by the hugely popular St. Petersburg band. "Babarobot, ili Kak Pisat Saundtreki" ("She-Robot, or How to Compose Soundtracks") is actually a cross between a radio play and a musical. "It's an absurd play, deprived of realism," says Leningrad's frontman and songwriter Sergei Shnurov, standing looking out over Moika River. |
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 Once an efficient propaganda instrument, political posters of the Soviet era are now displayed at the State Russian Museum as works of art. Graphic, bright and compelling, Soviet posters are often viewed as the quintessence of an epoch, reflecting the way that the country's rulers addressed the governed. |
 Journalism did not come naturally to the Bolsheviks. What does a reporter have left to do under a one-party dictatorship? How do you go about creating "news" that is entirely predetermined and predictable? In the wake of the Civil War and the economic collapse, newspapers became a top priority for the Bolshevik leadership as instruments of political mobilization and social change. |
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BELGRADE, Serbia-Montenegro - Serbia-Montenegro is ready to extradite UN war crimes suspects following the election of a pro-Western leader in Serbia, their president said Wednesday. Serbia, the dominant partner in the two-republic union that replaced Yugoslavia, elected reformer Boris Tadic president in a runoff poll Sunday in which he faced a hard-line nationalist ally of former autocrat Slobodan Milosevic. |
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EU Chooses Barroso BRUSSELS (AFP) - European Union leaders attending a special summit appointed Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Manuel Durao Barroso as the new president of the EU executive, breaking a deadlock over the bloc's top job. |
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Issues Archive