Latest St Petersburg (Russia) News
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Huge underwater quake hits Russian Far East
A massive undersea earthquake with an estimated 8.3 magnitude shook Russia Friday, with tremors recorded in Moscow - almost 4,400 miles west of the epicenter of the temblor. The quake hit in the Sea of Okhotsk at a depth of over 370 miles off the shore of Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula, according to ...
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Syrian Opposition Accused of Derailing Peace Conference
The prospects of an international peace conference on Syria being held in Moscow before the end of May look slim because of the Syrian opposition's stubborn stance, the Interior Ministry said Friday. Alexander Lukashevich, the ministry's spokesman, accused the Syrian opposition of making unreasonable demands that "dilute" the effectiveness of the conference and go against ...
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Russia welcomes North Koreas readiness for dialogue
North Korea's declaration of readiness to return to talks with world powers, a senior Russian diplomat was cited by the Interfax news agency as saying on Friday. "The fact that Pyongyang has declared its readiness and desire to return to the negotiating tabledeserves a positive assessment," Interfax quoted Russian Foreign Ministry special envoy Grigory Logvinov as saying. A ...
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Russia Syrian leaders agree in principle to attend Geneva talks
The Russian Foreign Ministry said Syrian leaders have agreed "in principle" to attend an international conference in Geneva on the long-running Syrian conflict. The ministry said the Syrian leaders would participate in the June conference so "Syrians themselves [could] find a political path to a solution" to the civil war that began in March 2011, the BBC reported Friday. ...
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Black archeologists uncover remains of Nazi soldiers in Russias Rostov region
In the Rostov region, on the territory of the former village of Privolnoe, "black archaeologists" discovered skeletal remains of Nazi soldiers during unauthorized excavation ...
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Strong earthquake shakes Russia
A powerful earthquake on Friday hit Russia's Far East with tremors felt as far away as Moscow, about 7,000 kilometres west of the epicentre. Marina Kolomiyets, spokeswoman for Obninsk's seismic station of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told The Associated Press the epicentre was in the Sea of Okhotsk, east of the Russian coast and north of Japan. She said the quake registered a ...
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Huge earthquake hits Russias east coast with tremors felt as far away as Moscow
A huge earthquake has hit Russia's Far East resulting in tremors being felt as far away as Moscow, about 7,000 kilometres (4,400 miles) west of the ...
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RPT-Fitch affirms Russias Eurasia Drilling Company at BB outlook stable
Fri May 24, 2013 7:50am EDT May 24 (Reuters) - (The following statement was released by the rating agency) Fitch Ratings has affirmed Eurasia Drilling Company Limited's (EDC) Long-term foreign currency Issuer Default Ratings (IDR) at 'BB' with a Stable Outlook. Fitch also affirmed the 'BB' senior unsecured ratings of the RUB5bn domestic bonds due in 2018 issued by EDC's ...
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Russian social network site banned by mistake
Russia 's leading online social network was banned briefly on Friday in a move dismissed as a "mistake" but which follows intensifying official pressure on the company as ...
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Pyotr Todorovsky Filmmaker Who Broke Taboo Dies at 87
Pyotr Todorovsky, an Academy Award-nominated director whose films explored World War II and broke a Soviet-era taboo against portraying prostitutes, died Friday after a long illness. He was 87. Several of Todorovsky's more than 20 films drew on his experience as a platoon commander during World War II. Voenno-Polevoi Roman ("Wartime Romance," 1983), which tells the story of ...
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50000 Schools Shut for Summer
Eleventh-graders are in for a day of mixed emotions as the summer semester draws to a close in schools across the country. More than 800,000 students are taking leave to prepare for their final examinations, which are due to begin next week. In Moscow, about 3,000 police have been mobilized to provide security for school leavers who traditionally mark the day with boat trips and strolls around ...
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Large earthquake strikes Russias Far East
An earthquake of at least 6.7-magnitude struck the Sea of Okhotsk off the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia's Far East Friday, officials said. The quake, which the U.S. Geological survey estimated might have been closer to 8.2-magnitude, could be felt in Moscow, 4,000 miles away and two buildings in the city were evacuated, but there were no reports of injuries or damage at any location. A ...
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Ring Of Fire Earthquake Hits Russia And US
Two earthquakes have hit the Ring of Fire area, registering magnitudes of 8.2 and 5.7 and prompting a tsunami warning. Moscow felt tremors from the more powerful quake, causing some people to evacuate buildings despite the epicentre being more than 4,000 miles to the east. The US Geological Survey said the epicentre of Thursday's quake was in the Kuril-Kamchatka arc, one of the most ...
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Russian’s Mayon caper cost gov’t P520 K
LEGAZPI CITY, Philippines--Russian tourist Mark Yuchyugyaev’s fascination with Mayon Volcano proved costly to the Philippine government. In order to rescue the Russian tourist, who went on an unsanctioned Mayon climb and was injured in the process, the government had to spend more than half a million pesos. Raffy Alejandro, regional direct of the Office of Civil Defense in Bicol, said ...
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Russia Says Syria Will Attend Geneva Peace Talks
MOSCOW -- The Syrian government has agreed to participate in an international peace conference coordinated by Russia and the United States, a spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry said on ...
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Police Bust Carjacking Equipment Makers
A gang that manufactured and sold sophisticated electronic equipment for carjacking has been thwarted by Voronezh region police and cyber-crime officers, the Interior Ministry said Friday. The criminal group provided criminals with "code-grabbers" at prices ranging from 50,000 rubles ($1,600) to 250,000 rubles. Code-grabbers are electronic devices that intercept signals from ...
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Russian Lawmaker Slams Condom Handout at WWII Eternal Flame
MOSCOW, May 24 (RIA Novosti) – A prominent Russian lawmaker called on Friday for public condemnation of a recent handout of condoms by AIDS activists at an monument in honor of soldiers who died in World War Two. "The most serious reaction to such things is not the introduction of new administrative bans, but a sharp condemnation by society," said Olga Batalina, head of the ...
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Russian Navy Shipbuilding Program ‘at Risk’ - Deputy PM
MOSCOW, May 24 (RIA Novosti) - The Russian government is ready to step in to sort out the crisis in Russian naval shipbuilding which is threatening to derail the defense procurement program, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said on Friday. The government’s direct intervention in the situation is the only way of averting further problems, he said at a meeting with shipbuilding company ...
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Syria is ready for talks - Russia
Moscow - Russia said on Friday that the Syrian government had agreed in principle to attend an international peace conference proposed by Russia and the United States, and criticised what it called attempts to undermine peace ...
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Regulator Bans Vkontakte by Mistake
The accidental inclusion of popular social network Vkontakte on a list of banned online resources on Friday was "caused by human error." Vladimir Pikov, a Federal Mass Media Inspection Service official, told Digit.ru that they wanted to block links to several other potentially harmful sites found on Vkontakte, but that blacklisting the entire service was a mistake. Vkontakte has ...
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Tornado Caught on Tape Over Worlds First Nuclear Plant
Video footage showing a tornado over the Obninsk nuclear station late Thursday. (Anton Lunev / YouTube) A tornado caused a scare outside Moscow when it passed over the decommissioned site of the world's first civilian nuclear power plant. No injuries or major damage was reported after the storm Thursday evening in the Kaluga region town of Obninsk, 110 kilometers southwest of Moscow. But ...
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RPT-Fitch Publishes Russian Banks 4M13 Datawatch
Fri May 24, 2013 5:44am EDT (Repeat for additional subscribers) May 24 (Reuters) - (The following statement was released by the rating agency) Fitch Ratings has published the latest edition of its 'Russian Banks Monthly Datawatch', a monthly publication of spreadsheets with key data from Russian banks' statutory accounts. The new issue includes numbers as of 1 May 2013, as well as ...
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Russia Syria Agrees to Participate in Conference
Russia says the Syrian government has agreed in principle to attend aproposed international peace conference on the country's future. A spokesman for the Russian foreign ministry said Friday that Syria has agreed to participate in the conference that Russia and the U.S. have proposed next month in Geneva. But he said it is impossible to set a date yet because it is not clear yet who will ...
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Russian regulator blacklists social media site VK
The future of Russia's biggest social media site was thrown into a state of flux Friday after the country's communications regulator moved to shut it down.The site, VKontakte, is similar to Facebook and has roughly 200 million registered users. On Friday a notice on the website of Russia's Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass ...
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Debilitated Russian cruise ship disappears off Newfoundland coast
Four months after an empty Russian cruise ship snapped a tow line and drifted into the North Atlantic off Newfoundland, its trail has gone cold.The Canadian Coast Guard says it has received no reported sightings of the Lyubov Orlova since March 12.At the time, one of the empty vessel's emergency radio beacons flashed an unconfirmed location almost 1,300 kilometres off Newfoundland. The ...
St Petersburg Focus
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New business centre in St Petersburg remains contraversial
Okhta Centre has become one of the most contentious development projects in all of Russia. It is a project that offers St Petersburg two options that can’t be matched, either to embrace the modern world and allow a world-class business centre to be built, or maintain the city’s historic skyline, architecture and reputation as a major tourist destination with huge historical significance.
Before 2007, Okhta Centre was called Gazprom City and was promoted as such in Russian and St Petersburg news media, but from the start the project was a contentious issue, due primarily to the fact that the development calls for a massive tower to be built in its centre, a tower that will be the tallest in Europe and one of the largest in the world. Read more
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