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MOSCOW — The world’s governing body for Internet domain names voted Friday to allow the use of non-Latin characters, clearing the way for the .ðô suffix and web sites named in Cyrillic. The first step in a long effort to make the Internet less reliant on the Latin alphabet allows “nations and territories to apply for Internet extensions … made up of characters from their national language,” the not-for-profit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, said in a statement following a weeklong summit in Seoul, South Korea. President Dmitry Medvedev — who has his own video blog and claims to be conversant in Russian web slang, known as Olbanian — made acquiring Cyrillic web addresses an early priority of his administration. But commercial web site operators in Russia shrugged off the changes, saying they would provide more flexibility but were unlikely to attract masses of new users. “This is only the first step, but it is an incredibly big one and a historic move toward the internationalization of the Internet,” Rod Beckstrom, ICANN’s president and CEO, said in the statement. “We just made the Internet much more accessible to millions of people in regions such as Asia, the Middle East and Russia.” ICANN chairman Peter Dengate Thrush called it “the biggest technical change to the Internet since it was created four decades ago.” The U.S. Commerce Department opened the U.S.-based ICANN to broader international oversight on Sept. 30, after years of criticism that Washington had a stranglehold on Internet regulation. Russia will submit its .ðô application Nov. 16, the first day ICANN starts accepting them, said Andrei Kolesnikov, president of the Coordination Center for ... |
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GOLDEN AUTUMN
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A blustery wind blows the leaves by the Clock Tower in Vyborg, 150 kilometers to the north of St. Petersburg. Forecasters are predicting snow toward the end of the week. |
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The March Against Hatred, an annual rally against neo-Nazi and racist violence held on Saturday, was raided by the Federal Migration Service. Officers started to single out participants of African descent and check their residency permits as the demonstration reached Ploshchad Sakharova, where the platform for the speakers had been installed. Ella Polyakova, ...
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Nine cases of the H1N1 flu virus have been registered at the St. Petersburg State University of Civil Aviation, the Russian Consumer Watchdog told Interfax on Monday. "A hotbed of sickness is developing in the university," the spokesperon said. Two other cases of swine flu have been reported in local institutions of higher education. A fourth-year student at the Shtiglitz Academy of Applied and Industrial Arts fell ill on October 20 and was hospitalized two days later with H1N1, said Valentina Badanina, who manages the university clinic. A second-year student at Bonch-Bruevich University is also sick with the virus, Badanina confirmed. Both individuals' close contacts have been examined, but their institutions remain open to students. The University of Civil Aviation, meanwhile, has been quarantined with classes cancelled until November 12. Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko on Friday banned public gatherings, including election rallies, and closed schools for three weeks after confirming the country’s ... |
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KEEP ON RUNNIN'
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A jogger unlikely to be accused of overdressing runs close to the Peter and Paul Fortress on Sunday, with the Neva River and St. Isaac's Cathedral in the background. |
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MOSCOW — A military cargo plane crashed Sunday shortly after taking off from a Sakha republic airport, killing all 11 crew members on board, emergency officials said. The cause of the crash of the four-engine Il-76 jet was unknown. It came just weeks after aviation authorities temporarily grounded all Il-76s after one of them lost an engine during takeoff. The ...
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Debate surrounding the dismissal of a controversial city ombudsman and member of United Russia party Igor Mikhailov is becoming more heated. The St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, which removed controversial city ombudsman Igor Mikhailov from his post ... |
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In a move that would leave Russia as one of the few countries with HIV travel restrictions, U.S. President Barack Obama said Friday that the United States ... |
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BERLIN — Helmut Kohl, George Bush, and Mikhail Gorbachev hailed their excellent relations at a Berlin cabaret on Saturday, 20 years after the Cold War leaders watched over the Wall’s fall. The German ex-chancellor (1982-1998), US former president (1989-1993) ... |
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 Che Bar&Gallery on Friday unveiled “Photo Book About Sweden,” an exhibit of contemporary Swedish photography. Presented in conjunction with the Swedish ... |
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MOSCOW — Somali pirates seized a Thai-flagged fishing trawler with 23 Kaliningrad sailors and were sailing it Sunday toward a pirate base off Somalia’s coast. Pirates on two skiffs captured the Thai Union 3 ship Thursday as it was fishing for tuna about 200 nautical miles north of the Seychelles archipelago ... |
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 MOSCOW — The Russian government is only making alcohol consumption worse by increasing taxes for brewers, according to Jorgen Buhl Rasmussen, president of Carlsberg, which owns Baltika brewery. Last year was extremely successful for Danish Carlsberg. ... |
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WARSAW — Poland and Russia are “much closer” to a final agreement on gas supplies after their respective state-controlled gas companies struck a deal on ... |
 MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Friday that Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko blocked a money transfer for Russian gas and risked provoking a new supply crisis that could disrupt flows to Europe. “It seems we have problems with payment ... |
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MOSCOW — Russian banks failed to raise lending to businesses and consumers even after the central bank cut interest rates in the hope of easing credit ... |
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MOSCOW — Russian manufacturing contracted in October as companies cut jobs and failed to build up inventories, casting doubt on the strength of the recovery. VTB Capital’s Purchasing Managers’ Index fell to 49.6 from 52 in September, the Moscow-based ... |
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MOSCOW — TNK-BP Vice President Maxim Barsky may be named acting chief executive officer of Russia’s third-largest oil producer in a move to end a shareholder ... |
 MOSCOW — Customers at a discount grocery store in northern Moscow have been gathering around the newest automated terminal there, a bright-green machine with a flashing touch-screen and a slot for “prizes.” Emblazoned with the words “Charity Lottery,” ... |
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 On Friday, City Hall signed an agreement with VTB, Fraport and Copelozus, granting the consortium control of Pulkovo airport by May 2010. The agreement ... |
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MOSCOW — Russia will more than halve the budget for bank recapitalization next year as the industry turns around, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said. The government will earmark 100 billion rubles ($3.4 billion), down from a previously planned 250 billion ... |
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RUSSIA — Russian banks are committing to funding costs so high they risk becoming unsustainable, a trend that constitutes a greater threat to the country’s ... |
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 They say the devil is in the details, but if you listen to leading Russian politicians and conservative journalists and analysts you would think the devil is in NATO. Despite the fact that NATO has radically changed its military structure and heavily ... |
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I am sitting in the Akademiya Cafe reading a newspaper and sipping a cappuccino, which I would give the title of “Best in Moscow” if I still practiced ... |
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 Although often referred to as Russia’s Cote d’Azur, don’t come to Sochi expecting to find the French Riviera. You’ll soon realize your mistake when you land at the airport, which, despite preparations for the Olympics, remains something of an embarrassment. Sochi is a chaotic mix of a spectacular natural ... |
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