Friday marked the beginning of Moscow's fountain season, as city officials flipped the switch to begin pumping water through the capitol's 570 water fountains. Friday marked the beginning of Moscow's fountain season, as city officials flipped the switch to begin pumping water through the capital's 570 water fountains. The official opening was held at the fountain...

... Arctic," said Viktor Afanasyev, deputy rector of the Makarov State Marine Academy in St. Petersburg. One of the most important factors, Afanasyev said, is that the Baltic is an unusually frigid sea — with average temperatures of surface waters in the Gulf of Finland in summer at 15 to 17 degrees Celsius, dropping in winter to around freezing. Large areas of the Gulf of Finland are covered with ice up to 65 centimeters thick in winter months. In some parts of the Baltic Sea, ice floes...

You flow like a river with your strange name And your asphalt is like transparent river water. Oh, Arbat, my Arbat, you are my calling, You are my joy and my sorrow. You flow like a river with your strange name And your asphalt is like transparent river water. Oh, Arbat, my Arbat, you are my calling, You are my joy and my sorrow...

... President Nursultan Nazarbayev and his government. The authority's response was decided in advance. According to his court testimony, a senior police officer was dispatched with police troops to Zhanaozen on Dec. 14. Instead of tear gas, rubber bullets or water cannons, weapons and live rounds were issued.  Video footage  from the conflict shows police firing into unarmed and peaceful protesters, often shooting people in the back. The government admits that 15 people were killed, while eyewitnesses say...

... million tons by 2017. For the U.S. oil major, the enormous Berkut platform is also a potential template for its lucrative exploration agreement signed last year with state-owned Rosneft to tap about 36 billion barrels of crude in Russia’s Arctic waters. “The strategic global alliance with Rosneft is looking at exploration, development and production in different parts of the world, including the Kara Sea,” Glenn Waller, head of ExxonMobil in Russia, told reporters Friday outside Nakhodka...

... agreement with Japan and China to protect Far East crab populations, after a similar agreement with South Korea has shown good results, a federal fisheries official said Tuesday. The new agreement will help to eliminate the black market for king crab in the waters off Russia's Pacific coast, a market worth hundreds of millions of dollars, Federal Fisheries Agency head Andrei Krainy told Interfax on Tuesday. After the anti-poaching deal with neighboring China and Japan takes effect around the end of this...

... they did on a number of occasions throughout the night. Police tactics varied from a welcoming attitude to cunning, if obvious, bureaucratic intervention: Just as some demonstrators settled down to sleep around 2:30 a.m., they were forced to move as water trucks arrived to clean the square, followed by the police. Before then, a local police colonel, Oleg Sigunov, wandered cheerfully among protesters, standing and listening to them sing songs in English and tapping his foot. The feeling in the square...

... land plot; planting of plants that cause the deterioration of a neighboring land plot or buildings and structures on it; performing earthworks on a land plot in such a way as to cause subsidence on a neighboring land plot; building a well that prevents water reaching a well on a neighboring land plot; laying sewage systems that cause contamination of a neighboring land plot, and such like. The amendment introduces "neighbors' rights" for landowners of both adjoining and non-adjoining land...

A firm with ties to the Defense Ministry has landed in hot water over the sale of real estate in a prime neighborhood in the southern city of Samara, with a federal agency saying the price tag was far too low. A firm with ties to the Defense Ministry has landed in hot water over the sale of real estate in a...

... here, and I don't see any violations," Sigunov said, adding that he was in charge until sunrise. "It's a good atmosphere." But just as some demonstrators settled down to sleep around 2:30 a.m., they were forced to move as water trucks arrived to clean the square, followed by the police. Navalny led demonstrators up Ulitsa Maroseika and Ulitsa Pokrovka to the sound of beeping car horns and the bizarre sight of Dozhd television host Pavel Lobkov riding...

... time identifies "global environmental problems associated with climate change, biodiversity loss, desertification and other negative environmental processes" as having an impact on Russian national interests. The report also singles out poor water treatment, degradation of agricultural soil and increasing volumes of waste as major challenges facing the country. Proposals in the wide-ranging document include promoting "environmentally oriented economic growth," slashing pollution...

... are considering the creation of five large terminal shipping facilities on the shores of the Kola Bay. Q: What places in Murmansk would you recommend that tourists visit? A: I would recommend visiting the seafront Russian Orthodox Church Savior on the Waters and the nuclear icebreaker Lenin, which has been turned into a museum. Other than that, our city has the northernmost aquarium in the world, the Oceanarium. It’s the only aquarium on the European continent where trained Arctic seals perform...

... Patriotic War veterans housing, despite the public promises to do so. Brave men and women to whom Russia owes its very existence after they defended the Soviet Union against the Nazis still live in dilapidated shacks without central heating, running water or indoor toilets. Instead, Russia's leaders take great pride over the country's huge nuclear arsenal that is capable of destroying the United States. At least, that was the message delivered at an international conference on missile defense held...

... 90%. 06/2007 – 02/2008 – LLC "Fraenkische RUS", Moscow. (Russian trade delegates of Fraenkische Rohrwerke" company, Germany). Company’s direction of activity: production and sales of multilayer metal-plastic pipes for heating and water distribution systems. Post: Sales Manager. Functions: searching of potential customers, dealers and engineering companies; marketing research of metal-plastic piping systems; creation and filling of clients database; budgeting; participation in...

... Situations said Sunday that a mother and her two children and an elderly woman died in Tbilisi's Ortachala neighborhood after the Kura River burst Saturday night. Officials did not describe the circumstances of their deaths. According to eyewitnesses, the water in some areas rose to 3 meters and even lifted parked cars. (AP)

... acted in the same way in Western countries. The conflict escalated as demonstrators who appeared to be in their teens and twenties, some wearing masks over their faces, began throwing pieces of asphalt broken from the pavement and bottles filled with water at police, while the crowd yelled “Shame!” and “Fascists!” A Moscow Times reporter at the event saw one demonstrator throw a Molotov cocktail. Demonstrators besieged a van of pro-Kremlin television channel NTV, with people...

... going off, Interfax reported, citing blogs of people living there. In early evening, a Defense Ministry spokesman told Interfax that the detonations appeared to have stopped. The Emergency Situations Ministry said an amphibious aircraft able to collect water from open sources had been sent to help extinguish the blaze. More than 1,800 residents of the towns of Zelenodolskoye, Dukhovskoye, Novo-Rusanovka and Sungach were evacuated as a result of the blasts. Earlier, it had been reported that around 700...

... to sell assets held by state energy holding company Rosneftegaz in 2013-15, paving the way for the sale of stakes in Gazprom and Rosneft. The decree appeared to represent a renewed drive to privatize energy assets, but the president later muddied the waters by stating that Rosneftegaz itself could take part in auctions of state-controlled energy and power companies to prevent them being sold to the private sector on the cheap. "[These companies] are undervalued, and we would not like them to...

... collected and disposed of, Bashneft said on May 11. The cleanup operation is under pressure to finish by the end of this month, when rising temperatures will lead to spring floodwaters, hampering the efforts and washing the remaining oil into surrounding water systems. The April 22 accident happened as well No. 11 was being brought back online. Investigators have said it was the result of poorly trained staff and substandard equipment. Environmental groups have emphasized the danger posed by pollution...

... Stream pipeline under the Baltic Sea for Gazprom. The Caspian-pipeline deal shows LUKoil's steady progress with the Vladimir Filanovsky field. The company pioneered tapping the Russian section of the oil-rich sea — the largest enclosed body of water on the planet — by opening its Yury Korchagin field in April 2010. Saipem will lay one oil pipeline and one gas pipeline of 114 kilometers each by the end of 2015. LUKoil signed another Caspian underwater pipeline agreement with Malaysia's...