Word: petersburgs
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Last month, officials in St. Petersburg approved the construction of a 400-m-tall skyscraper in the historic center of the city. The city's beautiful baroque and neoclassical architecture, much of it built in the 18th and 19th centuries when St. Petersburg was Russia's capital, will soon be dwarfed by the Okhta Center, which will house an arm of the state gas monopoly Gazprom. (See pictures of Moscow...
...decision to build this thing cannot be called corrupt in any regular sense," says Sergei Malkov, a city councilor and one of the three members of the St. Petersburg land-use committee to vote against the plan. (Eleven voted in favor and one abstained.) "Gazprom is not the kind of organization that bribes or corrupts people from the bottom. It pushes through its initiatives from the very top," Malkov tells TIME. (Read "Russia-Europe Gas Spat Ends...
...While locals are up in arms about the project, it has also resonated overseas, in part because the historic center of St. Petersburg - once home to Empress Catherine the Great, poet Alexander Pushkin and novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky - has been listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, the cultural arm of the U.N., since 1990. If the tower is built, the body has said it may revoke the city's status, as its "outstanding universal value" would be under threat. (See pictures of the natural sites nominated for the World Heritage List...
...that's (sort of) equipped to handle a delegation of Moscow bigwigs, there were hordes of militia and security-service agents hanging out in the lobby and outside the hotel. (Wi-fi, fine dining and down comforters, among other amenities, are not common in Russia outside Moscow and St. Petersburg.) At night, the almighty descended on the bar in the first floor of the Parus for a spot of vodka or black tea. The bartender, who declined to give his name for fear of losing his job, quipped: "They ate, they drank, they did nothing...
...shot backers argue that the cyber-billboard can help prevent repeat offenses. "If you're screwing up with DUI or domestic violence, it's harder to keep doing it if it's harder to hide it," says Dwayne Mayo, a former St. Petersburg security guard who publishes Cellmates, a weekly print tabloid dedicated solely to mug shots. Stephen Buckley, publisher of TampaBay.com, where mug shots draw about 13% of unique visitors each month, says his site didn't start up its gallery for the shame factor...