Mysterious craters may signal global warming
Strange holes have appeared in the permafrost-covered Russian North, sparking debates over their origin and cause. The craters, first reported by reindeer herders, have now drawn the attention of scientists and piqued the curiosity of the entire country.
The first and largest hole was found on the Yamal Peninsula and made headlines after a witness posted a video on YouTube. Located about 30 kilometers north of Salekhard, the crater measures some 60 meters across and has smooth walls and an icy lake at its bottom. Speculation that the crater may have been caused by an impact event (like last year’s Chelyabinsk meteor) were dismissed after researchers found no traces of burning or radiation around its rim.
Scientists now believe that the holes are caused by giant gas bubbles. As global warming melts the permafrost, methane is freed from its icy confines and bursts to the surface.
“As the ground becomes porous,” Vladimir Melnikov of the Cryosphere Institute explained in an interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta, “the gas expands the pores, pushing its way upward before blasting several meters of icy ground into the air full force.”
This is the working hypothesis, in any event. Since the first crater was found, two more have been reported.
Russian pizzeria delivers by drone
A Russian pizza chain in Syktyvkar has pioneered pizza delivery by drone. Dodo Pizza launched its high-flying business in a local park and promised to expand the service to university campuses and even other cities. The process starts with a remotely located pizza agent taking orders and forwarding them to the kitchen. Within an hour, a tiny drone arrives and lowers the hot pizza to the agent, who then hand delivers it to the customer. While this enterprising business has caused a small sensation, local authorities are not impressed and have accused Dodo of violating aviation regulations.
Opposition-friendly channel booted from premises
Months after a clash with authorities precipitated by a poorly-worded opinion poll question about World War II, the independent Dozhd (Rain) TV channel is still broadcasting, despite losing most of its carriers and audience (see Russian Life, March/April 2014).
Cutting salaries and laying off half its staff, among other cost-cutting measures, could not prevent the channel from losing some R21 million ($600,000) over the first six months of the year. To make ends meet, Dozhd has hiked its subscription fees for internet users by nearly 500 percent (an annual subscription now costs about $140).
Meanwhile, pressure on the self-styled “optimistic channel” is not letting up. Dozhd is being evicted from its offices in Red October, a former chocolate factory in the heart of Moscow. The channel’s owners have not yet announced where they plan to relocate.
Yet another blow comes in the form of a law recently signed by President Putin. It forbids cable and satellite channels from showing commercials, essentially depriving them of income. Along with Dozhd, which has a heavy political focus, about 1,400 other channels, big and small (including those focusing on children and nature), may go belly up as a result of the new rules. The rules go into effect on January 1, 2015.
Mosfilm to digitally remaster Eisenstein’s classic
Russia’s Mosfilm studio is taking on the monumental task of restoring Ivan the Terrible, the two-part film made by Sergei Eisenstein that was unfinished at the time of the renowned director’s death in 1948.
The studio plans to release it in digital HD on its seventieth anniversary later this year. Each part of the film is about 100 minutes long and has multiple defects, said Viktor Tamazin, head of Mosfilm’s computer graphics department.
Ivan the Terrible earned Eisenstein the prestigious Stalin Prize after the first part was shown in theaters in 1945. Part II was shelved due to censorship (Ivan was portrayed as too weak, while his oprichniki henchmen were not “progressive” enough). It was not shown publicly until well after Stalin’s death.
The movie was shot in Almaty, where Eisenstein was relocated during World War II, along with many other filmmakers. The score was composed by Sergei Prokofiev. Fragments of a third part of the movie surfaced during perestroika but were never edited into a coherent whole.
Sanctions fuel capital flight, slow growth
Despite what Russian politicians might be saying about Russia being ready for Western sanctions, the economy is suffering. As investors exit the market, anticipating further moves by the European Union and the United States that may restrict their business in the country, Russian economic growth has essentially flat-lined, even by domestic estimates. The government projects economic growth to be 0.5 percent this year, the slowest since 2000, when Vladimir Putin first became president.
In response, the Russian Central Bank raised a key auction rate in July, increasing borrowing costs for the third time since the beginning of the Ukrainian conflict, to keep inflation in check. Meanwhile, capital flight reached $74.6 billion in just the first six months of the year, more than all of last year.
Hollywood diva Uma Thurman has appeared in a short film by the little-known director Ivan Petukhov, whose screenplay won a US contest called Jameson First Shot. The film is called Gift, and in it Thurman plays a woman who is wrapping presents in a department store and meets an illusionist.
Gold medalist finally gives birth
One of Russia’s most decorated athletes, pole vaulter Yelena Isinbayeva, gave birth to a baby girl this summer, demonstrating the truth of her prediction of the child’s sex during an announcement of a career time-out during last year’s World Championships.
The 32-year-old double Olympic champion is spending time in Monaco but plans to return to pole vaulting ahead of the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro. Meanwhile, hot on her heels, up and comer 18-year-old Alyona Lutkovskaya has beaten Isinbayeva’s junior record by clearing 4.5 meters.
Construction challenges ahead
Pressure continues to build from those who want to ban Russia from hosting the 2018 World Cup because of the conflict in Ukraine. Most recently, UK Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said Russia should be stripped of the right to host the event. “You can’t have this, the beautiful game, marred by the ugly aggression of Russia on the Russian Ukrainian border,” he told the Sunday Times.
The World Cup’s governing body, FIFA, has rejected such calls and sought to distance the game from politics. President Putin sat with FIFA President Joseph Blatter at a match in Rio de Janeiro in July, where Russia was officially handed the baton, as it were, for the next World Cup.
Among other challenges for the 2018 event, Russia must construct a dozen new football stadiums in several cities – a task arguably more challenging than the Sochi Olympic Games. Already, authorities are considering reducing the number of host cities from 11 to 10, while Russia’s Audit Chamber has learned that seven of the planned stadiums will cost up to three times more than original estimates.
Looking for profits in new casinos
In Sochi meanwhile, investors will now be able to build casinos in former Olympic venues – apparently a result of the resort town’s less than stellar post-Olympics commercial performance.
President Putin initially rejected calls to allow gambling in the area, saying it would scare off family vacationers. He has since thought better of it and signed a law designating some Olympic venues as potential gambling sites. In 2009, Russia banned gambling in all but four areas of the country, most of them so far-flung and underdeveloped that they have little chance of becoming popular destinations.
Investors, faced with a lack of tourists at their overpriced hotels, will now be able to build casinos at certain facilities that were developed with private money for the Olympics. Casinos will also be allowed on the Crimean peninsula, much to the chagrin of the local Communist Party, which voted against the measure. Local authorities said they plan to limit the casinos to Yalta, the famous Black Sea resort town on the peninsula’s southern tip.
A third of Russians have never seen the sea. 33% of Russians have never taken a seaside vacation, mostly the rural segment of the population (44%). When people vacation on the coast, they mostly choose the Black Sea (53%), Azov Sea (15%), and Baltic Sea (7%).
Public Opinion Foundation
Russia’s new budget airline (Dobrolyot, launched by Aeroflot) was started up earlier this summer to service flights between Moscow and Crimea. In July, EU sanctions forbade it from expanding to flights serving European cities.
Olympstroi, the state corporation overseeing construction for the Olympic Games, reports that the final, official cost of the Sochi Games was R1,524 billion ($43.5 billion according to the current rate of exchange). In 2007, authorities said the games would cost 314 billion rubles ($9 billion)
Тот канал или то СМИ, которое сегодня займет не патриотическую точку зрения, просто окажется экономически неуспешным, потому что от него отвернется аудитория.
“Any channel or any media outlet that today adopts an unpatriotic viewpoint will simply end up an economic failure, because its audience will turn away from it.”
Alexei Volin, deputy communication minister (Dozhd channel)
“Businessmen want to work, to invest, build factories and develop trade. And businessmen are very concerned about what they hear on radio and TV.”
Former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, on Russia’s increasing economic and political isolation (ITAR-TASS)
Это произошло не из-за каких-то системных инженерных сбоев, а от недостаточности дисциплины, безалаберности отдельных сотрудников.
“This happened not due to some systemic engineering failures, but because of a lack of discipline, because of the carelessness of certain employees.”
Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin,on the causes of a deadly derailment in the Moscow Metro (Rossiya channel)
Конечно, влияют, но у меня нет имущества в США, нет счетов. Но санкции не дают мне возможности изучить красоту их природы, изучить их культуру, показать своим детям их природу. Я хотел прокатиться на мотоцикле по Америке. <….> Это их решение лишает меня этой возможности.
“Of course they matter, but I don’t have any property or accounts in the United States. Still, the sanctions keep me from admiring their natural wonders, studying their culture, or showing their natural wonders to my children. I wanted to take a motorcycle trip across America… this decision deprives me of this opportunity.”
Rosneft Chairman Igor Sechin, one of the first to be sanctioned by the United States, on how the measures will effect his life. (RIA Novosti)
Крым — это часть России. Возврат, передача или другие манипуляции даже не подлежат обсуждению.
“Crimea is a part of Russia. Its return, handover or any other manipulations are not even up for discussion.”
Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov, on whether Moscow will give Crimea back in order to normalize relations with Ukraine and the West. (Russkaya Sluzhba Novostei)
Valeria Novodvorskaya, a dissident and writer who spent years in the Soviet prison system and stood up to practically every Soviet and Russian leader, died from complications following an injury. She was 64.
Known to her peers as a radical non-conformist, Novodvorskaya was often ridiculed by those who did not agree with her, yet most recognized her as steadfast and committed to her beliefs. At 19, she was arrested while distributing leaflets that contained an anti-Soviet poem she authored. She spent three years in an asylum, diagnosed, like many who criticized Soviet rule, with “sluggish schizophrenia.”
After the Soviet Union collapsed, Novodvorskaya continued to speak out against most Kremlin leaders, Boris Yeltsin being an exception. Sharp-tongued and stubborn, she publicly tore up pictures of Communist leaders, including Lenin, and called Putin’s regime a “Chekist junta.” Perhaps because she never had children of her own, many called her Baba Lera and “the grandmother of the Russian Revolution.” Others however, were less fond.
Novodvorskaya worked as a translator from French and English in the Soviet era and wrote in various opposition-friendly media until her death. “She is a Don Quixote in her struggle for freedom, for democracy, for universal values,” said rights campaigner Mikhail Fedotov. “I consider this a much higher calling than the work of a politician.”
The last Soviet foreign minister, hailed by the West as one of the architects of perestroika, and later the president of Georgia, Eduard Shevardnadze, passed away in Tbilisi. He was 86.
Credited with helping steer the Soviet Union and Europe through several key years during the end of the Cold War, Shevardnadze was an instrumental partner of Mikhail Gorbachev. But while Gorbachev was an outgoing, optimistic leader, Shevardnadze – christened “The White Fox” by some diplomats – was “like a wise owl who carried the aura, and burden, of intelligence and insight,” said former Secretary of State James Baker, who called his Georgian friend “one of the greatest statesmen of his lifetime.”
Shevardnadze’s legacy as president in Georgia, where he returned in the early 1990s to rule for a decade, was not, however, what many Georgians had hoped for. He was accused of instigating corruption and crime in his native land, and of impoverishing the population. Eventually, opposition forces and mass protests, led by Mikhail Saakashvili, forced him to resign and retreat to his Tbilisi residence, where for the last ten years he led a private life. He was buried alongside his wife Nanuli.
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