Posts tagged as:

Siberia

Russian Diamonds

December 15, 2009

A guide to Russian and Soviet Diamonds.

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August: Russia’s month of Disaster

August 25, 2009

Yet another horrendous month for Russia, as a dam explosion kills 70, a suicide bomber kills 20, and a freighter goes missing very publicly in the Atlantic.

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Tunguska Documentary

June 16, 2009

100 years after the Tunguska explosion, a British documentary crew visits Siberia to try and find out what really happened. On the way they talk to everyone, from the crackpots who think it was an exploding alien spacecraft, to the scientists who think it was a metor.

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How to build a bridge across the Bering Strait

September 12, 2007

A few months ago, news broke (yet again) that Russia planned to build a tunnel under the Bering Strait from Siberia to Alaska. Well, it looks like a tunnel isn’t the only option on the drawing board. 
Engineers are also considering how they could build a bridge across the Bering Strait.  Or, to be more precise, [...]

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Who stole the Tunguska meteor?

August 11, 2007

The meteor which (allegedly) struck Tunguska in 1908 has been stolen:
Russian police were combing the northern Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk on Friday for a three-tonne meteorite that has disappeared from under the nose of its keepers.
The giant rock was stolen from the yard of the Tunguska Space Event foundation, whose director said it was the [...]

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90% of Russians drink anti-freeze

June 25, 2007

A BBC poll reported that 90% of Russians regularly drink anti-freeze. 
But not all was as it seemed.  Russian bloggers, taking exception to a Russian language BBC article about alcohol abuse in Izhevsk, decided to spam the BBC’s online poll:
Within hours, sometimes at a rate of two votes per second, more than 25,000 testified to being “regular” [...]

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Miss Yakutia finalist was a man

April 18, 2007

Scandal hit the Miss Virtual Yakutia contest this year, when it was revealed that one of the finalists… was a man. Newslab.ru reports:
Anzhela Adamova was a young man called Oleg Goncharov, who decided to take part in the beauty contest by joke. He went to a stylist and after that made a portfolio at [...]

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Russia plans tunnel to Alaska

April 18, 2007

The tunnel under the Bering Strait from Siberia to Alaska story has resurfaced again. Bloomsburg report that Russia plans a tunnel that will include both transport links, and a pipeline to allow the export of oil to the United States:
The planned undersea tunnel would contain a high-speed railway, highway and pipelines, as well [...]

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What’s Google Maps hiding?

April 11, 2007

The image below is from Google Maps.
Notice the blur in the middle? I didn’t put it there – Google did. Click on this link to check for yourself.
Then scroll out a bit, using the controls of the left of the screen. Notice anything else?

Yep – the blurred out area is in the Russian Far East.
Anyone [...]

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Krasnoyarsk custom house listed third best in Siberia

February 14, 2007

No really. That was the headline from a news report I just read.  Krasnoyarsk has just won an award for having the third best custom house in Siberia.
Krasnoyarsk custom house was listed third best in Siberia in the category “Best custom house team of the first category” for 2006. The first and the second [...]

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The town that Gazprom built is dying

December 15, 2006

Russian company towns are similar to the US company towns of fifty years ago. But today, they’re dying too:
Gazprom has quietly begun cutting back on the Soviet-style paternalism for which it is renowned, hiving off “social assets” such as nurseries, subsidised housing and sanatoriums. Already almost half of its 9,320 “social properties” have been [...]

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Attack of the Killer Squirrels

December 3, 2005

Clearly, one should not mess with a siberian squirrel:
Squirrels have bitten to death a stray dog which was barking at them in a Russian park, local media report.
Passers-by were too late to stop the attack by the black squirrels in a village in the far east, which reportedly lasted about a minute.
They are said to [...]

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Russia to buy Alaska?

November 27, 2005

Laurence Jarvik links to a couple of reports that Russia should buy Alaska to solve America’s finacial difficulties.
I read the original Washington Post column by Steven Pealstein that proposed selling Alaska as a solution to America’s financial problems. (It also said that Alaska had a Soviet-style economy because of federal spending obtained by Senator Ted [...]

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Should Russia waste its money on nuclear weapons

November 25, 2005

Charlie Ganske at Russia Blog has a thoughtful post about whether Russia should focus its energies on maintaining a nuclear arsenal, or on preventing the breakup of the Motherland.
Today’s Washington Times features a story on Russia’s successful test of a maneuverable re-entry warhead. While this may bolster the national pride of Russian scientists and provide [...]

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Chinese toxic spill threatens Russian city

November 24, 2005

Looks like the the toxic waste that was spilled into the drinking water in the Chinese city of Harbin is spreading northwards along the Songhuar and Amur rivers. One Russian city has already announced plans to shut down its drinking water supply:
Oleg Mitvol, deputy head of the Russian environmental monitoring agency Rosprirodnadzor, told the [...]

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