Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Russia

Moscow Mayor Plans To Replace Casinos With Libraries

Moscow's next library? (AFP)

February 28, 2007 -- Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov has called on the city's gambling halls to eventually be turned into libraries.

Russia: Kremlin Sets Its Sights On Gambling

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February 28, 2007

"More than 2,000 gaming halls were opened in a short time in Moscow and we are now actively closing them down. Let's make book clubs out of gambling centers," AFP quoted the mayor as saying today in a statement.

Reading Initiative

The measure is seen as part of an effort to increase falling reading rates among Muscovites. A city official today cited statistics that show that half of the city's residents do not purchase books, 40 percent don't read books at all, and 60 do not subscribe to any publication, AFP reported.

Under legislation passed last year, thousands of Russian casinos and gaming halls are to be shut down and moved to four special zones in different parts of the country, all outside cities.

Gambling venues will begin closing this summer and continue through to 2009.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin covers his face during a conference of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs in Moscow on February 9.

Administrative (Resource) Breakdown

Administrative resources make up the glue that holds authoritarian structures like Putin's power vertical together. And there have been plenty of signs recently that this glue is weakening. More

Syrians in the northwestern town of Kfar Nubul pose with a cartoon depicting Russia

Angry Over Syria, Arab World Threatens Russian Boycott

Groups in a number of Arab states, angry over the Russian-Chinese veto of a UN resolution aimed at stopping the violence in Syria, have called for a one-day boycott of Russian and Chinese goods on February 12. More

Alla Dzhioyeva attends a protest by her supporters in Tskhinvali on January 28.

South Ossetian Opposition Leader Hospitalized After Raid

Alla Dzhioyeva, the opposition candidate whose victory in a runoff ballot in November for de facto president of Georgia's breakaway region of South Ossetia was swiftly annulled by the republic's Supreme Court, was taken to a hospital after a raid by some 200 masked security personnel on her headquarters in Tskhinvali. More