Petersburg marks 20th anniversary as UNESCO heritage site.

ST. PETERSBURG, December 12 (Itar-Tass) - St. Petersburg celebrates on
Sunday the 20th anniversary since the inclusion of the historic centre of
the city in the UNESCO World Heritage List. The historic for Russia's
'northern capital' decision was taken at the 14th session of the UNESCO
World Heritage Committee in the town of Banff (Canada) on December 12,
1990.
The object "Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of
Monuments" is unique both in the composition and scale of monuments. It is
located in two regions of the Russian Federation (St. Petersburg and the
Leningrad region) and consists of 36 components and 136 elements, covering
an area of over 26 thousand hectares. The distance between distant
elements of the object is sometimes 100 or more kilometres.
In 2005, the project of retrospective stock taking of objects that
were at the time included in the World Heritage List, was started - it was
announced by the World Heritage Committee. Since then, the city on the
Neva River, in close collaboration with the World Heritage Centre and
experts from the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS)
conducts analysis of the nomination materials. In collaboration with
UNESCO, St. Petersburg in March of this year received a joint
UNESCO-ICOMOS reactive monitoring mission.
The experts could personally see that there are no reasons for the
inclusion of the northern capital in the List of World Heritage in Danger.
Nevertheless, the city in a year has to solve the problem of the borders
and the status of the World Heritage site. Petersburg experts in the field
of cultural heritage protection have been engaged in this for several
years, clarifying the boundaries of monuments in the city on the Neva
River, determined by UNESCO nomination in 1990.
A particularly difficult situation is developing regarding objects
located outside the historic centre of St. Petersburg. Here UNESCO experts
demand to specify the boundaries of 1990, as there are a number of
mistakes there. In particular, out of 136 components that make up a single
object of cultural heritage, 63 are the monuments of federal significance,
13 - regional, 60 - do not have legal status. And 8 objects in this list
are absent - they do not exist or have disappeared, 5 - lost their
integrity before the start of World War II, and 20 - after the war.
The St. Petersburg Committee for State Control, Use and Protection of
Historical and Cultural Monuments (KGIOP) told Itar-Tass that a meeting of
the Council for the Conservation of Cultural Heritage under the government
of St. Petersburg, devoted to the jubilee, will be held on December 16. A
report of the head of a working group for the preparation of documentation
of the St. Petersburg nomination of UNESCO, Professor of St. Petersburg
State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering (GASU) Sergei
Sementsov, will be presented at the meeting. This issue is expected to be
settled at the 35th session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee in 2011.
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.Russian tourist missing in Israel.

TEL-AVIV, December 12 (Itar-Tass) - On Saturday, a Russian tourist
went missing in Israel as he was swimming in the Mediterranean Sea. Police
spokesman Alex Kagalsky told Itar-Tass that the "41-year-old Russian, in
spite of a violent storm, decided to swim in the area of the Sironit beach
in the city of Netanya and was carried away by the wave."
According to the officer, the initial search proved unsuccessful. At
dawn, the search operation will continue. The name of the tourist has not
been reported, it is only known that rescuers were called his friends who
remained on shore.
In recent days, the weather has sharply deteriorated in Israel -
showers with strong winds have hit the country. The bad weather has also
caused disruption in electric power supply in a number of areas of the
country.
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.Specialists start analysing crashed Tu-154 cockpit voice recorder.

MOSCOW, December 12 (Itar-Tass) - Specialists has started to analyse
records of the cockpit voice recorder of the Tu-154M airliner that
crash-landed at Moscow's Domodedovo airport. They have also begun drafting
a protocol of the talks, the Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC) told
Itar-Tass on Saturday.
The "black box" was found on Friday. The opening of the container in
the IAC scientific-technical laboratory and the subsequent analysis took
place in the presence of the Investigative Committee (SK) of the Russian
Federation. It has been established that record of the emergency flight
exists, it is being deciphered, the IAC noted.
Honoured Pilot of Russia Yuri Sytnik, who has for 20 years worked as
the commander of similar type of aircraft, told Itar-Tass earlier that the
voice recorder "should have registered all the commands and talks of the
crewmembers in the cabin during the last 35-45 minutes before the time of
the accident or other emergency."
The other two "black boxes" a parametric and emergency - were found on
the day of the accident, their data have already been partly deciphered
and published.
The airliner's accident occurred on December 4. The Tu-154 liner bound
for Makhachkala with more than 160 people on board developed engine
problems minutes after takeoff from Vnukovo. The plane made an emergency
landing at Domodedovo airport, skidded off the runway and broke up into
three parts. Two passengers died - 80-year-old Roza Gadzhiyeva, mother of
a Dagestan Constitutional Court judge, and brother of the president of
Dagestan Gadzhimurad Magomedov, and 82 passengers were injured.
The aircraft operating the flight was a Tupolev Tu-154M, registered
RA-85744. It had been built in 1992, and was equipped with three Soloviev
D-30KU jet engines for propulsion. The aircraft had been completely
overhauled in 2009, and met all relevant European safety standards, as it
had been used for the transport of the Belgium national football team in
November 2010, a flight which required it to meet European regulations.
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