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A local family is reconsidering taking a holiday in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el Sheikh after terrorist bombs killed more than 60 people there on Saturday. But the Yakovlev family say they are only postponing a planned vacation in Egypt this August or September until a later date. “We have decided to postpone our visit until November, December or January,” Alexei Yakovlev, 20, a computer science student and the oldest son in the family, said on Monday. “The resort is destroyed now but the hospitality industry is crucial to the resort, so I am sure everything will be rebuilt by winter.” Russian vacationers reacted calmly to terrorists attacks in the popular Red Sea resort, as Egyptian police hunting for bombers distributed photographs of some 50 foreigners, including five Pakistanis, who may be linked with attacks that killed at least 64 people. |
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MANTRA MARATHON
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Russian Buddhists taking part in a world-wide three-day meditation marathon at St. Petersburg’s Buddhist Center, which began on Sunday. The contemplative feat aims to spread understanding throughout humanity, said local Buddhist leader Alexander Koibagarov. |
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MOSCOW — Returning from vacation Monday, former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov accused the authorities of trying to discredit him through a criminal probe into his acquisition of a state-owned villa, and of attempting to frighten off potential opposition. “I have no doubts that the systematic slanderous campaign aiming to discredit me, based on lies and misrepresenting the facts, is part of the authorities’ general plan to purge the political landscape,” Kasyanov said in a brief statement circulated by his consultancy firm a few hours after his return to Moscow from vacation abroad.
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Governor Valentina Matviyenko vetoed 18 of 52 laws Friday submitted by the Legislative Assembly shortly after lawmakers went on vacation this month, approving mainly new legislation that widens the plenary powers of her own office, media reported last week. |
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MOSCOW — The director of an English language center and one of the country’s most notorious spammers was found beaten to death in his apartment in central Moscow, police said Monday. |
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The home of the leader of the Democratic faction in the city’s Legislative Assembly was burglarized on Sunday night, Interfax reported. The thieves broke into Andrei Chernykh’s apartment on Grazhdansky Prospekt through the balcony door on the third floor, taking a notebook containing valuable information, documents relating to his political work, his Assembly member identification document, two air pistols, two hunting knives, three suits, ski equipment and about $1,000 in cash. |
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Anti-Terror Funds Up MOSCOW — The government will earmark $125 million to fight terrorism next year, a more than five-fold increase from the amount spent in 2005, Interfax reported Monday. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — The Supreme Court on Monday convicted three federal judges of fraud for illegally expropriating dozens of Moscow apartments worth some $5 million in the late 1990s. The court also found Judges Vasily Savelyuk, Nina Ivchenko and Nina Mishina guilty of being members of a criminal organization and of abusing their posts by stealing the apartments of owners who died but had left no will or legal instructions for transferring the property to their relatives. |
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Dock workers at St. Petersburg’s port began a limited three-day strike Monday to demand better working conditions, accusing port operators of pressuring them to accept less favorable contracts, news reports said. |
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Chinese Tourists Come ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — China will allow organized tourists to visit Russia, “with no visa requirement” from August 25, online Chinese news service Xinhuanet reported Monday. After three years of negotiation, China and Russia signed a tourism memorandum, which allows more groups of Chinese tourists to visit the nation. |
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In a sign that the Russian Orthodox Church wants to play a role in national politics, its leading spokesman warned a gathering of pro-Kremlin youth leaders that an Orange Revolution in Russia would bring only bloody chaos. |
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Police arrested six protesters Saturday after they shouted insults at people taking part in Latvia’s first gay pride march, BBC News reported. Hundreds of protesters blocked the city’s narrow streets, outnumbering the marchers. Police altered the march route to form a chain around the parade participants to protect them. |
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MOSCOW — The official Russian translation of “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” the latest installment in the popular series, will not be released until December, but impatient fans needed only to go online to start reading the book two days after its release in the West last week. |
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A business conÿict between former and current management threatens to spell the end for one the city’s oldest printing houses, Svetoch. In an extreme measure, the plant’s employees plan to launch a public protest on Tuesday. In a letter to the local media the staff of Svetoch said they intend to express their concerns over the future of the printing house, which they rate as critical due to management disputes. |
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Special to Vedomosti International automobile holding Atlant M plans to build a car village near St. Petersburg that will accommodate several car dealerships, selling different brands in the same place. |
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MOSCOW — Minority shareholders in St. Petersburg-based Baltika brewery are gearing up for a court battle in their continued offensive against majority owner Baltic Beverages Holding, or BBH. In order to beef up their recent victory, which stalled Baltika’s plan to purchase a 70. |
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A St. Petersburg-based firm declared that combining industrial production with construction in one single business is not only be novel idea, but a very profitable one. |
 Contrary to the historical image of the city, St. Petersburg’s citizens seem more and more willing to shed signs of age and choose to pay handsome prices for pre-emptive health strikes and cosmetically enhanced beauty. By fall, a spate of anti-age treatment facilities will be running in the city’s clinics, charging as much as 3,000 euros just for a diagnosis, and advising well-to-do clients not only how to prevent illness, but also how to maintain their “wellness. |
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State to Regain Homes ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — St. Petersburg authorities will return state property ownership to desolate children’s camps located in the suburbs, the governor said Saturday, Interfax reported. |
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MOSCOW — The IT industry is sending an urgent warning that plans to turn Russia into a high-tech powerhouse will fail unless government and businesses pay more attention to educating a new generation of specialists. Ignoring the widening gap between the country’s stagnating educational system and the runaway development of the world’s information technology sector could threaten not only the country’s global competitiveness but also its national security, industry players say. |
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Hoping to capture the less SMS-conscious business market, INFON, a leading mobile content provider, launched a service to keep subscribers informed in real time about the latest moves in Gazprom shares. |
 A man may boast of his home as his castle, but Russians are increasingly turning to building cottages that are plain, economical, and rather small. Gone is the swagger of post-Soviet exaggeration, bulky turrets and superfluous spaciousness. Igor Firsov, head of architectural firm Art-Studio, says Russians have come to choose practicality over luxury. |
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Though retail outlets built in central, mainly residential areas still attract some shop tenants, most are moving to malls. The wise retailers are also considering the more remote districts, saying homogenous brand settlement appeals to consumers more than closeness to the city center. |
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MOSCOW — The benchmark Russian Trading System, or RTS, index came within striking distance of an all-time high on Monday, the first day of extended trading hours on the bourse. The dollar-denominated index rose 1.18 percent to close at 779.19 points on the back of an almost 4-percent gain by Sberbank. |
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Loan Modernize Ships ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — North Sea Steamship (Severnoye Morskoye Parochodstvo) took out a $1 million short-term loan from St. Petersburg-based Sovetsky bank, the company said Monday in a statement. |
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On the last day of its spring session, the State Duma adopted a law on Special Economic Zones, which was signed by President Putin on July 23. While anticipated by the international business community to boost development into knowledge-based sectors of the economy, the law left many international investors disappointed. |
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Let me tell you about my son. He is very handsome, with dark eyelashes that cover half his cheek when he sleeps. He is very talented, and serious about his violin. |
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The scandal over the Russian-Estonian border agreement should be used in political science textbooks as a good example of how normal political systems work in a democracy. The reaction of the Russian public to the events was the only abnormal thing about the story. |
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The United States long ago ceased to be anything like a living, thriving republic. But it retained the legal form of a republic, and that counted for something: As long as the legal form still existed, even as a gutted shell, there was hope it might be filled again one day with substance. |
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 U.S. Ambassador Alexander Vershbow had been in the job only a couple of months when the terrorists struck on Sept. 11, 2001. The attacks brought an outpouring of sympathy in Russia for Americans, as evidenced by the flowers that piled up outside the U.S. Embassy, and ushered in a period of cooperation between Washington and Moscow that looked set to change the relationship forever. |
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Issues Archive