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MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin on Thursday broke new ground in Russian foreign policy by meeting not only with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder , but also with his likely replacement, opposition leader Angel Merkel. Putin and Schroeder attended the signing of a landmark agreement in Berlin between Gazprom and Germany’s E.ON and BASF to build a $5 billion gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea. Once in full operation, the new pipeline — which bypasses Belarus, Poland and Ukraine — will handle one third of Gazprom’s current annual exports to Europe. |
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Fabrizio Bensch / Reuters
President Vladimir Putin is welcomed by German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder upon his arrival at the chancellery in Berlin on Thursday to sign an accord on the pipeline. |
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A St. Petersburg apartment building that once housed workers for Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, whose endowment funds the Nobel Prize awards, is facing demolition after being condemned. The building at 32 Ulitsa Mira was constructed in 1912 for skilled workers at the Russkii Dizel engineering plant, which was owned by Nobel. Despite this, the building is not protected for its historical status.
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Russian men who wonder if they are raising someone else’s child will soon to be able to conduct tests at home on “who the father is.” If international patterns hold true, they will find the child is not theirs in one out of five cases. British company DNA Solutions, which will open its first office in Russia in St. |
All photos from issue.
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The world’s spin doctors are concerned about the power of the Internet. Blogs, or personal Internet journals, created by angry customers are costing large corporations multi-million losses despite upbeat press releases being churned out by their counterparts, speakers said at the Fifth Baltic PR Weekend conference Thursday. |
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KIEV — Ukraine’s President Viktor Yushchenko fired his government Thursday as the team which led the Orange Revolution less than a year ago broke apart amid infighting and accusations of mass corruption. |
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Street Killing Detention ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Police on Wednesday detained a suspect in their investigation of the murder of a pedestrian on Aug. 22 who was apparently beaten to death with a baseball bat because he blocked the path of a vehicle driving on the sidewalk, Interfax reported. “One of the two suspects was detained yesterday in the Fruzensky district. |
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Sun Microsystems will expand its operations in St. Petersburg, possibly hiring as many as 200 more staff within the next 10 months, the company said Thursday at a news conference. The announcement comes a month after the IT firm’s India Managing Director, Bhaskar Pramanik, identified St. |
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A notorious row in the city’s vodka industry may soon reach the courts. St. Petersburg-based alcoholic drinks producer Liviz went into counter offensive this week, rebutting the smear campaign against the firm’s vodka, which a newly formed public organization has alleged to be poisonous for consumers. |
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MOSCOW — Hansabank, the largest financial institution in the Baltic states, has started banking operations in Russia and will specialize in long-term loans to commercial clients, the bank said Tuesday. Hansabank, which plans to offer commercial loans with terms of up to 10 years, joins a handful of banks that offer long-term financing in Russia, including Raffeisenbank and Citibank. |
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Recent changes in tax legislature in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast provoked strong debates when the business communities of both regions met with the authorities Wednesday. |
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Ford denied on Thursday claims that its Vsevolozhsk plant in the Leningrad Oblast received new, “large” tax claims from the authorities. The plant’s spokeswoman Yekaterina Kulinenko refuted claims that appeared earlier in the day in an Interfax news agency report that the automaker’s Russian venture faced “large” tax claims. |
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Despite St. Petersburg’s industrial production increasing by 17 percent this year, city officials said Wednesday the boom masks issues that if neglected could lead to serious negative effects in the future. |
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Does anyone remember the Bashkirian Airlines plane that collided with a DHL cargo jet over southern Germany back in July 2002 because of mistakes made by a Swiss-based air traffic controller? Do you remember how long it took to get an apology from the Swiss government? Do you remember what happened to the air traffic controller, how he was taken in for questioning and then released without charge? And then how an unfamiliar-looking man in black appeared at his front door? The man pulled out a photograph of his wife and two daughters, who had died as a result of the controller’s mistake. |
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In early May, Swiss authorities arrested former Nuclear Power Minister Yevgeny Adamov on a U.S. warrant. Shortly thereafter a State Duma deputy from the Liberal Democratic Party, or LDPR, called for Adamov to be returned to Russia or physically eliminated in order to keep state secrets from falling into the hands of the Americans. |
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 The Tiger Lillies, once a frequent guest in Russia, will return after a two-year hiatus. The outrageous British cabaret trio last came to St. Petersburg to perform and record a collaboration album with local ska-punk band Leningrad in September 2003. In the past two years the band was extremely busy releasing two albums, “Punch and Judy,” based on a theater show, and “Death and the Bible,” described as “10 sad songs of Death and 8 jaunty tunes [about] Jesus and pals on one CD” on the band’s web site. |
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 As part of Window on The Netherlands, a massive presentation of the country’s culture and business which has been held annually in St. Petersburg since 1996, there is Dutch Punch, a new mini-festival bringing alternative music and film from Holland to Russia. |
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A concert by Patti Smith last Friday turned out to be one of the best rock and roll shows that St. Petersburg has ever seen. Backed by a three-piece band including her long-time guitarist Lenny Kaye, Smith covered her entire career from her seminal 1975 debut album “Horses” to semi-improvized songs that she composed while in St. |
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Cutting-edge classical music by Finland’s Kaija Saariaho and Magnus Lindberg, Norway’s Rolf Wallin, and Iceland’s Haukur Tomasson will be performed during the New Nordic Music Festival beginning Saturday and running through Sept. |
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A French-Russian film crew is in St. Petersburg this week to shoot a series of key episodes for a historical movie based on a French novel about an astonishing horse ride by a Russian cossack through Siberia. “Serko” tells the story of young cossack officer Dmitry Peshkov’s staggering 9,000 kilometer ride across Siberia in the winter of 1889-1890. |
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By Matt Brown and Uilleam Blacker The St. Petersburg Times Although St. Petersburg has been home to Irish pubs — such as Mollie’s and The Shamrock — since the fall of the Soviet Union, a more recent phenomenon has been the establishment of English pubs following in their wake. |
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NEW ORLEANS — National Guard troops prepared to hunt on Thursday for thousands of people believed still in ruined New Orleans, as the White House sent a new wave of top officials into areas ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. The New Orleans stragglers were but a fraction of the million people displaced by the Aug. |
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Roberts Awaits Nod WASHINGTON (Reuters) — U.S. Chief Justice nominee John Roberts’ confirmation hearing will begin Monday, Senate leaders said, with Democrats vowing to take as long as needed to question the 50-year-old conservative who could lead the Supreme Court for decades. |
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NEW YORK — In the end James Blake, like the rest of Flushing Meadows, had no choice but to embrace the legend. Andre Agassi’s astounding recovery from two sets and a break down to win their all-American U.S. Open quarter-final started on Wednesday, finished on Thursday and will be remembered for years. |
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MOSCOW — A 10-man Russian side held out for a 0-0 draw against Portugal on Wednesday at Lokomotiv Stadium in a result that did it no favors in its fight for a place in the World Cup finals but still left it with a chance of qualifying. |
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England Loses Qualifier BELFAST (Reuters) — Northern Ireland beat England 1-0 on Wednesday to seriously dent the chances of its old rival winning European Group Six and qualifying directly for the World Cup finals. The win, Northern Ireland’s first over England in Belfast since 1927 and only its seventh in 98 meetings, is a huge embarrassment for manager Sven-Goran Eriksson. |
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