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MOSCOW — Gazprom said Wednesday it had agreed to buy control of Roman Abramovich’s Sibneft for $13.01 billion in the biggest takeover deal in Russian history. The deal will put nearly one-third of the nation’s oil output in state hands and revive Gazprom’s bid to become a global energy giant, just months after it failed to acquire prize oil assets through a merger with state-owned Rosneft earlier this year. Gazprom, already the world’s No. 1 natural gas producer by volume, will gain 910,000 barrels per day in oil output, making it the nation’s No. 5 oil producer. It will also put several more billion dollars into the pockets of Abramovich, the 38-year-old owner of Chelsea Football Club, who together with his former business partner Boris Berezovsky bought Sibneft for the bargain basement price of $100 million a decade ago. |
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INDIAN SUMMER
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A man fishing on the River Neva on Wednesday, with St. Isaac’s Cathedral in the background, taking advantage of the unusually warm weather. Temperatures hit highs of 19 degrees Celsius this week, and are forecast to remain high over the weekend. |
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A St. Petersburg court has ruled that the Oktyabrskaya Railroad broke the law when it rejected a man’s application to work as a train conductor because he was gay, the plaintiff’s lawyer said. The case is unusual because gays and lesbians usually find new jobs rather than challenge discrimination in court due to a social stigma attached to homosexuality.
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Human rights experts are worried by rising racist trends after leaflets calling for violence against Roma were circulated in the city of Pskov, 280 kilometers south of St. Petersburg, in September. “We are calling for Russia to be cleaned up! No To Gypsy Drug Barons! Save Your Children!” read the leaflets posted at the city’s bus stops, the St. |
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BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan — Another “space tourist” was set to be taken for the ride of his life as Russia prepared Thursday to shoot American millionaire Greg Olson into orbit for a 10-day, 20-million-dollar stay aboard the International Space Station. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday suggested that he wanted to play an important role in government after 2008, and spent most of a three-hour call-in show talking about bread-and-butter issues, from salaries and health care to the needs of the country’s 13 million hearing-impaired people. |
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Scientists at St. Petersburg’s Otto Institute for Obstetrics and Gynecology announced the development of the most detailed human genetic blueprint in Russia last week, allowing for a wider range of preventative measures to be prescribed. |
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Suspects Detained ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The city prosecution brought charges against four people detained on suspicion of murdering a Congolese student, Interfax reported on Wednesday. The city prosecution said that all four had been charged under article 105 of the Russian Criminal Code, which covers murder committed by a group. |
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MOSCOW — Ford workers in Russia are threatening to strike if management refuses to increase wages by 30 percent and offer other concessions, the head of the plant’s trade union said Thursday. The workers demands come at a time when the company is planning to almost double production at its St. |
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MOSCOW — For the first time in five years, the number of cell phone subscribers in Russia will not double, IT and Communications Minister Leonid Reiman said Wednesday at the InfoKom 2005 annual industry fair. |
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Volvo automotive corporation said Thursday it will boost its Russian operations, doubling local truck production and opening the company’s own service center. Market insiders saw this as a step towards setting up another Russian factory by the Swedish auto-maker. |
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The main shareholder of Taleon group, Alexander Yebralidze, said Wednesday that he will launch a large-scale production facility in Russia that will earn significant stakes on foreign markets. |
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MOSCOW — Russia’s “woefully inadequate” government institutions are holding back economic growth and urgent reforms are needed if Russia hopes to keep pace with other emerging markets, the World Economic Forum said in a report released Wednesday. A day after President Vladimir Putin said Russia was “among the leaders” in global economic growth, the report said Russia’s economy was not growing fast enough for average incomes to catch up with Central European levels. |
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The split of St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Aviation Enterprise into two independent companies, an airport and an airline, will be part of the government’s nationwide strategy to compartmentalize the industry, Transport Minister Igor Levitin said Wednesday. |
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Pepsi Pours In $6.5M ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Pepsi Bottling Group Russia expanded its St. Petersburg operations by opening a $6.5 million storage facility, the company said Thursday, Interfax reported. “The opening of the storage center completes the first step of our program to expand the production volumes. |
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“Where it’s moved to is not my problem,” Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said with evident pleasure when asked about the future of a U.S. military base in Uzbekistan, which authorities have ordered vacated within months. “It’s not like I have to move it myself,” Ivanov said. |
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Izvestia and NTV television reported with evident amusement last week that at least 11 mothers of children who died in the Beslan hostage crisis last year had traveled to Moscow to meet with Grigory Grabovoi, a cult leader who promised to resurrect their children. |
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 Four years on from 9/11, this year’s New British Cinema Festival starting Friday at Dom Kino features a crop of left-field responses to the changing relationship between Islam and the West wrought by the terrorist attacks. The opening film, Ken Loach’s “Ae Fond Kiss” is a multicultural love story between a Pakistani man and an Irish woman set in Glasgow, while “Yasmin” follows the life of a Muslim woman in northern England as she struggles with her identity in the West, before and after Sept. |
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The fifth “Contemporary Art in the Traditional Museum” event got underway last Saturday with modern artists invited by the Pro Arte Institute to liven up eight of St. |
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Western European music is assuming an ever higher profile in St. Petersburg. Dutch bands were showcased at Window on the Netherlands and the Dutch Punch festivals earlier this month, and now Sweden’s music scene will be celebrated with Swedish Cultural Days opening on Friday. The event’s music program will include three live bands, an electronic duo and a DJ who will appear at several local venues. The punk band Alarmrock will perform at Moloko on Friday. It will be followed by Stereo Starboy and Alice in Videoland at Red Club on Saturday. Alice in Videoland will also perform at Moloko on Sunday. Hailing from Sundsvall, the all-women sextet Stereo Starboy have performed a kind of power-pop/rock since 1998 even though their debut album did not appear until March 2005. |
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 Just as CBGB’s, a New York club that was the cradle of punk and new wave in the 1970s, has recently been deprived of its lease and struggles for survival, no less a drama has been taking place in St. |
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WOODVILLE, Texas — Five days after Hurricane Rita came ashore, conditions remained primitive in parts of Texas, where some residents were taking baths and brushing their teeth using water from the Neches River and others were sleeping in tents. The plywood sign outside the home in East Texas where eight Beaumont families had sought refuge from Hurricane Rita carried a simple message: “Help Needed. |
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UEFA Cup holder CSKA Moscow, already without Croatia forward Ivica Olic for the rest of the year with a serious knee injury, has suffered a double blow to its strike force, with Vagner Love now sidelined. The Brazilian will be out for three weeks after pulling a hamstring late in the first half of Saturday’s Moscow derby against Spartak. |
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MADRID — A record 50th goal in the European Cup from captain Raul and a late strike from substitute Roberto Soldado earned Real Madrid a 2-1 victory over Olympiakos Piraeus in a Group F match at the Bernabeu on Wednesday. |
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BANGKOK — Roger Federer recovered his poise on Thursday, beating Germany’s Denis Gremelmayr 6-3 6-2 to ease through to the quarter-finals of the Thailand Open. The Swiss world number one has now won 74 matches this year, matching Spaniard Rafael Nadal, and looked far more comfortable than in his opening match. |
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Issues Archive