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Russian environmentalists are crying foul at the controversial decision of the Nobel Committee to award this year’s Peace Prize to the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and its head Mohamed ElBaradei. The Nobel Committee announced that IAEA and ElBaradei have won the prize in recognition of their efforts to limit the spread of nuclear weapons on a global scale. The winner was selected from 199 candidates, which included, among others, Ukranian president Viktor Yushchenko, the Salvation Army, rock musician Bono and ex-president of Finland Martti Ahtisaari. “At a time when disarmament efforts appear deadlocked, when there is a danger that nuclear arms will spread both to states and to terrorist groups, and when nuclear power again appears to be playing an increasingly significant role, IAEA’s work is of incalculable importance,” the Nobel Committee said in its official statement. |
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FOREST FROLICS
Alexander Belenky / For The St. Petersburg Times
Schoolchildren playing football in the gardens next to the Nikolsky Cathedral during a lunchbreak on Monday. The Indian summer continues, with forecasts predicting sunshine, with highs of 15 degrees celsius, and clouds only appearing towards the weekend. |
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MOSCOW — Moskovskiye Novosti, a leading liberal publication from the time of perestroika that is now suffering a deep editorial crisis, has an unexpected new owner. Arkady Gaidamak, a Moscow-born businessman with four passports and a controversial past, confirmed to Ekho Moskvy radio late Friday that he had bought the weekly newspaper. No details of the deal were given, and Gaidamak could not be reached Sunday.
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MOSCOW — The populist Pensioners’ Party narrowly beat out United Russia in Tomsk legislative elections over the weekend, while voters in five other regions picked municipal council members for the first time. The Pensioner’s Party garnered slightly more than 19 percent of the vote in Sunday’s elections, while United Russia received slightly more than 17 percent, according to preliminary results released Monday, Interfax reported. |
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MOSCOW A total of 165 fires over 4,300 hectares were raging in Russian forests and peat bogs, 18 of them in the Moscow region, the Emergencies Situations Ministry said Monday, evoking memories of the fires in summer 2002 that engulfed areas of Moscow in clouds of acrid smoke. |
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The bronze sculpture of the Flying Mercury, which disappeared from the Pavlovsk museum during the Second World War, was returned to its historical site in front of the Gonzago gallery at the Pavlovsk Palace on Friday. Interfax reported that the Austrian foreign affairs minister handed the sculpture over to the Pavlovsk Palace after years of negotiation. |
All photos from issue.
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The management of the Russian Ford plant, located in the town of Vsevolozhsk in the Leningrad Oblast, has agreed to consider calls for wage increases coming from its workers. The Ford management are to review the demands by Thursday, Yekaterina Kulinenko, press-secretary of Ford Motor Company in Russia said Monday. |
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MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin received a double-barreled shotgun from German Chancellor Gerhard SchrÚder, a book about virgin soil from a fire-extinguishing farm worker and a heavy dose of sarcasm from Russia’s most famous prisoner as he celebrated his 53rd birthday on Friday. |
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Phil Collins will perform two farewell concerts in St. Petersburg and Moscow as part of his First Final Farewell Tour. The Peteresburg concert will take place at the Ice Palace on Oct. 18, with the Moscow concert coming on Oct. 20. The ex-member of Genesis’s last world tour took place eight years ago. |
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MOSCOW — Kremlin outcast Boris Berezovsky and Neil Bush, the scandal-tainted brother of the U.S. president, have joined forces in an educational software company that they are trying to promote in the former Soviet Union. |
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ENKHALUK, Buryatia — This tiny town on the eastern shore of Lake Baikal is a picture of tranquility. Goats lope up the dusty main street, a sandy beach stretches as far as the eye can see, and smoke rises from the chimneys of unpainted wooden homes at night. The only eyesore is an unfinished concrete foundation of what would have been a large new house, which local residents say former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky was building before he was arrested two years ago. |
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Elcoteq SE, a Finnish electronics manufacturer, opened a 25 million euros ($30 million) plant last Friday, hoping to capitalize profits in one of the world’s fastest-growing telecommunications market. Total future investments in the city plant could reach $120 million, the CEO and president of Elcoteq, Jouni Hartikainen said at the factory’s opening ceremony. |
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MOSCOW — The government’s plan to reduce the level of automobile emissions will lead to increased costs for consumers and force car companies to phase out old models, analysts and carmakers said Friday. |
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The office has of course rather spoilt the reputation of a suit, which has become almost synonymous with leading a complicated, yet regulated business life, with its need to abide by the code, the dress code to be precise. But one need not complain about the discomfort of a three-piece suit or the stifling grip of a tie. |
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As the real estate market matures, bringing with it more picky buyers, property sellers are turning to more innovative means to attract clients. Local construction firm Peterburgstroi Skanska, a subsidiary of Swedish constructor Skanska AB, has decided to follow the parent company’s practice and introduce sales offices at its construction sites. |
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Stroimontazh construction corporation’s recently acquired $30 million bank loan to finance local and European development projects has proved once again that credit schemes could be mutually beneficial for developers, construction companies and banks alike. |
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MOSCOW — A second Russian “Disneyland” is planned as part of a mammoth $2.1 billion leisure development southeast of Moscow — although as at the city’s other giant amusement park project, Mickey Mouse is not invited. |
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The question is why. A journalist colleague is showing off a recently acquired mobile phone number — of a general director whose factory has for years been as secretive as if it had been producing nukes and not plain old processed food. The factory’s information highways had been so narrowly squeezed you’d think it were sacrilege to allow even a one-word comment on the market or on competitors to pass. |
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The debate about why the Soviet Union collapsed began the day after it happened. As often happens with questions like this, however, no clear-cut answer has been found and probably never will be. |
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When the Soviet state made millions of schoolchildren intone on the first day of class, “Thank you, the Party, for our bright future,” it could hardly have imagined that the brainwashing scheme would turn against its successors. But this is exactly what happened as the economic security of the Soviet days evaporated. |
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Russia’s ruble corporate bond market boom shows no signs of slowing as a petrodollar influx and growing foreign interest makes it possible for a widening range of borrowers to tap the market, analysts say. Foreign investors facing low yields around the world started buying ruble bonds from second- and even third-tier issuers this year as yields compressed on top-line bonds from the likes of gas monopoly Gazprom. |
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Belarus Currency MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia and Belarus have agreed on a plan to introduce the Russian ruble as the sole currency of Belarus, Interfax reported Monday, citing the Belarussian Central Bank. |
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By Dmitry Rogozin One of the benefits of being Russian is that there is never a lack of constructive advice on sensitive social matters like immigration and ethnic and religious tolerance — not only from Russia’s own liberals, but from friendly foreign countries and international nongovernmental organizations that are glad to instruct Russia on its duty to move toward the democratic standards of an open society. |
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A new tender for passenger transport in the city is slated to begin in November, with a whole new system set to be introduced on April 1 of next year. Following the total failure of the last, scandalous tender, Governor Valentina Matviyenko has demanded that the bureaucrats seriously take into consideration the interests of the bulk of private carriers. |
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Last week, President George W. Bush filled the final vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court — and right on cue, all the knee-jerk Bush-bashers were up in arms, sputtering the usual objections: Unqualified crony! Right-wing apparatchik! Fawning, groveling Bush Family factotum! Wheel-greasing goon in high-priced threads! Poor little dissident lambkins. |
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He is one of Japan’s most famous sporting heroes. Fans beg to know the smallest details of his diet, or how he met his wife. For millions, he is the modern embodiment of a samurai: strong, faithful, skilled, and contained. And he’s Russian. Fyodor Yemelyanenko, 29, has ruled the mixed martial arts cage of PRIDE, Japan’s most popular combat tournament, for the last two years — its reigning champion since March 16, 2003. |
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BERLIN — Conservative leader Angela Merkel will become Germany’s first woman chancellor under a deal that sees Gerhard Schroeder step aside but gives his Social Democrats top posts in a new government, sources said on Monday. Three weeks after voters gave Merkel’s conservatives an unexpectedly narrow win over Schroeder’s SPD in a federal election, sources from both parties said an agreement had been struck that would set the stage for a power-sharing cabinet and break Germany’s political deadlock. |
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Nobel Prize Winners STOCKHOLM (AP) — Israeli-American Robert J. Aumann and American Thomas C. Schelling won the 2005 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences on Monday for their work on game theories that help explain political and economic conflicts from arms races to price wars. |
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LONDON — Former world heavyweight boxing champion Frank Bruno has admitted he took cocaine and said he believes it may have affected his mental health. “Taking it was the worst thing I could have done in my mental condition,” Bruno said. Bruno was talking to Sunday’s News of the World newspaper, which published extracts from his new autobiography and also carried an interview with the British boxer. |
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MOSCOW — Russia blitzed Luxembourg 5-1 in their penultimate World Cup qualifier on Saturday to keep alive their hopes of reaching next year’s finals in Germany. |
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MOSCOW — World No.1 Maria Sharapova said Monday she wanted to play for Russia in the Fed Cup at some point in the future. The Florida-based 18-year-old has turned down invitations to play for the country of her birth in the past in order to concentrate on improving her singles ranking. Addressing reporters before the opening of the Kremlin Cup, Sharapova said: “I want to play for Russia, I definitely want to play for Russia in Fed Cup competition. |
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