|
|
|
|
October, to misquote T.S. Eliot, was the cruelest month. A balmy Indian summer prolonged St. Petersburg’s usually brief autumn to give the city warm, sunny days for much of the month. But in the last days of October, the city was in the grip of a unwelcome cold snap. Sudden snowfall and a plunge in temperatures on Wednesday caused more than 1,000 road traffic accidents in St. Petersburg, local media reported. It had been one of the warmest Octobers recorded in the city, head of the Meteorological Service at the City Meteorological Center Alexander Kolesov, said Monday. “But no records were broken,” he said. The unusual warmth was caused by active anti-cyclones that covered Russia’s Northwest until late October, Suleiman Musamandi, weather forecaster at the City Meteorological Center, said on Friday. |
|
FIVE INTO II
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
The magificently named Culture Palace of the First Five Year Plan on Ulitsa Dekabristov was demolished on Friday to make way for Mariinsky II, the Mariinsky Theater’s proposed new building. Nearby residents have complained that services have been cut during the ongoing demolition. |
|
MOSCOW — After several years gathering dust, the long-standing proposal to unite Russia and Belarus into a common state is being revisited, with plans afoot to draw up a draft constitution next month. It is unclear, however, whether the move is anything more than a Kremlin attempt to court an electorate nostalgic for the Soviet Union. An alternate scenario much discussed in the Russian press — that the formation of a Russia-Belarus union could be used as a way to keep President Vladimir Putin in power beyond 2008 — is thought less likely, due to strong resistance from officials in both countries to the idea.
|
|
MOSCOW — Sergei Stepashin, the country’s top auditor, came under unusual scrutiny on Monday when Britain’s National Audit Office presented him with an evaluation of his work. Stepashin’s Audit Chamber received high marks for its talented staff and outreach to the regions, according to the first independent assessment of the chamber in its 10-year existence. |
|
Young Uzbek Killed ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A young Uzbek citizen died of knife wounds in Moscow on Sunday after an attack near the People’s Friendship University, police said. |
All photos from issue.
|
|
|
|
|
A captain charged with negligence leading to the death of five navy cadets and one officer was sentenced to five years imprisonment by the St. Petersburg Navy Court on Friday. When the verdict was announced, Captain Maxim Gavrilov was led away as mothers of the dead cadets shouted “It’s not negligence, it’s murder!” In the verdict the court changed the charge against Gavrilov from “exceeding authority to cause severe consequences” to “negligence causing death,” the offices of the court announced. |
|
MOSCOW — A man wielding a syringe has carried out a series of attacks on pedestrians in Yekaterinburg recently, stabbing passers-by and fleeing the scene undetected, health authorities in the city said Monday. |
|
KRASNOKAMENSK, Chita Region — Inna Khodorkovskaya is still reeling from the tremendous turnaround her life, and her husband’s, has taken. From quietly enjoying the comforts of being the wife of the nation’s richest man and keeping a low profile throughout his highly publicized trial, she has been thrust into the spotlight while visiting her husband inside an east Siberian prison camp. |
|
|
|
|
St. Petersburg’s dam was given a boost Thursday, with the announcement of a new manager together with a massive increase in spending. Thanks to pressure at both local and federal levels the project is now due for completion in 2008. Begun in the Gulf of Finland in 1980 but neglected for more than 15 years due to a lack of funding, the dam will next year receive 2. |
|
A St. Petersburg-based ice-cream company will become a national leader in ice cream production and sales following its acquistion of a smaller rival, Talosto said Friday. |
|
If Russia diversifies its economy and capitalizes on its advantages in agriculture, transportation and science, the country could reach Germany’s present per capita income by 2020, according to a study published Friday. While foreign economists have been generous in providing tonics, prescriptions and admonitions for Russia’s mid-term development, the report by the Center for Macroeconomic Analysis and Short-Term Forecasts makes interesting reading because Russian experts rarely take a view beyond the next presidential elections. |
|
Norway in Murmansk OSLO (Reuters) — Norwegian bank DnB NOR plans to take over a mid-size Russian bank based in the Arctic port of Murmansk, DnB NOR said Thursday. |
|
As Russia’s economy powers ahead driven by high oil prices, business education is failing to keep pace and employers complain of a chronic shortage of managers trained to international standards. More than 100 business schools have been established since the collapse of the Soviet Union but many have failed to gain credibility among Russian and international employers, who still prefer foreign-trained managers for top jobs. |
|
Police have foiled a mafia group’s attempt to extort 1.5 million euros from a British company, law enforcement officials said Friday. “The extortionists were caught red-handed,” a law enforcement source told RIA-Novosti, saying three men were arrested in the foyer of Moscow’s Renaissance Hotel during the exchange of a payment order for the sum of 1 million euros. |
|
The redevelopment of an 18th century island located in the heart of St. Petersburg will need an investment of $300 million and take at least 7 years to complete, the city governor’s press service said last week in a statement. The tender to choose an investor, architect and developer for the project to reconstruct the New Holland island, situated between the Moika river and Kryukov and Admiralteisky canals, that should have been issued at the end of August will now be declared on Wednesday. |
|
More than 50 plots of land will be auctioned off in the last quarter of this year, in line with the general trend of state property management in the city, a St. |
|
The much-vaunted talent of Russian IT programmers could be their undoing if a rise in salaries continues, without there emerging government subsidies to lower the infrastructure costs of the industry, Motorola’s executive vice president, Padmasree Warrior, said Thursday in an interview in St. |
|
MegaFon’s Profits Jump MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — MegaFon, Russia’s third-largest cellular-phone operator, said profits jumped 85 percent in the first half of this year. |
|
Mobile phone subscribers complaining of not having enough credit in their accounts to make a call – nothing new one might think; just a question of them finding a shop to top up. In St. Petersburg, however, a subscriber might just as well head straight for a public payphone to explain to friends and family that the phrase “Subscriber is temporarily blocked” in no way reflects the trials of life. |
|
The net is starting to tighten around what is left of Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s shattered Yukos empire as court marshals, foreign governments, banks and the Rosneft state oil company begin to close in for the kill. |
|
It seems like Russian taxpayers can expect a New Year gift from the government. That senior officials are talking about simplifying the tax system is in itself no novelty. This time, however, the respective bill has just passed through the Russian parliament. |
|
Johann Strauss, Jr., the “Waltz King,” spent 11 summers in the mid-1800s entertaining St. Petersburg high society at Pavlovsk’s musical train station. The 180th anniversery of the composer’s birth on Oct. |
|
LONDON — A violin created by one of the world’s leading makers and once owned by Italian maestro Nicolo Paganini goes to auction next week with an asking price of $887,000. Not only is it the first time one of Paganini’s instruments has been auctioned, it is one of only 50 surviving violins by master craftsman Carlo Bergonzi. |
|
|
|
|
Gazprom Eyes Sibneft MOSCOW (Bloomberg) —Gazprom may buy the 20 percent of Sibneft owned by Yukos, Gazprom Deputy Chief Executive Alexander Ryazanov said Monday, Interfax news service reported. Ryazanov, who is also acting Chief Executive of Sibneft, said Gazprom will pay back all of the $13 billion it borrowed to buy Sibneft by the end of next year, Interfax said. |
|
|
|
|
Image control has been a high priority for the Kremlin lately. This was especially clear when President Vladimir Putin came to New York in September for UN week. Aside from his purely presidential duties, he also ventured into two fields, religion and art, where the level of symbolism is even higher than in politics. |
|
In recent times, we’ve been assailed by new waves of patriotism, and as we march forward to a glorious future, they’ve been coming in ever thicker and ever faster. |
|
Presidents and their staffs resemble the families described by Tolstoy: All happy ones are alike while each unhappy one is unhappy in its own way. Scandals have a particular capacity for focusing this unhappiness. Richard Nixon’s White House during the Watergate scandal was invested with the conspiratorial attitude that was an attribute of this distrustful president. |
|
WASHINGTON, March 12, 2007 — Calvin J. Hooper was sworn in today as the 49th President of the United States in a quiet ceremony that many hope will put an end to a tumultuous period that has seen the inauguration and resignation of five chief executives in the 12 months since former president George W. |
|
|
|
|
New York Times Service TIKSI, Sakha Republic — Freed by warming, waters once locked beneath ice are gnawing at coastal settlements around the Arctic Circle. In Bykovsky, a village of 457 people on Russia’s northeast coast, the shoreline is collapsing, creeping closer and closer to houses and tanks of heating oil, at a rate of five to six meters a year. |
|
|
|
|
WASHINGTON — President Bush, stung by the collapse of his previous choice, nominated veteran judge Samuel Alito on Monday in a bid to reshape the Supreme Court and mollify his conservative allies. Ready-to-rumble Democrats warned that Alito may be an extremist who would curb abortion rights. |
|
WASHINGTON — The indictment of a top White House aide is a sign of deeper problems within the administration, say Democrats who are criticizing President Bush for lauding Lewis Libby rather than apologizing for his alleged actions. |
|
WASHINGTON — Thousands of Americans paid tribute to Rosa Parks under the dome of the Capitol Rotunda, waiting in line for hours to see the closed casket of the woman whose defiant act on a city bus inspired the modern civil rights movement. Bathed in a spotlight, it stood in the center of a Rotunda that includes a bronze bust of the Rev. |
|
NEW DELHI — Just a few hours after three bombs ripped through the heart of New Delhi on Saturday, India and Pakistan announced a deal to open their contested and militarized frontline in Kashmir for earthquake survivors and relief. |
|
MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan said on Monday it would make special arrangements to give earthquake survivors easy access to Indian Kashmir over concerns bureaucracy would hamper the efforts of thousands to cross the border. Pakistan and India agreed at the weekend that five points along their military border in Kashmir, known as the Line of Control, would be opened from Nov. |
|
Second-seeded Thomas Johansson of Sweden swept aside Nicolas Kiefer of Germany to take the St. Petersburg Open title in Sunday afternoon’s final. With a gritty and consistent display, the Swedish world No. |
|
|
|
LONDON — The first pieces in the Champions League jigsaw should fit into place this week with Bayern Munich, Arsenal, Barcelona and Chelsea guaranteed a passage from the group stage with victories. European champions Liverpool, Olympique Lyon and Real Madrid could also advance to the knockout phase depending on other results. |
Temp: -2°C overcast 
Issues Archive