LOCAL NEWS

ENVIRONMENTALISTS PICKET MAJOR FUR AUCTION

Environmentalists have called for Russia to ban fur sales and the use of animal traps at a protest outside the only surviving annual fur event in the country.

Members of the Alliance for the Protection of Animal Rights gathered outside the 167th Soyuzpushnina fur auction at 98 Moskovskaya Ulitsa on Wednesday.

SUSPECTS CHARGED FOLLOWING PETITION

Three people have been charged and a further two are being detained in connection with the murder of 20-year-old student Timur Kacharava, the St. Petersburg prosecutor’s office said Thursday.

NATIONAL NEWS

Poll: Majority of Citizens In Favor of New Festival

The vast majority of St. Petersburgers support holding outdoor mass entertainment events, and believe the city’s historic Palace Square to be the most appropriate location to host such events, according to a new survey conducted by the Agency for Social Information over the past two weeks.

Forty-four percent of respondents said they support such events regardless, and a further 38 percent said they support them on the condition that the necessary security and organizational requirements are observed.

LOCAL BUSINESS

MTS MAKES BID ON TURKISH MARKET

Russia’s leading mobile operator, Mobile TeleSystems, has submitted a bid for Turkey’s No. 2 cell phone company, Telsim.

Sistema Telekomunikasyon Anonim Sirketi, a company created by MTS majority stakeholder AFK Sistema to participate in next week’s Telsim tender, submitted its bid Monday, AFK Sistema spokeswoman Irina Potekhina said Tuesday.

MULTIPLEX FOR PETERSBURG

Moscow-based Cinema Park is due to open what will be St. Petersburg’s largest cinema, a nine-screen $13 million multiplex, the company said Thursday. Located in the Grand Canyon shopping center, north of the city, the cinema will show its first film December 14 and will hold 2346 people.

IN BRIEF

UES Unit Flotation

ST. PETERSBURG (Reuters) — Electricity monopoly Unified Energy Systems plans to float stocks worth between $700 million and $800 million in each of its three newly created power generating units — OGK-3, OGK-5 and TGK-3 — UES chief executive Anatoly Chubais said on Wednesday.

DERIPASKA CALLS TIME ON THE PROUD VOLGA

The ailing domestic auto industry looked set to undergo a major overhaul as the government hinted Wednesday at pumping oil money into the sector and the maker of the Volga announced the end of the line for one of the enduring symbols of Soviet pride.

GERMANY’S DRESDNER TO BUY INTO GAZPROM’S BANK

Germany’s Dresdner Bank is to buy one-third of Gazprombank, the subsidiary bank of Russia’s powerful state-controlled gas giant, for $800 million in the second major German-Russian financial deal this week.

Gazprombank said Wednesday that its board of directors had agreed to sell 6.

ARBAT LOOKS TO IPO CASH

Leading cosmetics retailer Arbat Prestige is gearing up for an initial public offering next fall, to raise cash for tapping booming consumer demand outside Moscow.

OPINION

WINNERS & LOSERS IN THE MOSCOW ELECTIONS

The great importance placed on Moscow’s City Duma elections owed to four factors: These were the first elections held after the completion of a major electoral reform, testing both its innovations and the adjusted strategies of the political forces.

Given the rapidly changing political landscape, this was an important “interim finish line” for all the main political forces in the country, a venue for the parties to demonstrate just how alive and how powerful they were.

KESAYEV REPORT POINTS A FINGER IN BESLAN

Last week, the results of a North Ossetian parliamentary investigation into the terrorist attack in Beslan were made public. The report went largely unnoticed.

CULTURE

WARHOL THE CLASSICIST

The Andy Warhol exhibition that opens at the Russian Museum’s Marble Palace this week aims at putting the Prince of Pop’s work in a classical context. Entitled “Andy Warhol: Artist of Modern Life,” it refers to Charles Baudelaire’s 1863 critical essay “The Painter of Modern Life,” in which the French poet urged artists to turn to modernity from tired academic subjects.

AN ECLECTIC FAIRYTALE

Sainkho Namtchylak, the Tuva-born, Vienna-based vocalist, who started out as a folk singer, but later encompassed avant-jazz, rock and electronic music influences in her act, seems to return to her ethnic roots with a new release.

CHERNOV’S CHOICE

An Andy Warhol exhibition touring three major Russian cities, is finally arriving in St. Petersburg. Opening at the Russian Museum’s Marble Palace on Friday, the show is called “Andy Warhol: Artist of Modern Life.”

Warhol had a link to the St. Petersburg underground art and music scene via Joanna Stingray, the then-aspiring U.

SURREALISM AT THE HERMITAGE

A new exhibition at the Hermitage showcases three paintings by Max Ernst from the Northern Rhine-Westphalia collection (Dßsseldorf). Ernst (1891-1976), a German-born French artist, was the pioneer of the ‘frottage’ surrealist technique.

A WINTER FEAST OF MUSIC

An ambitious new initiative aimed at attracting a million more winter tourists to St Petersburg has been launched. “White Days” is a program involving the city’s leading cultural institutions, hotels, private sponsors and local government.

The enigmatic and romantic Russian winter immortalized in Pasternak’s “Doctor Zhivago” could annually attract up to one million more tourists annually to St.

THE SECRET ADMIRER

In 1999, former KGB officer Vasili Mitrokhin and Cambridge University historian Christopher Andrew published to great acclaim an account of the relations between Soviet intelligence and the West from the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

SPORT

New Jersey Nets Score 1000 Wins

NEW YORK – Vince Carter scored 23 points and the New Jersey Nets picked up their 1,000th victory in franchise history, defeating the Charlotte Bobcats 97-84 in National Basketball Association play on Wednesday in Charlotte.

Carter was playing despite a sore ankle and knee that he picked up in New Jersey’s 95-82 loss to the woeful Toronto Raptors in New Jersey on Saturday.