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HELSINKI — Finland’s Tarja Halonen won reelection on Sunday as voters rewarded their first woman president for her down-to-earth touch and promises to preserve the welfare state. Left-leaning Halonen won a narrow victory over moderate rightist Sauli Niinisto, who kissed her hand as he conceded defeat. “Good people, thank you, together we have succeeded,” Halonen told a victory party, draped in a long red scarf and holding a bunch of red roses. Official results showed that backing by the Social Democratic Party and leftist and labor groups helped her win a second and final six-year term with 51.8 percent of the vote, way down from the overwhelming lead she had held in opinion polls for most of the campaign. |
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THE ICE PALACE
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
According to its builders, construction of an Ice Palace on Palace Square — a recreation of the palace built on the square in 1740 in honor of Empress Anna Ioannovna’s victory over Turkey — will require between 3 and 5 tons of ice from the lakes of the Leningrad Oblast. |
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MOSCOW — The government agency that registers nongovernmental organizations said Friday that it asked a court to shut down an umbrella human rights center supported by two prominent NGOs, the Moscow Helsinki Group and the Union of Soldiers’ Mothers Committees, over minor legal infractions. The Justice Ministry’s Federal Registration Service also said it successfully sued to close 300 NGOs last year and that more than 400 similar cases were pending.
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The Washington Post MOSCOW — Valery Uszhin, a wealthy car dealer, wanted an art collection. “About two years ago, I felt that I had money,” he said. “I decided to buy paintings, Russian art.” Uszhin began to collect at quite a clip, a new canvas every couple of weeks. |
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Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and his wife, opera singer Galina Vishnevskaya, have been ordered to pay 100,000 rubles ($3,500) in damages to neighbors living beneath a St. |
All photos from issue.
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Transportation Minister Igor Levitin earned the most of any government minister in 2004 — nearly $5 million — according to a list of the Cabinet’s income declarations published by Vedomosti on Thursday. Levitin’s declared income was 238 times more than that of the lowest-earning Cabinet member, Regional Development Minister Vladimir Yakovlev, who made $21,000. |
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MOSCOW — The government is set to delay the implementation of new traffic rules until the start of 2007, Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov said Friday. The controversial new rules require that tail lights on cars be yellow or orange, not red, and that all children up to the age of 12 must sit in special child seats. |
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Despite speculation in the media that Swedish mobile operator Tele2 damaged its image by offering the cheapest services in Russia, the company, which presented its new management team Wednesday, insists the cut-price philosophy continues to be its competitive advantage. |
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Russia’s largest producer of aircraft engines will file for registration as a joint-stock company by March, Alexander Vatagin, chief executive of Klimov, said last week at a press briefing. |
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Igor Linshits, head of the Concern Neftyanoi business group and a prominent supporter of liberal politicians, was put on a federal wanted list on charges of illegal banking activities and money laundering, the Prosecutor General’s Office said Friday. The announcement came nearly two months after prosecutors and OMON special forces raided a Neftyanoi affiliate, Neftyanoi Bank, in an investigation into suspected money laundering. |
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DAVOS, Switzerland — The World Economic Forum is a strange place, where members of an elite but eclectic global club meet for five days in a Swiss ski resort to hold structured discussions on high-minded topics and, of course, to schmooze. |
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MOSCOW — The country’s largest carmaker, AvtoVAZ, could form the cornerstone of a new, sprawling state automotive conglomerate currently being worked on by government ministries, according to a preliminary proposal signed last month by President Vladimir Putin. |
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MOSCOW — British-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto on Friday emphasized its strategic interest in Russia, saying it is ready to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into its newly formed joint venture with Norilsk Nickel. |
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No home was left unaffected by the threat of water, heating or electricity cuts as January’s deep freeze increased pressure on communal service companies and exposed vulnerabilities in the city’s communal infrastructure. Residents faced 20 times as many power failures than usual during the recent cold spell, Interfax reported last week, citing official statistics. |
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In 2005, as the result of a sharp fall in demand, prices for completed housing in St. Petersburg remained steady from January to August, though an increase in activity among buyers pushed the sector up from August to December, with a rise in prices of about 5 percent. |
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The president of the Adamant holding Igor Leitis could become the owner of St. Petersburg’s landmark trading complex Passazh. The entrepreneur has already acquired over 16 percent of the shares of TPF Passazh, which rents the building on Nevsky Prospekt from the City Administration. |
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On 6 October 2005 the Federal Arbitrage Court of North West District set a significant precedent in the arguments between taxpayers and authorities in the field of royalties under license agreements. |
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Financial Times The main topic of Russia’s current presidency of the Group of Eight leading industrial nations is supposed to be energy security. At the end of last year President Vladimir Putin called for a better investment climate, improved corporate governance and innovative technologies as tools to address international energy security challenges and claimed that Russia deserved a status of “fashion leader” in a new global energy architecture. |
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Gazprom Profits MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Gazprom, the world’s largest producer of natural gas, said nine-month profit climbed 66 percent as fuel prices rose. Net income advanced to 232.1 billion rubles ($8.2 billion) from 139.4 billion rubles in the same period last year, the Moscow-based company said Monday in an e-mailed statement. |
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Two hours north of Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan, an Iranian construction firm is boring a hole in the side of the Fan Mountains. It’s not for stashing weapons or nuclear material. It’s for a five-kilometer tunnel that, when finished in 2007, will become the only road open year-round between this country’s two main cities. |
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A brilliant article in last Monday’s issue of Kommersant, written by President Vladimir Putin’s former economic advisor, Andrei Illarionov, has been making waves among local analysts and Russia-watchers. |
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MELBOURNE, Australia — World No. 1 Roger Federer overcame an early scare to beat Marcos Baghdatis 5-7 7-5 6-0 6-2 on Sunday, winning the Australian Open for the second time and capturing his seventh Grand Slam title. Amelie Mauresmo won her first Grand Slam title when Justine Henin-Hardenne retired from the Australian Open women’s singles final due to illness on Saturday. |
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