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MOSCOW — Russians, whose savings were eroded by hyper-inflation, swallowed by pyramid schemes or lost in the banking crises of the 1990s, are being lured back to the investment game by a booming stock market. “If housewives in the West own mutual funds, bonds, shares, why should we be different?” asks Vladimir Savin, a 30-year-old doctor attending a Moscow exhibition where money managers showcased their products to would-be investors. Russians are estimated to have between $35 billion and $80 billion in foreign currency stashed under mattresses, mostly from cash-in-hand wages and black-market activities such as driving illegal taxis or letting out apartments. Until recently, they only dared to spend their cash on consumer goods and real estate. Now, many are turning to banks, brokers and mutual funds to beat double-digit inflation. |
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COMEBACK KID
Marc Serota / Reuters
Svetlana Kuznetsova of St. Petersburg celebrates her victory over compatriot Maria Sharapova at the Nasdaq-100 Open on Saturday — her first WTA title win since the U.S. Open in 2004. |
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TEHRAN — Iran’s boasts about its new missile technology may not stand up to close study but analysts say the message is simple: Iranian forces, if pushed, can cause havoc in one of the world’s key oil shipping routes. Iran says it has test fired a radar-evading missile and a high-speed underwater projectile during a week of naval wargames in the Gulf, the route for about two-fifths of the world’s globally traded oil.
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MOSCOW — Want to get a doctorate but do not feel like spending months in a library and days and nights in front of a computer composing a dissertation? No problem. For $1,000 to $7,000, a consultant or an entire firm will write the dissertation for you and prep you on defending it before an academic board. |
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Tickets for The Rolling Stones’ one-off Russian concert, scheduled to take place in St. Petersburg on June 13, will hit the stands this week, according to local promoter Planeta Plus. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — A group of politicians and other public figures set up an association Friday aimed at countering an outbreak of violent xenophobia, while a State Duma deputy fueled the flames of nationalism by announcing a list of the 100 enemies of the Russian people. |
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MOSCOW — The culture minister from the North Caucasus republic of Kabardino-Balkaria said Sunday that he was beaten by Moscow skinheads who shouted a racist slogan. |
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Rink Roof Collapses ST. PETERSBURG (AP) — Two children were injured Friday when the roof of a skating rink collapsed, emergency officials said. The roof of the rink at Okhta Park, on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, partially caved in. The collapse was possibly due to heavy snow accumulation, said Tatyana Striganyuk, deputy head of the St. |
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MOSCOW — The government’s so-called “national projects” will do little to improve life in many villages and towns if children are unable to get to school, the sick are unable to get to hospitals and farmers are unable to get their produce to market because of bad or nonexistent roads. |
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MOSCOW — The bullet-riddled body of a Moscow region mayor was found in a children’s playground close to his home early Friday in what prosecutors believe was a contract murder. Dzerzhinsky Mayor Viktor Dorkin was walking home at around midnight after speaking on live television when he was apparently attacked by two men with handguns, Channel One television reported, citing investigators. |
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WASHINGTON — U.S. President George W. Bush said he would raise concerns about Russia’s record on democracy at the G8 summit in July, but that he believed Moscow understood its interests lay in working with the West. |
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MOSCOW — Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov last week won the Cabinet’s approval for legislation that would allow the military to enlist more conscripts, and he asked for more money to hire volunteer soldiers. The Cabinet debated behind closed doors the two bills that would cancel or change nine of the 25 draft deferments and require university students to serve upon graduation. |
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Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the leader of the ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party, is the country’s wittiest politician, while President Vladimir Putin is a distant second, according to a new poll. |
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The Russian office of one of the largest international payment systems, MasterCard, last week announced that it would stop the agent agreements that let banks economize on membership fees. “For banks to participate in the issuing of cards and acquisition of operations they must enter the MasterCard International payment system as a principal or an affiliate member,” MasterCard International said in an official statement. |
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Andrew’s Travel House, Russia’s third largest business travel firm, has declared its intention to open 15 new representative offices over the next year in an ambitious bid to quadruple its turnover, the company said Thursday at a press conference. |
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MOSCOW — Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works, or MMK, is set to win an auction for Pakistan’s largest steel factory after placing the highest bid with two foreign partners Friday. The victory would mark the Russian steelmaker’s first foray into foreign markets. |
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The federal mobile retail chain Tsiffrograd has recognised the inefficiency of its use of franchising and started to buy up the stores of its partners. |
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Having lost several millions of dollars over the course of the last couple of years, St. Petersburg’s computer retailers have begun actively looking beyond the city to more distant markets. Compared to Moscow and many regional markets, in St. Petersburg demand is much more concentrated in chainstores, which occupy 80 percent of the total market. |
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When it comes to merging and acquiring competitors, lawyers generally like to stick to the paperwork and let their clients go forth and conquer. However among international law firms in St. |
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In an article in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, the U.S.-based journal, Keir Lieber of the University of Notre Dame and Daryl Press of the University of Pennsylvania laid out results of calculations according to a model they have developed. They show that the United States has developed nuclear capacity sufficient to launch a strike guaranteed to wipe out Russia and China, without the risk of suffering a return strike. |
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With just over nine months remaining before Russians lose the right to privatize state-issued apartments, a legislative race has begun to extend the deadline or abolish it altogether. |
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There has been more news about the courts in the last couple of weeks than, it seems, in the entire period since the Khodorkovsky trial ended. Courts are funny things. The courts exist to uphold justice. At the same time, the courts exist to enforce laws. Laws are written and passed by human beings, often operating on the basis of insufficient information or pursuing hidden agendas, and are therefore often unjust. |
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Unsatisfactory Total MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Total SA, Europe’s third-biggest oil company, isn’t producing enough crude from its largest project in Russia, making the company’s work there “unsatisfactory,” Russia’s Natural Resources Ministry said. Total isn’t investing enough in drilling and plans to produce 3. |
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The aftermath of the rigged presidential election and brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Belarus has elicited a predictable response in the West. The European Union and the United States have reimposed a travel ban on top Belarussian officials, while economic sanctions are also likely to be imposed. |
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Áàòüêà: father, friend, husband, leader, priest For people who love the thrill of elections, the last few weeks have been busy indeed. Of course, some of the elections didn’t provide much suspense. |
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Once again we must take up the cudgels for President George W. Bush, who is being increasingly maligned for his alleged lack of strategic vision in Iraq. This chorus of petty carping from partisan dead-enders has been exacerbated of late by all the hand-wringing media reports about “civil war” breaking out among the ungrateful beneficiaries of the president’s selfless crusade for peace and enlightenment in the Middle East. |
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After Sunday morning practice, players for the city’s top-ranked basketball team, Dinamo St. Petersburg, line up for lunch. Kelly McCarty and two teammates wait for pasta dishes at a fancy Italian restaurant near Nevsky Prospekt. McCarty goes through the scores of the past week’s NBA games and analyzes who might make the playoffs, when suddenly a tipsy young man wandering by the restaurant stops to stare at the two-meter tall African American on the other side of the window. |
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The thaw began this week in St. Petersburg and the city seems ready to melt and disappear. But for “walruses,” the name given to those people who like nothing better than to swim in holes cut into the frozen River Neva, rain and rising temperatures signal that the ice-swimming season is winding down. |
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LONDON — London is hosting a new exhibition which pays tribute to the castrati, superstars of a bygone era whose sublime voices were produced by castrating the singers before they reached puberty. With women forbidden by the Catholic church from appearing on stage, some 70 percent of all opera singers in the Italian baroque period from 1600 to 1750 were castrati, the show’s curator Nicholas Clapton said. |
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Anderson Blasts Cull HALIFAX, Canada — Pamela Anderson is renewing calls for her homeland to end its East Coast seal hunt. Anderson, a native of British Columbia, said Saturday that she was disappointed Prime Minister Stephen Harper had refused her request for a meeting after Canada’s annual Juno music awards show on Sunday, which she was invited to host. |
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CANBERRA — Australia and China signed a nuclear safeguards deal on Monday that set the stage for huge uranium exports to Beijing for its power industry, but Canberra said the trade was unlikely to start for some years. Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer and his Chinese counterpart, Li Zhaoxing, signed the nuclear safeguards deal in the presence of visiting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and Australian Prime Minister John Howard. |
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ISTANBUL, Turkey — Kurdish riots that hit southeast Turkey spread to Istanbul over the weekend and the countrywide death toll from nearly a week of unrest climbed to 15. |
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Rice Pressures Iraq BAGHDAD — U.S. Secretary of State Rice and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said Monday that while it is up to the Iraqi people to chose their own leaders, the international backers who have spent blood and money to end a dictatorship here have a right to expect that it will happen quickly. |
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NEW YORK — The Detroit Pistons clinched home court advantage through the Eastern Conference playoffs on Sunday with a 109-102 win over the Phoenix Suns in Auburn Hills. Chauncey Billups hit a 3-pointer with 3:40 to play to put the Pistons ahead for good, giving the two-time defending East champions the extra home game in Conference series play. |
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A dominant Renault team will head to Imola this month buoyed by wins in the opening three Grand Prix of the Formula One year and confident of carrying their championship form into the European season. |
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DULUTH, Georgia — Phil Mickelson completed his U.S. Masters preparations in emphatic style on Sunday, coasting to a record third BellSouth Classic title by 13 shots at the TPC at Sugarloaf. The defending BellSouth champion, eight strokes clear overnight, eagled two of the last six holes for a seven-under-par 65 and a four-round total of 28-under 260. |
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Former U.S. Open champion Svetlana Kuznetsova earned her first tournament title in 18 months by beating Maria Sharapova 6-4, 6-3 Saturday to win the Nasdaq-100 Open in Miami. |
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