|
|
|
|
MOSCOW — The Kremlin has hired a leading Western public relations firm to improve foreign media coverage of the July Group of Eight summit in St. Petersburg — an unprecedented step for Russia.
Kremlin spokesman Alexander Smirnov said the government had decided to employ a multi-agency team led by U.S.-based firm Ketchum in order to more effectively get across its message to Western media.
“The idea is to improve our communications strategy using the experience of a Western PR agency. In Russia, we are preparing seriously for the G8 summit,” he said.
Russia, which was admitted to the club of leading industrialized nations in 2002, is chairing the G8 for the first time this year, cementing its status as a leading global power. |
|
Sergei Karpukhin / Reuters
In Sochi, a relative of a passenger on the Armavia Airbus plane which crashed Wednesday killing all on board, grieves. |
|
A new, long-awaited law on domestic animals is being reviewed by the city’s Legislative Assembly. The document, if passed, will put an end to the ongoing practice of night raids aimed at catching and exterminating stray domestic animals. The review will last for several months and the parliament is expected to make a decision before the end of the year.
|
All photos from issue.
|
|
|
|
|
The world’s second-largest fast-food company, Burger King, is set to enter the Russian market, Vedomosti reported Wednesday, citing unidentified sources.
The Miami-based giant, which has more than 11,100 restaurants worldwide, is negotiating with several Russian companies that are interested in opening Burger King eateries here, Vedomosti reported, citing sources familiar with the situation. |
|
City architects want to suspend construction of an elite residential complex on the Neva embankment, citing its potential height as a threat to St. Petersburg’s historic panorama. |
|
President Valdas Adamkus of Lithuania has called for a common European Union front in response to Russia’s willingness to use its energy supplies to secure political influence over its neighbours.
Speaking to the Financial Times on the eve of an international pro-democracy conference in Vilnius, Adamkus condemned Germany for backing Russia’s controversial planned Baltic Sea gas pipeline, which will circumvent transit countries including the Baltic states, Ukraine and Poland. |
|
St. Petersburg Credit
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — One of the Northwest’s largest private banks, the St. Petersburg Bank, has been offered a $30 million syndicated loan from the ABN AMRO bank, AK&M reported Wednesday. |
|
Nuclear Replacement
KAZAN (Bloomberg) — Russia will replace all of its strategic nuclear submarines in the next five years, Itar-Tass reported, citing Russian navy chief Admiral Vladimir Masorin.
“The main strategy of the navy in the next five years is to create a more powerful, high-speed submarine fleet capable of using the latest Russian weapon, the Bulava rocket, in the defense of the state,’’ Masorin said Thursday at a shipbuilding plant in Kazan, central Russia, the news service reported. |
|
|
|
|
It’s easy to laugh at Russia and the Russians when it comes to history. What other than a giggle can a country expect when it acknowledges only the sweeter bits from the cupboard of the past? How is an educated foreigner expected to swallow amusement when a state prefers legend to fact?
I have chuckled at everything from Poltava to perestroika in my Russian life, and I shamelessly laughed out loud at their Victory Day for more than a year. |
|
It is probably the most abused quotation of all time: “When they came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist. When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat. |
|
|
|
 The popular American soprano Renee Fleming, the London Symphony Orchestra, conductor Mariss Jansons and violinist Leonidas Kavakos are among the headlining performers appearing at the 14th International “The Stars Of The White Nights” Festival that opens Wednesday at the Mariinsky Theater. |
|
Local ska band Dva Samaliota will perform a rare concert at Platforma on Sunday. The band reformed in 2004 with a new lineup after frontman Vadim Pokrovsky died in Sept. |
|
The Russian Museum mounts a major retrospective of art made in the Soviet Union from the Khrushchev era to perestroika.
Times are a-changin’ at the State Russian Museum with its new large show “Times of Change: Art in the Soviet Union 1960-85.”
Covering the period from the end of the Khrushchev era to the height of Gorbachev’s perestroika, the exhibition takes as its starting point the implicit co-existence of two types of art at the time: official art, defined by the state-mandated Socialist Realism, and so-called underground art which was made by artists who didn’t conform to the aesthetic authority of the state. |
|
With information on the North Korean regime so scarce, a new book by Balazs Szalontai looks for historical insight in the next best place — newly opened archives in Eastern Europe. |
|
|
|
|
PYONGTAEK, South Korea — Hundreds of people were injured as thousands of South Korean riot police fought pitched battles with anti-US protesters and villagers as the military started clearing a site for a new US army base.
Clashes began when 13,000 riot police arrived to help thousands of soldiers erect miles of barbed wire fence around a vast tract of paddy field to secure the site of the planned base at Pyongtaek, 70 kilometers (45 miles) south of Seoul. |
|
MOSCOW — Zenit St. Petersburg’s Czech coach Vlastimil Petrzela was fired on Wednesday following a string of poor results, the Russian premier league club said. |
|
LONDON — Steve McClaren’s hopes of becoming the next England coach were boosted on the eve of the expected decision by a ringing endorsement from the current incumbent Sven-Goran Eriksson.
The Football Association’s Board met on Thursday and McClaren, Eriksson’s assistant, was widely expected to be appointed as his successor when the Swede steps down after the World Cup. |
|
LOS ANGELES — For the first 10 years of her life, she didn’t know she had a first name.
Now, baseball has given her several.
“Let’s go, Tash!” … “Get ‘em Nat!” … “All yours, Pony Tail!”
“They call me lots of things,” Natasha Smith said. |
Temp: -2°C moderate or heavy snow showers
Issues Archive