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Treasury Secretary John Snow said Saturday the United States and Russia had made progress in talks on Moscow’s bid to join the World Trade Organization, and the two nations could reach a deal before next month’s G8 summit.
“I’m not forecasting that it will be done, but I’m saying that a lot of groundwork has been put in place and I’m hopeful that it can be accomplished,” Snow told a news conference after a meeting in St. Petersburg of finance ministers from the Group of Eight leading industrialized nations.
Russia is chairing the G8 summit in St. Petersburg in mid-July for the first time.
Moscow’s push for accession into the WTO has been stymied by disputes with the United States over financial market liberalization and protecting intellectual property, among other issues. |
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Alexander Natruskin / Reuters
A group from a youth organization marches with Russian state flags in the center of Moscow on Monday as part of the celebrations for the Russia Day state holiday. |
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As the country celebrated Russia Day on Monday with its citizens enjoying an extra day-off, only 23 percent of the people were able to correctly identify the holiday, according to a poll organized by the Moscow-based Yury Levada Analytical Center this week.
Fifteen percent of respondents said they had no idea what the holiday is all about, while the vast majority of those polled by the Levada Center experts, called the June 12 holiday “Independence Day.
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MOSCOW — Musa Nalgiyev, the commander of Ingushetia’s OMON riot police and his three children, brother and guard were gunned down Friday in the Ingush town of Karabulak.
At about the same time, other gunmen fired on Galina Gubina, deputy head of the administration of Ingushetia’s Sunzhensky district, who died on her way to the hospital. |
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Plane Crash
MOSCOW (SPT) — A plane on a training flight crashed outside of Moscow Sunday, killing the pilot-instructor and a passenger, an emergency official said. |
All photos from issue.
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An English version of the web-based “Encyclopedia of St. Petersburg” was launched last Thursday, giving the city an opportunity to substantially improve its visibility for the outside world.
The ambitious project, featuring more than 3,500 articles, 1,600 illustrations, and 4,600 addresses, aims to “make the legacy of Petersburg accessible worldwide. |
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GENEVA — A United Nations human rights investigator began a weeklong visit to Russia on Monday to probe a growing wave of racist killings and beatings. |
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MOSCOW — The State Duma has tentatively approved a bill that would remove the “against all” option from ballots in national elections, a change the opposition criticized as an attempt to silence discontent with the state.
The bill sailed through the first of three required readings Friday by a vote of 352-85, with no abstentions. |
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MOSCOW — The nation’s chief epidemiologist and State Duma deputies pledged support Thursday for the war on AIDS but avoided discussing hard-hit groups such as prostitutes, drug users and homosexuals, in contrast with officials from other countries, including China and India. |
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MOSCOW — The Moscow office of Georgia’s Justice party looks hospitable. Its steel door isn’t locked, and there is no guard inside to glare at visitors.
Security could be a lot tighter. The office’s head, Dzhemal Gogitidze, was the top cop in Georgia’s restive region of Adzharia until it returned to the federal government’s control in 2004. |
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MOSCOW — The first president of independent Azerbaijan, Ayaz Mutalibov, had to beg the Kremlin for an apartment after he fled a rebellion in 1992.
Mutalibov left Baku aboard a Russian military plane just three months into his term. |
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There were plenty of smiles and warm words about friendship and collaboration exchanged between finance ministers of the club of eight industrialised nations on a sunny weekend in St. Petersburg.
John Snow, the outgoing US treasury secretary, “commended” his Russian friend and counterpart Alexei Kudrin on his performance as a host of the club. |
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St. Petersburg soil will soon be on sale to the public. A new line of small and colorful souvenirs — red and blue velvet bags — are full of soil from both St. |
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An international exhibition of forestry equipment, Interles, starts on Tuesday and will run through Friday in Leningrad Oblast, Interfax reported, citing the regional government press service.
The exhibition is being organized for the 10th time and, as last year, coincides with the St. |
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MURMANSK, Russia — In this small bayside town on the Barents Sea, far to the north of Moscow, Russia is finally realizing an ambition to build a world-class oil port in the Arctic. |
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MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin said Friday that the country’s nuclear energy reforms were “close to completion,” signaling that the Kremlin would soon put forward long-awaited legislation to modernize the industry into a market-driven corporation.
The move could open the atomic sector to private investments as a way to fund the ambitious program to build 40 nuclear reactors inside the country and 60 abroad by 2030. |
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Indesit Factories
ROME (Bloomberg) — Indesit, Europe’s third-largest home-appliance maker, may build plants in Poland or Russia, Il Sole/24 Ore reported, citing an interview with the company’s chief executive officer Marco Milani. |
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MOSCOW — Russia is no longer seen as one of the world’s most attractive investment destinations, according to Ernst & Young’s global survey of business executives, released on Thursday.
Russia, which had held on to the No. 8 spot for the past two years, disappeared from the list of the top 10 most-attractive countries for foreign direct investment this year. |
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One of Scandinavia’s largest construction companies, NCC, is cooperating with local investment and construction firm Petropol to build a large-scale multifunctional complex in St. |
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Pyaterochka Style
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Pyaterochka Holding has opened a new store at Pulkovskoye Shosse according to a new design, Prime-Tass reported Friday.
This is the 45th Pyatyorochka discount store in the city. This year, 10 stores of the new design will open in St. |
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Under conditions of high penetration, one of the essential tasks for mobile providers is the attaining of loyal subscribers. If, at the moment, companies are using price and bonus mechanisms to retain their subscribers, they will soon employ more subtle methods. |
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MOSCOW — Russia’s Alfa Group said on Thursday it would prevent Norway’s Telenor from trying to use a Vimpelcom stake, being acquired by a bank under a swap agreement, from influencing the company’s policy.
Telenor said on Monday in disclosure documents it had made an equity swap deal with ING Bank for 3. |
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I wanted to write a column on the consolidation of the banking sector. It’s a topical issue. Last week Societe Generale announced the purchase of 10 percent of Rosbank for $317 million with an option to buy another 10 percent. |
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As the 25th anniversary of the start of the AIDS epidemic takes place this summer, we will look back on a world forever changed. AIDS has shaken the foundations of nations and shaped the history of our generation. Nearly 40 million people are living with HIV/AIDS; 25 million have lost their battles. |
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The latest opinion polls indicate that the image of an external enemy is gradually crystallizing in the consciousness of Russian citizens. We seem to be using a tried and tested method of overcoming a national identity crisis. |
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BERLIN — The history of global sporting events hosted by Germany brings up some dark memories. There were the Munich Olympic Games of 1972, at which a Palestinian terror squad killed 11 Israeli athletes. And of course there were the notorious Berlin Games of 1936, when the Nazis hosted the world. |
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The Public Chamber wants to save Russian voters from themselves. It wants legislation that would define extremism — a perennially elusive political term — and allow the authorities to weed out extremists so that they cannot register as candidates in any election. |
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The last few weeks have seen disastrous news breaking over President George W. Bush’s administration like another Hurricane Katrina. This time, though, it’s not winds and surging seas but waves of innocent blood overtopping the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates to turn the White House crimson.
Report after report of horrific atrocities — long held back by a levee of lies, fear, obfuscation and the natural confusion of war — has broken through, flooding the imperial capital with the reeking, corpse-filled backwash of the vast criminal folly committed by its grubby little Caesar. |
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BIRLESTIK, Kazakhstan — In the dried-up harbor of this dusty village, camels roam next to forlorn ships seemingly washed up by tides of sand.
Near the rusting hulks, a camel herder dreams of what once was — and what might be.
“They say that maybe there will be water here again,” Dosym Kutmambetov, the 27-year-old grandson of a fisherman, said as he paused from rounding up his family’s herd. |
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BEIT YEHOSHUA, Israel — An Israeli train carrying 200 passengers hit a stationary truck in its path and derailed on Monday, killing at least five people and injuring dozens, rescue services said.
The impact threw the locomotive on top of one carriage. |
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CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced on Sunday that he will visit Iran and North Korea, two nations at odds with Washington over nuclear development, at a time when Chavez is seeking to distance Venezuela from the United States. |
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LONDON — Europeans seized on the suicides of Guantanamo prisoners as more proof the U.S. camp should be closed, and a top U.S. official on Monday disowned a colleague’s comment that the deaths were a “good PR move.”
Two Saudis and a Yemeni hanged themselves with clothes and bedsheets in their cells on Saturday, the first prisoners to die at Guantanamo since the United States began sending suspected al Qaeda and Taliban captives there in 2002. |
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Shiloh Leaves Namibia
WINDHOEK, Namibia (AP) — Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie left Namibia with their newborn daughter Shiloh and their two older children after a two-month stay at a luxury beach resort, an official said Saturday. |
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LONDON — Justine Henin-Hardenne has risen to third in the world rankings after winning the French Open title on Saturday.
The Belgian, ranked No. 5 before the Roland Garros tournament, beat Russia’s Svetlana Kuznetsova 6-4 6-4 to win her third title on Paris clay.
St. Petersburg star Kuznetsova climbs to No. |
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