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More than a dozen detainees jailed in connection with the G8 Summit will be released this week after serving 15 days for offenses largely unrelated to the summit.
Their sympathizers say they will sue Russia in the European Court of Human Rights.
The 15 activists still to be released on Thursday represent the last batch of dozens of anti-globalists and members of opposition movements from across Europe who faced shorter jail terms, house arrest, fines, police harassment and unfair treatment during the three days of the summit and several days before the event, according to legal sources close to the activists.
Offenses that led to detention included “urinating in public places, swearing at police officers and violating traffic rules were cooked up by the police on the order of the Russian government,” Natalia Zvyagina, a co-ordinator with an advocate group that provided legal support to the Second Russian Social Forum, said. |
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ONE GREAT LEAP
Aalexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A boy jumping from the pedestal of one of the Rostral Columns on the spit of Vasilievsky Island on Friday. Forecasters are predicting that weather will be variable over the coming week, with rain on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday and high levels of humidity. |
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The notorious Kresty building, the largest prison in Europe, may soon be transformed into an entertainment center, a shopping mall or a hotel, with a new prison facility being built to replace it on the outskirts of the city.
The news about the possible conversion of Kresty was first distributed on April Fool’s Day by the London Consulting and Management Company.
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MOSCOW — Former Nuclear Power Minister Yevgeny Adamov, wanted by the United States on charges of embezzling U.S. aid money, walked out of prison Friday after the Supreme Court ordered him released on bail.
As a condition for his release, Adamov agreed not to travel beyond the Moscow region. |
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Further to “Soviet summer,” an article by Andrei Vorobei that appeared in the All About Town supplement of The St. Petersburg Times on Friday, July 21, the Italian cultural attachÎ in St. |
All photos from issue.
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Only one out of twenty-five officially registered beaches in and around St. Petersburg is safe for use, according to this week’s report from Rospotrebnadzor, a state consumer surveillance organization with hygienic supervision functions.
Twenty-four beaches checked by the center’s specialists were found to be contaminated. |
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MOSCOW — The Interior Ministry has slapped restrictions on aid workers in Chechnya, adding to difficulties posed by new rules that require nongovernmental organizations to produce paperwork such as the death certificates of founding members. |
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KIEV — Ukraine’s new pro-Russian parliamentary majority said it had nearly decided its Cabinet lineup and was ready to meet a Tuesday deadline to form a government.
Friday’s announcement puts pressure on Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko to speed up his decision about the bid by Viktor Yanukovych, his Orange Revolution rival, to become the new prime minister. |
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Russian and German intelligence services are trying to help secure the release of three Israeli soldiers captured by Palestinian and Lebanese militants, Germany’s DPA news agency reported Friday. |
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Putin Fires Governor
MOSCOW (SPT) — President Vladimir Putin on Friday fired Alexei Barinov, governor of the Nenets autonomous district, and nominated a former KGB officer to replace him.
Putin suspended Barinov in early June after the governor was arrested and charged with fraud and embezzlement. |
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MOSCOW — For the Kremlin, fresh from its public relations coup at the Group of Eight summit in St. Petersburg, the informal meeting of leaders from the Commonwealth of Independent States should have put the icing on the cake. |
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Vneshtorgbank (VTB) became the first Russian issuer of mortgage securities on the European market last week, when it offered mortgage-based eurobonds on the Irish Stock Exchange. Barclays Capital, HSBC and IFC organized the issue.
“English investors, as well as investment funds and banks in Austria, Portugal, Greece and Germany showed most interest in the bonds,” VTB press service said in a statement on Wednesday. |
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Filling Plots
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Beginning on August 4 the St. Petersburg Property Fund will auction off 30 land plots for the construction of filling stations, Interfax reported Friday. |
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MOSCOW — Industrial conglomerate Sistema has signed a cooperation agreement with the Altai region to develop its tourism infrastructure, a deal that may boost the picturesque region’s chances of being named a special economic zone for tourism.
In a deal signed with the Altai regional government on Wednesday, Sistema said it would help to develop hotel complexes, roads, ski resorts, transportation infrastructure and a slew of other projects. |
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MOSCOW — Gradual appreciation by the ruble would be good for the economy but a lurch higher would hurt business, trade and public finances, First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said. |
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VSEVOLOZHSK, Leningrad Region — Since he came back from Brazil last August, Alexei Etmanov has been a man in a hurry.
In one month he recruited 1,000 workers for his small union at the Ford factory near St. Petersburg, and half a year later they won a 17 percent pay increase. |
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Vladimir Ustinov’s replacement as prosecutor general by Yury Chaika last month brought with it sweeping and — by Russian standards — rapid personnel changes at national, federal district, and regional levels. |
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The traditional driving force of St. Petersburg industry — shipbuilding— is shrinking. In the good old days, the three largest shipyards — Admiralteyskiye Verfi, Baltiysky Zavod and Severnaya Verf — were overloaded with state orders for submarines and ships, tankers and ice-beakers; even furniture, which was then in short supply. |
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President Bush and President Vladimir Putin of Russia announced two new nuclear initiatives earlier this month that could make the world safer — if the presidents keep prodding their secretive and change-averse nuclear bureaucracies to follow through. |
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It was late in June in Sarajevo when Gavrilo Princip shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife. After emptying his revolver, the young Serb nationalist jumped into the shallow river that runs through the city and was quickly seized. But the events he set in motion could not be so easily restrained. |
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The Federal Security Service, or FSB, is the organization that has for all intents and purposes replaced the KGB. The linkage between the two is open and explicit on every level, from symbolic to that of institutional memory. |
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Well, that didn’t take long. Two weeks ago, we wrote here that the “lickspittle, lock-step” U.S. Congress would scurry to give its approval to the dictatorial powers asserted by President George W. Bush after the Supreme Court struck down those claims earlier this month. And lo and behold, last week Republican Senator Arlen Specter introduced a bill that would not only confirm Bush’s unrestrained, unconstitutional one-man rule — it would augment it, exalting the Dear Leader to even greater authoritarian heights. |
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It’s another busy night at the noisy Casino de Paris here in Moscow, a grown-up post-Soviet Disneyland where burly men with expensive cell phones, their dolled-up companions and aging, wide-eyed foreigners play blackjack amid swirls of cigar smoke and snifters of cognac. |
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Want to buy a fake vacation, medical degree or “Siberian purebred” alley cat? Anything’s possible, as long as you don’t care whether it’s real.
Always wanted to brag to your friends about your trip to Brazil, but couldn’t afford to go? No problem!
For $500, nobody will believe you weren’t sunning yourself last week on Copacabana Beach, just before you trekked through the Amazon rain forest and slept in a thatched hut. |
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Israel Kills 3 in Gaza
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli artillery shelled a town in the Gaza Strip used by Palestinian militants to fire rockets Monday, and hospital officials said three Palestinians were killed and eight were wounded.
The attack occurred in a neighborhood of the northern town of Beit Lahiya, where Palestinian militants had just launched seven rockets at southern Israel, causing no casualties, the Israeli army said. |
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VIENNA, Austria — Kosovo formally made its pitch for independence face-to-face with Serbia on Monday at their first top-level talks since NATO bombs drove Serb forces from the province in 1999. |
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LONDON — Two women died and 13 people were injured when they fell from a huge inflatable sculpture after it broke its moorings and flew into the air in a park in northeastern England, police said Monday.
Up to 30 people were inside the walk-in exhibit, which has been shown around the world, when a gust of wind blew it 9 meters above the park in Chester-le-Street on Sunday. |
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NEW YORK — Russia’s Vera Zvonareva rounded off a week of upsets with a 6-2, 6-4 victory over Katarina Srebotnik of Slovenia to win the Cincinnati Open on Sunday.
Zvonareva’s second title of the year was well-earned.
The unseeded Russian knocked out seventh seed Tatiana Golovin, fifth seed Jelena Jankovic and former world number one Serena Williams in her march to the final. |
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LIVERPOOL, England — Tiger Woods completed one of the best ball-striking weeks of his career to retain his British Open title with an emotional two-shot victory over compatriot Chris DiMarco on Sunday. |
Temp: -2°C moderate or heavy snow showers
Issues Archive