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MOSCOW — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez slammed the United States as the “biggest threat” to the world on Thursday, as he finalized up to $3 billion in Russian arms deals that have provoked Washington’s ire.
Chavez, a constant critic of Washington, praised President Vladimir Putin for defying a U.S. arms blockade and hit out at Washington for its foreign policy.
“The biggest threat which exists in the world is the empire of the United States,” Chavez said while unveiling a bust of 19th-century South American liberation hero Simon Bolivar at a Moscow library.
“It is a senseless, blind, stupid giant which doesn’t understand the world, doesn’t understand human rights, doesn’t understand anything about humanity, culture and consciousness,” Chavez said. |
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WIND POWER
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Windsurfers taking part in the Baltic Cup on the Gulf of Finland near Zelenogorsk. The competition is part of the national Russia Cup contest and concludes on Sunday. Weekend weather is forecast to be cool and wet with maximum temperatures Saturday of 14 deg C. |
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STRASBOURG, France — In a landmark ruling on Thursday, the European Court of Human Rights found Russia had violated the “right to life” of a young Chechen who disappeared after a Russian general ordered him shot.
In the first ruling of its kind on a disappearance case in Chechnya, the court also ruled Russia had violated a ban on arbitrary detention and failed to provide an effective remedy due to the failings of the official Russian investigation into the disappearance of Khadzimurat Yandiyev.
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The U.S. Consulate in St. Petersburg tops the list of the most difficult diplomatic missions in town for Russians obtaining travel visas according to a survey of local travel agencies conducted this month by the North-Western branch of the Russian Tourism Industry Union (RST).
RST members evaluated the city’s foreign consulates on a diverse range of criteria, including cooperativeness, flexibility, interest in Russian clients, efficient contact with tour operators, willingness to reach a compromise, understanding and attitude. |
All photos from issue.
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The St. Petersburg City Court acquitted suspected murderers of an African student Tuesday in a second controversial ruling on racist killings this year, sending mixed messages to the public and leading Governor Valentina Matviyenko to question the efficacy of jury trials.
Around 50 supporters of the four suspects in the courtroom applauded the ruling for several minutes, and a few shouted “Thank you!” and “Way to go!” Interfax reported. |
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Yukos said Wednesday that it was rejecting a bid by Gazprom to buy up assets ahead of an Aug. 1 bankruptcy hearing likely to finish off the ailing oil firm.
“The bankruptcy process is moving forward at a great pace and the management is now of the belief that it would be inappropriate and without benefit to the company for any last-minute deals to be struck,” Yukos spokeswoman Claire Davidson said by e-mail. |
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EuroPartner has become the first Russian company accredited by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) for the provision of forestry certificates. Experts hope that voluntary certification will help the nation’s timber companies compete on the world market and at the same time greatly reduce illegal forestry. |
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The Rosgosstrakh insurance company has announced its intention to expand into medical services. One out of seven of the new clinics will be opened in St. Petersburg, Interfax-AFI reported Tuesday.
“Last year we made a strategic decision to go into the compulsory health insurance business, plus we started constructing medical and prophylactic clinics,” Interfax-AFI quoted Rosgosstrakh CEO Danil Khachaturov as saying. |
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When, in 2004, Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, coming on the heels of a rigged presidential election, seemed to put that country on the path to join the West, it was top news in the U.S. media and the stuff of countless emotional commentaries. Many of them focused on the iniquity of Russia, which had backed the existing Ukrainian regime. |
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State television has been trumpeting the arrival in Russia of “the well-known Israeli human rights activist Yuly Nudelman,” who is voluntarily helping the Prosecutor General’s Office secure the extradition of Yukos co-owner Leonid Nevzlin from Israel. |
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 Art and science combined in the life of Vladimir Nabokov, according to an exhibition based on his butterfly collection.
Just over a century ago, in June 1906, a 7-year-old Vladimir Nabokov caught his first butterfly.
Although he eventually gained worldwide fame as a writer — especially after the publication in 1955 of his scandalous best-selling novel “Lolita” — he also maintained a lifelong passion for lepidopterology, the branch of entomology that focuses on moths and butterflies. |
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The host of an arts news bulletin on local television discusses cultural life in St. Petersburg.
For the last three years the cultural status of St. Petersburg has been verified not only by the variety of cultural events held in the city but, also, by a special TV news program VESTI-Culture hosted by Anna Fradkina that is broadcast four days a week, Tuesday to Friday, at 2:30 p. |
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With yet more rock bands showing well-paid loyalty to the Kremlin, a person whose songs were definitive of the Russian rock revolution of the 1980s has spoken against collaborating with the increasingly undemocratic regime.
As 5,000 so-called “commissars” of the pro-Kremlin youth movement Nashi gathered in its camp on Lake Seliger in the Tver Oblast for free meals, free concerts and some heavy indoctrination (as they did last year), more bands held out their hands to take the Kremlin oil rubles. |
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An outstanding figure of the Russian Avant-Garde, Pavel Filonov, is honored by a long-awaited retrospective at the State Russian Museum that opened its doors last week. |
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London’s classical music lovers this month are torn between Russia’s two great companies — St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theater and Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater — which are performing in the British capital at the same time at venues within a few minutes walk of each other. |
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The St. Petersburg Times was not the first English-language newspaper in St. Petersburg. Before the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, when the city was a flourishing Imperial capital, a range of publications were printed in English. |
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MOGADISHU — Somali legislators are trying to remove Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi from power, in a move government sources said on Thursday was aimed at persuading rival powerful Islamists to enter peace talks.
A lawmaker said a vote of no confidence in Gedi had been presented to the speaker and would be debated on Saturday. |
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ARLINGTON, Texas, — When it was over — after five Yankees relievers, four lead changes, two booming homers and one pivotal missed bunt — one fact stood out about the Yankees’ wild 8-7 win over the Texas Rangers on Wednesday.
For all of their injuries and occasionally ragged play, the Yankees have the lead for a playoff spot. |
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Guus Hiddink, the newly appointed coach of the Russian national football team, will be charged with tax evasion in his native Netherlands, his agent confirmed Wednesday. |
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SAN FRANCISCO — The U.S. Olympic Committee advanced Los Angeles and San Francisco on Wednesday to the next step in the contest to bid to host the 2016 games, a move that comes as many of the state’s sports teams draw up plans for new stadiums.
Chicago was the third city tapped by the committee. |
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ROME — The man at the center of Italy’s match-fixing scandal, former Juventus general manager Luciano Moggi, has hit out at the decision of an appeals court earlier this week to confirm the club’s relegation to Serie B. |
Temp: -2°C moderate or heavy snow showers
Issues Archive