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MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin on Friday signed off on controversial changes to the law on extremist activity that critics say could be used to silence opposition politicians and the press.
The revised law expands the definition of extremist activity to include public slander of a government official related to his duties, using or threatening violence against a government official or his family, and publicly justifying or excusing terrorism.
Supporters of the revised law argue that it will allow the state to combat racist and nationalist groups more effectively. Russia has seen a rise in hate crimes and xenophobia in recent years.
But critics of the legislation, which sailed through both houses of parliament this month, say it could be used to stifle opposition political parties during the election cycle that begins next year. |
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HELLO SAILOR!
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Sailors celebrating Navy Day which traditionally takes place on the last Sunday of July. The day is marked by concerts and drinking on the banks of the River Neva. The Russian Navy was founded by Peter the Great in 1696 and will mark its 310th anniversary in October. |
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BEIRUT — Israel on Monday rejected mounting international pressure to end its 20-day-old war against Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon, but Washington said a ceasefire could be achieved this week.
Civilians fled battered villages in southern Lebanon after Israel agreed to partially halt air strikes for 48 hours, and aid convoys headed into the area to deliver supplies.
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Jacques, is a 19-year old medical student from Senagal who studies at St. Petersburg State University. He is not somebody who makes enemies easily. Friendly and easy talk to, Jacques, who like other foreign students interviewed in the wake of the acquital last week of suspects in the race-hate murder of a Congolese student, asked for his full name to not to be published. |
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UNITED NATIONS — The UN Security Council was poised on Monday to adopt a resolution demanding Iran suspend its nuclear activities by the end of August or face the threat of sanctions. |
All photos from issue.
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Environmentalists at the local branch of Greenpeace have discovered six containers near St. Petersburg stocked with radioactive material that the ecologists claim is emitting radiation well over the accepted safety level.
But representatives of the Atomic Energy Ministry argue the cargo, stationed at the Kapitolovo stain station, 6 kilometers away from St. |
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MOSCOW — Top Chechen rebels have tried without success to convince Hamas and Hezbollah to send fighters to the North Caucasus and might have had a hand in the killing of four Russian diplomats in Iraq in June, a senior Federal Security Service official said. |
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Bureaucrats will be forced to quickly process applications for new businesses, newly purchased property and driver’s licenses under a pilot program that targets corruption.
The Economic Development and Trade Ministry intends to spend $44.5 million this year to apply “customer charters” to 19 federal agencies and their counterparts in 29 regions. |
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G8 Opinions
MOSCOW (SPT) — The summit of heads of governments held in St. Petersburg in July 15-17 was mostly beneficial to Russia, said 37 percent of respondents of a survey from All-Russia Center of Public Opinion Study (VCIOM), Interfax reported on Monday. |
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Russians living in Lebanon spoke of bodies in freezers, bombed-out buildings and a growing scarcity of food, but not all felt certain that it was time to leave.
“There are lots of bodies everywhere. Bodies wrapped in garbage bags and plastic sheeting and put in fridges. |
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MOSCOW — An Indian woman fell to her death from a 10th-floor apartment in southern Moscow last week, and her relatives are pressing the police to investigate whether the death is linked to a $10,700 dowry dispute. |
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The largest national mobile retailer Euroset has bought St. Petersburg-based mobile retailer Ultra in an effort to diversify its range and conquer new market segments. With Euroset’s financial impetus, 100 new Ultra salons will open across Russia by the end of 2006, the company said Monday in a statement. |
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One of the world’s largest hotel reservation systems, Pegasus, is to promote St. Petersburg to western tourists by including local hotels in its network. |
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MOSCOW — The Federal Anti-Monopoly Service has asked the three leading domestic cell phone operators to explain the reasons for their recent connection-fee hikes.
The anti-monopoly service sent letters on Thursday to Mobile TeleSystems, VimpelCom and MegaFon asking them to clarify why they introduced new charges for connecting subscribers’ telephone calls and for announcing the changes at roughly the same time, a spokeswoman for the service said. |
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Northwest Trade
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Trade turnover for the Northwest increased by 36 percent up to $40 billion in the first half of the year, Interfax reported Friday. |
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BRUSSELS — Talks between Russia and the European Union over a pact on energy transit have hit a setback, the Russian ambassador to the EU said, casting doubt on EU hopes that Moscow would eventually ratify an Energy Charter Treaty.
The EU, which relies on Russia for about 25 percent of its gas, has pressed Moscow to ratify the charter, which governs energy activity across the Eurasian continent. |
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MOSCOW/LONDON — Russian auto maker GAZ Group agreed to buy British vanmaker LDV on Monday, securing production and 850 jobs at the firm’s plant in central England. |
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Alrosa, the world’s second-largest diamond producer, has lodged a complaint with the European Court of Justice to dispute a ruling that bans it from trading with industry leader De Beers.
The Russian diamond monopoly confirmed Friday that it was challenging February’s decision by the European Commission to force the company to scale-down and by 2009 stop all diamond trade with South Africa’s De Beers. |
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MOSCOW — TMK, the country’s biggest pipemaker, said Friday that it might build a pipe plant in Venezuela with an eye on supplying Latin American and Caribbean markets. |
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In August 1982, Richard Hainsworth and his wife took a three-day train journey from Ostend, Belgium to Moscow. Representatives of Mir Publishing met the British couple at the Belorussky train station and escorted them to a designated flat. They have been living in Moscow ever since. |
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ST. PETERSBURG — There are two popular sayings in Russia: “Remodeling your apartment is a way of life” and “Remodeling your apartment is worse than a fire. |
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Over the last few years, St. Petersburg has become an attractive proposition for foreign and local investors and hotel operators. Among the ambitious projects that are currently being realized in the city is the construction of two new four star hotels — the Sheraton airport hotel near Pulkovo airport and the Sokos Hotel Vasilievsky on Vasilievsky Island. |
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In many respects the Group of Eight summit in St. Petersburg earlier this month marked the end of the first phase of Russia’s emergence from the wreckage left by the collapse of the Soviet Union. |
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The IT-sector began receiving attention at the highest governmental level back in the beginning of 2005. The government has set rather ambitious national goals. According to its concept of IT development, by 2010, Russia, along with India and China should be the three world leaders of IT outsourcing with export volumes over US$ 3 billion. |
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Dacha is Russian for “country house,” but as spoken by my parents it might as well have meant “the loving grace of God.” When the warm season finally broke the grip of the lifeless Leningrad winter, my parents schlepped me around to an endless series of dachas in the Soviet Union: a mushroom-ridden village near Daugavpils, Latvia; beautifully wooded Sestroretsk, not far from the Gulf of Finland; the infamous Yalta in the Crimea (Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt signed some kind of real estate deal here); Sukhumi, a wrecked Black Sea resort in what is today a restive part of Georgia. |
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Russia’s chief health inspector, Gennady Onishchenko, the man who has left us wine-less, brandy-less and Borzhomi-less, has shut down the cafeteria at the Moscow Regional Arbitration Court. |
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The history of almost every religion is a tragedy of betrayal: the betrayal of the radical, egalitarian vision of its founders by generations of powerful elites, who twist and pervert the original principles in order to augment their own status, wealth and dominion. It has always been thus, but is nowhere more marked than among the “People of the Book” — Christians, Muslims and Jews — whose elites have for centuries led their followers away from the sparks of light that shone in the beginning, dragging them deeper into darkness and error, until today the world finds itself mired in a new Jahiliyyah, or time of ignorance. |
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MOSCOW — On Tuesday, the All-Russia Exhibition Center, or VVTs, celebrates its 67th anniversary. But what’s there today has only a faint resemblance to the Stalinist wonderland that opened its doors on Aug. 1, 1939. Back then, it was conceived as a one-time state fair that would sell peasants on the wonders of collectivization. |
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MOSCOW — It could make a great dollhouse, or it could be blown up in a low-budget action flick; it would also look good in the lair of a James Bond villain. |
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KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — A bomb in a police car killed at least eight people in Afghanistan on Monday as NATO forces took control of security in the south of the country to begin one of the biggest ground operations in the alliance’s history.
“NATO is here for the long term, for as long as the government and people of Afghanistan require our assistance,” Lieutenant-General David Richards, the British NATO commander responsible for the south, said in a statement. |
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COLOMBO — Sri Lanka’s two-decade civil war is back on, a top Tamil Tiger said, as seven soldiers and three rebels were killed on Monday in the first army advance on rebel-held territory since a 2002 ceasefire. |
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HOCKENHEIM, Germany — Ferrari’s Michael Schumacher blasted the Formula One title race wide open on Sunday with a commanding one-two victory in his home German Grand Prix.
While the 37-year-old celebrated the 89th victory of his incredible career, serenaded by air-horns and his jubilant army of red-shirted fans, Renault’s world champion Fernando Alonso limped home fifth. |
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LOS ANGELES, California — Germany’s Tommy Haas rallied to defeat eighth seed Dmitry Tursunov 4-6, 7-5, 6-3 in Sunday’s final and clinch his second title in three years at the Los Angeles ATP tournament. |
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PARIS — Tour de France winner Floyd Landis, who tested positive for testosterone on his way to victory in cycling’s showpiece event, should find out shortly if the counter-analysis he has requested confirms the result.
A source close to the anti-doping laboratory testing the B-sample said the result would be known soon. |
Temp: -2°C moderate or heavy snow showers
Issues Archive