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KIEV — Ukraine’s Viktor Yanukovich, humiliated in the 2004 “Orange Revolution,” was set to be voted in as prime minister on Thursday after signing a commitment not to reverse the country’s pro-Western policies.
President Viktor Yushchenko, architect of the revolution that overturned the old order in Ukraine, reluctantly chose “co-habitation” with the Moscow-leaning Yanukovich in the early hours of Thursday to end four months of political deadlock.
Parliament was expected later in the day to approve Yanukovich’s nomination and cement a “grand coalition” uniting the president’s Our Ukraine Party with Yanukovich’s Regions group and smaller allies.
Before that, Yanukovich and Yushchenko formally signed a declaration of principles on the formation of a coalition government which the Ukrainian president said would safeguard the ideals of the revolution. |
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Alexander Demianchuk / Reuters
Mikhail Piotrovsky, director of the State Hermitage, announcing the theft of 221 artworks from the museum on Tuesday. |
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One of the most valuable works of art from the haul the the State Hermitage Museum announced Tuesday had been stolen has turned up in a garbage can following what the local police named “an anonimous call.”
It has been less than a week since Mikhail Piotrovsky, director of museum called a news conference to acknowledge the theft of 221 precious items from the collection’s Russian Art Department.
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Two girls dressed in yellow bikinis took to the streets on Thursday to protest against what they call the ferocious and sadistic treatment of chickens by the international fast food chain Kentucky Fried Chicken, or KFC.
Waving people off the KFC outlet near 39 Kamennoostrovsky Prospekt, the activists from the U. |
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KIEV — Ukraine’s President Viktor Yushchenko and his rival Viktor Yanukovich have almost nothing in common apart from their first name, but fate keeps throwing them together. |
All photos from issue.
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As English-Land, a television reality show in which teenagers must use English to compete for a prize, prepares to air, its creators say they want to shift viewers from voyeurism — the concept used in the majority of such programs — to learning and self-improvement. |
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MOSCOW — At least six people were hospitalized in Moscow and the Moscow region during raucous celebrations of the Paratroopers Day holiday Wednesday.
Thousands of former paratroopers took to the streets, splashed in the fountains and showed off their combat skills in brawls with one another and unfortunate melon vendors. |
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BISHKEK — A court in Kyrgyzstan on Thursday sentenced to death three men charged with killing a member of the Central Asian state’s parliament.
The penalty will not be implemented because Kyrgyzstan has a moratorium on executions. Instead, the men — Yevgeny Golovin, Azamat Zakirov and Rustam Abdulin — will be jailed on death row. |
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MOSCOW — When a plumber responded to complaints about clogged pipes in an apartment building in northern Moscow last week, he made a gruesome discovery: chunks of human flesh. |
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MOSCOW — Yukos could still survive if the state allows it to, although the chances of that happening are “pretty close to zero,” Tim Osborne, director of Yukos majority shareholder GML said Wednesday.
Osborne said GML, formerly Group Menatep, would support Yukos’ attempts to appeal the Moscow Arbitration Court’s decision Tuesday to liquidate the company. |
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MOSCOW — Oil pipeline monopoly Transneft moved to calm Western customers Wednesday by saying a weekend leak on a spur off its major export route, feeding Lithuania, would not affect their supplies. |
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St. Petersburg’s housing committee has said that within four months all residential buildings not yet receiving the services of a management company would be offered to such firms at auction. Tenders for a total of 60 million square meters of residential area will be put on offer from September through November, Regnum reported Monday. |
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Northwest premiums
ST. PETERSBURG (SPB) —The Northwest filial of Ingosstrakh increased its insurance premiums by 55 percent up to 327.5 million rubles ($12. |
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ALMATY, Kazakhstan — Yury Wegelin, a German citizen who owns and runs a successful wine and juice company in Kazakhstan, spent five months in jail last year, three of them in solitary confinement in a small, windowless cell.
Neither he nor Gold Product, the company he founded in 1997, has been found guilty of any wrongdoing, but the firm has faced repeated audits and is fighting two cases in the courts. |
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MOSCOW — Unified Energy Systems second-quarter net income surged 34 percent from a year earlier as the country’s eight-year economic boom boosted electricity demand, the company said Wednesday. |
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Deripaska Gift
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Billionaire Oleg Deripaska, owner of Russian Aluminium, paid himself $1.5 billion in dividends for 2005, almost the company’s entire profit for the year, Vedomosti said.
Russian Aluminium, known as Rusal, said net income surged 56 percent last year to $1.65 billion, Vedomosti said. |
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In the West, Qana, a small Lebanese village southeast of Tyre, is believed by some to be the place where Jesus performed his first miracle, turning water into wine. In Lebanon and throughout the wider Arab and Muslim world, however, the village’s name has for the last decade been synonymous with something else: the killing in April 1996 of more than 100 men, women and children who had taken refuge in a UN compound, hiding from Israeli shelling directed at Hezbollah. |
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The clowns finished their show, the circus rolled up its tents and left town, and the Group of Eight summit came to a successful close. But the public is still here. |
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 Musicians Igor Butman and David Goloshchokin were among the stars headlining the Jazz Q Festival in St. Petersburg two weeks ago, and to take advantage of the shared billing of two of Russia’s premier jazz stars, the St. Petersburg Times spoke to them to take the temperature of jazz in the country today. |
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A local author has published an anthology of alcohol-soaked memoirs touching on the philosophical.
Writers muse on the meaning of hard drinking in their lives in a new anthology, “The Blue Book of the Alcoholic,” which includes short stories, biographical sketches of bohemian artists and an account of drying out at a U. |
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“Glastonbury,” a film about the 35-year history of Britain's definitive music festival, will be screened at Platforma on Friday.
The film’s director, Julien Temple, is probably best-known for “The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle,” the cynical story of The Sex Pistols told from the point of view of the band’s former manager Malcolm McLaren. |
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Hookahs may be the only nightlife trend that has existed for centuries.
Oxygen bars and swing music quickly became passÎ, and even the almighty sushi is last year’s news. |
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Want to hail a ride to the Black Sea coast without leaving your office? New “find a travel partner” web sites springing up all over the Russian Internet (RuNet) are making it possible.
With just a month of summer left, Natalya is desperate to get out of Moscow and spend some quality beach time, but she needs to find someone to travel with to avoid feeling like a third wheel. |
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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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TRINCOMALEE, Sri Lanka — Artillery fire killed 10 civilians sheltering from fighting in northeast Sri Lanka on Thursday, the army said, as troops battled Tamil Tiger rebels and the island slipped back towards civil war.
More than 800 people have died this year and ambushes, air strikes and naval clashes had become commonplace, but it was a dispute over a rebel-held water supply that led to the first major ground fighting last week since a 2002 ceasefire. |
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BEIRUT — Israeli jets pounded Hezbollah’s Beirut stronghold and battles raged in the south of the country on Thursday while world powers struggled to come up with a plan to stop a war now in its fourth week. |
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LONDON — Iraq is more likely to slide into civil war than turn into a democracy, Britain’s outgoing ambassador to Baghdad wrote in a leaked diplomatic cable, the BBC public broadcaster reported on Thursday.
William Patey’s final cable from Baghdad gives a far more pessimistic assessment for prospects in Iraq than Britain has disclosed in public. |
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HAVANA — Nearly three days after Cuba’s historic handover of power, neither ailing President Fidel Castro nor his brother Raul, to whom he temporarily ceded control, has been seen by an anxious Cuban public. |
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RALEIGH, North Carolina — Businesses will be less likely to invest in sport after positive doping tests by Tour de France winner Floyd Landis and Olympic champion Justin Gatlin, U.S. marketing experts say.
“When this kind of thing happens, it is a downer for everybody, especially with track and field and cycling already having limited appeal in the rich American sports and entertainment market,” said Bob Dorfman, executive creative director for Pickett Advertising in San Francisco. |
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NEW YORK — Mark Loretta did his best David Ortiz impression by crushing a game-winning double with two-out in the ninth to lift the Boston Red Sox to a 6-5 win over the Cleveland Indians on Wednesday at Fenway Park. |
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MILAN — Juventus have sold France midfielder Patrick Vieira to Inter Milan for 9.5 million euros ($12.11 million), less than half what they paid for him a year ago.
Juventus said in a statement that they had booked a capital loss of 8.6 million euros on the sale, part of an exodus of players from the Turin club following a match-fixing scandal that led to their demotion to the second-tier Serie B league. |
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BUDAPEST — Germany’s Britta Steffen claimed a world record in the women’s 100 metres freestyle and Laure Manaudou of France broke a 19-year European mark on a memorable day at the European swimming championships on Wednesday. |
Temp: -2°C moderate or heavy snow showers
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