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In a controversial jury trial of 17 teenagers that included 14 suspects in the murder of a Vietnamese student who were acquitted last month, the St. Petersburg City Court on Monday sentenced three defendants to a total of 9 years in jail for hate crimes and other crimes not related to the homicide.Sentencing in the trial came on the day anti-fascist activists commemorated the first anniversary of the downtown murder of St. Petersburg student Timur Kacharava in what was widely seen as a hate crime.
Two of the accused were sentenced to 3 years and 2 1/2 years in jail respectively for violent hate assaults on a Palestinian and a Chinese student. The court also dismissed hate charges in attacks on a Ghanaian student and on an Azeri national, sentencing the assailant on the former charge to 3 1/2 years in prison for general "hooliganism" and fining the culprit in the attack on an Azeri man a total of 20,000 rubles ($740) for a similar offense. |
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Alexander Natruskin / Reuters
A man casts his ballot in the independence referendum and presidential election in Tskhinvali in South Ossetia on Sunday. |
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Sergei Yeklichayev saw what seemed like a useful advertisement on St. Petersburg's metro. Leaflets advertising draft-dodging services can easily be found in local subway stations or glued to apartment buildings.The firm's services sounded suspicious, but Yeklichayev felt cornered. His younger brother had deserted from his military service after several months of brutal hazing, and was on the run.
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Three activists from the international environmental organization Greenpeace on Monday chained themselves to a cargo ship carrying more than 5,000 tons of genetically modified soya en route from Amsterdam to St. Petersburg.Greenpeace has been campaigning in the past several years for a complete ban on production of GM soya. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — Despite an increase in per capita income, Russia has fallen further behind developed countries like Norway, Japan and the United States in terms of income, life expectancy and other factors, according to a UN report released last week.The United Nations Development Program's annual human development index ranks Russia 65th out of 177 countries, sandwiched between No. |
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MOSCOW — TNK-BP has paid $1.44 billion in back taxes amid an attack that analysts say is designed to ensure that a state-run company will soon gain a stake in the Russian-British oil major. |
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MOSCOW— A police officer sought by authorities in connection with the killing of Anna Politkovskaya, an investigative reporter who uncovered abuses against civilians in Chechnya, has denied allegations of his involvement in the murder.Alexander Prilepin told state-owned Rossiiskaya Gazeta in an interview published Saturday that he and his colleagues had been angered by Politkovskaya's reports, which he called unfounded, but added that he had never thought about taking revenge. |
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MOSCOW — What price beauty?Cellular telecommunications companies have begun charging more for "beautiful" or easy-to-remember phone numbers — and experts say money is no object, because a catchy number can help a company attract loyal customers. |
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MOSCOW — The Calling Party Pays protocol that took effect at the beginning of July has, in theory, led to free incoming calls for the nation's mobile-phone users.However, customers who have a so-called direct number — a seven-digit number with a local area code — have discovered that the new system is not as straightforward as it might at first seem. |
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Poetry has always been charged with the distinctions of sex. Russian poems can be all the more polarized with their overt linguistic gendering of people and things. |
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One of the world's leading producers of log-built cottages, Finnish company Ikihirsi, has announced record sales in Russia this year after it began tailoring its product to the local market.The company experienced little success when distributing log cottages in Russia under the Ikihirsi trademark — last year sales in Russia accounted for only $2. |
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MOSCOW — The government may sue the Shell-led Sakhalin-2 group in international courts to claim billions of dollars in damages or even scrap the $22 billion production sharing deal, an official said Friday. |
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MOSCOW —President Vladimir Putin met his Belarussian counterpart, Alexander Lukashenko, on Friday for what seemed likely to be tough talks on Russian oil deliveries and control of gas pipelines.The two leaders, meeting in the glare of media cameras in an ornate room in the Kremlin, seemed anxious to mask any discord, greeting each other with a hearty handshake and warm words. |
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Chevron SnubnMOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russian Industry and Energy Minister Viktor Khristenko rejected proposals from a Chevron Corp.-led group for expanding an oil pipeline that connects Kazakhstan to Russia's Black Sea coast, Kommersant reported, citing a copy of a letter Khristenko sent to the group. |
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St. Petersburg's travel industry witnessed an important change last month, with the merging of the Russian airlines "Pulkovo" and "Rossiya," under the latter's brand and moving the management of the new company to Moscow.I was among the first to witness the new company in operation when I flew to Karlovy Vary, via Prague, on October 30. |
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Tatyana Parfenova is one of Russia's leading fashion designers. Her collections have never gone unnoticed, always personifying her refined taste and the inexhaustible creative resources at her disposal. |
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The last jewel in the private crown of the city's previous administration is gone. Pribaltiyskaya, St. Petersburg's largest hotel is to be sold to Norwegian investor Wenaas Holding and will operate under the Park Inn brand. Only six months ago, Wenaas purchased another big hotel — Pulkovskaya, which already belongs to the Park Inn brand. |
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Under President Vladimir Putin there has been a buildup of grievances about Russia's political development, but the economy has appeared to remain safely in the free market zone where his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, left it. |
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During his recent televised question-and-answer session, President Vladimir Putin was clearly irritated with the pace of work on a February presidential decree to form a national holding company for aircraft construction. "They are sorting out whose assets are worth more and whose less as at some oriental bazaar," Putin said. |
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People are so happy U.S. Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld is leaving that they are overlooking the dark side of the man nominated to replace him, Robert Gates.Now that U.S. President George W. Bush and Rumsfeld have undermined relations with nearly every other country in the world, Gates may finish it off by wrecking relations with the one country they haven't alienated too badly yet: Russia. |
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During Soviet times, three symbols served as indicators for me of the regime's stability: If Lenin was still in his tomb, if the red flag still flew over the Kremlin and if the statue of secret police founder Felix Dzerzhinsky still stood in front of KGB headquarters, then all was right with the Soviet world. |
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As South Ossetians voted Sunday for independence from Georgia in a referendum no country in the world was likely to recognize, the sheer absurdity of the situation in the tiny breakaway republic was brought home again on a short drive from the capital, Tskhinvali, to the scruffy village of Eredvi. |
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On Jan. 18, 1989 — his next-to-last day in office — U.S. President Ronald Reagan finally invited me to dine at the White House. Frankly, I had begun to wonder. |
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GAZA — Rival Palestinian factions were close to agreeing on Monday on a new prime minister to replace Ismail Haniyeh, but the candidate required the endorsement of President Mahmoud Abbas to be made final, officials said.Negotiators from the Islamist group Hamas and its more moderate rival Fatah said separately they were near agreement that Mohammad Shbair, the former head of the Islamic University in Gaza, should replace Haniyeh. |
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SEOUL —South Korea will not join a U.S. plan to intercept North Korean ships suspected of carrying arms cargo out of fear of raising tensions with its neighbor, officials said on Monday. |
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LONDON — The U.K. Ministry of Defence has launched a probe into how four British soldiers were killed and three seriously wounded in an attack on a patrol boat in the southern Iraqi city of Basra.Their boat was attacked on Sunday as it patrolled the Shatt al Arab waterway when it was caught in an explosion caused by an improvised bomb. |
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DHAKA — Police fired rubber bullets and used batons to disperse thousands of protesters across Bangladeshi cities on Monday, and at least one person was killed and 50 wounded as a political crisis showed no sign of abating. |
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LONDON — Andy Robinson gained a stay of execution on Monday when he was confirmed as England rugby union coach for the remaining two November internationals despite a seventh successive defeat at the weekend.Argentina upset the world champions 25-18 at Twickenham on Saturday after the hosts had lost by a record score to New Zealand on the previous Sunday. |
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LONDON — Desert Orchid, one of horse racing's greatest steeplechasers, has died at the age of 27, the Racing Post reported on Monday.The gray known as Dessie clocked up 34 race wins in his career, including a 1989 victory in the Cheltenham Gold Cup and four in the King George VI Chase between 1986 and 1990. |
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SHANGHAI — James Blake showed he was not in Shanghai just to make up the numbers when he produced a quality performance to upset world number two Rafael Nadal 6-4 7-6 in his opening match at the Masters Cup on Monday.The 26-year-old American, playing his first Masters Cup match, came back from a break down in the first set and recovered from a 4-0 deficit in the second to triumph 7-0 in a one-sided tiebreak. |
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MADRID — The Spanish capital Madrid won the right to retain the WTA Championships after what was widely regarded as one of the most successful and entertaining women's tournaments in recent years. |
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LONDON — Battle lines have been drawn in a war of the sexes in English football after a disgruntled coach described the use of women match officials as "tokenism for politically-correct idiots."Luton Town manager Mike Newell apologized on Monday for comments he made about lineswoman Amy Rayner after his side were denied a penalty in their 3-2 defeat by Queens Park Rangers at the weekend. |
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