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The forthcoming election campaign to the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly is likely to resemble a sports contest as major parties recruit popular sportsmen as candidates to run in the March poll. Yevgeny Plyushchenko, an Olympic figure skating champion and one of Russia’s most flamboyant sportsmen, announced at a news conference this week that he will run in the election for the Just Russia party as one of the top three candidates on its list. But Plyushchenko indicated it was practical rather than ideological motives that led him to plunge into politics. “Careers in sports do not last forever, and no one can skate forever,” Plyushchenko said. |
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Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A skateboarder practising his skills at a new specially built extreme sports park in the courtyard of 34 Voznesensky Prospekt in the Admiralty district of the city. |
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MOSCOW — Two police officers escorted Boris into the station at about 6 p.m. His speech was slurred. He had trouble recalling his last name. When the cops forcibly removed his coat and sweater, the stench of booze and sweat was overpowering. “Why did you bring me here?” Boris screamed after the nurse managed to coax his age, 53, out of him. When the officers told him he’d have to take off all his clothes, Boris less-than-politely declined.
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Russian and international visitors to the city will be able to register themselves at post offices when a reform unveiled by the St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast Federal Immigration Service this week takes force next month. “The new practice will save both foreign and Russian visitors the time and trouble of filling in and chasing people in office corridors,” the head of the Immigration Services’ Department of Legal and International Cooperation, Sergei Golovin said about the new policy which takes effect on Jan. |
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MOSCOW — Russian Post has started delivering 4.5 tonnes of letters and parcels that were sent from the United States in 1999. The state-owned postal service said the delay was not its fault — a shipping container with the mail inside had languished at a port in Finland for years. |
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ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Every Petersburger will have a chance to become a Good Samaritan when Radio Baltika’s charity fundraiser gets under way Sunday. The radio station said that each year 6,000 children spend the holidays in city hospitals and has appealed to listeners to donate a gift for them. |
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ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The city’s first “park-and-ride” scheme has been announced by the planning committee of the Legislative Assembly, Rosbalt agency reported. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — Russia’s largest Jewish organization on Wednesday called on the government to reassess its relations with Iran in response to a conference held in Tehran that questioned the reality of the Holocaust. Boruch Gorin, director of public affairs for the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia, called the Tehran conference “unprincipled and arrogant PR on the bones of the victims of the worst catastrophe of the 20th century. |
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Mortgage volume at City Mortgage Bank increased up to $300 million this year, managers said Wednesday at a press conference to announce their regional expansion. Various obstacles notwithstanding, the bank’s representatives were confident of continued expansion. |
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The state is forcing private firms out of the market for housing services, companies said at a press conference at Rosbalt news agency Thursday. In some districts state companies are likely to win 100 percent of tenders for the servicing of residential buildings. |
 MOSCOW — The country’s second-largest bank, Vneshtorgbank, has agreed to sell its 16 percent stake in International Moscow Bank, or IMB, to Italy’s UniCredit, banking sources said Wednesday. “An agreement in principle has been reached. There are only technical details left. |
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MOSCOW — Pressure from the authorities is beginning to threaten the timetable of the Shell-led Sakhalin-2 oil and gas project, the venture’s operator said Wednesday. |
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Comstar Purchase n MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Billionaire Vladimir Yevtushenkov’s Comstar United Telesystems will get a one-year loan of up to $675 million from ABN Amro Bank NV to refinance the purchase of a quarter of national fixed-line monopoly Svyazinvest. Comstar will pay ABN Amro an interest of 1.6 percent above the London Interbank Offered Rate or Libor, the Moscow-based company said in a filing on its web site Thursday. |
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Augusto Pinochet has died. He was the old idol of Russia’s democrats and liberals. I recall the praises of the former Chilean dictator’s iron hand sung by Mark Zakharov, the progressive director of the Lenin Komsomol Theater, back in Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s time. |
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The case of the Federal Mandatory Medical Insurance Fund provides the likelihood that wolves will be exposed as wearing sheep’s clothing — or at least dinner jackets or medical gowns. |
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The news that Shell has offered Gazprom a stake in the Sakhalin-2 project doesn’t come as a surprise to many. The state-controlled gas giant has been looking to get involved in the project for at least six months and, if information from industry insiders is accurate, the involvement will be significant. |
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A blond boy sits on a swing and talks about his parents finding him in a cabbage patch, while a girl puts on eye shadow with an expert touch. These are two of the 6-year-old children depicted in “Generation,” a documentary cycle whose second installment is nearly ready to air on Russian television. |
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The author Dmitry Bykov wrote an article in Ogonyok last week arguing that there aren’t any Russian sex symbols, only Hollywood ones. This was a touch harsh, I think, especially since the writer and his shorts recently starred in a Moskovsky Komsomolets gossip column. |
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While the organizers of May’s disastrous gay march lick their wounds, one activist is waging a more subtle battle for the rights of sexual minorities in the face of antagonistic public attitudes and apathy among the people he is trying to help. Ed Mishin, director of the Russian National GLBT Center, Together for short, does not like waving rainbow flags or holding rallies, and he is certainly averse to being assaulted by neo-fascists or arrested, as were his more pugnacious colleagues in May. Instead of political agitation, Mishin said, steps need to be taken to build a community out of Russia’s atomized gay men and lesbians. Without it, he said, homosexuals will never enjoy the rights and freedoms guaranteed to other Russians. |
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 Imagine a forum of artists, thinkers, critics, and art-historians all engaged in a conversation about a single, somewhat abstract concept. Now, print that conversation — in two verbal, and three visual languages in a compact and beautifully made volume. |
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The Russian painter, draughtsman and designer Mikhail Vrubel (1856-1910) replaced Pavel Filonov at the Benois Wing of the Russian Museum when a new exhibition of his work opened last week. The consquence is meaningful. Near contemporaries, both artists were extremely inventive and had fabulous biographies with tragic ends; both Vrubel and Filonov remain lonely and enigmatic figures in Russian art and its history. |
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One of history’s more interesting coincidences occurred on nearly the same day in June, 129 years apart: In 1812 and 1941, respectively, Napoleon and Hitler invaded Russia. |
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However it’s cooked, the fatty Bavarian sausage seems to pull in the crowds and St. Petersburg’s meat-loving public is proving just as rapt by a lengthy mix of shoulder, cheek and skin. First there was the phenomenal (and vaguely explicable) success of Karl and Friedrich on Krestovsky Island, and now Grad Petrov downtown,, in the shadow of a towering statue of Mikhail Lomonosov next to the Neva, is forever thronged with tourists and locals alike. And although the brewpub was packed, the waitress did not waste any time in appearing to confirm the fact, quickly offering us a couple of high stools in a corner, which was dark but cozy and that little bit closer to a smartly vaulted brick wall, so welcoming after the river cold walk. |
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 Who knows what violence lurks in the hearts of men? Mel Gibson knows, and he just can’t resist putting every last ounce of it on screen. He also can’t resist pulling those bloody, still-beating hearts out of human bodies and putting them up on screen as well. |
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IPSWICH — Police hunting a serial killer of prostitutes in eastern England said on Thursday two of five victims had been murdered in strikingly similar ways before their naked bodies were dumped. Anneli Alderton, 24, was strangled and an unidentified woman was killed by “compression to the neck,” detectives said as they appealed for help in one of Britain’s biggest manhunts. |
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LONDON — Prime Minister Tony Blair has been questioned by police investigating allegations that peerages and other honors were bestowed in return for political contributions, Blair’s office said Thursday. |
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DOHA — China’s Olympic champion Liu Xiang won the 110 metres hurdles title in a new Asian record time as drugs and controversy again enveloped the Asian Games. Liu, the world record holder, clocked a time of 13.15 seconds to beat compatriot Shi Dongpeng, who posted a personal best of 13.28 seconds, with Masato Naito of Japan taking the bronze. It bettered the 13.20 seconds Liu set at the last Games in Busan four years ago but, at the end of a long season, was well outside his world mark of 12.88 seconds set in Lausanne in July. “It’s great to win the Asian Games. The Olympics are world famous but the Asian Games remain Asia’s main competition,” said the 23-year-old. It was also a good night for Bahrain’s Ethiopian-born Maryam Yussuf Jamal, who completed a rare middle distance double by adding the 1500m title to the 800m. |
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/ Reuters
Privivkova in action Tuesday at the European Curling Championships in Switzerland. Russia’s women won all nine of their round-robin ties. |
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LONDON — Chelsea cut Manchester United’s Premier League lead to five points after Didier Drogba scored the winner in a 1-0 victory over Newcastle United on Wednesday. Chelsea, desperate for all three points after the champions were held to a 1-1 draw by Arsenal on Sunday, needed Drogba to come off the bench and poke the ball home in the 74th minute.
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LONDON — Three-times grand slam tournament winner Lindsay Davenport has no plans to play tennis again after giving birth to her first child next year. “I hate the word ‘retirement’ but this season was such a struggle physically for me and I can’t imagine playing again,” Davenport told ESPN.com (www.espn.com). The 30-year-old American missed most of 2006 with back problems before reaching the quarter-finals at the U.S. Open. In her career, she has won the Australian Open, Wimbledon and U.S. Open singles titles plus the 1996 Atlanta Olympics gold medal. Her 51 singles titles put her ninth on the all-time list. Davenport began her professional career in 1993 and was one of the pioneers of the power game in women’s tennis. |
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 PERTH — Monty Panesar captured five wickets on his Ashes debut to help England bowl out Australia for 244 before struggling to 51 for two on the opening day of the third test on Thursday. |
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KUALA LUMPUR — Badminton’s most prestigious event, the All England Championship, will be part of a new cash-driven 12-tournament Super Series tour aimed at raising the sport’s global appeal. Governing body Badminton World Federation (BWF), formerly known as the International Badminton Federation, said on Thursday that the inaugural series in 2007 will offer minimum prize money of US$200,000 (102,000 pounds) for each tournament. |
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