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Amid continued debate about the fate of the Constitutional Court, a large group of the court’s judges was taken on a tour of St. Petersburg on Saturday to familiarize themselves with their future headquarters in the historic buildings of the Senate and Synod. Yury Sharandin, head of the Constitutional Legislation Committee of the Federation Council said Monday the committee will recommend rejecting the law on the relocation of the Constitutional Court from Moscow to St. Petersburg. In Sharandin’s opinion, the transfer conditions stipulated by the law, are illegitimate and unacceptable. The main obstacle is the controversial amendment that enables the Constitutional Court to hold an unlimited number of its sessions in cities other than St. Petersburg. The amendment had been approved by the State Duma during the law’s second hearing on Dec. |
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Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
The Russian version of Santa Claus, Father Frost, arriving at the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg on Saturday as part of a festive parade to celebrate the holidays. |
 When prosecutors went to search Boris Berezovsky’s Moscow mansion in 1995 to investigate the murder of an executive at state-controlled ORT television, a determined armed guard barred the door. The guard was Alexander Litvinenko, then an officer in an FSB counter-terrorism unit. Litvinenko was protecting Berezovsky, who consolidated his hold over the channel after the executive, Vladislav Listyev, was shot to death.
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All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — A Russian parliamentary commission on Friday issued its final report on the terrorist seizure of a public school in Beslan in 2004. The report briefly highlighted law enforcement mistakes but placed blame for the hundreds of deaths on the terrorists alone. |
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MOSCOW — Russian tax authorities have filed a suit against the local branch of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) accusing it of producing a false audit for fallen oil company Yukos, the auditor said on Monday. |
 The new British Consul-General in St. Petersburg defines his mission as to “learn and adapt” and “to build on [work done by his predecessors].” William Elliott, who succeeded George Edgar, began his tenure last month just as British diplomatic relations with Russia took a blow from the poisoning murder in London of former FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko. |
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 Last week saw the final conference in the European Commission’s Project “Tourism Development in North-West Russia,” jointly organized by the EC and the North-West regional branch of the Russian Travel Industry Union (RTIU). The total cost of the project amounted to $2. |
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MOSCOW — Moscow has savoured victory after state giant Gazprom ousted Royal Dutch Shell from control of the Sakhalin-2 energy project, ending a struggle highlighting changing rules in Russia’s bare-knuckle business environment. |
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MOSCOW — TNK-BP must accommodate Gazprom into its giant Kovykta gas project or face new sanctions for licensing noncompliance, an official said Thursday. TNK-BP is the main shareholder in Rusia Petroleum, which has the license to operate Kovykta. Under the licensing agreement, the firm should produce 9 billion cubic meters of gas next year. |
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MOSCOW — Russia has outlined terms for 3G licences, saying companies will have to pay a fee of about $50,000, answer questions and convert frequencies for civil use, Vedomosti business daily reported on Monday. |
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MOSCOW — Russian services conglomerate AFK Sistema reported a more than 50 percent rise in third quarter core earnings and its president said a merger of its telecoms business with a large foreign operator was likely. Sistema said in a statement on Thursday its earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) rose 56 percent to $1.4 billion as the performance picked up of its key asset, Russia’s top cellphone operator Mobile TeleSystems (MTS). Revenue increased 39 percent from the third quarter of 2005 to $2.9 billion. Company President Alexander Goncharuk said that as Russia prepares to join the World Trade Organisation next year Sistema needed to enlarge its telecoms assets to tackle competition. |
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 When the Soviet Union collapsed, there was much talk about the “peace dividend” the end of the Cold War would bring. It was all about turning swords into ploughshares. |
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For a long time the payment of taxes has been a sticking point in the relationship between the state and its citizens. In any country throughout history taxpayers have tried to avoid or minimize the tax burden. At the same time, the state tries to bolster its budget by increasing tax rates, introducing new taxes and improving old ones. |
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MOSCOW — The government approved plans by the country’s second-largest bank, Vneshtorgbank, to hold an initial public offering next May and promised a decision soon on the largest bank, Sberbank’s, planned $7.6 billion share issue. Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref told a government meeting that VTB aimed to raise up to 120 billion rubles ($4. |
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ROME — Italian automaker Fiat said Thursday that it had signed a memorandum of understanding to set up a joint venture with Severstal-Avto to produce diesel engines. |
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MOSCOW (SPT) — A Moscow appeals court on Wednesday upheld a lawsuit filed by Vedomosti against news agency RosBusinessConsulting for breach of copyright, the newspaper said in a statement Thursday. The compensation awarded, 282,000 rubles ($10,700), was one-thousandth the amount demanded, the statement said. |
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HELSINKI (Bloomberg) — Plans to supply Russian power to Nordic companies including Boliden and Stora Enso are in jeopardy after Finland rejected an application for a cable linking the country with Russia’s power grid. |
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 The apparent exotic murder-by-polonium of the former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko has embroiled Russia, Britain and Germany in a diplomatic scuffle and a hunt for more traces of the lethal substance. But it also throws into question most of the previous analyses of “dirty bombs,” terrorist attacks using radioactive isotopes wrapped in explosives (or using other dispersion techniques) to spread radioactive material in crowded areas. |
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Royal-Dutch Shell is going to end up handing half of its shares in the Sakhalin-2 oil and gas project to Gazprom. When Gazprom first said it wanted a stake, it could not reach agreement with Shell on a price. |
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Everybody is talking about Iran of late so, since I got my degree in the modern history of Iran and the Farsi language, so will I. But I want to talk not about the Iran of today, but about the lessons of 30 years ago, when I spent a year working as a translator in Tehran from late 1977 through late 1978. |
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 BETHLEHEM, West Bank — Hundreds of pilgrims celebrated Christmas in Bethlehem on Monday but Palestinian residents said there was little cause for holiday cheer in the town Christians revere as the birthplace of Jesus. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas attended the traditional midnight mass along with a few hundred worshippers in the Church of the Nativity, and morning saw Manger Square awash with the soft sounds of hymns and church bells. |
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MOGADISHU — Ethiopian warplanes attacked two Islamist-held airfields in Somalia on Monday, witnesses said, in the most dramatic strikes yet of a war threatening to engulf the Horn of Africa. |
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VATICAN CITY — Mankind, which has reached other planets and decoded the genetic instructions for life, should not presume it can live without God, Pope Benedict said in his Christmas message on Monday. In an age of unbridled consumerism it was shameful many remained deaf to the “heart-rending cry” of those dying of hunger, thirst, disease, poverty, war and terrorism, he said. |
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ROME — Mario Scaramella, the Italian contact of the dead ex-Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, flew home for Christmas on Sunday but was arrested in connection with an investigation into arms trafficking, a judicial source said. |
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 CHENNAI, India — World number one Roger Federer says he hopes to extend his seemingly invincible reign over men’s tennis into the new season. The nine-times grand slam winner was virtually unstoppable in 2006, reaching the final in all but one of the 17 tournaments he contested and winning three of the four majors. |
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SYDNEY — The emotion and hype surrounding Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath’s pending farewells is threatening to distract Australia in the build-up to the fourth Ashes test at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. |
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LONDON — Leaders Manchester United began their holiday fixtures with a resounding 3-0 victory at Aston Villa as the goals flowed in the Premier League on Saturday. A double from an inspired Cristiano Ronaldo and a thumping Paul Scholes volley, all in the second half, briefly gave United a five-point lead before champions Chelsea responded with a last-gasp 3-2 win at Wigan Athletic to slice it to two again. |
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