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 Boris Yeltsin’s grief-stricken widow bent over the coffin after it was opened for a final farewell at the Novodevichye Cemetery. Naina, Yeltsin’s wife of 50 years, stroked his cheeks and forehead for a minute. Then she kissed his pale lips one last time. |
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The first criminal case against the police for using excessive force against an opposition protester has been opened by the St. Petersburg Prosecutor’s Office this week, while over fifty similar cases are being prepared to be filed. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — The son of Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov was found guilty of unlawful assault Wednesday at Southwark Crown Court in London. He faces up to five years in jail. Pyotr Zhukov, 24, will be sentenced within a month, a court official said by telephone on Wednesday. He was released on bail until sentencing. Deputy Prime Minister Zhukov could not be reached for comment on Wednesday. His assistant, Konstantin Voitsekhovich, said last week that the minister’s only child had been involved in the incident “by chance.” “I don’t know what’s happening,” said Pyotr’s grandfather, Dmitry Zhukov, a well-known writer. He said he had not heard anything about the trial except through the press. |
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 The Mariinsky Theater’s brand-new, state-of-the-art concert hall, located in the company’s former warehouse on Ulitsa Pisareva, a few hundred meters from its historic main building, hosted its first concert for the general public on Tuesday, with its indefatigable artistic director Valery Gergiev conducting the Mariinsky symphony orchestra for performances of Debussy’s “La Mer” and Mahler’s Fourth Symphony. |
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MOSCOW — Sergei Mavrodi, the mastermind behind the notorious MMM pyramid scheme that scammed millions of people in the early 1990s, was convicted of fraud on Tuesday in a Moscow court in what appears to be the end of a bizarre saga that stretches across the entire post-Soviet era. Reading out the verdict Tuesday, Judge Nadezhda Markina of the Chertanovsky District Court said Mavrodi had defrauded MMM investors “by deception, betrayal and abuse of trust. |
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MDM-Pechat, a St. Petersburg-based printing plant owned by a group of Irish investors, has launched the most cutting edge printing machine in Russia — Lithoman IV. By modernizing its equipment, MDM-Pechat hopes to attract back those Russian glossy publishers that prefer to use Finnish printing plants. |
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LONDON — Royal Dutch Shell and its partners have agreed to pay an annual dividend to the Russian government as part of a deal to salvage its Sakhalin-2 project, the Wall Street Journal said on Thursday. |
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CIT Mortgage ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — CIT-Finance bank will issue mortgage securities for $500 million in September 2007, Interfax reported Tuesday. The issue will be organized by Morgan Stanley. At the moment the CIT-Finance mortgage portfolio amounts to . |
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MOSCOW — Aluminum mogul Oleg Deripaska will buy a 30 percent stake in Austrian builder Strabag for 1.2 billion euros ($1.6 billion), boosting the clout of Europe’s fifth-largest builder in Russia. |
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MOSCOW — State-owned VTB will try to raise up to $8.4 billion in an initial public offering in London next month, issuing some 1.7 trillion shares at a price that some market players consider to be grossly inflated. The bank said Wednesday that it had set the indicative price range for its IPO, the first by a Russian bank in London, at 11. |
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 It is in the nature of men who lead revolutions that they rarely prove to be effective leaders of governments. So it was with Boris Yeltsin. ... Yeltsin was a huge figure in an extraordinary time. Brought into the ruling Politburo by Mikhail Gorbachev at the dawn of perestroika — the restructuring that couldn’t save the system — Yeltsin electrified Muscovites with his openness and accessibility. |
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Boris Yeltsin — one of Russia’s greatest leaders — has died. His greatness was not as a liberal reformer, like Alexander II, or in opening the country up to Europe, as did Peter the Great. |
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Although Boris Yeltsin is a historic figure who ushered in democracy and a free market, he is being laid to rest rather quickly and quietly. Yeltsin, who died of heart failure Monday, will be buried Wednesday in the Novodevichye Cemetery. The funeral is closed to the general public. Granted, the decision to bury Yeltsin on the third day after his death is in line with Russian Orthodox practice. |
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 When it comes to extravagant, impassioned images of saints and sinners, nothing can compare to the sugar-coated masterpieces created by French artistic duo Pierre Commoy and Gilles Blanchard. Known the world over simply as Pierre et Gilles, the couple have been active since the mid-70s making photographs that have always existed on the fringes of respectability. |
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With heavy political censorship on Russian television and the regime’s intolerance of any anti-Kremlin protest in the streets, as the recent violent suppression of the “dissenters’ marches” in St. |
 “My songs are kind of quiet. They’re quiet but they’re a little twisted, so you have to listen to them, or else they’re going to sound kind of boring,” says Lisa Germano, the acclaimed U.S. vocalist and musician who performs in the city this week. “In the Maybe World,” Germano’s seventh album, features such musicians as ex-Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr. Many of its 12 songs deal with issues of loss and death. |
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 After getting rave reviews in the U.S. press, the Russian art-rock band Auktyon is releasing its long-awaited “American” album this week. But does that mean they are set for a new, brilliant career in the United States? “I feel good in America, it’s a great country. |
 Russian caricatures, military clothes, Soviet animation, railways and revolutions — despite the obstacles that were prevalent during seventy years of communism, they all managed to create corporate brands. For the fifth year running, Interros Holding Company is joining forces with the Agey Tomesh/WAM publishing house to put out a number of books in a format they call the “corporate gift,” hoping to capitalize upon this largely ignored Russian cultural legacy. |
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 Up till now, it could only be a fantasy: your least favorite game show host or pop singer getting pummeled repeatedly in front of a cheering audience. But now, thanks to Channel One’s new show “King of the Ring,” this is something you can enjoy from the comfort of your living room every Sunday evening. |
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Shatush 64 Moika Embankment. Tel: 448 6075 Open daily from noon until the last client leaves Major credit cards accepted Menu in English and in Russian Dinner for two with alcohol: 2,580 rubles ($100) Fresh ingredients, polite and attentive waiters who know their stuff, a good air conditioner and a relaxed atmosphere — the recipe for creating a good restaurant is simple yet surprisingly elusive in St. Petersburg. Shatush, a recently opened Asian restaurant is a rare exception to that rule. Judging by the flashy cars parked outside, the newcomer is a fashionable haunt aimed at the rich and beautiful. But apart from the standard-issue bouncers on the door, nothing is intimidating about it. |
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 Looks like the movie moguls are testing the waters — there are now almost two new Russian movies being released every week, and if they get enough attention, that number may go up. |
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 WASHINGTON — Defying President George W. Bush’s veto threat, the House of Representatives on Wednesday approved a bill providing new war funds while setting a timeline for the withdrawal of all U.S. combat troops from Iraq by March 31 next year. By a mostly partisan vote of 218-208, the Democratic-led House narrowly approved the $124-billion emergency spending bill, ignoring Bush’s promise to veto any bill that sets deadlines for withdrawing U. |
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MOGADISHU — Ethiopian tanks supporting the Somali interim government pounded insurgent positions in Mogadishu on Thursday, but Somalia’s prime minister said “most fighting” had ended with many hostile areas overrun. |
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JAIPUR, India — An Indian court ordered the arrest of Hollywood star Richard Gere on Thursday for kissing Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty at an AIDS campaign event this month saying it was an obscene act committed in public. Gere’s repeated kisses on Shetty’s cheeks at an event to promote AIDS awareness in New Delhi sparked protests in some parts of India, mostly by Hindu vigilante groups, who saw it as an outrage against her modesty and an affront to Indian culture. |
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 CASTRIES, St Lucia — World champions Australia dismissed a feeble South Africa challenge on Wednesday with a seven-wicket victory to take their place in Saturday’s World Cup final against Sri Lanka in Barbados. South Africa, who were top of the one-day rankings before the seven-week tournament began, collapsed to 149 all out from 43. |
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DALLAS — Jason Terry and Dirk Nowitzki were instrumental in helping the Dallas Mavericks pull away from the Golden State Warriors in the third period to even their playoff series with a 112-99 Game Two victory on Thursday. |
 LONDON — A first-half goal from Joe Cole gave Chelsea a 1-0 win over Liverpool in a tightly-fought first leg of their all-English Champions League semi-final at Stamford Bridge on Wednesday. An entertaining first half gave way to a scrappy second in which Liverpool came back into the game but could not find an equaliser, although the tie is still delicately poised for the second leg at Anfield next Tuesday. |
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MOSCOW — Russia and the Czech Republic are joint favourites to upstage champions Sweden at the world ice hockey championship which starts on Friday. Sweden became the first nation to win both world and Olympic titles in the same season last year, but face an uphill battle this year after bringing a relatively inexperienced squad to Moscow. |
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NEW YORK — Jhonny Peralta drove in a run in the 11th inning to lift the Cleveland Indians to an 8-7 win over the Texas Rangers on Wednesday, their fourth straight victory. Peralta swung at the first pitch Willie Eyre threw him and connected, driving in Victor Martinez, who had doubled. “That’s what I had in my mind,” Peralta told reporters. |
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