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MOSCOW — U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, seeking to repair strained ties with Russia, said on Monday she did not like its rhetoric toward Washington but said there were no grounds for talk of a new Cold War. As she flew to Moscow to meet President Vladimir Putin, Rice conceded it was “not an easy time for the relationship,” but said ties were nowhere near as bad as during Soviet times. “I know people talk about, throw around terms like new Cold War. As somebody who came out of that period as a specialist in it I think the parallels ... frankly, they have no basis whatsoever,” she told reporters. Rice said she hoped to ease Moscow’s concerns about U.S. plans to place 10 interceptors in Poland and radar in the Czech Republic as part of a missile defense shield for Europe. |
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RECORD BREAKER
Sergei Karpukhin / Reuters
Canada's Rick Nash holds the trophy after his team won the Ice Hockey World Championship final against Finland in Moscow on Sunday. Canada won the match 4-2. |
 Prosecutors on Sunday detained a suspect in the case of the murder of 22-year-old Dmitry Nikulinsky who was killed Saturday in the stairwell of his apartment building on Svetlanovsky Prospekt. Nikulinsky, a sixth year student of the biology faculty of St. Petersburg State University, was stabbed to death and died of multiple wounds to his face and neck.
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MOSCOW — Samara authorities have granted permission for a Dissenters’ March to be held in the city center during a Russia-EU summit, but police on Sunday detained several journalists and march organizers. Sergei Kurt-Adzhiyev, editor of the Samara edition of Novaya Gazeta, was detained along with his daughter Anastasia, Samarskaya Gazeta reporter Mikhail Kuteinikov and Yury Chervinchuk, a rally organizer. |
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Leaders from five European and Caspian Sea nations agreed Saturday to work together on energy security issues and on a possible extension to Poland of a pipeline carrying Caspian oil. |
All photos from issue.
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NEW YORK — Some U.S. couples hoping to adopt children from Russia are concerned that rising political tensions between the two countries could add further delays to their bids to become parents. “We’re getting kicked when we’re down,” said Kathleen Dorrian, 41, a New York police officer who started the process to adopt a child from Russia with her husband, Joseph, 48, in October 2005. |
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Gay rights activists said Monday some 2,000 people are expected to take part in a gay pride parade in St. Petersburg later this month despite authorities’ opposition to events celebrating gay culture, RIA Novosti reported. |
 HELSINKI — Serbia’s Marija Serifovic won the 2007 Eurovision Song Contest early Sunday with a heart-wrenching ballad that beat 23 other entries in a competition dominated by East European countries. Serifovic’s song “Molitva” (“Prayer”) received the highest score in a 42-nation vote count, followed by a glitzy drag show act from Ukraine and a Russian girl band. |
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BRUSSELS — Talks between NATO leaders and General Yury Baluyevsky late last week failed to narrow the gap between Moscow and the West over a missile defense shield in Central Europe. |
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One of Britain’s largest menswear stores has pulled a T-shirt off its racks after realizing it bore a slogan similar to those used by Russian ultranationalists to promote ethnic cleansing, the company said. Burton stores stopped selling the T-shirts on Friday in response to concerns raised by a Russian-speaking staff member, a week after 6,000 of the shirts went on sale, a spokeswoman said. The slogan written in Cyrillic script reads “Ochistim Rus Ot Vsekh Nerusskikh!” (We will cleanse Russia of all non-Russians!). The words wrap around the Russian state symbol of the double-headed eagle. In the center of the eagle is a Russian Orthodox cross. |
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 MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin scored a victory for access to Turkmen gas on Saturday, winning approval for a direct pipeline around the Caspian in a major setback to U. |
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MOSCOW — Bank robbers killed two guards and stole 38 million rubles ($1.5 million) from a Sberbank branch in Chita, pulling off one of the country’s biggest heists in a decade. Police found the bodies of the guards, their hands in cuffs and legs bound with duct tape, when bank employees called to say the doors were locked from the inside and that they could not start work Saturday morning. |
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YEREVAN, Armenia — Pro-presidential parties have won a majority in Armenia’s parliamentary elections, the country’s election commission said Sunday, in a vote Western monitors described as a vast democratic improvement. |
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Four years into her reign as St. Petersburg governor, Valentina Matviyenko has acknowledged the “outrageous” nature of the city’s outdoor advertising and vowed to banish it from the center of town. Matviyenko has offered to remove banners spanning Nevsky Prospekt and other main roads, as well as large posters and billboards both in public and private areas. |
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MOSCOW — No. 2 bank VTB raised $8 billion on Friday in the world’s largest stock market float of 2007, and its shares rose by up to 11 percent in initial trading as investors piled into the stock. |
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ST. PETERSBURG — Rail freight between Russia and Estonia, interrupted during a dispute over the relocation of a Soviet war memorial in Tallinn, will soon resume in full, Russian Railways chief Vladimir Yakunin said Saturday. “Traffic is limited at present, but soon it will be restored in full,” Yakunin was quoted by Interfax as telling reporters in St. |
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OSLO — Norwegian phone group Telenor said on Monday it spent $745 million to increase its stake in Russian mobile group Vimpelcom to 29.9 percent of the voting stock from 26. |
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MOSCOW — TMK, the world’s third-biggest steel pipe maker by market capitalization, said Friday that it was in talks with Ukrainian producer Interpipe over “a potential transaction,” but stopped short of confirming they involved a possible tie-up. TMK, owned by billionaire Dmitry Pumpyansky, said in a statement that talks were at an exploratory stage and that there was no certainty a deal would result. |
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MOSCOW — The Federal Migration Service has rejected a proposal to grant an amnesty to immigrants working illegally in the country, the service’s deputy head said Friday. |
 MOSCOW — A mystery firm called Prana bid $3.9 billion to beat Rosneft in a fiercely fought auction on Friday for assets of bankrupt oil firm Yukos, including its head office. The price was far higher than expected, and Prana’s backers are as yet unknown. The lot also included Yukos’ other Moscow property and a trading unit that several sources said might have access to oil inventories or cash. Otherwise, the price would make the firm’s headquarters one of the most expensive buildings in the world. |
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 Natalya Vashko labors under the slogan “Turn off your brain!” But her own brain won’t heed that advice. On a recent afternoon in Correa’s cafe, sardined between couples out for afternoon tea, the 38-year-old director of the 2x2 television channel sat down for what she called relaxation: reading a thick manual titled “Managing Media Companies. |
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LONDON — The Independent on Sunday reported that the Reuters Founders Share Company, the trust that acts as guardian to the editorial independence of Reuters Group Plc, is set to back a proposed takeover of the media group by Canada’s Thomson Corp. “It looks like this deal is now almost certain to go ahead,” the newspaper quoted an unidentified banker close to the trust as saying. |
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 Uneven development, as reflected in political polarization, geographical and ethnic diversity, the minuteness of the middle class and sectoral imbalances, is a defining feature of Russian history. Imbalances persist today and are prevalent across regions and sectors, as well as in income distribution and the comparatively minor role of small and medium enterprises. |
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For more than 60 years, Mexico’s most important political practice was known as the dedazo. It was a moment near the end of the president’s term when he would metaphori-cally point his finger (dedo) at a crony, thereby anointing his successor. |
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 If ever there were a political conundrum, this is it. On Thursday, British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced he would leave office on June 27. The decision came only days after dreadful results for his Labour Party in the Scottish, Welsh and local elections, mired in the “loans-for-peerages” scandal — which may yet lead to criminal charges against some of his closest aides, who arranged seats in the House of Lords for leading Labour backers — and overshadowed by the dark cloud of Iraq. |
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The day after U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates met with President Vladimir Putin and invited Russia to take part in a joint anti-ballistic missile defense system to counter the threat from rogue states, the head of the General Staff, General Yury Baluyevsky, snapped that Russia “would not cooperate in the creation of an anti-missile system directed against ourselves. |
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The pickup in housing construction has yet to have much effect on the availability of housing. In the first quarter of 2007, according to the State Statistics Service, the rate of residential construction was 9.5 million cubic meters, or 50 percent higher than for the same period last year. |
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With its detailed financial calculations and planning, the style of President Vladimir Putin’s final state-of-the-nation address last week was reminiscent of reports given at Communist Party congresses, with a couple of pages on domestic policy thrown in. |
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 KARACHI — Shops were closed and public transport off the streets of Karachi on Monday after nearly 40 people were killed and about 150 wounded in Pakistan’s worst political street violence in two decades. The authorities have banned demonstrations in the city and declared a public holiday. |
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WELLINGTON — Church services across the tiny Pacific island nation of Samoa paused for a moment’s silence in honor of the late King Malietoa Tanumafili II on Sunday as the nation prepared for a week of official mourning. |
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BELGRADE — It’s been a long time since Serbia won a popularity contest, and the country is going wild. Some 25,000 people gathered in downtown Belgrade to welcome back Marija Serifovic, winner of the 2007 Eurovision song contest, waving flags and singing her passionate ballad “Molitva” (Prayer) again and again. |
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MONTREAL — Veteran politician Gilles Duceppe said on Saturday he was abandoning the race for the leadership of the Parti Quebecois, just one day after vowing to leave Canadian federal politics in a bid to lead Quebec’s top separatist party. |
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Woolmer Death KINGSTON, Jamaica (Reuters) — Scotland Yard investigators have concluded that Pakistan cricket coach Bob Woolmer died of natural causes and was not strangled as local police have said, a Jamaican newspaper reported on Sunday. In London, Scotland Yard declined to comment on the report in the Jamaica Gleaner newspaper that Woolmer died of heart failure and said it would not discuss an analysis of toxicology tests that a British government lab conducted on behalf of Jamaican authorities. |
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 MOSCOW — Every time Canada competes at the world championship it is expected to bring home the gold. But the record 24th world title clinched with a 4-2 win over Finland on Sunday will be considered a bit of a surprise, coming from a team that overcame the absence of some top NHL players who said “no” to the chance to represent their country. |
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BERLIN — Serbian teenager Ana Ivanovic fought back from a set down to win the first title of her career on clay on Sunday, defeating Russian third seed Svetlana Kuznetsova 3-6 6-4 7-6 in a thrilling final at the German Open. |
 LONDON — Sheffield United was relegated from the Premier League on goal difference after it lost 2-1 at home to Wigan Athletic and Carlos Tevez fired West Ham United to a shock 1-0 win at champions Manchester United on Sunday. Sheffield United finished the season in 18th place with a goal difference of -23, a single goal worse than Wigan, to join already relegated Charlton Athletic and Watford in the second division. |
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 MOSCOW — Russia beat Sweden 3-1 in a consolation game for third place at the world championship on Sunday to win the bronze and salvage some pride. The Russians, who were heavy favorites to win their first world title since 1993 on home ice, rebounded from a 2-1 semi-final defeat to Finland in overtime on Saturday with three unanswered goals in the first two periods. |
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