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Security forces detained two suspects over the weekend in connection with an alleged plot to assassinate Governor Valentina Matviyenko. In a joint raid carried out by the Federal Security Board and the Interior Ministry’s investigative unit, two grenades and over 0. |
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VOLZHSKY UTYOS, Samara Region — Top EU officials accused a visibly annoyed President Vladimir Putin on Friday of meddling in other countries’ affairs, turning a blind eye to the killings of Kremlin opponents, and muffling voices of criticism. |
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MOSCOW — Seven journalists have resigned from Russian News Service after new management censored their reports about a Dissenters’ March and a dispute with Estonia, among other things, several of the journalists said Friday. Russian News Service — a leading private broadcast news agency that provides news to the country’s largest radio station, Russkoye Radio, and other partner stations — is run by general director Alexander Shkolnik and editor Vsevolod Neroznak, both of whom joined the agency from Channel One state television. |
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VIENNA — President Vladimir Putin canceled an interview with Austrian state television ORF because the station’s promotion trailer included “unfriendly” footage, ORF said. |
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BUTOVO, Moscow Region — The Russian Orthodox Church consecrated a cathedral on Saturday at a site of mass Stalinist executions in a symbolic act of unity after an 80-year rift between the mother church and a rival faction. Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexy II and Metropolitan Laurus, the New York-based leader of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, attended the emotional liturgy at the Cathedral of Christ’s Resurrection and Russia’s New Martyrs and Confessors. At a secluded military testing site in Butovo, just south of Moscow, some 21,000 people, including about 1,000 Orthodox priests, were executed in just one brief period of communist repressions from August 1937 to October 1938, historians citing KGB files say. |
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GOING UNDERGROUND
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Children learning to write in milk to conceal secret messages at the Common Folk Memorial Museum on Saturday as part of the International Museum Night project. |
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MOSCOW — Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev could remain in office for the rest of his life as a result of a package of constitutional amendments approved by the nation’s parliament Friday. The measures, which still need the 66-year-old Nazarbayev’s signature to take effect, would remove any limit on the number of terms he can serve. Under the current constitution, Nazarbayev would be required to step down in 2012.
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Ambassador Promoted SEOUL, South Korea (Reuters) — North Korea has appointed its ambassador to Russia, a seasoned diplomat who once accused the United States of planning a nuclear attack on his country, as its new foreign minister, the country’s official media reported Friday. |
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MOSCOW — Police stopped opposition activists Garry Kasparov and Eduard Limonov and a group of journalists from boarding a flight to Samara for a sanctioned protest Friday. |
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The city’s first endowment fund was established this month by the European University of St. Petersburg (EUSP). The board of directors has been appointed for a three-year term and will comprise EUSP professors and graduates, EUSP said Friday in a statement. |
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The total volume of mortgages in St. Petersburg increased fourfold in January-March 2007, according to managers of Gorodskoi Mortgage Bank. Reporting on the bank performance they were confident in expanding Gorodskoi market share both in volumes and geographically. |
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Web Spinning ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Karusel retail chain will open ten new supermarkets this year, Interfax reported Friday. At the moment the company operates 20 supermarkets across Russia. The new stores will be opened in St. Petersburg, Volgograd, Yekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk, Saratov, Yaroslavl and Dzherzhinsk. |
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MOSCOW — Having come up for air at the end of March and in the first half of April, Russian markets have gotten that sinking feeling once again. But this time, no single factor — except a general exasperation with the riskiness of Russian stocks — seems to be behind the slump. |
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MOSCOW — Russia’s inclusion of Rosneft in its list of strategic companies will protect the state-controlled oil firm from bankruptcy and keep the state’s share at no less than 75 percent, analysts said Friday. The government said Thursday that it had added Rosneft, the country’s biggest oil company, to its list of strategic companies that are protected because they provide research or resources crucial to national defense. |
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MOSCOW — Russian businessman Oleg Deripaska has increased his stake in Hochtief, Germany’s largest construction company, to 9.99 percent from the previous three percent, Deripaska’s investment unit said on Monday. |
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KAZAN — Russia will exceed this year’s target for net private capital inflows as early as May amid a series of fund raisings by private and state firms, which puts inflation targets under further pressure, the Central Bank said Sunday. “We had $13 billion of net capital inflows in the first quarter, then $17 billion in April alone,” said the bank’s first deputy chairman, Alexei Ulyukayev. “This is $30 billion in the first four months and the figure at the end of May is likely to be around $40 billion,” he told reporters in Kazan on the sidelines of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s annual conference. Large capital inflows create additional inflation pressures and prompt the Central Bank to resort to its main anti-inflation tool of allowing the ruble to appreciate. |
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 TOLYATTI, Samara Region — President Vladimir Putin on Friday flew by helicopter from his talks with European Union leaders to the AvtoVAZ plant in Tolyatti and gave his blessing to a preliminary deal between the carmaker and Canada’s Magna. |
 First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov spoke Friday about the future of technology in Russia, painting a picture in which the military-industrial complex, rather than private enterprise, would lead the way forward. “Generally, there is every reason to call the military-industrial complex the locomotive of diversification,” he said, adding that it accounted for 30 percent to 35 percent of total domestic production. |
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KAZAN — Record profits at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development sparked a major internal debate at its annual meeting on Sunday over what the development bank for the former Soviet bloc should do with the excess cash. |
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MOSCOW — Russian steel maker and coal miner Mechel plans to raise coal output to 25 million tonnes by 2010 from more than 17 million tonnes last year, a senior company executive said on Monday. Executive director Alexei Ivanushkin said the increase would be achieved by expanding the company’s current mines and building a new mine, Yerunakovskaya, in Russia’s main Kuzbass coal-mining region. |
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MOSCOW — The Federal Customs Service will ask a Moscow court to apply U.S. law that allows triple damages for money-laundering in its lawsuit against the Bank of New York, lawyers for the service said Friday. |
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 Cynics might say the Russia-EU summit at Volzhsky Utyos near Samara on Friday was a success simply because it took place. This was hardly a foregone conclusion. A few weeks before the summit, European Union Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson stated the obvious — that the current level of misunderstanding and mistrust between the EU and Russia was greater than at any time since the end of the Cold War. |
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It was amusing to watch the final round of the Eurovision Song Contest last weekend. The performers were nothing to write home about; they were good at best and at worst something on the border between rank amateurs and fledgling professionals. |
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The Georgian army’s latest recruits leapt from the helicopter as it touched down, scrambled across the field and threw themselves to the ground in the hope of dodging snipers’ bullets or incoming shells. In full battle dress uniforms, they certainly looked like soldiers — but they weren’t. |
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A key phrase for Russian officials in Cold War II is “the fate of Russians abroad.” Intoned regularly and bathetically, it refers to purported human rights abuses against minority Russian speakers outside Russia. |
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By Jamal Halaby The Associated Press SOUTHERN SHUNEH, Jordan — Iran urged Arab countries on Sunday to support its nuclear program but received a cool reception at the World Economic Forum, particularly from U.S. allies worried about Iran’s growing regional influence. Iranian officials said separately that the nuclear program was moving ahead as scheduled and that the country would not suspend uranium enrichment despite the threat of a third set of UN sanctions. The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency is expected to present its latest report on Iran’s nuclear program to the UN Security Council in coming days. Arab countries should value Iran’s nuclear development because it could help them address their own energy needs, said Mohammed J. |
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ARRIVING IN STYLE
Mario Anzuoni / Reuters
FMX rider Robbie Maddison arrives at the 2007 Taurus World Stunt Awards at Paramount Studios in Los Angeles on Sunday. The show honors outstanding stunt performances. |
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BEIJING — China has signalled during a week of high-level diplomatic wrangling over the Darfur crisis that it is unlikely to bend to global pressure and change its much-criticised policies on Sudan. Beijing has been showered with international condemnation over its support for the Khartoum government, accused of shielding Sudan from sanctions and abetting genocide in Darfur.
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 GREENWICH, England — A spectacular fire caused heavy damage to the clipper ship Cutty Sark on Monday, adding millions to the cost of restoring one of London’s proudest maritime relics. The cause of the blaze was under investigation, but within hours officials responsible for the graceful 19th-century sailing ship said they were determined to carry on with a four-year restoration project. |
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BERLIN — Greenpeace activists laid the carcasses of 17 small whales and dolphins in front of the landmark Brandenburg Gate on Monday in a dramatic protest to urge countries to resist increasing pressure for a resumption of commercial whaling. |
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 LONDON — Chelsea won the first FA Cup final staged at the new Wembley Stadium at the weekend, narrowly defeating Manchester United 1-0 after extra time in the battle of England’s top two clubs. VfB Stuttgart captured their first Bundesliga title in fifteen years in a title race that went down to the final day of the season, while Olympique Marseille claimed the second automatic French Champions League place with a game to spare. |
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BERLIN — Bayern Munich have reached a transfer agreement with Manchester United for England midfielder Owen Hargreaves, Bayern president Franz Beckenbauer said on Sunday. |
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MOSCOW — Guus Hiddink has called up three newcomers to his 23-man squad for Russia’s Euro 2008 Group E qualifiers against Andorra and Croatia next month. The Dutchman named Kuban goalkeeper Vladimir Gabulov, Ascoli midfielder Viktor Budyansky and Spartak midfielder Alexei Rebko for the June 2 match at home to Andorra in St. Petersburg and then away to Croatia in Zagreb four days later. Gabulov, 23 and who joined newly-promoted Kuban from champion CSKA last year, was called up after first-choice Igor Akinfeyev tore knee ligaments earlier this month. The injury sustained in a Russian league match on May 6 could keep the keeper, who has conceded just one goal in Russia’s five Euro 2008 qualifiers so far, out for up to six months. |
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 HAMBURG — Roger Federer is itching to get his French Open campaign started after beating Rafael Nadal on clay for the first time in Sunday’s Hamburg Masters final. |
 LONDON — Heineken Cup winners Wasps are relishing the chance to defend the trophy next season after a boycott that threatened the tournament was averted. Their 25-9 victory over Leicester on Sunday in the final came only two hours after tournament officials said they had reached an agreement with French and English clubs for Europe’s top club competition to go ahead with a full complement. |
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ATLANTA — Masters champion Zach Johnson won a sudden-death playoff over Japan’s Ryuji Imada to claim victory in the Atlanta Classic in Duluth, Georgia on Sunday. |
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ATHENS — More than 7,500 police officers and thousands more security personnel on Monday started taking positions in and around the capital ahead of Wednesday’s Champions League final between AC Milan and Liverpool. With about 50,000 English and Italian fans expected in Athens, many of them without tickets, police are bracing for three days of potential clashes. |
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Maybe it is the cobblestone byways that meander through Vilnius and appear more suited for horses than horsepower. Perhaps it is the unexpectedly historic architecture or the hulking castles that whisper of medieval derring-do. While modernity certainly intrudes — it would not be a European capital without its Prada and Ermenegildo Zegna stores, now would it? — somehow or other, this Lithuanian city, despite its many recent changes, often has the feel of an old-world diorama sprung to life. |
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