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A group of local investors in off-plan residential property developments, or dolshchiki as they are known colloquially in Russian, ended a week-long hunger strike on Sunday after an apparently fruitless meeting with City Hall officials. The investors, who had paid for apartments in buildings under construction, were demanding action from City Hall after the apartments were sold to third parties or construction was never completed, leaving them out-of-pocket. More than 45 off-plan investors went on hunger strike on May 16, representing a protest committee that unites almost 1,000 victims of various construction scams. In a meeting with the protestors, Alexander Vakhmistrov, vice-governor of St. |
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PETER’S PARADE
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Clown Vyacheslav Polunin leading a parade on Nevsky Prospekt on Sunday celebrating St. Petersburg’s 304th anniversary. Polunin was crowned Carnival King at a ceremony on Ploshchad Vosstaniya, before setting off down Nevsky Prospekt. See photo essay on page 11. |
 MOSCOW — OMON riot police detained gay rights activists, including three European lawmakers, on Sunday as they tried to deliver a letter to City Hall appealing a banned gay march. A crowd of gay rights opponents, meanwhile, shouted “Moscow is not Sodom!” and pelted the activists with eggs and stones. Activists spoke of seeing knives and a gun as well.
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 It was a failure from the start. Russia’s biggest conference on the Kyoto Protocol, which aims to fight global warming, began with a speech from a top official who denied that global warming even exists. “In reality, the scientific basis for the protocol is fairly weak,” Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov told a crowded opening session of the two-day conference Thursday, which drew more than 200 environmental experts and carbon market participants from around the world. |
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MOSCOW — Thailand’s globe-trotting deposed leader, Thaksin Shinawatra, garnered an academic honor by visiting Moscow last week, but lost thousands of dollars and his passport when he stopped at a McDonald’s in the city center. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — The State Duma gave tentative approval Friday to legislation aimed at restricting smoking in public places such as restaurants and waiting lounges in train stations and airports. Restaurant owners, who would face fines of up to $3,900 for noncompliance, expressed some unease about the bill. But if the lax enforcement of a previous attempt to crack down on second-hand smoke is any indication, they and smokers themselves have little to worry about. The new rules would prohibit smokers from lighting up anywhere except specially designated areas in restaurants, trains, ships, municipal government offices and waiting lounges. |
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HELLO, SAILOR!
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A crew member of Britain’s HMS Albion, which docked in the city on Monday. On Tuesday, a team made up from the crew is due to play the brutal force that is the local White Knights rugby side. |
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NOVOKUZNETSK, Kemerovo Region — Steel giant Evraz Group announced Friday that it would assume full control of the company that owns the Yubileinaya mine, where a methane gas explosion a day earlier killed at least 39 miners. Evraz currently holds a 50 percent stake in Yuzhkuzbassugol, which owns Yubileinaya and other area mines and is valued by analysts at about $2 billion.
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MOSCOW — Britain’s ambassador on Monday submitted an official request to Russia for the extradition of the man suspected of murdering Alexander Litvinenko. British prosecutors said last week they wanted to bring Russian businessman Andrei Lugovoi before a British court to try him for the murder of Litvinenko, who died on November 23 after being poisoned with polonium 210. |
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A new web-based business information service, “Doing business in St. Petersburg,” was officially launched last week. The new portal is the work of the St. Petersburg Foundation for SME Development in cooperation with Danish National Agency for Enterprise and Construction, Danish Federation of SMEs, COWI consultancy and City Hall. The www.doingbusiness.spb.ru website is to become an entry point to St. Petersburg for international SMEs, investors and companies wishing to trade, outsource or start a business in the city. The Danish side invested 80,000 euros into the portal. |
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ICE BREAKER
Nikita kruchkov / Itar-Tass
Workers at the Baltisky Zavod shipyard in St. Petersburg watching the launch of the icebreaker Moskva on Friday. |
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Raiffeisen Capital plans to acquire 300 million euros ($400 million) worth of assets by the end of the year through regional expansion. The management company’s foreign shareholders are even more ambitious — they target $1 billion in assets by the end of 2007. “We are interested in the regions, where trusts and managing companies are not yet widely represented,” said Andrei Zaitsev, general director of Raiffeisen Capital.
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Containing Process ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Petrolesport stevedoring company will invest $250 million into the development of its container terminal in the next four years, Interfax reported Saturday. By 2012 Petrolesport plans to increase the capacity of container processing up to 1.2 million Twenty-foot Equivalent Units, by 2015 to 1.8 million TEUs. The container area will expand from 23 hectares to 60 hectares. A new 190 meter mooring line and new refrigeration terminal will be constructed. Last year freight turnover was reported at 313,000 TEU, this year it is expected at 430,000 TEU. AVANTA Expansion ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — AVANTA Personnel recruiting company has announced it is to expand across the Russian regions. |
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 MOSCOW — Gazprom Neft, the oil arm of Gazprom, and LUKoil have set up a joint venture to cooperate in new projects in Russia and abroad, the firms said Friday. |
 DUDINKA, Krasnoyarsk Region — Every spring, the cranes in this Arctic port are shifted several hundred meters away from the banks of the Yenisei River. With good reason. The river rises 8 meters when it thaws, tossing chunks of ice into anything blocking its path. |
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New Dalsvyaz CEO Dalsvyaz, a provider of telecommunications services in the Far East region, on Friday confirmed Anton Kolpakov as its new chief executive officer. |
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Given the high levels of mobile penetration in St. Petersburg, operators have been reduced to attracting customers by lowering their prices. And yet, most market players admit that, despite the decrease, customers are still not paying less for calls. Cuts in the cost of mobile services were previously related to either a dampening effect, when companies first arrived on the market and needed to attract customers, or as a form of marketing, which offered a discount on a particular service. |
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St. Petersburg is Russia’s former imperial capital and one of the nicest cities in the world but for all that it is a very snobbish place. Snobbery here comes in different forms. |
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Central Bank Chairman Sergei Ignatyev is a man who is battle-hardened to deal with tough situations. He was, after all, a first deputy finance minister at the time of the 1998 default. Since taking over at the Central Bank in 2002, he has had a relatively easier time dealing with a bulging balance of payments surplus. |
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For the last 200 years, the United States and Europe have exchanged ideas, groundbreaking technologies and political philosophies. And while both parties have benefited from this relationship, the latest export from the United States to Europe could, if not carefully managed, do irreparable damage. |
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When I hear foreign policy realists extol the virtues of inaction I think of the Balkans. As Yugoslavia began to unravel during the early 1990s, an over-excited European foreign minister said that posterity would recall that this had been “the hour of Europe. |
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I recently attended a dinner in New York at which the American Jewish Historical Society presented its annual award to former U.S. Secretary of State George Schultz for his efforts on behalf of Soviet Jewry during the 1980s. |
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Journalism is becoming an increasingly dangerous profession, but the state is doing its part to try to help. The Defense and Foreign ministries and the Federal Press and Mass Media Agency have begun a second round of security training for journalism students. |
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They don’t call the United States the sole superpower for nothing. Paul Wolfowitz might be looking for a new job right now, but the term he used to describe the pervasiveness of U. |
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TOKYO — A scandal-tainted minister in Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s cabinet committed suicide on Monday, compounding problems for the Japanese leader whose support has slumped ahead of a July election. “This will have serious political fallout, but at this point it’s hard to tell how much,” a government official said. Agriculture Minister Toshikatsu Matsuoka’s suicide came as Abe’s public support rate fell to its lowest level since he took office last September, due largely to voter anger over mismanagement of pension premiums that could shortchange retirees. The dent in Abe’s popularity had already increased chances that his ruling camp would lose its majority in the election for parliament’s upper house, his first big test at the polls. Matsuoka, 62, under fire for a series of political funding scandals, died in hospital after he was found unconscious in his room at a Tokyo residential complex for lawmakers. |
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BECKS IS BACK
/ Reuters
David Beckham (r) dribbles the ball in front of coach Steve McClaren on Monday after he was recalled to the England soccer squad on Saturday. |
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GAZA — Hamas kept up rocket fire into Israel on Monday in defiance of a ceasefire call by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli threats to escalate military strikes in the Gaza Strip. In the first internal Palestinian violence since a May 19 ceasefire, fighting between Hamas gunmen and members of a security force loyal to Abbas’s Fatah faction erupted in the territory.
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 CANNES, France — The Cannes Film Festival pulled it off in its 60th year, picking a popular winner from an eclectic competition lineup that had many more hits than misses. The annual movie extravaganza also attracted a string of big Hollywood stars to its red carpet, always key to a festival’s success, and reports of a healthy crop of new film deals signed on the margins meant 2007 would go down as a vintage Cannes. |
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MELBOURNE, Australia — An Australian hotel catering for homosexuals has won the right to ban heterosexuals from its bars so as to provide a safe and comfortable venue for gay men. |
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KIEV, Ukraine — Dynamo Kiev beat arch-rivals Shakhtar Donetsk 2-1 in the Ukrainian Cup final on Sunday to retain the trophy for a fourth straight year. Brazilian striker Kleber put Dynamo ahead in the 58th minute and Ukraine international Oleg Gusev added the second goal against the run of play 10 minutes from time. Shakhtar’s Brazilian international midfielder Elano pulled one back from close range in the 89th minute but Dynamo held on for victory despite having Brazilian defender Rodrigo sent off after picking up his second yellow card in the 70th minute. Among the 60,000-strong crowd at Kiev’s Olympic stadium were Ukraine President Viktor Yushchenko and his chief political adversary, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich, sitting side-by-side in the VIP box. |
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 BERLIN — It’s been a long time since one-time German powerhouse Nuremberg last won a title. The long-suffering club beat Bundesliga champions Stuttgart 3-2 in an extra-time thriller to win the German Cup on Saturday. |
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Beckham Returns LONDON (AP) — David Beckham’s chance of starting for England improved when teammate Aaron Lennon withdrew Sunday from games against Brazil and Estonia because of a knee injury. The 20-year-old Tottenham winger limped off after 10 minutes of Friday’s England “B” victory over Albania. A scan on Saturday ruled him out of an exhibition against Brazil on June 1 at Wembley and the European Championship qualifier at Estonia on June 6, according to the English Football Association. Beckham was recalled to the England team this week by coach Steve McClaren after being overlooked for nine matches since last year’s World Cup. After replacing Sven-Goran Eriksson at the end of the World Cup, McClaren dropped Beckham, the former England captain. |
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 MOSCOW — Substitute Garry O’Connor scored in extra time to give Lokomotiv Moscow a 1-0 victory over city rivals FC Moscow in the Russian Cup final on Sunday. |
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MONACO — McLaren have assured Lewis Hamilton that he still has every chance of winning the Formula One world title despite being reined in by the team in Sunday’s Monaco Grand Prix. “Of course he does,” team boss Ron Dennis told reporters. “We will not favor one driver, no matter who it is. We never have, never will. |
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