|
|
|
|
During the 11th St. Petersburg Economic Forum held in the city last weekend, President Vladimir Putin confidently played the role of host and the leader of a world energy superpower. But the aftershocks of the political warnings sounded at the G8 summit held in Germany immediately before the forum got underway — where the Russian president was received as the head of what U.S. president George Bush called “a derailed democracy” — were still felt in Putin’s home town. Andrei Illarionov, Putin’s rebellious former economic advisor, speaking at a Dissenters’ March on Saturday, which he attended instead of the prestigious forum, warned that Russia’s economic success would be short-lived if it is not supported by coherent political reform aimed at developing its fledgling democracy. In Illarionov’s opinion, the rally, which was attended by about 2,000 activists — around one third of the number of registered participants of the economic forum — was more important for Russia than the business event. |
|
FIRST NIGHT
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A performer takes part in a ceremony marking the beginning of the reconstruction of New Holland Island on Sunday evening. The project is due for completion in 2010. More photos at the Photogallery. |
|
Video-installations, performance art, and interactive shows will soon be available for the public in one of Russia’s most conservative institutions, the State Hermitage Museum. “To make art accessible to all, closer to ordinary people and a pleasurable experience” is the guiding principle for developing a new exhibition space in the Hermitage’s General Staff Building, its director Mikhail Piotrovsky said at a news conference earlier this month.
|
|
Sunday evening marked the beginning of the reconstruction of New Holland Island and the closing ceremony of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum with an extravaganza, featuring music and theater on a scale the city hasn’t seen since it celebrated its 300th anniversary in 2003. An architectural monument, the buildings of New Holland Island are set to be redeveloped as a “multi-functional cultural and business center,” with a Festival Palace, three theaters, an art-gallery and hotel, apartment and retail facilities. |
All photos from issue.
|
|
|
|
|
MOSCOW — A London court sentenced the 24-year-old son of Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov to 14 months in prison Friday, one month after it convicted him of assault causing bodily harm. Pyotr Zhukov, an associate director at UBS Investment Bank in London, was found guilty of beating up fellow investment banker Ben Ramsey, who showed up to what he believed was a party at a friend’s apartment, prosecutors said. |
|
MOSCOW — The country’s industrial safety watchdog Friday implicated dozens of officials in last month’s methane blast at the Yubileinaya mine in the Kemerovo region that killed 39 miners, but cited a short circuit as the main cause of the explosion. |
|
MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin said Friday that the United States could place interceptors in Turkey, Iraq or on the sea instead of setting up a missile defense shield out of eastern Europe. The comments elaborated on his proposal Thursday for the United States to use the Gabala radar site, which Russia leases from Azerbaijan, rather than build a shield in the Czech Republic and Poland. |
|
MOSCOW — Self-exiled businessman Boris Berezovsky will be tried in absentia in Moscow and could be jailed for up to 10 years if found guilty of theft from flagship carrier Aeroflot, prosecutors said Friday. |
|
MOSCOW — Seven hours after Kristina Smirnova, 17, gave birth to her son, the doctor came into her room and said she should hand the baby over to the state. “The baby is ill. He will not live more than a week. I think signing rejection papers is the only wise thing for a girl like you to do,” the doctor said, Smirnova recalled. |
|
|
|
|
The 11th St. Petersburg International Economic Forum was expected to be an outstanding event in Russian economic life. The city has never welcomed so many world leaders and CEOs in hunt of investment opportunities and assurances about life post-Putin. |
|
Government officials at the St. Petersburg International Economic forum made great efforts to assure foreign investors that Russia would diversify its economy and stick to a policy of openness. |
|
Troika Plans ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Troika Dialog will hold 10 percent of the market for asset management by 2012, Ruben Vardanyan, president and shareholder of the investment company, said in St. Petersburg on Friday. “According to a conservative forecast, $45 billion to $50 billion will be in trust management in Russia by 2012,” Vardanyan said. |
|
The government inked a deal Friday with the New York Mercantile Exchange to set up an oil exchange in St. Petersburg by year’s end to better control the prices at which Russian oil is sold. |
|
Suzuki Motor Corporation signed an agreement Friday to build a $115 million plant in St. Petersburg that will produce its popular Grand Vitara and SX4 models. The deal, signed by Suzuki chairman Osamu Suzuki and St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko, reconfirms the city’s status as the country’s automotive hub. |
|
Plans for a Russian economic zone in Egypt moved a step closer Friday as the Economic Development and Trade Ministry named the first wave of companies setting up shop there, including Gaz Group, MiG, Soyuzmedprom and St. |
 From June 3rd-5th, Dr. Karl Joachim Dreyer and Dr. Hans-JUrg Schmidt-Trenz, respectively president and chief executive officer of the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce visited St. Petersburg. Dreyer shared his views about cooperation between the two cities. |
|
Major changes are underway on the Russian business integration market, with solutions for the automation of business processes being of increasing interest to representatives of small and medium-size businesses. |
|
|
|
|
A couple of words from the Russian president was enough to make the St. Petersburg Economic Forum something quite sensational. After a leak that Putin “does not recommend” participation at the London Economic Forum only the most independent entrepreneurs and bravest top-managers dared to attend the London event, while crowds of businesspeople and politicians flew in to the president’s home town at an especially romantic time of year. |
|
Russia’s economic development in recent years has been extraordinary. Last year Russia’s real gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 6.7 percent, surpassing average growth rates in all other G8 countries and marking the country’s seventh consecutive year of economic expansion. |
|
The web site of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum proclaimed without any false modesty, that the city would be the world’s economic capital from June 8 to June 10. With growing frequency and a waning sense of reality, Russian leaders have been demanding that it be accorded its proper place in the global pecking order — as a military power, a historic victor over Nazism, an energy superpower, a hockey powerhouse and even a cradle of democracy. |
|
|
|
 Russia’s economic history over the past decade and a half has been characterized by erratic reform progress and some important setbacks, such as the 1998 crisis. Lacking a clear policy anchor, as European Union enlargement was for the East European countries, for example, efforts have been more dispersed. |
|
Since the 2001 Group of Eight summit in Genoa, Italy, which drew an estimated 200,000 protesters, one of whom was killed in the violence, no meeting has been accompanied by the level of violence and confrontation at this year’s meeting in the German city of Heiligendamm. |
|
Last week marked the 10th time a Russian president has attended a Group of Eight summit as a full-fledged member of the club. The first meeting to consist of eight members of equal status, and not just seven members plus Russia, came in May 1998 in Birmingham, England. Just three months before Russia’s default crisis, President Boris Yeltsin convinced his colleagues that Russia had entered an epoch of economic stability. |
|
|
|
|
THE HAGUE — The UN war crimes tribunal sentenced the former leader of rebel Serbs in Croatia, Milan Martic, to 35 years in jail for ordering atrocities committed when rebel Serbs set up a breakaway state in Croatia. Martic, 52, was found guilty on Tuesday of criminal responsibility for 16 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity including the murder, persecution, torture and deportation of Croats, Muslims and other non Serb civilians during the early 1990s. |
|
NEW YORK — Inundated with politics long before the 2008 presidential election, U.S. voters are in danger of suffering wearying bouts of the uniquely American affliction of “campaign fatigue” in coming months. |
 The U.S. war crimes tribunals at Guantanamo have betrayed the principles of fairness that made the Nazi war crimes trials at Nuremberg a judicial landmark, one of the U.S. Nuremberg prosecutors said on Monday. “I think Robert Jackson, who’s the architect of Nuremberg, would turn over in his grave if he knew what was going on at Guantanamo,” Nuremberg prosecutor Henry King Jr. |
|
LONDON — Prime Minister Tony Blair defended the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and rounded on the media Tuesday for acting like a “feral beast” ripping reputations apart. |
|
|
|
|
LONDON — Ticket sales for next month’s British Formula One Grand Prix have rocketed since Lewis Hamilton’s first win in Canada on Sunday, organisers said. “The reaction to his win in Canada has been amazing,” Silverstone Circuits managing director Richard Phillips said in a statement. “We haven’t seen this level of interest since Mansell-mania in the late 80s and early 90s,” he added, referring to former British world champion Nigel Mansell. Briton Hamilton is leading the championship by eight points just six races into his Formula One career after finishing every one on the podium. The 22-year-old, who is also Formula One’s first black driver, won from pole position in Montreal after finishing runner-up in his four previous races. |
|
BRIT GRIT
/ Reuters
Alex Bogdanovic of Britain returns the ball to Lee Hyung-taik of South Korea during their first round singles match at the Artois tennis championships in west London on Monday. The British No. 3 won the match and goes through to the second round where he will meet fellow Briton James Baker. |
|
PARIS — In all likelihood, the second Sunday in July cannot come soon enough for Roger Federer. For pundits agree there is a good chance he will be holding aloft the Wimbledon trophy for a fifth successive time on July 8. It would be a feat to equal Bjorn Borg’s record, and would prompt fans and aficionados alike to once again debate the Swiss maestro’s place among the tennis greats.
|
|
BRUSSELS — The European Commission is on a collision course with UEFA, other sports lawmakers and European Union governments as it finalises reforms on how sport should be run in its 27 member states. The EU executive is due to unveil the proposals for new laws on July 4 and its findings could have a massive impact on the way soccer and other sports are governed throughout the EU. |
|
BEIJING — China said on Tuesday it was looking into allegations that Chinese factories used children to produce merchandising for next year’s Beijing Olympics. |
Temp: -2°C moderate or heavy snow showers
Issues Archive