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Two young men were hospitalized and three were detained by police following an inter-ethnic brawl in St. Petersburg on Friday. A policeman was also hurt in the incident. Prosecutors have filed minor charges of “hooliganism” for what they called “the drunken gang fight” between three ethnic Dagestani men and three extreme nationalist members of the Anti-Illegal Immigration Movement (DPNI), at 13/3 Ulitsa Utkina near Ladozhskaya metro station. But, in what the DPNI’s leadership sees as unfair police treatment of its members involved in the fight, a contrasting picture of the event from the police’s official version has emerged. DPNI’s St. Petersburg spokesman, Andrei Kuznetsov said that when an enormous group of “Caucasian natives” attacked “two Slavs,” a police officer on patrol stopped the fight and took them to the 52nd police precinct, only to detain the Russians and clear the Caucasians, although “one of the Russians was put in intensive care with head injuries. |
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STAR RIDER
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Oscar-winning actor Jeremy Irons on Palace Square on Friday preparing to take part in a motorbike ride from St. Petersburg to Moscow. Fellow riders on the trip included actor Dennis Hopper. |
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Demographers have provided dire statistics depicting a sharp decline in Russia’s population in the next few decades — and said that St. Petersburg, which loses an average of 70 people every day and has the lowest birth rate in the nation, could be hit hardest. According to the St. Petersburg Civil Registry Committee, an average of 130 children are born in the city every day but the daily mortality rate is just over 200.
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MOSCOW — Andrei Lugovoi complained on Friday he was becoming so popular at home that crowds of fellow Russians hounded him to get an autograph. “I do not know if I am a hero or not,” Andrei Lugovoi, the former Federal Guard Service officer accused by Britain of murdering emigre Alexander Litvinenko, said in a live interview on Ekho Moskvy radio. |
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MOSCOW — Masked attackers armed with metal rods and baseball bats raided a camp of environmental protesters near an east Siberian uranium enrichment plant over the weekend, beating one person to death and injuring several others. |
All photos from issue.
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ST. PETERSBURG – A truck carrying dangerous waste was stolen in the Leningrad Oblast on Saturday, Interfax reported citing an unidentified police source. The incident happened when the driver of the Kamaz truck, which was transporting beryllium waste products, decided to pull off the main road and stop for lunch, the agency said. |
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Radio podcasts raising awareness of homelessness in St. Petersburg have been made available on the Internet with a new project called Homeless Radio. “Our radio is not the same as that which we listen to in our cars on the way to work,” said Arkady Turin, a coordinator with Homeless Radio, which is backed by charity New Social Solution. |
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The five-year old daughter of the mayor of Sochi died in a St. Petersburg hospital on Saturday after a horrific road accident involving one of the city’s picturesque horse-drawn carriages. Valeriya Kolodyazhnaya on Friday had fallen onto the road at Palace Embankment after a Lada car crashed into the back of the horse-driven carriage in which Viktor Kolodyazhny, the mayor, was taking a sight-seeing ride with his family, Vyacheslav Stepchenko, a St. |
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Saakyan Wins Vote STEPANAKERT, Azerbaijan (Reuters) — Azerbaijan’s breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh republic elected a local security chief as its new leader Friday, but the change was unlikely to bring new policies or unlock a 20-year conflict over the region. |
 KHOST, Tajikistan — Every spring, meltwater dislodges bomblets in the mountains and sends them down steep gullies toward inhabited areas. That is how Salim Saimuddinov, 10, who was born after Tajikistan’s 1992-97 civil war ended, became one of its victims. A green-eyed boy wearing ripped tracksuit bottoms and an old denim jacket, he lives in a small village in the Pamir Mountains of eastern Tajikistan. |
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 Environmentalists and local entrepreneurs have called for an ecological resort to be founded in Karelia to protect Lake Ladoga from the effects of quarrying. They claim the resort would be a profitable venture attracting both Russian and foreign tourists, supplying taxes to the regional budget and providing local jobs. |
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MOSCOW — Gazprom has doubled the maximum ceiling for borrowings under its loan participation notes program to $30 billion as it continues buying new assets. |
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Uralsib Loans ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Uralsib bank doubled the volume of car credit issued in the first half of 2007 compared to the same period last year, the bank said Friday in a statement. By July 1 this year Uralsib had issued car credit amounting to $235 million total value. |
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MOSCOW — Turbine maker Power Machines will close the books for its secondary share offering for Russian and foreign investors Wednesday, a source close to the placement said. |
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JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — Diamond giant De Beers is likely to snub an opportunity to market more gems from Alrosa as it distances itself from its former role as cartel operator to focus on high-margin business. De Beers’ move to a modern business model will, analysts say, probably see it shrug off a European court decision last week that lifted curbs on De Beers buying diamonds from Alrosa, the world’s second-largest producer. |
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TOKYO — Japan’s Mitsui is in talks with Russian Railways to launch a trans-Siberian freight service for Japanese car and electronics makers. Mitsui said Friday that it and Russkaya Troika aimed to sign a contract deal by the end of August and start service in September. |
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MOSCOW — The Chevron-led Caspian Pipeline Consortium has been hit with fresh back taxes as its struggle with Moscow over the fate of the country’s only private oil link shows no signs of easing. The consortium plans to mount a legal challenge to claims that it failed to pay $290 million in taxes for 2004 to 2005, CPC spokeswoman Olesiya Kuznetsova said Friday. |
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YEREVAN, Armenia — The aluminum foil plant on the upper slopes of Armenia’s capital accounts for around 40 percent of the country’s annual trade. Only seven years ago, it was on the brink of ruin. |
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MOSCOW — The government has resumed issuing permits for Indian rice imports banned from May 1 due to discovery of a banned pesticide in shipments, the Federal Service for Veterinarian and Vegetation Sanitary Supervision said Friday. The service said in a statement that all shipments of rice from India would be accepted after Friday if accompanied by certificates confirming their safety. This was agreed on at talks with Indian authorities held earlier this month. India is one of the country’s main suppliers of rice. Moscow used to import 400,000 to 500,000 tons of rice per year until it imposed a tariff of 70 euros ($97) per ton in April 2005. Imports shrank to 300,000 to 350,000 tons after that, analysts have said. |
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 UST-BOLSHERETSK, Kamchatka Region — For a rare visitor to the volcanic Kamchatka Peninsula in the Far East, no other custom reveals more about the local economy, lifestyle and environment than salmon poaching. |
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SEVERO-YENISEISKY, Krasnoyarsk Region — Cutting the ribbon at Russia’s largest gold mill this week, Krasnoyarsk Governor Alexander Khloponin forecast a huge increase in production by the time gold medals are handed out at the 2014 Winter Olympics. The country’s miners are investing billions of dollars to turn reserves second only to South Africa’s into gold. If its top three miners fulfill their promises, output will more than triple by 2015, a year after the country hosts the games. But investors, awaiting evidence that these long-term plans will bear fruit, have become more conservative as gold prices draw breath after rising over 50 percent in the last two years. |
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 PETROPAVLOVSK-KAMCHATSKY — Gold miners on the Kamchatka Peninsula contend with volcanic eruptions, floods and poor infrastructure, but high metal prices mean the hard work pays off. |
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Admiralteysky Verf, the state owned shipyard, has seen its market share fall by half over the last year from 20 to 10 percent, according to research done by City Hall’s Committee for Economic Development, Industrial policy and Trade, published earlier this month. At the same time the share of private yard Severnaya Verf has risen from 15 to 39 percent, making it the new market leader. Over 40 percent of Russia’s shipbuilding industry is located in St. Petersburg, with revenue estimated at 30 billion rubles (approximately $1.2 billion) a year. Admiralteysky’s production is mainly focused on diesel submarines, but last year it began building oil tankers too. |
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 The media can force a company to address grievances with corporate governance by raising managers’ concerns about their reputation. It is beneficial to managers when their company has a reputation of acting in the best interests of its shareholders. |
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Lawyer Boris Kuznetsov fled Russia after Moscow’s Tverskoi District Court initiated a criminal case on Wednesday, charging him with the disclosure of state secrets. How could the lawyer have gained access to state secrets? The intelligence services and prosecutor’s office believe that Kuznetsov violated the law by copying and distributing secret wiretap recordings of his client, former Federation Council Senator Levon Chakhmakhchyan. |
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 As Alexander Litvinenko lay dying in a London hospital, a strategy meeting was convened in the offices of Boris Berezovsky. The oligarch was adamant to get the word out that Litvinenko was poisoned on orders of President Vladimir Putin. “The problem is, most people will not want to believe it was Putin,” cautioned Lord Bell, Berezovsky’s media adviser. |
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In the twilight years of communism, I took an American friend around Moscow. On our prolonged excursion, she was struck less by the beauty of its historical sites than by the city’s frightening chaos, by the mindless mixture of residential buildings, fumes-spewing factories, building sites, 19th-century mansions, metal-working shops inside old churches and grass-covered vacant lots. |
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It wasn’t surprising that Moscow rejected Britain’s request to extradite Andrei Lugovoi, charged with murdering Alexander Litvinenko. After all, the Constitution prohibits extradition of its citizens. Britain answered by expelling four Russian diplomats, but this response is far too tepid. |
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The tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats in the dispute between Britain and Russia inevitably evoke memories of the Cold War. This reflex reaction is misleading. |
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 ANKARA — Turkey’s ruling AK Party on Monday celebrated its decisive victory in a parliamentary election, but strong nationalist gains dented its majority and could hamper reforms crucial to its European Union bid. With all votes counted from Sunday’s poll, unofficial results gave the Islamist-rooted AK Party 46. |
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LONDON — Prime Minister Gordon Brown visited the scene of Britain’s worst flooding in 60 years Monday as thousands of people remained cut off, many without access to clean water or electricity. |
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LONDON/NEW YORK — The seventh and final Harry Potter book flew off the shelves on Saturday as fans the world over snapped up copies to discover the fate of the boy wizard and his Hogwarts pals. J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” looks set to become the fastest selling book on record based on early estimates, following months of hype and a carefully orchestrated launch designed to maximize sales and suspense. |
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Tammy Faye Bakker, the diminutive and elaborately coiffed gospel singer who, with her first husband, Jim Bakker, built a commercial empire around television evangelism, only to see it collapse in sex and money scandals, died Friday at her home near Kansas City, Missouri. |
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LONDON — Kevin Pietersen said his 134 that ensured England was well placed for victory on the penultimate day of the first test against India on Sunday was the best of his nine test hundreds so far. It was Pietersen’s third century in a Lord’s test and although he has six test scores higher than his latest effort, other elements meant more to him, shown by the animated way in which he celebrated three figures by jumping up and down and waving his bat to the crowd. “I would probably rate that as number one,” Pietersen told reporters. “The conditions were as testing as I have known in test cricket or county cricket. |
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Alexander Demianchuk / Reuters
Women compete in a high-heel sprint in St. Petersburg on Saturday. Some 100 women took part in the race wearing high-heeled shoes with a required minimum height of 9 centimeters (3.5 inches). |
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NUERBURGRING, Germany — McLaren’s Fernando Alonso won a wet and wild European Grand Prix on Sunday to cut championship-leading team mate Lewis Hamilton’s lead to just two points. While Spain’s double world champion celebrated his third victory of the season, after a wheel-banging thrust past Ferrari’s Felipe Massa just four laps from the finish, Hamilton’s run of nine podiums in a row came to an end.
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 CARSON, California — David Beckham made his long-awaited debut for Los Angeles Galaxy in front of a capacity crowd when he came on as a substitute in the 78th minute of Saturday’s exhibition match against Chelsea. The England midfielder, who has been struggling to recover from an injury to his left ankle, was cheered loudly by the 27,000 fans at the Home Depot Center as he ran on to the pitch in place of striker Alan Gordon. |
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LOS ANGELES — Czech Radek Stepanek, sidelined for six months last year because of a neck injury, set his sights on regaining a top-10 ranking after winning the Los Angeles Classic on Sunday. |
Temp: -2°C moderate or heavy snow showers
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