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Firefighters in the region surrounding St. Petersburg say they have not had as much to do so far this summer as they had feared after a record low number of forest fires broke out during recent high temperatures — despite the raging fires experienced during a similar heatwave in southern Europe in spring. |
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MOSCOW — If you’re looking to strike it rich on the presidential election in March, Lyudmila Putina is a name to keep in mind. A $10 dollar wager with Britain’s Unibet that President Vladimir Putin’s wife will replace him in the Kremlin could bring a $2,000 payout should she get the job. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — Airline passengers will face restrictions on bringing perfume, juice, water and other liquids aboard flights from Aug. 27 as Russia joins the West in cracking down on liquids that could be used in a terrorist attack. Liquids will only be allowed in transparent plastic containers in quantities of 100 milliliters, with the exception of medicine and baby food, which the passenger may be asked to sample, a decree issued Friday by the Justice Ministry said. Passengers will be able to carry up to 10 containers on board, but the containers will be taped shut by ground staff for reopening on the plane. Alcohol will be barred unless it is purchased in the airport waiting area, and a passenger will be required to provide a receipt as proof of purchase. |
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TOY SOLDIERS
Sergei Karpukhin / Reuters
Shanghai Cooperat Organization leaders viewing a mock-up of exercises held Friday at the Chebarkul range, near the Ural Mountains city of Chelyabinsk. President Vladimir Putin took the occasion to announce the resumption of longe-range bomber patrols. |
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MOSCOW — The new owners of a Moscow radio station abruptly pulled the plug on the BBC Russian Service on Friday, raising new fears about media freedom. Finam, an investment company that acquired the BBC’s host station, Bolshoye Radio, in early August, said the BBC’s broadcasts had been removed because they violated the terms of the FM station’s license.
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Aquabike Horror ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A man on an aquabike rammed into a 44 year-old woman sitting on the bank of the Griboedov canal on Friday, severing one of her legs below the knee and breaking the other one, Interfax reported. The driver of the vehicle, who had a passenger, tried to flee the incident but he was subsequently located by Special Forces Police in speed boats. He tried to justify his actions by saying that he had only intended to spray the woman, and that the fin of the aquabike had got lodged on the bank of the canal. Swiss Plan Release WINTERTHUR, Switzerland (AP) — A North Ossetian architect convicted of killing an air traffic controller after losing his wife and two children in a midair plane collision may be released from prison Friday, his lawyer said. |
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 BUBONITSY, Tver Region — Vladimir Bologov was 18 when the wolves first answered his howl. Sitting in the kitchen of his house in a small village 500 kilometers northwest of Moscow, he explains how to howl properly. |
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 NEW YORK — U.S.-based International Paper said Friday that it had signed a definitive agreement to form a $1.6 billion joint venture with Russia’s leading forestry firm, Ilim Holding. International Paper, which signed a letter of intent with Ilim in October, said it would pay about $650 million for a 50 percent stake in the venture, to be called Ilim Group. |
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The General Prosecutor’s Office has requested that Bank Russky Standart abolish a number of practices that were found to violate consumer rights in a case that could have a dramatic impact on the banking industry. |
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Intel Corporation has launched an anthropological and ethnographical research project in Russia — by studying the behavior of the middle class, and how they use information technologies at their dachas, Intel hopes to come up with solutions and products customized for Russian country-homes. |
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MOSCOW — A key shareholder in juice maker Lebedyansky denied that the company was in sale talks with PepsiCo. A Lebedyansky spokesman confirmed the details of an Interfax report on Friday in which Nikolai Bortsov, Lebedyansky’s former director and an owner of a 30 percent stake in the company, was quoted as telling reporters that there had been no discussions with PepsiCo, the world’s No. |
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Railway Net MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russian Railways, the country’s rail monopoly, doubled first-half profit to a record 25.3 billion rubles ($983 million) as it carried more cargo and passengers, Interfax reported Monday. The earnings were calculated using Russian accounting standards, the news service said, citing a company report. |
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ASTANA, Kazakhstan — China and Kazakhstan agreed Saturday to expand an oil pipeline that will link China to the Caspian Sea, giving Beijing direct access to an energy-rich region controlled by Kazakhstan. |
 Russia was the leader among East European countries in attracting foreign direct investment into real estate in the first half of 2007, according to the latest research by real estate consultancy Knight Frank. A number of western investment funds and banks, including Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Immoeast, Quinn Group, JER Partners and Rutley Russia, have recently announced plans to invest millions of dollars into commercial and residential real estate in Moscow, St. |
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JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — Norilsk Nickel will spend over 4.4 billion rands ($588.6 million) on two projects in Botswana and South Africa, it said Friday. |
 The government will sell majority stakes in two firms with licenses for large coal deposits in the republic of Sakha as a single lot and has set a starting price of $1.85 billion for the Oct. 5 auction, the Federal Property Management Agency said Friday. |
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ShalkiyaZinc, owner of Kazakhstan’s largest zinc deposit, said Monday that it expected to arrange up to $150 million in debt finance from Barclays Capital to fund expansion of a mine and construction of an ore-processing plant. |
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 The selling panic that is rocking equity markets is unlikely to topple the global financial system. Investors worry that financial institutions will curb lending in response to the subprime mortgage crisis in the United States. Major central banks, however, led by the U. |
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While politicians make use of the summer recess to prepare for the election campaign fracas in the fall, an altogether different battle is shaping up in provincial cities that has much more significance for ordinary citizens. |
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 We are once again in the month of August. And again another explosion — this time on a Moscow-St. Petersburg train. It seems to me that there is more to this incident than meets the eye because a terrorist act has taken place at such an important moment for the country — on the eve of a presidential election. |
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Novelist Salman Rushdie, journalists Thomas Friedman and Nicholas Kristof and Mansour al-Nogaidan, a Saudi Arabian young intellectual, are among the well-intentioned people who have called for an Islamic Reformation. |
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Hydrocarbons are not the only industry to witness the trend. In the banking sector, state-owned VTB has acquired private rivals. Defense firms in aviation and shipbuilding are consolidating into large conglomerates under state control. The state’s arms export firm, Rosoboronexport, has taken control of assets in metallurgy and carmaking. |
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 BAGHDAD — An Iraqi provincial governor was blown up by a roadside bomb on Monday in what appeared to be an escalation of a power struggle between rival Shi’ite factions, threatening to destabilize the country’s oil-producing south. Mohammed Ali al-Hassani, governor of Muthanna province, was on his way from the city of Rumaitha to Samawa, the provincial capital, when his convoy of nine cars was targeted by a powerful roadside bomb, provincial officials said. |
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CARACAS — Former Argentine soccer star Diego Maradona on Sunday said he hates the United States “with all my strength” during an appearance on Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s weekly television show. |
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BEIJING — A Chinese couple tried to name their baby “@,” claiming the character used in e-mail addresses echoed their love for the child, an official trying to whip the national language into line said Thursday. The unusual name stands out especially in Chinese, which has no alphabet and instead uses tens of thousands of multi-stroke characters to represent words. |
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OKLAHOMA CITY — Six people died in floodwaters across Oklahoma after heavy rains from the remains of Tropical Storm Erin drenched the state on Sunday, according to police and local media reports. |
 KINGSTON, Jamaica — Hurricane Dean buffeted Jamaica’s southern coast, flooding the capital and littering it with broken trees and roofs after killing nine people earlier on its run through the Caribbean. Dean was an “extremely dangerous” Category 4 hurricane, the second-highest on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale. |
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 LONDON — Manchester United’s stuttering start to the defense of the Premier League title became a full-blown slump on Sunday when they were beaten 1-0 by Manchester City. The win, courtesy of Geovanni’s 31st minute shot, left Sven-Goran Eriksson’s City top of the league with a maximum nine points and looking down on their rivals who languish just above the bottom three with two points. |
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BEIJING — Traffic flowed more smoothly but the sun was still shrouded by smog on Monday, the fourth and final day of Beijing’s Olympic pollution prevention test. |
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Another Olympic Bid n MOSCOW (Reuters) — Russia’s Olympic Committee voted unanimously on Monday to submit a bid to host the first Youth Summer Olympics in 2010. It agreed to enter the Russian capital in the bidding process to stage the youth version of the world’s greatest sporting spectacle, for athletes aged 14-18. |
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Issues Archive