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Local businessman Vladimir Barsukov, reportedly one of the former leaders of the Tambov criminal group, has been arrested on suspicion of forming a criminal gang, murder, attempted execution-style contract killing and other crimes, the Prosecutor General’s press-office said on Monday. |
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MOSCOW — Claims published Friday by archaeologists that they have found the remains of two of the children of the last tsar, Nicholas II, have brought the controversy surrounding the fate of the royal family’s remains to the surface again. |
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Local businessman Vladimir Barsukov, reportedly one of the former leaders of the Tambov criminal group, has been arrested on suspicion of forming a criminal gang, murder, attempted execution-style contract killing and other crimes, the Prosecutor General’s press-office said on Monday. |
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LOSEVO, Leningrad Oblast — Athletes and thrill seekers came from as far away as Samara for a three-minute wet and wild ride on inflatable women in the fifth annual Bubble Baba Challenge at the Losevo Rapids on the Vuoksa River, about 82 kilometers northwest of St. |
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FSB director Nikolai Patrushev told President Vladimir Putin on Monday that inquiries into the bombing of an express train traveling from Moscow to St. Petersburg earlier this month have yielded “interesting information.” “The first results [of the search] have been already considered,” Interfax news agency quoted Patrushev as saying. |
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MOSCOW — Russia on Monday announced that 10 people have been arrested in the killing of journalist and Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya, including law enforcement officers and a Chechen crime boss accused of organizing the slaying. |
 A middle-aged woman stoops over her handbag resting at her feet and finds a small piece of food wrapped in plastic. “Koo-koo-koo,” she calls to a mud-caked mutt that leaps from the bushes to snatch the morsel from her hand. The dog trots back to its lair to share the food with its pack. |
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Dovlatov Remembered ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A memorial plaque will be inaugurated on Ulitsa Rubinshteina on Monday to commemorate the birth of the Russian short-story writer and novelist, Sergei Dovlatov, Fontanka. |
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MOSCOW — Several foreign banks are poised to make acquisitions after the Central Bank granted them permission to buy stakes of more than 20 percent in local lenders. Speaking on the sidelines of the eighth All-Russian Banking Forum in Nizhny Novgorod, Central Bank First Deputy Chairman Gennady Melikyan told reporters that in the last few days he had “signed several papers permitting the acquisitions of stakes exceeding 20 percent in several Russian banks. |
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Finnish energy concern Fortum has finally sold its stake in St. Petersburg based JSC Lenenergo for approximately 295 million euros ($403 million) to three companies — VTB Bank, I. |
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MOSCOW — A wealthy Russian tried to buy a U.S. B-52 bomber from a group of shocked American pilots at the MAKS 2007 air show, Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper reported Friday. The unidentified Russian, wearing sunglasses and surrounded by bodyguards, approached the U. |
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Italian Power ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The Syntez Group development company will order gas turbines for St. Petersburg’s Southwest Power Plant from Italian company Ansaldo Energia, one of the world’s leading producers of power equipment, the company said Monday in a statement. |
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PARIS — Moscow’s representative on the IMF board said former French Finance Minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn lacked the technical skills to head the International Monetary Fund. The representative, Alexei Mozhin, told the Financial Times in remarks published Saturday that Russia had also secured the backing of unidentified developing countries for its own candidate, Josef Tosovsky, a former Czech prime minister and central banker. |
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MOSCOW — The Federal Anti-Monopoly Service has allowed Italy’s Enel to take full control of wholesale generator OGK-5, which will become the country’s first power utility to be fully owned by a foreign firm. |
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Keeping Afloat ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — By 2010 Admiralteiskiye Verfi state shipyard will invest 12 billion rubles ($466 million) into development, RBC reported Friday. The company will invest the money into production facilities for submarines and large-capacity vessels. |
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Legislation banning gambling halls and casinos may end up driving many operators out of business, but for some, it is spurring creative partnerships, while others are seeking fortune elsewhere. |
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 On August 22, Russia nominated well-known Czech economist Josef Tosovsky is candidate for the post of International Monetary Fund managing director. It did so because the means for managing the world's financial system, with the World Bank and the IMF as key elements, is fundamentally out of date and in need of reform. |
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Compared with much of the world, Russia was late to learn about AIDS. In the 1990s, as the disease surged across sub-Saharan Africa, the number of HIV cases in Russia was relatively small. |
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A helpful friend once asked me in 2003, “Would you like to meet a Russian gangster?” The conversation proved comfortable, intelligent and wide-ranging. I was especially interested in his thoughts on power and relations between states, of which he took a very Darwinian view: to the victor — the spoils; to the loser — bitter humiliation. |
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Russia’s intrepid underwater conquest of the south side of the North Pole earlier this month raised some bemused eyebrows. If you’re under a pole, one observer asked, do you plant the flag upside down? Another wondered if the Antarctic Treaty means the reverse can’t happen: Russians in a blimp can’t claim the north side of the South Pole, can they? Jokes aside, however, Russia’s summer Arctic adventure — though not a formal territorial claim — may indeed carry real significance. |
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Azerbaijan may be a secular Muslim country, but morally it is still a distinctly conservative kind of place. That is why it has been both thrilled and scandalized by the libertine lifestyle and provocative posturing of Roya Ayxan, an Azeri pop princess with the shock value of a feisty young Madonna. Why all the fuss over Roya? Well, she has been known to swear like a drunken sailor on live television. And she thinks little of stripping off and flashing her breasts. “Her attitude is basically punk,” commented a colleague, after Roya breezed into our Baku office in designer sunglasses, killer heels and an electroshock hairstyle, leaving a trail of expensive perfume and turning heads at every corner. |
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 Until now, Kazakhstan, which has generally been viewed separately from other Central Asian republics, stood on its own in the political sense as well. But with the recent parliamentary elections there, which President Nursultan Nazarbayev called “the final act of constitutional reform and a reference point for the new political history of Kazakhstan,” any distinctions between Kazakhstan’s political system and those of its neighbors have become a thing of the past. |
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MOSCOW — Russia has launched a campaign to promote the national language after almost two decades of retreat — to match the country’s increasing economic and political confidence. The Kremlin believes it can start rebuilding the credibility of Russian as a means of communication outside its own borders, with business and not communist ideology driving the revival. |
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YANGOON, Myanmar (Burma) — Around 50 members of Myanmar’s main opposition party staged a protest march in a provincial town on Monday, witnesses said, as a major junta crackdown failed to stifle rare displays of public anger at soaring fuel prices. Gangs of men from the army’s feared Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA) shadowed the march through Bago, 50 miles north of Yangon, taking pictures and video footage but did not intervene. The protesters, all from the National League for Democracy (NLD) party of detained Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, agreed with police and town officials to halt their march after an hour, one of their leaders said. |
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 LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan — Afghanistan produced record levels of opium in 2007 for the second straight year, led by a staggering 45 percent increase in the Taliban stronghold of Helmand Province, according to a new United Nations survey to be released on Monday. |
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BLED, Slovenia — The European Union could change the Balkans at a stroke by giving membership candidate status to countries still uncertain whether the bloc really wants them, Serb Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic said on Monday. Jeremic told leaders at the Slovenian Strategic Forum in Bled that lack of a clear incentive from the EU was hindering political and economic reform. |
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BEIJING, China — German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged China on Monday to do more to halt climate change, prompting the response that the developed West has been polluting the skies for much longer than the newly developing Chinese. |
 KRESTENA, Greece — Desperate Greek villages encircled by flames appealed for help on Monday as strong winds continued to fan forest fires sweeping through the country, killing 63 people in three days. People sought refuge by river banks as towering flames engulfed homes, farms and forests and firefighters battled scores of blazes across the country, which has declared a nationwide emergency. |
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ISTANBUL, Turkey — Ferrari’s Felipe Massa won the Turkish Grand Prix for the second year in a row on Sunday while a late puncture slashed Lewis Hamilton’s championship lead to five points. Hamilton finished fifth, two places behind his McLaren team mate and closest rival Fernando Alonso, after the 43rd lap blowout robbed him of a safe third. |
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OSAKA, Japan — Jamaican world record holder Asafa Powell admitted on Monday that he gave up during his world 100 meters final showdown with new champion Tyson Gay. |
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SOFIA, Bulgaria — Tottenham Hotspur striker Dimitar Berbatov has confirmed he is staying at the north London club, ending recent speculation about the Bulgarian’s future. “I chose to join Tottenham last season, now I’m staying at the club through my own free will. |
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LONDON — Mali midfielder Mohamed Sissoko scored his first goal for Liverpool to help his side register a 2-0 win at Sunderland on a weekend where African players made decisive contributions across Europe’s major leagues. |
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LOS ANGELES — Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick, whose fall from grace has been one of the most sudden in U.S. sport, will formally plead guilty Monday in a dog-fighting case almost certain to wreck his football career. The 27-year-old admitted in a plea agreement Friday he took part in an illegal, interstate dogfighting enterprise known as “Bad Newz Kennels” from 2001 through April 2007. In documents filed in U.S. District Court in Richmond, Virginia, Vick said he knew dogs that did not perform well were killed. He added that he bought property in Virginia to serve as the main staging area for housing and training pit bulls that took part in the dogfighting venture. |
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 MADRID, Spain — Millions of euros were spent remodelling squads at the top end of the Primera Liga during the close season yet the weekend’s opening round of matches had a familiar feel. |
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OSAKA, Japan — Russia’s Yekaterina Volkova stormed to the world title in the women’s 3,000 meters steeplechase on Monday, going one better than in 2005. Volkova looked up at the giant stadium screen and punched the air in delight as she came down the home straight to clock a world championship record nine minutes 6. |
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Leading development firm Mirax Group has taken its first step toward setting up a luxury European and North African hotel chain with the $340 million acquisition of the Sungate Port Royal Hotel in Turkey. “We are creating a network of world-class hotels in a number of different European countries and the Sungate Port Royal Hotel is the first part of this chain,” Mirax board member Maxim Temnikov said in a statement Aug 14. |
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Issues Archive