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 JAKARTA — Indonesia sealed on Thursday a $1 billion deal to purchase Russian tanks, helicopters and submarines during a visit by President Vladimir Putin, marking a further sign of Moscow’s growing re-engagement in the region. The visit by Putin, the first to Indonesia by a Russian or Soviet leader in around five decades, is also due to see the signing of billions of dollars in mining and energy deals. |
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 Residents who feel that the increasing number of new buildings in the historical center of St. Petersburg is threatening its integrity and risks disfiguring the architectural landscape will take to the streets on Saturday to make their voices heard against City Hall’s town-planning policies. |
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MOSCOW — The indications were few during Wednesday’s State Duma session that deputies were even aware that there was an election campaign under way. But the presidential decree officially opening the campaign was finally published Wednesday and, behind the scenes, deputies said their electoral prospects were the main thing on their minds. |
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MOSCOW — The Emergency Situations Ministry said Wednesday that it had closed more than 160 schools because of fire-safety violations. “The activities of 161 educational establishments have currently been halted temporarily by the courts,” the ministry said in a statement on its web site. |
All photos from issue.
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 MOSCOW — French urban climber Alain Roberts scaled the 242-meter Federation Tower on Tuesday after getting permission from city authorities. Roberts had planned to climb the tower in the Moskva-City business district as Moscow celebrated its 860th anniversary Sunday. |
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LONDON — Britain’s air force scrambled four Tornado warplanes on Thursday to intercept eight Russian long-range bombers, the Ministry of Defence said. The ministry said the Russian aircraft had not entered British air space. |
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MOSCOW — United Russia has missed an internal deadline to select candidates for its party lists, fueling speculation that the pro-Kremlin party is entering the campaign season in disarray. Each of the party’s regional branches was supposed to choose candidates for its list by the end of last month. The party’s general council was to meet Monday to review the results. |
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MOSCOW — Former Russneft chief Mikhail Gutseriyev fled Russia via Turkey and is living in London, sources close to the wanted oil tycoon said Wednesday, as a Moscow court upheld a warrant for his arrest on what he has called politically motivated charges. “He is in London, but has asked his friends to remain quiet during this difficult time,” one source said by telephone from London. Gutseriyev is observing 40 days of mourning for his son, Chingiskhan, who was killed in a car crash in Moscow on Aug. 22, the source said. The death of his son came as prosecutors ramped up the campaign against Gutseriyev, who stepped down as head of the country’s seventh-largest oil firm on July 31 after what he called “unprecedented hounding” from tax and law enforcement authorities. |
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 Germanwings, the German budget airline, has announced the introduction of low-cost connecting flights from Russia. The company has introduced over 500 new destinations, which can be accessed through the airports of Cologne-Bonn, Stuttgart and Berlin-Schonefeld, spokesmen for Germanwings said Wednesday at a press conference in St. |
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ST. PETERSBURG — Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works plans to invest more than $1 billion building a plant in the United States to supply steel sheet to the automotive sector, its billionaire owner said Wednesday. MMK, Russia’s third-largest steel producer, expects the go-ahead from U. |
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MOSCOW — The Cabinet was due to discuss a development plan Thursday that could see Russian Railways spending 13 trillion rubles ($506 billion) to overhaul its infrastructure and expand railway connections to the country’s major ports and business centers by 2030. |
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The city budget’s profits will increase by 25.5 percent next year, as local authorities expect to raise 293.8 billion rubles ($11.5 billion) through taxes and other payments in 2008, according to a draft of the city budget approved by the local government Tuesday. |
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MOSCOW— Rosneft plans to start drilling next year for oil and gas off the Kamchatka Peninsula, where reserves could rival those at Sakhalin, CEO Sergei Bogdanchikov said Wednesday. |
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MOSCOW — The global liquidity crunch may hit the two key drivers of the country’s strong economic growth — consumer lending and the real estate sector, the Economic Development and Trade Ministry’s chief forecaster said Wednesday. “There is some overheating in the economy. |
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TEHRAN, Iran — Iran signed a contract with Belarus on Wednesday that will allow Minsk to extract oil from the Islamic state’s southern Jofeir oil field, the oil ministry’s news web site reported. |
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This summer, two Republican U.S. senators have had their secret lives revealed in humiliating circumstances. David Vitter admitted to a “very serious sin” after his name appeared on the phone records of a Washington escort agency. Larry Craig was given a 10-day suspended jail sentence after apparently cruising for gay sex in a public bathroom. This weekend, Craig resigned from the Senate. Vitter, however, is hanging on. So what does it take for a sex scandal to be truly fatal? Why do some politicians survive this sort of thing and others perish? In the British-American heartland of the political sex scandal, this is not a marginal question. The French may pride themselves on allowing politicians to lead their private lives unmolested. |
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 A powerful new agency, the Investigative Committee, has been created to operate alongside the Prosecutor General’s Office. The head of the committee will have broad powers, operate independently of the prosecutor general and, like the prosecutor general, be appointed directly by the Federation Council on the president’s recommendation. |
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 Once the Netherlands spawned a band that Russians immediately accepted as their own — to strum Shocking Blue’s “Venus” or “Never Marry a Railroad Man,” sung to with home-made Russian lyrics, was a must for any teenager with a guitar, alongside “Can’t Buy Me Love” and “Yesterday. |
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After August’s tranquility, a busy autumn kicked off with a “secret” dual birthday party celebrated by the seminal local alt-rock band Tequilajazzz and the legendary underground club Fish Fabrique this week. |
 Theo Fabergé, the last surviving grandson of Russian Imperial jeweler Carl Fabergé, died last month in the U.K. aged 85, the jewelry company with which he was associated said in a statement issued on Tuesday. Romanov court jeweler Carl Fabergé had five sons, the last of whom Nikolai was sent from St. Petersburg to England to represent the family business in 1903. When the Russian revolution took place in 1917 Nicolas, as he was known in the U. |
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 Comic book art, a virtually unknown genre in Russia, is in the spotlight at the first international festival of Comics to be held in St. Petersburg, showcasing the work of dozens of comic book artists from St. |
 This week, MTV Russia launched a new reality show, “R&B Girls,” which brings in a handful of musical gurus to transform some leggy raw material into a group that will be Russia’s answer to the Pussycat Dolls. The show, which started on Monday, hired the real-life music producer Alexander Tolmatsky, best known as the father and former producer of over-privileged rapper Detsl, to preside over the process. |
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Grand Café Koreana // 25, Ligovsky Prospekt, Tel: 275 5219 // Open daily 11.30 a.m. through 11 p.m. // Menu in Russian, English and Korean // Major Credit Cards Accepted // Dinner for two 1,625 rubles ($63) Grand Café Koreana is an unpretentious looking establishment, near Moskovsky Station, offering excellent value Korean food and Japanese sushi. |
 Russian cinema audiences finally saw late last month what they’ve been waiting three months for: a film about a 21-year-old from the United States who is brought in front of a camera, given a choice of porn stars and allowed to carry out his sexual fantasies with one of them. The 38-minute short by controversial U. |
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 BERLIN — German politicians called for tougher anti-terrorism measures and immigration rules on Thursday after police said they had foiled a plot by Islamist militants to carry out massive bomb attacks. Leading conservatives demanded new laws to punish those who visit what the authorities say are terrorist training camps, new powers for online monitoring of computers and immigration curbs. |
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LONDON — Chinese computer hackers are infiltrating British government networks, giving them access to secret information, according to media reports on Thursday. |
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LONDON — England head into Saturday’s Euro 2008 qualifier against Israel at Wembley with a serious injury crisis threatening their chances of securing a vital victory. England will be without David Beckham, Frank Lampard, Wayne Rooney and almost certainly Owen Hargreaves for the Group E match which they must win to keep alive their chances of qualifying for next year’s finals in Austria and Switzerland. |
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NEW YORK — Svetlana Kuznetsova beat Hungarian teenager Agnes Szavay 6-1 6-4 to reach the U.S. Open semi-finals on Wednesday and believes she is a better player than when she won the title in 2004. |
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