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SYDNEY, Australia — President Vladimir Putin told the leaders of China and Japan on Saturday that Russia’s policy toward key partners in Asia would not change after he leaves office next year. A day earlier, in a meeting ahead of the weekend’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Sydney, Putin and U.S. President George W. Bush came up with nothing more concrete than a Siberian fishing invitation. On the sidelines of the APEC summit Saturday, Putin reminded Chinese President Hu Jintao and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that it was their last meeting before the presidential election in March. |
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FUN RUN
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Competitors on Palace Square on Sunday taking part in a 10-kilometer run for women through the center of the city. About 10,000 women took part in the run, including teams from abroad. |
 The plan to build a skyscraper to house the headquarters of energy giant Gazprom is driven by an inferiority complex, the tower resembles Godzilla, its completion would be like spitting in the face of Peter the Great and the whole project stinks, angered residents who joined a protest march on Saturday said. The focus of the March for the Preservation of St.
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Pulkovo airport is to enlarge its network of long-distance flights by attracting new carriers, the airport’s management has announced, with new routes opened to the U.S and south-east Asia. St. Petersburg’s rapid economic development and the corresponding increase in passengers using Pulkovo is the major reason behind the initiative, a Pulkovo news release said. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — U.S. plans to deploy parts of a missile defense shield in Poland and the Czech Republic are “politically dangerous,” former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said while promoting a book in Moscow on Saturday. “From my point of view, the missile defense system is politically dangerous. It is perceived as an attempt to isolate Russia, which is not in Europe’s political interests,” said Schroeder, a personal friend of President Vladimir Putin. “It is Germany’s responsibility ... to persuade the United States to abandon these plans,” he said at a roundtable discussion with political analysts and journalists. |
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KISS ME QUICK!
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A flash mob of around 120 couples kiss on Palace Sqaure on Saturday evening. The couples had prearranged their kisses through a network of mobile phone text messages. |
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VIANA DO CASTELO, Portugal — The European Union must be tougher in its dealings with a newly assertive Russia during the final months of President Vladimir Putin’s rule, EU foreign ministers said. “We want a constructive relationship with Russia, but we want responsibility shown by Russia,” British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said after EU ministers discussed Russian ties at a meeting Friday in the Portuguese coastal town of Viana do Castelo.
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 Director Nikita Mikhalkov won a special award at the Venice film festival last weekend for his film “12,” a Chechen-themed remake of Sidney Lumet’s “12 Angry Men.” Mikhalkov’s movie tells of 12 jurors who must decide the fate of a Chechen teenager charged with murdering his stepfather, an officer in the Russian army. Though all but one are convinced of the youth’s guilt, the single skeptical juror forces the others to discuss the case, slowly uncovering their personal stories and the emotional involvement behind their decision. |
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 MOSCOW — By day, presidential aide Dzhakhan Polliyeva’s duties include preparing speeches for President Vladimir Putin. By night, she writes pop songs. |
 TSOVKRA-1, Dagestan — By a twist in history, every man, woman and child in the remote mountain village of Tsovkra-1 can walk the tightrope. For children in this village on the country’s southern fringe, after-school pastimes usually mean time spent balancing on a wire suspended above the ground. |
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Rogozin on List? MOSCOW (SPT) — Nationalist State Duma Deputy Dmitry Rogozin may get a top spot on the party list of the Patriots of Russia for Duma elections in December, Kommersant reported Saturday. |
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The seventh Baltic PR Weekend took place at the Grand Hotel Europe in St. Petersburg from Thursday to Friday last week. The conference was organized by the Russian PR Association, SPN Ogilvy Public Relations and the International PR Association. This year, the event gathered a record of more than 450 participants, as well as leading PR experts who gave presentations and led round tables during the two day conference. Among them was Ivan Bunin, general director of the independent fund Center for Political Technologies; Andrei Barannikov, general director of SPN Ogilvy Public Relations and vice-president of the PR Association of Russia; Andrei Braginsky, Marketing Communications Director for Sochi 2014; Vladimir Medinsky, State Duma Deputy and the president of the PR Association of Russia; Andrei Vasiliyev, Editor-in-Chief of Kommersant and Mikhail Umarov, PR director of AO VimpelCom. |
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Grigory Sysoyev / Itar-Tass
Customers in a Starbucks coffee shop, which opened its first cafe in Russia in the Mega shopping mall in Moscow last week. The U.S. chain plans to open more cafes this year. |
 Avielen company, a joint venture by Warimpex Group and Pulkovo Airport, has begun construction of a four-star hotel and two business centers in proximity to St. Petersburg’s airport. The hotel and business centers will start operating by the end of 2009, managers from the company said last week, presenting the project at the PROestate-2007 exhibition at Lenexpo.
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The American car components producer Tenneco opened a plant in the Leningrad Oblast on Monday. The company has invested $2 million into the enterprise, which will produce car exhaust systems, Interfax reported. The plant will produce 75,000 units a year, but Tenneco plans to increase production up to 500,000 units in the future. |
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Severstal to Expand MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Severstal, Russia’s largest steelmaker, plans to spend more than half of a planned $10 billion expansion domestically after first-half profit more than doubled because of surging local demand. |
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MOSCOW — Russian stocks have flatlined this year but are poised to rally and the best prospects are in the power and infrastructure sector, according to $4 billion fund manager Prosperity Capital Management. Apprehension over who will succeed Russian President Vladimir Putin, due to stand down next year, has contributed to Russia’s underperformance in relation to the booming emerging markets of China and Latin America. |
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By introducing European standards of management to its acquired Russian company NASTA, the Swiss group Zurich hopes to make it one of the top-5 insurance companies in Russia. |
 MOSCOW — Like many people, Lori Daytner loves to try new restaurants. The promise of new tastes, a new atmosphere, and association with friends over dinner is enough to get a lot of people through a long week at work. However, while the majority of these people forget the details of their dining experience before their next meal, Daytner takes careful note of the food, service and presentation of each establishment. |
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MOSCOW — The government is proposing tougher curbs on the sale of mobile phones as a new report shows that stealing handsets has become the country’s top economic crime. |
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MOSCOW — Western investors who bought a Yukos firm that is the subject of a protracted legal battle in the Netherlands contacted former Yukos managers who claim effective control over the firm and sought their agreement to take it over, the Financial Times reported Friday. |
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MOSCOW — Miner and steelmaker Severstal has signaled its intent to enter the gold-mining sector by winning an auction Thursday to develop a deposit in eastern Siberia. |
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 In the weeks to come, the executive board of the International Monetary Fund will have the responsibility of appointing its managing director for the next five years. Regardless of nationality, what truly matters is that whoever is selected to run the IMF should embrace a number of vital changes within the organization. |
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Europeans cannot decide what they fear more: relying too much on Russian gas or not getting enough of it. We worry about the Kremlin’s political machinations and Gazprom’s underinvestment in equal measure. |
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 After years of political, social and economic chaos under Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping set a new course for China, determined to build the economy first and the military later. He sought a low-key foreign policy where China would not take the lead in world affairs and the nation would “bide time, hide capabilities. |
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This year marks the 200th anniversary of official relations between Russia and the United States. Of course, the two nations had relations that preceded 1807. |
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The seafront at Sukhumi, in Abkhazia, is full of ghosts. Ghosts of those killed in the war and of those who fled, taking whatever they could with them. Ghosts of the people who played, loved and fought there. Ghostly buildings, like the once-grand Hotel Abkhazia, gutted by rocket fire and stripped to a skeleton. |
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Trying to guess the identity of President Vladimir Putin’s choice as his successor and how he or she will come to power is a game that just continues to grow in popularity. |
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ORLANDO, Florida — During a Republican presidential debate on Wednesday, Rudolph W. Giuliani asserted, “The reality is that I’m not running on what I did on Sept. 11.” Two days later, a crowd of nearly 1,000 filed into a ballroom here for a 9/11 Remembrance Luncheon. Graphic images of the exploding towers, dust-covered survivors and even a series of photos that showed someone leaping from a tower were flashed on two giant screens flanking the stage where Giuliani was about to speak. “America must never forget the lessons of Sept. |
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RIDE LIKE THE WIND
/ Reuters
Bedouins take part in a horse and camel race during a Bedouin culture festival in the village of Kusaifa, in Israel's Negev desert, on Saturday. |
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GUWAHATI, India — About 2.5 million people have been made homeless in India’s northeast state of Assam after a second wave of flooding caused by heavy rains over the past three days, an official said on Monday. The flooding has affected about seven million people and killed 12 people since Friday and has washed away thousands of homes, bridges, electricity poles and telecommunications towers — disrupting power and phone networks in many areas.
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RABAT — Morocco’s conservative Istiqlal party won the most seats in parliamentary elections, allowing it to form the next government with its current ruling coalition allies, final results released on Monday showed. Istiqlal (Independence), a ruling coalition member, won 52 seats, ahead of the opposition Islamist Justice and Development party (PJD) with 46 seats, the Interior Ministry said. The final figures showed a record-low turnout of 37 percent, an apparent snub of a political system whose leaders are widely seen as aloof and out of touch. Islamist PJD had hoped to take the top spot and a role in the next government. When it became clear the party would only take second place it accused unnamed opponents of buying votes to skew the results. |
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 LISBON/ROTHLEY, England — Portuguese police said they would hand evidence against the parents of missing 4-year-old Madeleine McCann on Monday to the public prosecutor, who would decide whether to charge them. |
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ISLAMABAD — Former Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif was arrested and deported to Saudi Arabia on Monday within hours of arriving home from exile vowing to end the rule of President Pervez Musharraf. Authorities imposed a major clampdown before he flew in from London, detaining many leaders, spokesmen and activists of Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League party, stopping supporters from traveling to the capital and sealing off Islamabad airport. |
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BAGHDAD — Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Monday his government had stopped Iraq sliding into civil war and said violence in and around Baghdad had plunged under a U. |
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BERLIN — They grew up as middle-class Germans with the ordinary names Fritz and Daniel. They had by and large sound family backgrounds and attended good schools. They even once played American football and basketball. But somewhere along the line — according to a portrait of the two Germans that has emerged in local media reports since their arrest — Fritz Gelowicz and Daniel Schneider went off the usual track and became Islamist militants. |
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 LONDON — Italy drew 0-0 with France in their World Cup final repeat, Germany and England notched easy wins and 10-man Spain were frustrated by a 1-1 draw in Iceland in Saturday’s Euro 2008 qualifiers. The battle to reach the finals in Austria and Switzerland also saw the Netherlands beat Bulgaria 2-0, while the day’s other upset left Turkey with only a 2-2 draw in Malta. |
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NEW YORK — Swiss virtuoso Roger Federer captured his fourth successive U.S. Open title with cold-blooded efficiency on Sunday, proving to young Serb Novak Djokovic that he is not yet ready for a changing of the guard. |
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NEW YORK — Belgian Justine Henin demolished Russian Svetlana Kuznetsova 6-1 6-3 on Saturday to win her second U.S. Open title and seventh grand-slam crown. The top seed was right on top of her game, scorching to victory in one hour, 22 minutes to become the first woman to win the title without losing a set since Serena Williams in 2002. |
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Russia enters its match against England on Wednesday in confident mood following an impressive win over Macedonia in Moscow on Saturday. Russia is one place and one point above England in the table and only two points behind group leaders Croatia, and a positive result against England at London’s newly reopened Wembley Stadium will put them in a strong position to qualify for the European Championships in Switzerland and Austria next year. |
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