|
|
|
 MOSCOW — The Other Russia on Sunday chose Garry Kasparov as its unity candidate for the March presidential vote while confirming a party list of 450 candidates for the Dec. 2 State Duma elections, in which the party is not eligible to run. The coalition’s first national congress also saw the departure of the Red Youth Vanguard from the movement, as leader Sergei Udaltsov said he was dissatisfied with the coalition’s strategy and walked out, taking the group’s support with him. |
|
The much-discussed art collection owned by the late cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and his wife Galina Vishnevskaya is to be given to the nation and placed in the Konstantinovsky Palace near St. |
All photos from issue.
|
|
|
|
|
A long-standing State Duma deputy and member of its Budget and Taxes Committee has hit out at St. Petersburg’s 2008 city budget saying it is riddled with murky investment projects, contains state subsidies to local energy monopolists and inflated construction costs of socially important construction projects. Oksana Dmitriyeva, who was once aligned with Yabloko and is currently with Just Russia, said on reviewing the budget — now passing through the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly — that she was surprised to find billions-worth of subsidies to such suppliers as Peterburgteploenergo, slated to received 7. |
|
MAGIC MUSHROOMS
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A mushroom picker in a forest in the Leningrad Oblast on Sunday, a day which saw the setting of a new record high temperature for Sept. 30 of 22.7 deg. Celsius. |
|
MOSCOW — About half of the names on a decree President Vladimir Putin signed Friday for the 42 Public Chamber members he appoints directly are new, including two figures from major human rights organizations that boycotted the same process two years ago. When the 126-member chamber was created in 2005, people like Alexander Brod, the head of the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights, and Holocaust foundation head Alla Gerber were conspicuous by their absence.
|
|
Park & Ride Opens ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The city’s first “park & ride” transport scheme came into operation on a pilot basis in St. Petersburg on Monday. The scheme, in which commuters from outlying districts park their cars at a designated parking lot and continue their journey to the center by public transport, is centered near Ladozhskaya metro station, Interfax said. |
|
MOSCOW — Fifty years ago, the Soviet Union woke up to the space age with a propaganda blunder. On Oct. 5, 1957, the main headline on Pravda’s front page said the country should prepare for winter. |
|
Should an ice rink be set up on Palace Square? Vasilisa, 8, schoolgirl: “It will be very beautiful to have a skating rink on Palace Square. I don’t know how to skate yet but I’d learn it there with pleasure.” Vitaly, 50, artist: “I’m sure the pictures in the Hermitage can stand a skating rink and rock concerts. |
|
|
|
 MOSCOW — From his ground-floor office, at the end of a marble corridor lined with portraits of his Soviet predecessors Leon Trotsky, Felix Dzerzhinsky and Lazar Kaganovich, Vladimir Yakunin runs a state within a state. As president of the country’s second-largest corporation, Russian Railways, Yakunin controls an empire of steel and movement that spans 11 time zones, employs a work force bigger than the population of Estonia and has a budget larger than those of many developing nations. |
|
|
|
|
The Finnish hotel operator Sokotel plans to construct five new hotels in the center of St. Petersburg over the next six years, adding about 1,000 new rooms to Sokotel hotels’ capacity, the company announced last week in a statement. Last month Sokotel completed the construction of Sokos Hotel Olympic Garden, which will start operating in the near future. “Over the last two years we have announced three large projects in St. Petersburg. Just a year ago we had nothing here in this spot, and today we see a beautiful building. In Finland we would not have been able to construct the building so fast,” said Juhani Jarvenpaa, general manager of SOK Holding. |
|
 A Japan-Russia business seminar started Monday in St. Petersburg at the Grand Hotel Europe and will continue through Wednesday this week, focusing on traditional Japanese furniture, Japanese food, consumer goods, construction technologies and the business model of a Japanese restaurant. |
|
MOSCOW — Gold prices rocketed to a 28-year high last week as Severstal tightened the screws in its battle for gold miner Celtic Resources. On Friday, Severstal upped its bid for Celtic, prompting feverish activity on the London-listed company’s stock. |
|
MOSCOW — Engineering company NPO Energomash, which makes rocket engines for U.S. firm Lockheed Martin, said Thursday that it was approached for a 7 million euro ($9. |
|
MOSCOW — Severstal on Friday made a new public offer for gold miner Celtic Resources worth $328 million, but Celtic’s board immediately advised shareholders to reject it. News of Severstal’s higher bid emerged just hours after Celtic, which has gold mining assets in Kazakhstan and Russia, informed the London Stock Exchange that a rival bidder had made a preliminary approach. |
|
Russia-China Pipeline MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia and China may agree in November to build an oil pipeline between the two countries, Interfax reported, citing Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov. |
|
Less than five years after Vitaly Yezopov founded his telecommunications company at the age of 26, it has flourished to become one of the top 10 communication services providers in Moscow. His spacious boardroom at Mastertel’s headquarters is a symbol of sorts for a company overindulged with medals and accolades, with rows of framed certificates hanging meticulously on its walls. |
|
British American Tobacco (BAT) has completed the construction of new production facilities at its plant in St. Petersburg. This expansion is part of a large investment program which began in 2005, Lance Mucalo, general manager of BAT–St. |
 MOSCOW — Rosoboronexport’s assets will be consolidated into a new state corporation, Russian Technologies, in the next six months, Sergei Chemezov, head of the state arms trader, said Friday. The new corporation will be formed after a bill goes to the State Duma this month and is signed into law by President Vladimir Putin next month, Chemezov said. |
|
MOSCOW — Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov on Thursday chastised Russian banks for failing to offer credit to domestic companies and said it was a “disgrace” they had to turn to foreign banks for loans. |
|
|
|
|
Several bankers have changed their places of work over the past few weeks — or perhaps I should say that several banks and their local branches have changed their top-managers. For instance, the local office of VTB, Russia’s 3rd bank by total assets, bid farewell to its head after several month of fruitless head hunting. Finally the right person was found at a division of VTB North-West, a regional bank in which VTB has a majority stake. The new head will be more of a nominal one than a strategically important person, experts say. The St. Petersburg affiliate retail-oriented VTB-24, another member of VTB group, has finally got a top-manager after almost two years of intensive recruiting. |
|
 We may be at the “make-or-break” moment for global free trade. Although bilateral trade deals are becoming more common, consensus on the multilateral Doha Development Round of the World Trade Organization negotiations is still elusive. |
|
Global financial markets are nervous and with good reason. The long period of low and stable interest rates is coming to an end. Since the events of August, when U.S., German, French, Chinese and other banks were caught holding suddenly illiquid assets backed by U.S. subprime mortgage securities, the interbank markets in main financial centers have tightened. |
|
|
|
 Few Americans have ever heard of Sergei Korolyov. But he is the reason that NASA was created and that the United States went to the moon. It is because of this anonymous Russian that the United States has federally backed college loans and National Football League games on DirecTV. |
|
Opponents of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq have long compared it to the earlier intervention in Southeast Asia, which created a quagmire on the ground and a painful rift at home. |
|
The elevation of the virtually unknown Viktor Zubkov as prime minister has complicated the issue of President Vladimir Putin’s successor. Pundits had long debated the various merits of the two first deputy prime ministers, Sergei Ivanov and Dmitry Medvedev, but ostensibly they are now out of the running. |
|
|
|
|
BAGHDAD — Civilian deaths from violence across Iraq fell by 50 percent in September, according to government data published on Monday, matching a drop in U.S. military casualties attributed to a boost in troop numbers. Information provided by the health, interior and defense ministries registered 884 civilians killed in September, the lowest monthly total this year, down from 1,773 in August. The casualties were also the lowest since Washington began pouring an extra 30,000 troops into Iraq as part of a last-ditch security crackdown aimed at al Qaeda and other Sunni Arab militants and Shi’ite militias across the country. |
|
DIAMOND HAND
/ Reuters
A flawless diamond on show at Sotheby's in Geneva on Monday. The diamond, which is the largest brilliant-cut diamond ever to be auctioned is expected to reach up to $16 million. |
|
LONDON — Foreign students visiting Britain are to be educated in the etiquette of queuing for buses, after local users complained about them not observing the conventions of standing in line. Southern Vectis, which operates buses on the Isle of Wight, off England’s south coast, said it was to contact local language schools following several complaints about the behavior of young students over the summer months.
|
 YANGON — Mystery surrounded the whereabouts of UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari on Monday after he flew to Myanmar’s new jungle capital to persuade the junta to end its crackdown on the biggest pro-democracy protests in 20 years. One diplomatic source said Gambari was being made to wait until Tuesday to meet junta supremo Senior General Than Shwe, and with the streets of Yangon quiet on Monday, had gone on a trip to Lashio, in the hills of Shan state, near the Chinese border. |
|
OSLO — Using secret material smuggled out of Myanmar, the Oslo-based Democratic Voice of Burma’s radio and TV stations are a key source of information for those inside and outside the country on the government’s crackdown on protesters. |
|
HOW DID THEY COME TO POWER? The State Peace and Development Council, as Myanmar’s ruling junta is formally known, replaced another dictatorship in 1988 after suppressing a pro-democracy uprising. WHO ARE THEY? There are 12 members on the council, but first among equals is Senior Gen. Than Shwe, 74, an uncompromising hard-liner. |
|
|
|
FUJI, Japan — McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton won a wet and wild Japanese Grand Prix on Sunday to take a huge stride towards becoming the first rookie to win the Formula One championship. While the 22-year-old Briton splashed through the spray to chalk up his fourth victory in just 15 grand prix, his closest rival and double world champion teammate Fernando Alonso crashed out. |
|
PARIS — Horribly rusty against Namibia, fortunate to beat Georgia, outclassed by France and simply outplayed by Argentina, Ireland return home after failing to make the last eight for the second time in three World Cups. |
|
Front-runner Zenit St. Petersburg is on course for its first league title since 1984 with a 2-1 win over champion CSKA Moscow at Petrovsky Stadium on Saturday. The victory keeps the team three points ahead of nearest rival Spartak Moscow with five matches remaining in the March-November season. CSKA’s hopes of holding the league title were dealt a fatal blow after a string of wasted chances allowing Zenit forward Pavel Pogrebnyak to score after half-an-hour. |
Temp: -2°C moderate or heavy snow showers
Issues Archive