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MOSCOW — A weekend visit by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates failed to resolve tensions between Washington and Moscow, lowering hopes that relations will be mended before Presidents Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush leave office. But the U.S. side did make a last-minute offer on the issues of missile defense and arms control, saying later that the proposal was received positively in private talks with Russian officials. In public, the two-day visit was full of signs that relations continue to be poor, as Putin warned his American guests to back off their plan to install a missile defense system in Central Europe or risk further harming relations with Moscow. “We might decide some day to set up a missile defense system on the moon, but until then, the opportunity for an agreement might be lost while you are realizing your own plans,” he said in a sharp speech Friday that was posted on the Kremlin’s web site. |
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Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A model displays an outfit from designer Alexandra Kiaby’s collection at the Defile Na Neve fashion show at the Manezh Kadetskogo Korpusa. The event concludes on Oct. 18. |
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While businesses have seen profits shoot up as Russia’s economy goes from strength to strength, bosses have shown little inclination to share new wealth with the country’s poor, and charitable giving is hit by a tangle of bureaucratic obstacles. Lev Paneyakh, general director of ASK, a large insurance company, uses the phrase “shadow charity.” This means that the intended benefit of charitable activity is not actually delivered.
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The government under Vladimir Putin has amassed so much central authority that new attempts to centralize power may undermine Moscow’s commitment to democracy, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said. “In any country, if you don’t have countervailing institutions, the power of any one president is problematic for democratic development,” Rice told reporters Saturday after meeting with human rights activists. |
All photos from issue.
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St. Petersburg State University has become the first higher educational institution in Russia to teach students nanobiology and nanotechnology, the university’s press service has said. Students will be able to study the program for two years. Professors at the university’s biology and chemistry faculties developed the nanobiology course. “Russia does not have specialists in nanobiology. Neither Europe nor Asia prepares such specialists,” said Maria Shishova, professor of the Biology and Soil Faculty of the university. Shishova said that separate lecture courses on nanobiology exist in the United States, but only St. Petersburg State University can offer a full course on the subject. |
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 Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa, 73, who designed St. Petersburg’s new soccer stadium under construction on Krestovsky Island, died in Tokyo on Friday. |
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A British rock band that has new-found popularity in Russia is to perform at St. Petersburg’s largest indoor venue on Friday in a huge step forward from its debut in the city five years ago. Muse, the British “prog-rock” band noted for its frenzied live performances as well as shrieking vocals and eccentric views of its frontman Matthew Bellamy, returns to Russia this week as rock giants with their most successful album and tour to date. Muse made its St. Petersburg debut five years ago, when it was mostly known to a limited number of Britpop connoisseurs in Russia. The current tour promotes “Black Holes and Revelations,” Muses’s fourth album and the first since 2003. |
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 MOSCOW — Having spent $5 million on his protege, multimillionaire Viktor Baturin should probably be happy that singer Dima Bilan teamed up with Timbaland, one of the hottest pop producers in the world, to sweep the Russian MTV awards. |
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 VERKHOVYE, Oryol Region — Gennady Zyuganov looked completely at home as he stood on a dirt road in the village of Verkhovye, listening to a dozen or so middle-aged workmen and elderly women pour out their troubles. Zyuganov — tanned and wearing a pink-and-white striped shirt, a red-and-white striped tie and gray slacks — shook hands with the poorly dressed workmen and patted the women on their shoulders as they complained about high utility prices and idle farmland. |
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MOSCOW — The Federal Tax Service on Friday expanded its case against PricewaterhouseCoopers as it called for the auditor and prosecutors to produce documents that it said pointed to PwC advising Yukos on avoiding taxes. The tax service’s lawsuit against PwC accuses the international auditing firm of colluding with the now-bankrupt oil company by signing off on false audit reports, the Financial Times reported. PwC and the Prosecutor General’s Office were subpoenaed during a hearing at Moscow’s Ninth Arbitration Appeal Court on Friday, with members of the service’s fifth tax inspectorate demanding that a list of all the company’s 146,000 employees worldwide and a rundown of the firm’s international units be handed over by Oct. |
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 WASHINGTON — An Internet business based in St. Petersburg has become a world hub for web sites devoted to child pornography, spamming and identity theft, according to computer security experts. |
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Web Plus invested over $200,000 into a rebranding campaign launched earlier this month, as managers expect that unifying all the company’s telecom services under one brand will increase its market share and reduce spending on advertising and promotion. |
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Banknote Forgery Up MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia’s central bank took 1.8 percent more fake banknotes out of circulation in the first nine months of the year as cash continued to be the main form of payment. |
 MOSCOW — Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov on Saturday pressed U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Russia’s bid to join the World Trade Organization and called for the repeal of the Jackson-Vanik amendment, a Soviet-era piece of legislation that has been a key obstacle to the country’s WTO accession. |
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The world’s leading contractor for the production of computers, electronics and telecom equipment, Foxconn, will construct a plant in St. Petersburg, after signing an agreement Friday with the St. |
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MINSK — Belarus told Russia on Friday that it was making a mistake to build a gas pipeline under the “minefield” of the Baltic Sea and offered tax breaks instead to increase pipeline gas flows across its own territory. “Why have you decided to go under the Baltic? Don’t you remember I told you that nothing good will come of this?” President Alexander Lukashenko said at a meeting with journalists broadcast on state radio. |
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MOSCOW — Senior officials on Saturday sought to reassure voters that the Cabinet has price growth under control despite a spike in food prices six weeks ahead of the State Duma elections. |
 Kent McNeley has a long history in Russia. It was McNeley who launched the first Procter&Gamble branch in Russia fifteen years ago when the country was taking its first steps in the market economy, and two years ago he came back to Russia after receiving an exclusive offer to join the Russian mobile phone service provider VimpelCom as its Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer. |
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MOSCOW — A bill to put the country’s nuclear industry under a tightly controlled state corporation received overwhelming backing in its first reading in the State Duma on Thursday, but the Communists labeled the bill as dangerous. |
 Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko assured Europe on Thursday that his government would meet its obligations to ensure Russian oil and gas exports flow across its soil on schedule and in full. Yushchenko gave the assurance days after Kiev resolved a dispute with Gazprom over the payment of debts worth $1. |
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The State Duma on Thursday approved measures to tighten rules protecting consumers’ rights and regulate the retail sector. The changes to consumer rights legislation will allow shoppers to claim refunds on defective or sub-standard goods without going through laborious administrative procedures. |
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On the evening of October 7th, the Konstantinovsky Palace State Residence located on the shore of the Gulf of Finland on the south-western outskirts of St. Petersburg was crowded with well-dressed people. Presumably they were waiting for President Putin, but he was celebrating his 55th birthday in the Kremlin in Moscow. However, the guests could entertain themselves by discussing Spanish architect Ricardo Bofill’s new design for a congress center at Strelna, where the Konstantinovsky palace is located. Bofill, along with half a dozen other famous western designers, participated in a strictly confidential contest that was organized by the Presidential Administration. |
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 Fifty years ago last week, Ayn Rand published her magnum opus, “Atlas Shrugged.” It’s an enduringly popular novel, with some 150,000 new copies still sold each year in bookstores alone. |
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The war in Afghanistan was not the main reason the Soviet Union collapsed. Nevertheless, it bankrupted the Soviet state and pointed out the moral blight, skewed priorities and irrelevance of the Communist gerontocracy. The United States is a vibrant society with a diversified and resilient economy. But it currently stands on the brink of considerable social and economic upheaval, and the Iraq war reveals the fault lines within the world’s only superpower. |
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 The key political question in Russia over the past two decades has not been about the relationship between democracy and dictatorship, but about the relationship between different kinds of oligarchy. The oligarchy that has taken shape under President Vladimir Putin is far more coherent, close-knit and disciplined than Boris Yeltsin’s collection of feuding magnates. |
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Every Russian or Soviet leader changes the structure of government to serve his own tactical interests. It’s highly unlikely that Nikita Khrushchev, NKVD chief Lavrenty Beria or Georgy Malenkov, chairman of the Soviet Council of Ministers, thought too much about observing the letter of the Soviet Constitution when they divided power after the death of Josef Stalin. |
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I received the news that President Vladimir Putin would be heading United Russia’s federal ticket while on a visit to Harvard University. My U.S. colleagues expressed empathy. Now Russia would be led by a dictator, I was told, and the last remaining remnants of civil liberties would be tossed out the window. |
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Two weeks ago, we were once again warned about the possible perils of state control in Russia — this time by no less than President Vladimir Putin’s top economic adviser, Arkady Dvorkovich. |
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 LOS ANGELES — Former Vice President Al Gore, who has waged a decades-long fight against global warming, on Friday shared the Nobel Peace Prize with a Geneva-based United Nations climate group. The choice of Gore delivered a symbolic rebuke to the Bush administration, which has opposed calls for mandatory greenhouse gas reductions, and fueled speculation that the former Democratic presidential candidate might yet enter the 2008 race. |
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 MOSCOW — Russia’s Yelena Dementyeva gave herself an early birthday present when she rallied after dropping the first set to beat Serena Williams 5-7 6-1 6-1 and win her maiden Kremlin Cup title on Sunday. Top seed Nikolai Davydenko prevailed over France’s Paul-Henri Mathieu 7-5 7-6 in the men’s final later in the day to retain his crown and complete the Russian double at the $2. |
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MOSCOW — Evander Holyfield’s quest for a fifth heavyweight title ran into a roadblock Saturday: Russia’s Sultan Ibragimov. Ibragimov kept his WBO title with a unanimous decision over Holyfield, who turns 45 next week. |
 PARIS — South Africa earned a World Cup final rematch with the England team they demolished in the pool stage when they overcame Argentina 37-13 in their semi-final on Sunday. Bryan Habana scored two of their four tries to equal Jonah Lomu’s 1999 tournament tryscoring record of eight as Argentina’s first appearance in the semi-final fell flat with a performance littered with errors. |
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BELGRADE — England, Sweden and the Czech Republic can secure Euro 2008 finals berths on Wednesday and join Germany, who became the first nation to qualify with a 0-0 draw at Ireland on Saturday. |
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PARIS — Argentina want their 2007 World Cup performance to be a legacy to future generations of Pumas and the game at large. The weight of superior opposition and a lack of regular top-tier international competition finally caught up with Argentina in their 37-13 semi-final defeat by South Africa at the Stade de France on Sunday. |
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PARIS — Former South African president Nelson Mandela has been invited to attend next weekend’s World Cup final between the Springboks and England. South Africa coach Jake White said the current president Thabo Mbeki had already confirmed he would attend the match and there was a chance Mandela might also come to Paris if he was healthy enough to make the trip. |
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JERUSALEM — Chelsea head coach Avram Grant is set to complete study requirements for his UEFA Pro license early next year, the Israel Football Association (IFA) said on Sunday. “If Grant participates and successfully completes the pro course which is set to begin in February, he will receive his license approval,” the statement said. |
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