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MOSCOW — At least 28 people died in a fire in a Russian home for the elderly and officials blamed its management on Monday for failing to evacuate residents in time. “Firefighters received a very late fire warning because the personnel waited for some reason for 30 minutes before calling,” Russian Emergency Ministry spokesman Viktor Beltsov said adding that over 200 people lived in the residence. The blaze broke out at lunchtime on Sunday near the city of Tula, 200 kilometers south of Moscow. The tragedy is the latest of a series of fire disasters in Russia where state-run institutions for the elderly and for the socially deprivved have frequently been criticized for poor management and inadequate attention to safety procedures, fire drills and equipment. |
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 As Dec. 2 parliamentary elections draw closer and political temperatures rise, two different street demonstrations held in St. Petersburg last weekend both ended in arrests. |
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A television reporter is in a coma after the TV crew he was traveling with was involved in a car crash in east Leningrad Oblast on Sunday night, Fontanka.ru reported. Valery Dragilyev, a reporter with the north west bureau of national channel NTV, suffered serious head injuries in the accident. |
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Frozen Reptiles Found ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — More than 300 reptiles and amphibians froze to death during a flight from France to Russia, Interfax reported on Friday. |
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LONDON — Russian spying against Britain remains at Cold War levels, diverting intelligence resources that would be better devoted to fighting al Qaeda, the head of the MI5 intelligence agency said on Monday. Jonathan Evans said espionage by a number of countries, also including China, was a distraction from countering militant Islamists who were growing in number and now targeting children as young as 15 in Britain. “Since the end of the Cold War we have seen no decrease in the numbers of undeclared Russian intelligence officers in the UK — at the Russian embassy and associated organizations conducting covert activity in this country,” Evans said. “So despite the Cold War ending nearly two decades ago, my service is still expending resources to defend the UK against unreconstructed attempts by Russia, China and others to spy on us,” he added in his first public speech since taking over as head of MI5, the domestic spy agency, in April. |
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Alexander Natruskin / russia
Wen Jiabao, premier of the People’s Republic of China, inspects an honor gaurd after his arrival in Moscow on Monday for talks. |
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MOSCOW — On a holiday created to unite his country, Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a veiled warning that foreigners were seeking to split up the vast country and plunder its resource wealth. “Some people are constantly insisting on the necessity to divide up our country and are trying to spread this theory,” Putin told military cadets during a speech in Moscow on Sunday, Russian news agencies reported.
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MOSCOW — They seemed like a few lame jokes. But for the Federal Security Service, they were no laughing matter. The agency’s Novosibirsk region branch has accused the Communists of campaign violations for distributing leaflets poking fun at pro-Kremlin party United Russia and President Vladimir Putin, who tops the United Russia ticket in the Dec. |
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None of Dmitry Medvedev’s friends can remember hearing him bark an order. If he ever did, it would sound forced, they said. Soft-spoken and a full 10 centimeters shorter than the diminutive President Vladimir Putin, Medvedev is a far cry from what the public expects in a leader, political consultants said. |
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MOSCOW — Imperial Energy, a London-listed oil company that has come under sustained pressure in Russia this year over the size of its reserves, said Thursday that it had received an unsolicited offer for a 25 percent stake. “The board ... is currently reviewing this proposal and there is no certainty that any agreement will be entered into,” Imperial said in a statement. |
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MOSCOW — Dutch firm Gasunie will probably finalise a deal to acquire a 9 percent share in the Nord Stream gas pipeline project this week during Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende’s visit to Moscow, a Kremlin source said. |
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Local Bank IPO ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Bank St. Petersburg expects to raise $274.32 million through a public offering of shares which is to start on Nov. 6, Prime-Tass reported Friday. Ordinary shares will be offered at $5.4 per share and GDR at $16. |
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MOSCOW — Her grandfather worked with Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, and she is waging a revolution of her own. Marina Jigalova-Ozkan, head of The Walt Disney Company CIS, is introducing Mickey Mouse and other Disney characters to Russia. |
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MOSCOW — Top-end developers and real estate agents from around the globe were out in force at Moscow’s prestigious Extravaganza-2007 fair in late October, proving that Russia is an increasingly crucial market for companies looking to hawk their luxury properties. Stretching over three days, the annual Extravaganza event, billed as a supermarket for the super-rich, lined the Manezh exhibition center with everything the wealthy could want, from sports cars to private jets and even luxury porta-potties. Most eye-catching, however, was the preponderance of stands offering elite real estate around the world, from villas in the south of France to holiday homes in Dubai. |
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 MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin told United Russia last month to ditch State Duma candidates with business interests. But an analysis of United Russia’s party lists shows that at least 72 of the 600 candidates — or 12 percent — have direct links to big or medium-size businesses. |
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 Since the end of the Cold War all kinds of barriers have come down and the world economy has fundamentally changed. By 1989, the global market encompassed 800 million to 1 billion people. Today, it is three times larger and growing. Indeed, we are witnessing one of the most dramatic revolutions in modern history, and it is occurring almost unnoticed. |
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President Vladimir Putin’s annual televised question-and-answer session with the nation on Oct. 18 was a carefully staged event, but it gave Putin an unexpected opportunity to make some bold pronunciations. |
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 Opinions about President Vladimir Putin run the gamut. In the West, he is regarded as an authoritarian, an autocrat, even as a dictator. In Russia, a huge majority regards him as the most democratic of leaders on the grounds that he has done more than his predecessors to improve the lot of ordinary people. |
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The Kremlin took a very important step in 2005 when it decided that Nov. 7, the date that traditionally commemorated the Great October Socialist Revolution, would no longer be an official government holiday. |
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The United States’ allies and increasingly the U.S. public are playing a ghoulish guessing game: Will President George W. Bush manage to leave office without starting a war with Iran? Bush is eagerly feeding those anxieties. This month he raised the threat of “World War III” if Iran even figures out how to make a nuclear weapon. |
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Russia’s approach to foreign policy is going back in time. During his speech at a February security conference in Munich, President Vladimir Putin told his listeners that the relationship between Moscow and Washington was most stable during the 1980s. |
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PARIS — A journalist arrested with French aid workers as they tried to fly 103 African children out of Chad criticized the activists for their “amateurishness” but said they were convinced their mission was legitimate. Marc Garmirian, one of three French reporters who were released and flown back to France on Sunday, said he filmed some of the aid workers putting bandages on children to make them seem injured before the flight. “I realized rather quickly that in what you could call the investigation, or the interviews they conducted with the children or the people who brought them the children, they displayed a dramatic amateurishness,” he told TF1 television on Monday. Several of the 10 Europeans still in custody are members of the organization ‘Zoe’s Ark’, which has said it intended to place orphans from Darfur with European families for foster care and that it had the right to do so under international law. |
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NEW WHITE JUMPER
/ Reuters
A five-month Wallaby albino is seen inside its mother's pouch at their enclosure at Buenos Aires' zoo in Argentina on Friday. |
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JOHANNESBURG — U.S. television magnate Oprah Winfrey said on Monday she was “cleaning house” at her all-girl academy in South Africa after a dormitory matron was charged with abusing students at the facility. Describing the charges — including soliciting under-age girls to perform indecent acts — as one of the most devastating experiences in her life, the billionaire philanthropist said she had not renewed the head mistress’s contract.
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LONDON — One is in vogue. At the age of 81, Queen Elizabeth on Monday joined models Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell on Vogue Magazine’s list of the world’s most glamorous women. The style bible slavishly worshipped by dedicated followers of fashion decreed that age was no barrier. Sensible brogue shoes, waxed jackets and headscarves knotted firmly under the chin are clearly no passing fad. |
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 PARIS — Argentine David Nalbandian extended his perfect record against Rafael Nadal by crushing the world number two 6-4 6-0 in the final of the Paris Masters Series tournament on Sunday. The unseeded Nalbandian, who had destroyed the Spaniard 6-1 6-2 in their first meeting in the quarter-finals of the Madrid Masters two weeks ago, highlighted his brilliant form with a spectacular display. |
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MOSCOW — Zenit St. Petersburg beat FC Moscow 1-0 in the penultimate round of the Russian Premier League on Saturday to stay firmly on track for their first title in nearly a quarter of a century. |
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MADRID — Svetlana Kuznetsova believes she can improve despite achieving a career-best world number two ranking as she prepares for her third season-ending WTA Championships next week. The 22-year-old St. Petersburg native has been one of the most consistent players on the tour this year but is conscious that she has won only one title, in New Haven, and lost in five other finals. |
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Coach Transfer Rules VIENNA (Reuters) — FIFA President Sepp Blatter has proposed introducing restrictions aimed at stopping coaches from changing clubs outside the transfer window. |
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