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 MOSCOW — Investigators arrested Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Storchak on suspicion of belonging to a criminal ring that sought to embezzle tens of millions of dollars in state funds, the Investigative Committee, which operates under the Prosecutor General’s Office, said Saturday. |
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MOSCOW — In an unprecedented move, the OSCE’s democracy watchdog on Friday canceled its planned observer mission for the upcoming State Duma vote, saying Moscow had prevented election monitors from receiving visas. |
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Two weeks before Dec. 2 Duma Elections, financial strains have forced the majority of the 11 regional political parties to withdraw from the media phase of the campaign. They will have no access to about 130 media outlets licensed to run commercial campaign adverts and to 148 non-media organizations and individuals assigned to prepare, design, print and publish campaign materials. |
All photos from issue.
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Thousands of Russian tourists have been forced to cancel vacations to Egypt since the beginning of October, Russian Tourist Council, or RTC, has said. “Russian tour operators who offer vacations in Egypt and their clients have been in a jam since the beginning of October when many Egyptian hotels resold pre-paid rooms,” Irina Tyurina, spokeswoman for Russian Tourist Council, told Interfax. |
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Tired of English classes held at universities, Russian students and professionals have taken to the Internet to find new ways of learning English. VKontakte, a Russian online social networking site, similar to Facebook, is now making it easier to find English language conversation groups in St. |
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MOSCOW — The State Duma on Friday met for its final session, passing 19 bills and dissolving itself ahead of the Dec. 2 Duma elections. The outgoing lawmakers gave drastically different appraisals of their work over the past four years, ranging from harsh criticism to pompous commendations. |
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New Years Gifts ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Books, CDs, DVDs and souvenirs do not make the best New Year gifts, according to experts contacted by Interfax. |
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MOSCOW — Foreigners in Russia will have to apply for visas in their home countries or in a country where they can stay 90 days or more, a Federal Migration service official said Monday. The clarification came as government officials attempted to explain the restrictive new rules after foreign business associations were swamped with inquiries about the new system. |
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MOSCOW — If politics is a world of paradox and scandal, then Vladimir Zhirinovsky is the poster boy. Zhirinovsky’s boisterous talk is full of ultranationalism, yet his party is called liberal-democratic. He is notorious for starting fistfights in parliament, yet his deputies resemble low-key bureaucrats more than thugs. |
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 Ford Motor Company is ready to negotiate with the trade union at its plant in Vsevolozhsk in the Leningrad Oblast, if the workers do not strike, the company said in a statement distributed Friday. Workers said they do not trust the management of the plant and plan to strike in any case. |
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BANSKO, Bulgaria — The citizens of Bansko, a ski resort in Bulgaria’s Pirin mountains, are selling their land with gusto to buy fancy cars and replace communist-era furniture. |
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BEIJING — Chinese oil company CNPC and Gazprom have agreed a gas pricing deal that should unlock a major pipeline plan, but it may come at a higher cost than Beijing wanted, the Xinhua news agency cited a Russian executive as saying Saturday. Alexander Medvedev, Gazprom’s deputy chairman, said the two sides had reached consensus on the pricing mechanism for fuel piped from Russia to China after months of wrangling that had held up the start of work. |
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As Muscovites bundle up warm this week with the onset of winter, investors are still looking for exposure to this year’s big story, the government’s infrastructure spending. |
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MOSCOW — Thomas Nastas, a pioneer of venture capital in Russia and the founder of Innovative Ventures Incorporated, advises his aspiring colleagues to “expose yourself to as much randomness as possible.” A glance at his resume shows that he lives by his word. |
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ST. PETERSBURG — Peter Dussmann, a subsidiary of the German facility management company Dussmann, which used to service about 130 residential buildings in St. |
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Economic growth in St. Petersburg is based mainly on the development of processing enterprises, construction and retail, according to a report released Tuesday by the Committee for Economic Development, Industrial Policy and Trade (CEDIPT). “From January to September of this year, intensive investment and construction and steadily increasing consumption of consumer goods provided economic growth in St. |
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MOSCOW — A court has set a tight deadline for Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev to read the voluminous cases against them on money-laundering charges. |
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Fund IPO Delayed MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Investment firm Prosperity Capital Management said Friday it has postponed the London listing of its New Russian Generation electricity fund, due to poor market conditions. “The initial offering of ordinary shares in New Russian Generation Limited and its plan to list the ordinary shares on the London Stock Exchange will not take place in 2007 due to the current challenging market conditions,” it said in a statement. |
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HELSINKI — Applications for building the Russia-Germany Nord Stream gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea will be filed after the environmental impact assessment is finished next spring, a senior official at Nord Stream said Friday. |
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$100M Raven Venture LONDON (Reuters) — Raven Russia, a Guernsey-registered property firm, said Monday it had set up a joint venture to develop a 100,000-square-meter warehouse and logistics complex near Kiev. Raven Russia, which is listed on London’s AIM market, has teamed up with conglomerate Asnova Holding to build the property, which is expected to have an end value of around $100 million and produce a net rental income yield of around 14 percent. |
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MOSCOW — Two former managers at dairy firms Wimm-Bill-Dann and Nutritek have left to set up a new milk venture, Russagroprom Holding, which will invest $550 million in the next five years buying land and producing milk. |
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CIT-Finance Stats Up ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — CIT-Finance investment bank increased assets by 80.7 percent during the first ten months of 2007, Interfax reported Friday. Balance profit increased by 40.9 percent compared to the same period last year — up to 5.5 billion rubles ($224.5 million). By the end of October the assets of the bank increased to 89. |
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The increase in China’s energy demand from 2002 to 2005 was equivalent to Japan’s current annual energy use.” This nugget of information, buried in the International Energy Agency’s latest “World Energy Outlook” study tells one almost all one needs to know about what is happening to the world’s energy economy. |
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The International Monetary Fund’s latest annual report on Russia describes a remarkable trajectory no less exceptional than that of post-World War II Germany or Japan. |
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The picture of a French president who jogs, vacations in New Hampshire and even seems comfortable around U.S. President George W. Bush is so unusual that it has earned Nicolas Sarkozy the nickname of Sarko the American. That, along with France’s toughened stand against Iran’s nuclear appetites, won Sarkozy bipartisan applause in Washington this month. |
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When Milton Friedman died one year ago on Nov. 16, the world was inundated with remembrances and reflections of the most influential economist of the last century. |
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Josef Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev are riding in a train when the engine suddenly stalls. Stalin has the engineer shot. The train doesn’t move. Khrushchev posthumously rehabilitates the engineer, but the train still doesn’t move. Brezhnev then draws the curtains and says: “Good. |
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Russia, say supporters of President Vladimir Putin, must find its own way to democracy. The country needed strong rule to recover from the chaos of its 1990s dash to the market. |
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 LONDON — Queen Elizabeth, the first reigning British monarch to celebrate a diamond wedding anniversary, marked the milestone on Monday with a service of thanksgiving alongside her husband Prince Philip. The royal octogenarians, whose family have been buffeted by a string of scandals, divorces and tragedy, retraced their steps up the aisle of Westminster Abbey to hail 60 years of marriage. |
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ISLAMABAD — Pakistan’s Supreme Court, packed with government-friendly judges since the imposition of emergency rule, dismissed on Monday the main challenges to President Pervez Musharraf’s re-election last month. |
 PARIS — French transport workers voted to extend a six-day strike on Monday, but union leaders offered a glimmer of hope as talks could resume soon to end a dispute that poses a challenge to President Nicolas Sarkozy’s reform plans. Early indications were that grass roots members of the rail unions were inclined to extend the strike for another 24 hours, which would ensure their industrial action overlaps with Tuesday’s separate protest by public sector workers. |
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PHNOM PENH — Rifle-toting Cambodian police arrested ex-Khmer Rouge President Khieu Samphan on Monday, the latest member of Pol Pot’s inner circle to be detained by the UN-backed “Killing Fields” tribunal. |
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TEHRAN — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Monday the “empire of the dollar is crashing”, a day after his country and anti-U.S. ally Iran advocated action over the weakening U.S. currency during an OPEC summit in Riyadh. Chavez, who on Saturday said oil prices could double to $200 per barrel if the United States attacks Iran over its disputed atomic ambitions, spoke to reporters after talks with his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. |
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WASHINGTON — The number of Americans in prison has risen eight-fold since 1970, with little impact on crime but at great cost to taxpayers and society, researchers said in a report calling for a major justice-system overhaul. |
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TBILISI — Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili reshuffled his cabinet on Monday but left economic portfolios unchanged in pursuit of stability following a wave of street protests. On Friday, Saakashvili appointed a new prime minister and lifted a state of emergency he had imposed on the volatile southern Caucasus nation that met wide criticism in the West. |
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 As Dmitry Sychev’s 90th-minute drive headed toward the goal, it appeared England would be virtually eliminated from European Championship qualifying. Then the ball bounced off a post and Omer Golan scored in injury time, giving Israel a 2-1 victory over Russia on Saturday night that could allow the England to join next summer’s 16-nation field. |
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SHANGHAI — When asked what advice Roger Federer the coach would offer any player facing him in a match, the imperious Swiss joked: “Don’t even try, pal!” But after watching the world number one capture his fourth title in five years at the season-ending Masters Cup on Sunday, none of his rivals will be laughing. |
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SHANGHAI — Nikolai Davydenko, under investigation over a betting scandal, faces a long wait to clear his name, ATP Tour chief Etienne de Villiers said on Friday. Men’s tennis has signaled its intent to get tough on match-fixing and gambling with a new integrity unit soon to be set up to investigate accusations of corruption. |
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Issues Archive