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 The Kuibyshevsky District Court on Tuesday upheld an appeal filed by a local business association and a pressure group against the installment of a temporary ice rink on Palace Square. The construction was declared illegal, and the court ordered the rink’s operations to be halted and the rink to be dismantled. The rink — the property of the Bosconeva private enterprise — had been slated to operate until March 15. The driving force behind the case was Living City, an informal movement of local residents united by the idea of preserving St. Petersburg’s historic center in its integrity, and the St. Petersburg Association of Small and Medium Business Entrepreneurs. The verdict obliged City Hall’s Committee for the Preservation and Protection of Historical Monuments and the Russian Federal Mass Communication and Cultural Heritage Inspectorate to “take all necessary measures to remove the rink which is in the way of public access to one of the richest collections of cultural valuables in Russia. |
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KSENIA’S DAY
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Orthodox believers at Smolenskoye Cemetery lighting candles on the feast day of St. Ksenia the Blessed of St. Petersburg, the city’s patron saint, on Wednesday. Ksenia Petrova (c. 1730 - c. 1803) was a ‘holy fool’ who wandered the city’s streets for 45 years after being widowed. |
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The names of the world’s best sportsman and woman are to be announced at the ninth Laureus World Sports Awards Ceremony 2008 to be held in the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg on Feb.18. The glamorous ceremony, the sporting world’s Oscars, is to be televised in more than 180 countries and will be attended by dozens of the world’s best sportsmen and women nominated for the awards, as well as the 43 legendary retired athletes who form the jury.
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WARSAW, Poland — Russia’s foreign minister called U.S. plans to build a global missile defense shield an example of “imperial thinking,” and suggested in comments published Thursday that Washington was using the system to try to encircle Russia. Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza that elements of the missile defense system “exist or will be built in Alaska, California, northeast Asia. |
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The gun used to kill Novaya Gazeta reporter Anna Politkovskaya contained fur from a dog owned by three Chechen suspects now in custody, the Tvoi Den newspaper reported Wednesday. |
All photos from issue.
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Deep Purple is heading to Moscow as a farewell gift to First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, the chairman of state-controlled gas giant Gazprom and a virtual lock to become the country’s next president. Medvedev has said Deep Purple, known for hits such as “Smoke on the Water,” is his favorite band. The rock group will perform at a show Gazprom is putting on at the Kremlin on Monday to mark the 15th anniversary of the firm’s creation, industry sources said. Both Medvedev and President Vladimir Putin are expected at the party. The British band’s management declined to comment. Medvedev and 70 other political figures and businessmen brought Deep Purple’s former lead singer, Joe Lynn Turner, to Moscow last year for a secret concert. |
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PHOTO FINISH
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Photographer Dmitry Koshcheyev demonstrates an antique camera to Rita, Misha, Vika, and Anton who are students at Boarding School No. 33 for Deaf Students during a program of masterclasses. |
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A U.S. pastor is being held in a detention cell in Sheremetyevo Airport after trying to bring a box of ammunition into the country. A court was due to consider Friday whether to charge Phillip Miles, a pastor of the Christ Community Church in Conway, South Carolina, with smuggling, the U.S. Embassy said. If charged and convicted, Miles faces a possible fine or prison sentence.
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MOSCOW — Rostelecom, the country’s dominant long-distance telephone company, announced plans Wednesday to reduce charges for long-distance calls in an effort to expand its client base and stay ahead of the competition. The rate cuts, effective Feb. 1, could be as much as 30 percent for daytime intercity calls, although actual rates would vary from region to region, said Anton Godovikov, the company’s commercial director for long-distance services. |
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YEREVAN — Russia said on Wednesday it will bid in a tender to build a nuclear power station in Armenia to replace an ageing Chernobyl-style plant that has provoked safety concerns. |
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Binbank Reports Gain ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Binbank reported a total gain of $366 million in international financing in 2007. Out of that funding, $206 million was attracted in long-term and short-term trade financing, the bank said Tuesday in a statement. In April last year, Binbank’s syndicated loan increased from $40 million to $52 million. The bank operates over 100 branches and offices in Russia. On January 1, 2008, assets stood at 76.9 billion rubles and capital at seven billion rubles. Currency Exchange Up ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The St. Petersburg Currency Exchange doubled turnover last year compared to 2006, Interfax reported Tuesday. |
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 City Hall has amended a decree that could have eliminated a considerable number of small retail enterprises, had it been enacted in its initial wording. |
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MOSCOW — Societe Generale, the French banking giant hit by a $7.3 billion trading scandal, has alerted the French authorities to a case of suspected money-laundering through the bank involving two Russian businessmen, a French newspaper said Tuesday. The bank passed the French Finance Ministry its findings from an internal investigation last week, after it noticed suspicious transactions involving several accounts, which were being used to channel hundreds of millions of euros into real estate projects in and around Paris, Le Parisien reported. |
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 WASHINGTON — Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton looked ahead on Wednesday to a long and bruising presidential battle, and Clinton said she loaned $5 million of her own money to the costly fight to keep pace. Republican John McCain, still facing conservative opposition, promised to unite his party as his coast-to-coast “Super Tuesday” wins in key states put him on the verge of clinching the nomination and capping a stunning political comeback. |
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ATLANTA — Right-wing radio hosts who are influential in U.S. politics expressed alarm on Wednesday at the lead established by Senator John McCain in the race to become the Republican presidential candidate. |
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KOGELO, Kenya — The 2008 U.S. presidential election is being followed closely by millions around the world but in the Kenyan village of Kogelo, relatives of Democratic hopeful Barack Obama are watching every step of the race. In Kogelo, Obama’s ancestral village in western Kenya, relatives and friends crowded around television sets on Wednesday to watch the results of nominating contests across 24 U. |
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 Russia and the European Union are neighbors geographically. But geopolitically they live in different centuries. A 21st-century EU, with its noble ambition to transcend power politics and build an order based on laws and institutions, confronts a Russia that behaves like a traditional 19th-century power. |
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Since the outcome of next month’s presidential election is a foregone conclusion, we can move on and speculate instead about what will happen after the vote. |
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 MOSCOW — When people think of clothes to wear at home, they think of tracksuits and pajamas, a T-shirt or slippers — the kind of loose clothes that are unobtrusive and disguise the body. In an exhibition of his avant-garde clothing, “100% Vanilla,” runway model and designer Danila Polyakov shows a breezy disregard for these kinds of conventions. |
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Opposition candidates have been eliminated from the presidential election under different pretexts, protests have largely been suppressed, international observers have been locked outside Russia, and the Kremlin is 100 percent sure that President Vladimir Putin’s candidate, Dmitry Medvedev, will win in the March 2 poll, so why not celebrate? And former rock heroes from the West are here to offer the entertainment. |
 Spitfire, Russia’s pioneering ska-punk band, has been on the scene for 15 years — a fact the band will celebrate with a concert and party at Achtung Baby next week. “We’re not little boys anymore, one has to try hard to perform in one style for that long,” said drummer Denis Kuptsov, speaking in Fidel indie bar on Wednesday. “Many famous bands didn’t even last that long.” Last year, Spitfire survived an attempted bombing when it headlined the Music of the Streets event at Roks club in September. |
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 The French Movie Festival 2008, organized by St. Petersburg’s French Institute, began Thursday and takes place nightly at 7 p.m. until Wednesday at the Rodina Cinema. |
 This “biography” of “Das Kapital,” “a book that changed the world,” is Marx for the age of choice. There’s no compulsion to read the bible of anti-capitalism anymore, but you might want to. British writer Francis Wheen, author of a prize-winning biography of Marx that stressed the theorist’s carbuncles as much as his communism, sets out the attraction of a new Marx for the 21st century in this engaging essay. |
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 Last week, MTV promised to delve into the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle of pop star Dima Bilan, uncovering the depraved secrets that he hides so well under a baseball cap and a dubious mullet. |
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Teplo // 45 Bolshaya Morskaya Ulitsa. Tel: 570 1974 // Breakfast from 9 a.m.; full menu from 1 p.m. through midnight // Menu in Russian // Dinner for two with alcohol 2,370 ($96) Crisp iceberg lettuce leaves and spicy fronds of ruccola, hot herby croutons, sweet and chewy sun-blushed tomatoes glistening with olive oil. Large, warm mounds of crumbly chicken livers and strips of bacon in a tart balsamic sauce. Compose on a white plate and serve. Tyoply Salat (Warm Salad) is the signature dish at Teplo and it embodies everything that is good about this new restaurant in the House of Composers on Bolshaya Morskaya. At 170 rubles ($7) it is great value and a perfect overture to a long and cozy evening with excellent food, fine drinks and warm company. |
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 “Not if you were the last man on earth!” Plenty of guys have heard that line at some point in their lives, but it’s unlikely that Will Smith is one. His irresistible charm has been proved, above all, by his ability to attract audiences to bad movies like “Hitch” and “Wild Wild West,” as well as to better ones like “Ali” and “The Pursuit of Happyness. |
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 KABUL — U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice denied here Thursday the allied strategy to stabilise Afghanistan was failing, saying it was incomplete and needed innovation to crush “determined enemies.” Rice made her case during a press conference in Kabul with President Hamid Karzai and British Foreign Secretary David Miliband who accompanied her on a surprise visit here amid growing fears for Afghanistan’s future. |
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N’DJAMENA — Chad’s President Idriss Deby called on the European Union on Thursday to deploy a peacekeeping force urgently to the east, as his government sought to tighten security after a weekend rebel assault. |
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 LONDON — England improved dramatically as the match progressed to give Italian Fabio Capello a winning start as coach with a 2-1 victory over Switzerland in a friendly international at Wembley Stadium on Wednesday. Midfielder Jermaine Jenas scored his first England goal and the first of the Capello era with a first-time left foot shot after superb work down the left from Joe Cole after 40 minutes. |
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BELEK, Turkey — Russia coach Guus Hiddink has raised a few eyebrows by holding the national team’s training camp this week at a five-star Mediterranean resort hotel offering free drinks all day. |
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