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MOSCOW — Britain on Friday named a career diplomat with extensive experience in Eastern Europe as its next ambassador to Russia. Anne Pringle, a former ambassador to the Czech Republic who worked at the British Embassy in Moscow during the Cold War, will replace Ambassador Anthony Brenton when his four-year assignment expires in October, the British Foreign Office announced Friday. Pringle, 53, is set to become Britain’s first female ambassador to Russia, and her appointment comes at a time of tense relations between the two countries. “I am delighted and honored to be taking up this appointment,” Pringle said by e-mail Friday. A Foreign Office spokesman said Friday that Britain hopes bilateral relations will improve after President-elect Dmitry Medvedev takes office in May. |
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PUSSY GALORE!
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A cat in a basement at the State Hermitage at an exhibition celebrating the museum’s traditional March Cats Day on Friday. Peter the Great brought the first cat to the Winter Palace from Holland and Catherine the Great gave them official status as museum guards. |
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MOSCOW — Abandoning his bellicose rhetoric, President Vladimir Putin will seek to initiate a meaningful dialogue on security and to sign a political declaration with the NATO-Russia Council during this week’s NATO summit. The stakes are high at the three-day summit in Bucharest, Romania, which begins Wednesday and is likely to be Putin’s last foreign trip as president.
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An amendment that has passed its second reading in the State Duma is repressive and it restricts the liberty of Russian men of call-up age, argue human rights groups and liberal politicians. The amendments oblige all Russian men aged 18 to 27 to inform district military commissions every time they leave their places of residence for more than two weeks. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — Prosecutors said Friday that they were hunting for the man who killed journalist Anna Politkovskaya and that a court had granted their request to keep another suspect in the killing in custody until August. Police are actively searching for the man who shot Politkovskaya dead at her apartment building in October 2006, prosecutor Vyacheslav Smirnov said Friday, Interfax reported. Smirnov did not give the name of the suspected killer. Prosecutors first announced in October that they had identified the man who killed Politkovskaya, a fierce Kremlin critic who wrote for the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta. |
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ON THE RUNWAY
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Four flight attendants walk past the first of three Boeing 767s bought by Rossiya Russian Airlines, on Sunday, at Pulkovo Airport. The airline plans to replace its fleet of Il--86s. |
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HELSINKI — Helsinki and Tallinn have agreed to explore the possibility of linking the two capitals with a railway tunnel, which could end up the world’s longest, Helsinki’s mayor said Friday. “We will start by applying for European Union financing for the study of the tunnel as well as an alternative railway link using ferries,” Mayor Jussi Pajunen said in an interview.
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Protesters condemned the city’s town-planning policies and amendments to the General Plan of the City’s Development proposed by Governor Valentina Matviyenko and which were accepted on the first reading by the Legislative Assembly last month. Held in Srednaya Rogatka, where Dunaisky Prospekt and Pulkovskoye Shosse, the highway leading to the Pulkovo airport, intersect, the rally was organized by Lunny Serp (Crescent Moon), a pressure group struggling against the destruction of the Hero-Cities Park located there to give way to a planned massive trade and entertainment complex. |
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Transstroy Engineering Corporation Ltd, which is part of Transstroy Planning and Construction Holding, has created a sister enterprise to its branch in St. |
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Attic Protest More than 40 people protested against an attic conversion in their building on Malaya Konushennaya Street in the city center, Ekho Moskvy radio reported. The demonstrators carried signs bearing such slogans as “We Say ‘No’ to the Attic,” and “In Defense of Our Home.” Protester Olga Babayeva told Fontanka.ru that, due to the fact that most of the buildings are old, construction only makes things worse (from construction, her ceiling was leaking, thus causing her chandelier to loosen and fall). The protest dissolved peacefully later on. Akhmatova Burglary A burglary occurred Monday in the Anna Akhmatova Dacha-Museum, located just outside of St. |
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 MOSCOW — In recent years, Russians have gotten used to a wide array of easy-to-make products, such as instant borshch, instant noodles and instant blini mix. |
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The St. Petersburg office of Yabloko will go ahead with a forum for liberal opposition politicians and activists in St. Petersburg on Saturday, despite the recent arrest and detention of its leader in what it says was a bid by the authorities to scupper the event. |
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MOSCOW — Seven female members of a doomsday cult have come out of the cave where they have been awaiting the end of the world, but 28 people were still underground Sunday. |
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MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin plans to become the official leader of United Russia and will announce his decision to join the party at its congress next month, sources said, Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported Friday. Putin would then be elected to replace current party leader Boris Gryzlov, the newspaper said. |
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 St. Petersburg developers, consultants, architects and engineering companies were honored Friday in Smolny Cathedral at the Commercial Real Estate Awards. It was the first time the event has been held in the city. Out of the 50 local projects submitted for the award this year, the winners were those who received the most votes from 200 market experts. |
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Nevo Tabac Sells Land ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Nevo Tabac has sold its new production complex on the Pulkovskoye Highway to Russky Standard, Interfax reported Friday. |
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MOSCOW — Polyus Gold, Russia’s largest gold miner, said on Monday its proved and probable reserves had risen 3.5 percent to over 71 million ounces after the completion of an audit of its Chertovo Koryto deposit. Polyus, the world’s fourth-largest gold company by reserves, has invested $8 million in the Chertovo Koryto deposit, which means Devil’s Trough in Russian, since acquiring it in 2004. |
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LONDON — Aurora Russia, a start-up venture company investing in small and medium-sized firms in Russia, said its net asset value was 82.2 million pounds ($163. |
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MOSCOW — Russian gas export monopoly Gazprom is set to increase capital investment by almost 40 percent in 2009 to another record level to speed up development of production and pipeline projects. In a memorandum on its forthcoming bond issue, the world’s largest gas producer said its capital investment is expected to rise to 668. |
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BRDO, Slovenia — The European Union should be ready to start negotiations on a new strategic partnership with a resurgent Russia at a June summit in Siberia, EU officials said Friday. |
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MOSCOW — Tax authorities hit Procter & Gamble’s unit in Russia with a back tax claim of $28.5 million, chiefly over its royalties to the U.S.-based parent company, Kommersant reported Friday. The distributor paid from 2.5 percent to 7 percent of its sales revenues to Procter & Gamble Co. |
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SINGAPORE — Troika Dialog, Russia’s No. 2 investment bank, said on Monday that it plans to raise $1 billion from an infrastructure fund and is seeking Singapore’s state-owned Temasek as a return investor. |
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Price Hikes Reviewed MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia, the world’s largest energy producer, will review scheduled increases in domestic electricity prices and may do the same for natural gas, Federal Tariff Service chief Sergei Novikov said. Working groups will be formed within relevant ministries to study the issue, Novikov told reporters Monday in Moscow, without saying whether any changes would likely be higher or lower than scheduled. |
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MOSCOW — In a step that could jeopardize the sale of southern Siberian power producer TGK-11, a Moscow court on Friday postponed a decision until May on splitting off one of the firm’s main assets, Tomskenergo, in which Rosneft formerly controlled a blocking stake. |
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MOSCOW — While TNK-BP’s troubles may have been grabbing the wrong sort of headlines, last week’s key economic news came from Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, who proposed a $4.2 billion cut in annual oil taxes from next year, an eagerly awaited move that provided an overdue boost for oil stocks. The proposals, to a meeting of officials at the Economic Development and Trade Ministry on Tuesday, come at a time of soaring oil prices. |
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 There are hopes in the United States and Europe that President-elect Dmitry Medvedev could foreshadow a fresh start. After the West’s wearying clashes with President Vladimir Putin, the impulse is understandable. No one has gained from the cold peace. |
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Though the Constitution does not say it in so many words, the main task of the Russian president is to keep the country from falling apart. In taking the oath of office, the president swears to protect “the security and integrity of the state. |
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A cluster of women stands obstinately in front of the police line, clapping, whooping and belting out a ragged rendition of the Armenian national anthem. As the commanding officer raises his bullhorn and urges them to disperse immediately or face the consequences, officers with riot shields and batons shuffle forward menacingly. |
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Various Russian commentators expressed irritation or dismay earlier this month when a Pew Research Center survey indicated that a majority of U.S. citizens could not name the province that had just proclaimed independence from Serbia. |
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 Aspiring for world supremacy? Then the Russian Freemasons are not the group to join. “Many walk away disappointed when they don’t find buttons to operate the world behind my armchair,” Russia’s top Freemason, former presidential candidate Andrei Bogdanov, said jokingly in his office in central Moscow. |
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MERIDIAN, Mississippi — Republican presidential candidate John McCain takes a walk down memory lane this week by visiting the places that were important to the upbringing of an impetuous youth from a military family. While Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama battle for their party’s nomination, Arizona Sen. |
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LONDON — The coroner investigating the death of Princess Diana said Monday there is no evidence she was murdered by British intelligence, as claimed by her boyfriend’s father. |
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HAVANA — Cuba has lifted a ban on its nationals staying at hotels that were reserved exclusively for foreigners, hotel employees said on Monday. It was the latest step to liberalize the communist-run state under new President Raul Castro, who has ended bans on Cubans buying computers, DVD players and cellular telephones. |
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MOSCOW — World number four Svetlana Kuznetsova will lead Fed Cup champions Russia in next month’s semi-final against the United States in Moscow. In the absence of Australian Open champion Maria Sharapova, who will skip the April 26-27 tie, captain Shamil Tarpishchev also named world number six Anna Chakvetadze, 13th-ranked Dinara Safina, Vera Zvonareva (20) and Elena Vesnina (53). World number five Sharapova won both of her singles matches in her Fed Cup debut against Israel last month to help Russia to a 4-1 victory quarter-final victory. “We had an agreement with Kuznetsova and Sharapova that one of them would play against Israel and the other against the U. |
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JUMBO POLO
/ Reuters
Players fight for the ball during their elephant polo exhibition match in Chiang Rai, north Thailand on Monday. The tournament drew 12 international teams to take part in the games with 28 elephants. |
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SYDNEY — Australian swimmer Nick D’Arcy is facing expulsion from the Olympic team for Beijing after being arrested and charged with assault on former Commonwealth Games champion Simon Cowley. Australian police released a statement on Monday confirming a 20-year-old man had been charged with two counts of assaults after an incident at a Sydney pub in the early hours of Sunday morning.
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 TOKYO — A pen is spun in the hand, flicked from the little finger to other fingers, then tossed and bounced off the thumb before being twirled in the palm. Ryuki Omura, a 16-year-old Japanese high school student, has become the first nationwide pen-spinning champion with such slick maneuvers, a group devoted to the pastime said on Monday. |
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EDINBURGH — Top athletics officials were meeting on Monday to discuss how to arrest Europe’s precipitous decline in cross country running after Ethiopian runners dominated the world championships. |
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LONDON — Chelsea kept their Premier League title hopes alive with a 1-0 victory over Middlesbrough on Sunday but their performance would have caused few alarms for leaders Manchester United. Ricardo Carvalho’s well-placed header inside the opening six minutes at Stamford Bridge proved sufficient for Avram Grant’s side to cut the gap to five points but they rode their luck as Boro’s Brazilian striker Afonso Alves twice hit the woodwork. |
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Kazan Thumps Zenit ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Surprise package Rubin Kazan went top as the only team with three wins out of three following their 3-1 success at champions Zenit St. |
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Issues Archive