|
|
|
|
MOSCOW — Russia and Libya are negotiating a deal under which Moscow would build nuclear research reactors for the North African state and supply fuel, officials said on Saturday. Russia earns billions of dollars each year by exporting its civilian nuclear expertise, but it has faced criticism from Western governments who say the nuclear technology could fall into the wrong hands. |
|
MOSCOW — Vladimir Putin ordered massive spending increases in his last state-of-the-nation address as president, but his successor will have to think twice about making lavish pronouncements in his debut at the podium on Wednesday. |
 An annual anti-Nazi rally drew hundreds of supporters in St. Petersburg on Sunday, followed by two less-well supported nationalist rallies held on Tuesday, one of which was banned by the authorities. Sunday’s pro-tolerance March Against Hatred rally was held in memory of Nikolai Girenko, a local scholar and hate-crimes expert who was shot dead at his apartment in June 2004. |
|
MOSCOW — Ingushetia’s parliament on Friday confirmed Yanus-Bek Yevkurov, a hitherto obscure military officer, to replace Murat Zyazikov as president of Ingushetia, a day after Zyazikov resigned suddenly as the head of the troubled republic. |
All photos from issue.
|
|
|
|
|
As work started on LAES-2, a complex of six power station units with VVER-1200 reactors that is due to complement the existing four 4 RBMK-1000 units of Leningrad Nuclear Power Station (LAES), environmentalists began a protest campaign against what they call an illegitimate and potentially hazardous construction. The project’s estimated cost is $10 billion. Environmentalists at the St. Petersburg branch of the international environmental pressure group Bellona say the simultaneous operation of the existing and new plants will have a strong negative radiological and bacteriological impact on the population of the town of Sosnovy Bor, 80 kilometers south of St. |
|
NEW HOPE
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A pedestrian walks past a poster depicting U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama on Ligovsky Prospekt, by the Loft Project Etazhi arts center on Tuesday. Obama led polls as this issue went to press. |
|
MOSCOW — Two Jesuit priests found slain in their central Moscow apartment might have been killed a day or two apart, a senior Catholic official said Thursday. Otto Messmer, 47, a Russian citizen and top Jesuit in Russia, and Victor Betancourt, a 42-year-old Ecuadorian citizen, were found dead with battered skulls in an apartment on Ulitsa Petrovka on Tuesday evening.
|
|
|
|
 Communication is the key to building cross-culture relations, says the creator and organizer of the Russian and International Students’ Educational Network, a local program that brings together young people from Russia and abroad. “I had this desire to put curious people in the same room together ... where they can have a dialogue and see what happens,” says Gregory Sandstrom, 33, a PhD student at the sociology faculty of St. Petersburg State University. “The primary objective [of R.I.S.E.N] is to create a place where students and recent graduates can come and meet,” he says. “Mainly it’s in English, [but] we have offered discussion groups in Russian because the key is to have dialogue, conversation, communication about issues that are close to the lives of young people in St. |
|
SURREAL THING
/ For The St. Petersburg Times
Boots inspired by the paintings of Salvador Dali on show as part of this week’s ‘Admiralty Needle’ contest for young St. Petersburg fashion designers. |
|
Since it opened in June 2007, the Ivan Slavinsky Gallery has launched a series of ambitious shows of works by contemporary artists — including by that of its owner, Ivan Slavinsky. The gallery is situated just across from the incubator of local artistic talent, the St. Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts, on Vasilievsky Island. Starting Thursday, the gallery embarks on its latest and largest project so far.
|
|
|
|
 City Hall has declined to become a shareholder of the ferry line operating between St. Petersburg and Helsinki. Talks with the ferry line operator, Stella Naves Russia, about selling a share packet to the city were not successful. The Finnish company invited the city to become a shareholder, valuing 51 percent of its shares at three million euros ($3. |
|
MOSCOW — The Audit Chamber will oversee the use of $4.5 billion in financing that Vneshekonombank loaned to United Company RusAl, the chamber said Friday on its web site. |
|
MOSCOW — One only has to look over Standard & Poor’s ratings list of commercial banks operating in Russia to see that lately life for them has been no slice of apple pie. Even some of the largest retail lenders have seen their outlooks cut and deposits wane, forcing banks to be creative — and unusually lavish — to keep customers’ cash on their books. After a round of ratings cuts earlier this month, six of the 10 largest banks in Russia by net assets now have a negative outlook, including subsidiaries of major European lenders Raiffeisen and UniCredit. “We have a negative outlook on many banks, but the ones most at risk are those with short-term debt that is difficult to refinance and exposure to sectors considered risky, such as construction and retail,” said Yevgeny Tarzimanov, an analyst at S&P in Moscow. |
|
 MOSCOW — The ruble may have shed 10 percent of its value in two months, but both President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin are clinging onto their rubles in favor of the U. |
|
MOSCOW — Alfa Bank will apply to Vneshekonombank, the state development bank, for a long-term loan of $400 million, Alfa Bank president Peter Aven said at a crisis-related summit Friday. With help from the Central Bank, Alfa Bank could be in a position to bail out Russian banks in danger of bankruptcy, he added. |
|
|
|
 Around the world, the U.S. presidential election campaign has attracted as much attention as domestic political controversies in each of our own countries. The interest the world has taken in the U.S. vote is the best example of the United States’ soft power and a lesson in democracy from the world’s only superpower. |
|
The United States calls its own crisis the mortgage meltdown. Banks went on a lending splurge, handing out mortgages to every homeless and unemployed Joe Blow who walked in off the street. |
|
|
|
 SAO PAULO — Lewis Hamilton will only get stronger over the next decade even if, as Formula One’s youngest champion said on Monday, he has no burning desire to break Michael Schumacher’s records. Taking the title after a heart stopping last lap in Sunday’s Brazilian Grand Prix, the 23-year-old McLaren driver has in two seasons already ripped up the time-honoured script that newcomers are supposed to follow. |
|
DOHA — Svetlana Kuznetsova is hoping a switch of training base from Spain to her native Russia will help spur her to the kind of form that saw her capture the U. |
 PARIS — As a little boy, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga was taught to finish off everything on his plate and he did just that when he won the Paris Masters on Sunday. The 23-year-old Frenchman, who beat Argentine David Nalbandian 6-3 4-6 6-4 in the final in front of a jubilant home crowd, started sobbing after clinching victory and the tears kept rolling during his post-match news conference. |
Temp: -1°C clear 
Issues Archive