|
|
|
 MOSCOW — Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin appeared on Wednesday to throw Russia’s weight behind OPEC’s announcement of a major production cut, saying the country’s oil output would slide by 3 percent next year if prices remained low. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed to remove an additional 2.2 million barrels of crude from the market starting in January — the deepest single cut it has ever made — at a Wednesday meeting in Oran, Algeria, in an effort to reverse plummeting prices. |
|
 Twenty-five St. Petersburg travel agents and tourists are recovering in Israeli clinics after a fatal accident on the road from Ovda International Airport to the resort town of Eilat which killed 24 people and left Russians and Israelis in state of shock. |
|
MOSCOW — The number of homeowners missing payments on their mortgages more than sextupled in the first nine months of this year, the Central Bank said Wednesday, in a first indication of how badly the crisis was battering the mortgage market. Industry insiders predicted that the mortgage market would be dead for at least the next two years as banks funneled funds from a multibillion-dollar state bailout of the banking system elsewhere. |
All photos from issue.
|
|
|
|
 ZURICH — Four-time world heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield will be fighting for all the world’s 40-somethings when he takes on towering Russian WBA champion Nikolai Valuev this weekend, he said on Wednesday. Holyfield, 46, is bidding to become the oldest heavyweight champion when he fights in Zurich on Saturday against the tallest and heaviest boxer to hold a world title belt. As well as being 11 years younger than Holyfield, Valuev is 24 centimeters taller — at 2.13 meters — and expected to be some 45 kilos heavier than his American opponent. “His head is exactly where it needs to be for me to hit it,” Holyfield (42-9-2) shrugged when asked at a Wednesday media conference about the difference in the two men’s statures. |
|
TESTING THE ICE
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Skaters test the ice on the newly opened rink by the Alexandrinsky Theater in central St. Petersburg earlier this week. Forecasters are predicting mild temperatures for the weekend. |
|
MOSCOW — The Kremlin on Wednesday managed to avoid paying some $4 million to a German businessman who is seeking to confiscate government property as compensation for a company he lost in St. Petersburg in the 1990s. But Franz Sedelmayer, who claims the Russian government owes him up to $10 million, said the forced auction in Cologne, Germany, was still open and that the Kremlin had finally compensated him voluntarily, paying him 40,000 euros ($57,000) in back rent.
|
|
MOSCOW — Russia will give 10 MiG-29 fighter jets to Lebanon as a gift, the Federal Military and Technical Cooperation Service announced on Wednesday. Agency head Mikhail Dmitriyev said Moscow and Beirut were also in talks on selling Lebanon armor for its ground forces, adding that supplies of Russian weapons there were “now possible after the situation in this nation has stabilized. |
|
|
|
|
MOSCOW — Shareholders in the Caspian Pipeline Consortium agreed Wednesday on plans to double the line’s capacity. One partner — LUKArco, owned by LUKoil and BP — did not sign the agreement but agreed not to block the expansion project. “BP supported the approval by LUKArco of a plan allowing expansion of the CPC to go ahead in 2009,” said BP spokesman Vladimir Buyanov. |
|
MOSCOW — Truck maker KamAZ, in which Germany’s Daimler took a 10 percent stake last week, said Wednesday that it would halt assembly lines from Friday until Jan. |
|
MOSCOW — The Central Bank allowed a devaluation of the ruble for the second time this week on Wednesday, allowing it to lose almost 1.4 percent of its value against the currency basket, its biggest devaluation in three months. While the ruble plummeted against the euro, it lost little against the dollar, which sank on news of a Federal Reserve rate cut in the United States. |
|
|
|
 The shelf life of most newspaper articles is usually one or two days. After that, readers tend to forget whatever the article said. That is why I am so surprised by the continuing debate over my article, “Novocherkassk-2009,” published on Nov. 6 in Vedomosti. |
|
President Dmitry Medvedev has proposed that Europe reform its system of collective security. The Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe trashed the idea, voting 55-1 against it. |
|
|
|
 MOSCOW — A billionaire banker has locked horns with a poverty-stricken left-wing writer in a rare public debate over social division in crisis-hit Russia, revealing growing antagonism in its ostensibly well-controlled society. The debate, which quickly spread over the Internet but has not been reported on state-controlled mainstream television, has evoked memories of pre-1917 Russia where hatred between the ruling class and the poor sparked a Communist revolution. |
|
The FSB, Russia’s Federal Security Service, is celebrating its 91st anniversary this week, which will be marked with a televised gala concert from the Kremlin. |
|
This European style cafe is just a short walk from Nevsky Prospekt and offers a break from traditional Russian grub for diners tired of beets and dill. The restaurant’s menu comes in both Russian and English, with rather humorous translations. Kristoff’s kid’s menu (Russian only), features cleverly titled dishes such as “Salad like Mommy’s!” The restaurant has a front room with a bar, and a back room with cozy booths. Due to the loud, live saxophonist playing in the bar most of the dining pairs were seated in the back room. Black and white photos hang on orange walls above candlelit booths cornered off with translucent curtains. Among the crowd of relaxed visitors were a couple on a date, a “Sex-in-the-City”-style group of ladies dining and enjoying drinks, and a mother and daughter dining together Kristoff has an assorted offering of wine from European countries, as well as Chile. |
|
 A St. Petersburg theater company that uses masks, mime and puppetry was lauded earlier this year when it took first prize in the directing category at the 100, 1000, 100,000 Stories International Children’s Theater Festival in Romania. |
Temp: -1°C clear 
Issues Archive