|
|
|
|
MOSCOW — This year’s federal budget, which only recently appeared doomed to an ugly 8 percent deficit, is beginning to look a lot healthier thanks to spiraling inflation, a weakened currency and a surge of optimism. And while the Central Bank has devalued the ruble and announced plans to print 3 trillion more, the heroes of this story are, of course, OPEC and the United States. The U.S. Federal Reserve is funding a massive spending program to dig the economy out of recession with a steady stream of freshly printed dollars, sending investors scrambling from the safety of the greenback back to the inflation-haven commodities, including crude. And the optimism, also flourishing in the new U. |
|
FULL THROTTLE
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Motorbikes take part in the City Day procession on Nevsky Prospekt on Saturday. The event, held in glorious sunshine, marked the 306th anniversary of the founding of St. Petersburg. See photo essay on Page 11. Rain is predicted for much of the rest of the week. |
|
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has ordered the country’s Culture Ministry to organize a new architectural competition to design a second stage for the world-renowned Mariinsky theater, or Mariinsky II. “The contest must be held as soon as possible,” Putin said, adding that the building is due to be completed by 2011. “No specific deadlines for the competition have yet been set but it is expected that it will take place no later than July,” said St.
|
|
MOSCOW — Several dozen Russian students have been detained in Egypt in document checks just days before U.S. President Barack Obama pays a visit to Cairo. Cairo police rounded up the students at Al-Azkhar University, a world center of Islamic studies, last week during checks on foreign students studying in the country, Foreign Ministry spokesman Igor Lyakin-Frolov said. |
|
The State Hermitage Museum is set to provide security and video surveillance cover for the Alexander Column in the city’s Palace Square. “The museum will institute these measures once the column is in the Hermitage’s care,” the museum’s director Mikhail Piotrovsky said last week, Interfax reported. |
All photos from issue.
|
|
|
|
|
A Russian naval ship carrying out target practice off the Russian Baltic Sea coast accidentally rained shell fragments on a village near St. Petersburg, officials said Friday. Nobody was injured when the fragments from shells fired by an anti-submarine ship in the Gulf of Finland fell on houses in the village of Zelyonaya Roshcha, close to the border with Finland, regional military prosecutor Igor Lebedev said. An investigation has begun, explained Lebedev. Russia’s NTV television channel said that the ship fired its six-barrel anti-aircraft gun near the shore, and the exploding shells rained shards of metal on the village. It broadcasted images of metal fragments several centimeters long spread all over the area. |
|
 Despite continued pressure from the authorities, an artists’ hunger strike against the police’s arbitrariness went into its fifth day on Monday. The protesters are demanding the investigation and punishment of those responsible for the May Day mass arrests, when some 300 anarchists, artists and musicians were seized or dispersed by the OMON, preventing them from taking part in an authorized demonstration in St. |
|
MOSCOW — Two Ingush natives have been charged in connection with the 2007 bombing of a Moscow-St. Petersburg train that injured 30 passengers, investigators said Saturday. The suspects, Maksharip Khidriyev and Salambek Dzakhiyev, both 41, are accused of acquiring explosives and transporting them to the Novgorod region to be assembled into a bomb, the Novgorod Investigative Committee said in a statement. |
|
MOSCOW — Georgia’s separatist South Ossetia province held parliamentary elections Sunday expected to strengthen its Moscow-friendly leader’s hold on power. |
|
Putin Pal to Irkutsk MOSCOW (SPT) — President Dmitry Medvedev has nominated a former St. Petersburg colleague of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to become Irkutsk’s governor, a post that remains vacant after the previous governor died in a helicopter crash. Medvedev has nominated Dmitry Mezentsev, 49, who headed St. |
|
|
|
 More than 2,000 participants, including heads of states, ministers, and business and science leaders from dozens of different countries will take part in the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum from Thursday to Saturday. The forum is dedicated to topical issues including the current economic crisis. |
|
Hotels accused by the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service (FAS) of price-fixing during last year’s St. Petersburg Economic Forum do not appear to be raising prices this year — in fact, some are even offering discounts. |
|
Steelmaker Seeks Loan MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Novolipetsk Steel, the steelmaker controlled by Russian billionaire Vladimir Lisin, may borrow $355 million from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to increase its own electricity supply. |
|
Foreign investment in St. Petersburg dropped in the first quarter of 2009 by eight percent in comparison to the same period last year. In the first quarter of 2009, foreign investors pumped $651. |
 Organizers of the annual International Economic Forum in St. Petersburg last spring boasted that the event is becoming “a second Davos,” a supreme showcase of Russia’s vast and diversified business potential. This confidence was largely based on then-skyrocketing oil and gas prices. But with the Russian economy now facing a recession due to the fall of crude prices and markets after financial turmoil developed in the second half of 2008, the tone and hopes of the forum’s hosts have become more modest. |
|
 Vytautas Buciunas could have become a racing driver, had he let his passion for his hobby dominate his career. Fortunately for Swedbank, he realized he had to choose between his promising career in banking and his time-consuming hobby, and now contents himself with visiting rallies as a spectator — though he admits it broke his heart to do so. |
|
VTB will most likely not sell all of the shares that it planned to offer last fall, chief financial officer Nikolai Tsekhomsky said at a meeting with minority shareholders Friday. The nine trillion shares that the bank plans to issue “includes reserve shares,” Tsekhomsky said. |
|
MOSCOW — The government made no official comment on the winning bid by a consortium of Sberbank, GAZ and Canada’s Magna International to buy U.S.-controlled Opel in a deal that promises to give a huge boost to the Russian car industry. |
|
Gazprom has announced that it is speeding up its plans to sell more gas by tankers to a wider range of customers as it faces a sharp drop in demand from its traditional consumers in Europe. “Trends on the global gas markets create conditions for Gazprom to increase the pace of producing and supplying liquefied natural gas,” the company said in a statement late Thursday. |
|
|
|
 The European Union recently embarked on a policy of “constructive engagement” with Belarus. None too soon. Previously, EU policy was to isolate Belarus, which itself was seeking isolation. That policy achieved little more than bolstering the country’s authoritarian leader, President Alexander Lukashenko. |
|
The beginning of June is a good time to talk about banks, and not only because it heralds the annual International Banking Congress that has taken place in St. |
|
|
|
 ISLAMABAD — Police say suspected militants have abducted some 400 students, staff members and relatives driving away from a school in a troubled tribal region in northwest Pakistan. Police official Meer Sardar said the mass abduction occurred about 30 kilometers from Razmak Cadet College in North Waziristan. |
|
SAO PAULO — A missing Air France jet carrying 228 people from Rio de Janeiro to Paris encountered lightning and strong thunderstorms over the Atlantic Ocean, officials said Monday. |
Temp: -1°C clear 
Issues Archive