|
|
|
|
A British diplomat in Russia has resigned after a video allegedly showing him having sex with two prostitutes was posted on the internet, the Press Association reported. James Hudson stood down as deputy consul general in Yekaterinburg in the Urals following the furore about the clip. A link to the film, which lasts four minutes and 18 seconds, was posted on a Russian news website under the title “Adventures of Mr Hudson in Russia”. It shows a portly man wearing glasses enter a room - reportedly a brothel in Yekaterinburg — and sit on a sofa, drinking, and kissing two blonde women who are in their underwear. The video then cuts to explicit scenes of all three having sex. It has been suggested that the film was made by agents from Russia’s FSB - the successor to the KGB - in order to leave Mr Hudson open to blackmail. |
|
A SPECIAL DAY
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A girl accompanies one of the 50 couples married over the last week that paraded in the Peter and Paul Fortress on Wednesday as part of the Family, Love and Fidelity Day festivities. |
|
No one expected a major diplomatic breakthrough, an impressive concession or an outburst of inflammatory rhetoric at the U.S.-Russia summit this week in Moscow. And none happened. But the talks will be remembered as the moment when the two countries “reset” relations if both sides muster the political will to build on the agreements — all nonbinding — reached by Presidents Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama.
|
|
A Just Russia faction in St. Petersburg’s Legislative Assembly is planning to appeal to the Russian State Duma with an initiative to toughen the rules for keeping and breeding of dangerous dogs after a spate of horrific attacks on children in the city. |
|
MOSCOW — The Prosecutor General’s Office has agreed to join forces with the U.S. Justice Department to investigate the 2004 killing of U.S. journalist Paul Klebnikov in Moscow, prosecutors said Tuesday. |
|
MOSCOW — The Federal Anti-Monopoly Service on Wednesday accused Aeroflot of illegally inflating its ticket prices on flights between Krasnoyarsk and Norilsk and ordered the carrier to return the excess profit to the federal budget. The Krasnoyarsk branch of the anti-monopoly service said Russia’s flagship airline had been charging passengers 36,000 rubles ($1,130) for a round-trip ticket, or more than twice the legal amount. |
All photos from issue.
|
|
|
|
|
MOSCOW — Moscow police detained about 20 people on Wednesday when they tried to block a highway to protest the closing of Cherkizovsky Market, Ekho Moskvy radio reported. A crowd of about 100 people who lost their jobs at the sprawling market, Eastern Europe’s largest, moved toward Schyolkovskoye Shosse intending to stop traffic but were barred by the police. Traders also tried to block the highway in eastern Moscow earlier this week. Police were told to close the market on June 29 after federal inspectors found a series of sanitary and storage violations. The closure came after Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called for “convictions” in connection to the seizure there last year of about $2 billion in purportedly contraband goods. |
|
 A group of fraudsters, including a U.S. citizen who posed as a member of the presidential administration, has been uncovered in St. Petersburg, law enforcement officials said Wednesday. |
|
Church on New Laws MOSCOW (SPT) — United Russia will discuss bills with the Russian Orthodox Church before they are passed by the State Duma, a senior party official told Interfax on Wednesday. The pro-Kremlin party will present the Duma’s work schedule to the Moscow Patriarchate and discuss with it any bills that the clerics care to comment on, Duma Deputy Andrei Isayev said. United Russia holds 315 of the Duma’s 450 seats. The church is separate from the state under the law. Family Found Dead MOSCOW (SPT) — A senior regional police official was found dead with his wife and two young children in a partly burned car peppered with bullet holes near Rostov-on-Don, RIA-Novosti reported Wednesday. |
|
 MOSCOW — The fortunes of embattled Sibir Energy co-owner Shalva Chigirinsky went from bad to worse Wednesday as police raids across Moscow exposed a tax investigation into a fuel trading company that he formerly ran. |
|
DOMODEDOVO, Moscow Region — Soft drink and snack maker PepsiCo opened its eighth plant in Russia on Wednesday amid promises to invest another $1 billion in the next few years — including to educate potato farmers. The opening ceremony, attended by PepsiCo chairwoman Indra Nooyi, Economic Development Minister Elvira Nabiullina and U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, was at a facility PepsiCo expects to become the largest in Europe in three to four years. The company said the plant will produce “simple pleasures” that Russians can afford, in good times and bad. “The Domodedovo plant will initially only produce Lipton Ice Tea, which remains popular in Russia despite the crisis,” Mike White, head of PepsiCo International, said in an interview. |
|
 MOSCOW — U.S. President Barack Obama inadvertently misspoke Vladimir Putin’s title during his first meeting with the prime minister Tuesday, a second slip of the tongue in as many days that indicates he remains uncomfortable with who is who in the ruling tandem of Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev. |
|
MOSCOW — U.S. President Barack Obama told opposition and civic society representatives Tuesday that Americans and Russians must learn from each other and that it was important for him to show humility. “I think in the past there’s been a tendency for the United States to lecture rather than to listen,” Obama said during a round-table discussion with eight handpicked opposition politicians that lasted almost 90 minutes in the Ritz Carlton hotel. |
|
MOSCOW — U.S. first lady Michelle Obama took time away from her husband’s public diplomacy, summit speeches and protocol meetings Tuesday to visit a school for orphans and a nurse training college. |
|
|
|
 The tickets were snapped up a long time ago; invitations and free passes were hotly contested even in the final minutes before the curtain rose. On Tuesday, an evening dedicated to the 70th birthday of Russian mezzo-soprano Yelena Obraztsova was a multicultural homage featuring ballet performances, opera arias, jazz and piano recitals, and even excerpts from films. |
|
Correcting last week’s errors, Morrissey was reported to have thrown two sweaty shirts into the crowd at the recent concert to St. Petersburg, not one. |
 Concerts taking place this week as part of ongoing festivals make the next few days an important highlight in St. Petersburg’s classical music calendar. At the height of the White Nights season, the State Hermitage Museum continues a beautiful tradition of holding open-air concerts in its newly restored New Hermitage courtyard and other associated venues. The Ninth International “Music of the Greater Hermitage” festival kicked off on Thursday, July 9, with a recital, Blues For Four, that brought together prominent jazz musicians from St. |
|
 The arrival in St. Petersburg on Thursday morning of the Russian vessel “Mir” — moored on Lieutenant Schmidt Embankment — heralded the second stage of this summer’s Tall Ships’ Races in the Baltic. |
 The idea of the Tall Ships’ Races came to a seaman during a dream. Bernard Morgan, a retired solicitor from London was dreaming about a “Brotherhood of the Sea,” a dedicated community of young seamen engaging in a friendly competition. The idea was first raised in a public discussion in 1953 and was then envisaged as an international race for sail training ships, with crews drawn from sea cadets and young seamen still in the process of training. |
|
The city's Transport Committee has announced that as a result of the Tall Ships' race Baltic-2009: * From 8 p.m. on Thursday until midnight on Saturday traffic on the Lieutenant Schmidt Embankment between lines 8 and 22 of Vasilievsky Island will be limited. |
 FRIDAY (10.07.2009) 10. a.m.-11 p.m. – Arrival of the regatta fleet Lieutenant Schmidt Embankment SATURDAY (11.07.2009) 1 p.m.–1.30 p.m. – Opening ceremony of the St. Petersburg Stage of the regatta (Main Stage) Lieutenant Schmidt Embankment, opposite Building No. |
|
The first thing to say about this brand-new, top-notch, all-out effort at a high quality restaurant, new on the city’s dining scene, is that the food it serves is great. |
Temp: -1°C clear 
Issues Archive