LOCAL NEWS

PRESIDENT CALLS FOR ACTION OVER CRASHES

MOSCOW — At least 29 people have been killed in a series of bus crashes in the past week, including one Friday that left nearly two dozen dead, prompting President Dmitry Medvedev to demand that officials boost order on the roads.

In the bloodiest accident, 21 people were killed when a bus and gasoline tanker collided Friday afternoon on a southern highway that has often been called one of the country’s most dangerous. The empty KamAZ tanker apparently veered into oncoming traffic on the M-4 highway between Krasnodar and Rostov-on-Don, Interfax reported.

A criminal investigation has been opened into the accident, Rostov prosecutors said.

CALLS MADE FOR STAROVOITOVA CASE TO BE REOPENED

The sister and the former aide of slain State Duma deputy Galina Starovoitova addressed President Dmitry Medvedev on Monday, urging him to reopen the investigation into what is seen as one of the most shocking, unresolved political murders of the 1990s.

A co-chair of the Democratic Russia Movement, Starovoitova was a prominent democratic politician in Russia in the late 1980s and 1990s.

CHINESE OFFICIALS ‘ACCEPT’ CRACKDOWN ON SMUGGLING

MOSCOW — A Chinese delegation that flew to Moscow last week for talks about the closure of Cherkizovsky Market expressed “understanding and approval” of the fight against smuggling, the Investigative Committee said Friday in a statement on its web site.

IN BRIEF

$24M Check Rip-Off

MOSCOW (SPT) — Three men were detained in Moscow after trying to cash a check for almost 17 million euros ($24 million), Interfax reported Friday, citing police.

NATIONAL NEWS

NAVY ACCIDENTALLY SHELLS VLADIVOSTOK

MOSCOW — A dummy shell fired from a warship veered off course Friday and landed just feet from a building in a residential area of Vladivostok, less than two months after a similar incident off the Gulf of Finland.

The anti-ship shell was fired during rehearsals for Sunday’s Navy Day celebrations in the far eastern port. For reasons yet to be determined, the projectile changed course after takeoff and landed beside a nine-story building, breaking windows and leaving a 1.5-meter crater, RIA-Novosti reported.

No one was hurt in the incident, and the Navy said it was investigating.

A bomb disposal team from the Pacific Fleet was sent to dig out and remove the shell.

CLASSIC CAR MUSEUM OPENED BY COLLECTORS

Boris Yeltsin’s Mercedes, Marilyn Monroe’s Cadillac and Yury Gagarin’s Pontiac Tempest are just a few of the attractions on display at a new museum of classic cars that unveiled for the media in Vyborg over the weekend and is getting ready to open to the general public in early August.

The 6,000-square meter, two-story building that houses the Vyborg Classic Car Museum is home to 150 rarities.

LOCAL BUSINESS

IN BRIEF

Road Concession Inked

MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Vinci, the world’s biggest construction company, signed a 60 billion-ruble ($2 billion) concession to build and operate the initial stretch of Russia’s first major toll road from Moscow to St. Petersburg.

Vinci plans to start work on a 43-kilometer section of the road next year, the Transportation Ministry said in a statement distributed to reporters. The government plans to allocate 23 billion rubles from the state investment fund for the work, which will take about three years to complete, the ministry said.

The contract was signed by Vinci Concessions CEO Louis-Roch Burgard and Anatoly Chabunin, head of the Transportation Ministry’s Federal Highway Agency, in Moscow on Monday.

SHOPLIFTING HEIGHT OF FASHION AS CRISIS CONTINUES

Retail chains are seeing an increase in shoplifting, but do not seem to be in a hurry to spend more on their security systems.

The incidence of shoplifting at Lenta stores increased by 33 percent during the first half of 2009 compared to the same period last year, according to the supermarket chain’s press service.

PUTIN’S FIRM HAND COULD BACKFIRE

A visit to Sberbank headquarters by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin last week may have been more cordial than some of his recent corporate appearances, but the message was little changed.

After touring the facilities, meeting with senior executives and grilling Sberbank head German Gref on the methods used to size up a prospective borrower’s credit worthiness, Putin got down to business —that is, telling business how business should be done.

COMMUNIST PARTY CRITICAL AS DUMA MEETS TO REVISE BILL

The Communists poured scorn on United Russia when the State Duma reconvened for a special session Friday to revise a bill that the Federation Council rejected despite strong support from the Kremlin and Cabinet.

OPINION

Resetting Georgia's Democracy

Most people will be familiar with the threat Georgia faces from its Russian neighbor. But Georgian society also faces massive internal challenges to its democracy and economy. We need to get past our confrontational politics to create a pluralistic democracy and bring prosperity based on open markets to all Georgians.