LOCAL NEWS

MEDVEDEV PUTS LIMITS ON ALCOHOL CAN SIZES

MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev on Friday gave teeth to his calls for a crackdown on alcoholism, ordering the government to limit the can sizes of low-alcohol beverages and to place larger health warnings on all types of alcohol.

Medvedev also told the government to come up with a national strategy to fight alcoholism by Dec. 15, the latest in a series of recent high-profile comments about the country’s drinking problem.

Russia’s per capita consumption of pure alcohol is 18 liters per year, “including babies,” Medvedev said during a meeting with government and regional officials to discuss alcohol consumption, citing Health and Social Development Ministry statistics.

PUTIN WEIGHS WAR, U.S. AND 2012 ELECTION

NOVO-OGARYOVO, Moscow Region — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin passed on bread and hardly touched his wine Friday as he gave a passionate lecture on World War II and spoke about the incumbent U.S. president during a sweeping lunchtime discussion with Western experts on Russia.

The 2 1/2-hour meal with the Valdai Club of leading Western reporters and scholars specializing in Russia — most of it behind closed doors — was a routine annual meeting seeking to give them firsthand knowledge of Moscow’s thinking on key local and international issues.

OKHTA CENTER OPPONENTS ACCUSE AUTHORITIES OF FOUL PLAY

Opponents of the Okhta Center (Gazprom Tower) have lost a case in court, but say that further evidence of multiple violations on the part of the developer and city officials came to light during the two-week trial.

On Friday, Judge Lyudmila Golovkina of the Krasnogvardeisky District Court ruled that the demands of the plaintiffs were not to be satisfied.

ISRAEL CONFIRMS NETANYAHU DID MAKE SECRET TRIP TO MOSCOW

MOSCOW — Israel’s deputy prime minister confirmed Saturday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had visited Russia but declined to elaborate on the affair, which has triggered media accusations of official disinformation.

Prosecutors, Citing CIA Hoax, Pursue NGO for Extremism

MOSCOW — Novorossiisk prosecutors have embraced a fictitious CIA document to justify their case to close a small human rights group on extremism charges.

Prosecutors have asked a Novorossiisk court to outlaw the Committee for Human Rights as extremist because one of its supporters held up a poster reading “Freedom isn’t granted, it’s taken” at an April 4 rally, the group’s deputy head, Vadim Karastelyov, told The St.

NATIONAL NEWS

RIGHTS GROUP WARNS CONSCRIPTS

As the autumn military draft draws closer — it begins on Oct. 1 — the Soldiers’ Mothers human rights group is campaigning to stop the illegal practice of military commissions confiscating the passports of those being conscripted.

“Confiscation of passports has been routine for years, and it is completely illegal,” said Ella Polyakova, the chairwoman of the St.

WOMAN CHARGED IN DOG-FOR-VODKA MURDER

MOSCOW — Prosecutors in the central Chuvash Republic have wrapped up the investigation of a woman charged with beating her neighbor to death for selling off her boyfriend’s dog in order to buy a half-liter of vodka.

LOCAL BUSINESS

PUTIN PRAISES CHOICE OF SBERBANK-MAGNA

NOVO-OGARYOVO, Moscow Region — General Motors made the “right, market-based choice” by agreeing to sell its Opel unit to a half-Russian consortium, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Friday in his first public comments on the deal.

The decision, announced a day earlier, will be the first substantial step in integrating the economies of Russia and Western Europe, Putin said at a meeting with the Valdai Club of Western experts on Russia.

IN BRIEF

BoNY Offers $4 Billion

MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Bank of New York Mellon Corp. offered to lend Russia $4 billion to settle the country’s $22.

Bankruptcy Law May Be of Little Help to Debtors

MOSCOW — As State Duma lawmakers reconvened for the fall session last week, one of the top bills that they are expected to consider is the country’s first personal bankruptcy law.

Coming a year after the economic crisis rolled over Russia, it might seem high time for a law offering people relief from their debts.

OPINION

Myths Eclipse Reality

In an authoritarian society, public opinion surveys are meaningless. The problem isn’t so much that survey data are falsified. It’s that the results themselves do not provide an accurate reflection of reality — just as a thermometer placed outside the kitchen window cannot give you the temperature indoors.