LOCAL NEWS

Cash-for-Clunkers Plan Comes Under Fire

MOSCOW — As the Industry and Trade Ministry puts the last touches on a cash-for-clunkers program, skepticism about the plan’s viability is running high among car-recycling firms.

The state program, patterned after similar initiatives in Germany and the United States aimed at bolstering domestic car production, would award certificates worth 50,000 rubles ($1,730) to drivers who turn in cars 10 years old and older for recycling.

NATIONAL NEWS

CITY HALL GIVES GO-AHEAD TO MARCH AGAINST HATRED

City Hall has issued a permit to the anti-fascist March Against Hatred due to be held on Saturday, while refusing to authorize the nationalist Nov. 4 Russian March, suggesting its organizers hold a stationary meeting at a remote park instead.

The March Against Hatred is held to protest against “the growth of national and religious intolerance and xenophobia in society,” the organizers said in a statement.

The March Against Hatred is an annual event that was first held soon after the 63-year-old scholar and hate crimes expert Nikolai Girenko was murdered by extreme nationalists in 2004.

INVESTIGATORS RELEASE ARCTIC SEA

MOSCOW — Investigators have lifted the arrest of the Arctic Sea and will turn over the cargo ship to Maltese authorities in the next few days, the Investigative Committee said Wednesday.

The Maltese-flagged Arctic Sea has stayed in international waters near Malta since Moscow’s Basmanny District Court sanctioned its arrest in late August, the committee said in a statement.

PRESIDENT CONCEDES ELECTIONS WERE MARRED BY IRREGULARITIES

MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev acknowledged for the first time Tuesday that irregularities had occurred in the disputed Oct. 11 vote and said he would include several proposals on elections in his state-of-the-nation address.

Medvedev also told Central Elections Commission chief Vladimir Churov to review the irregularities and make sure that complaints of vote rigging were heard in court.

RIOT POLICE RAID DAM DISASTER SITE

MOSCOW — The Investigative Committee and OMON riot police swooped into the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydropower plant in a raid Tuesday, seizing documents and isolating employees at their workstations in a probe into an August accident that killed 75 people.

Putin Recalls Fall of Berlin Wall in New Documentary

MOSCOW — Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has publicly recalled how he personally contributed to this turn in history as a Soviet spy in East Germany.

Putin told veteran NTV reporter Vladimir Kondratyev in a half-hour interview how he managed to calm down an angry crowd of East German protesters outside the KGB headquarters in Dresden in late 1989.

LOCAL BUSINESS

BOSCO TO SPONSOR SOCHI GAMES

MOSCOW — Russian apparel brand Bosco Sport signed up as leading domestic sponsor of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi on Wednesday in a deal worth more than $100 million.

The agreement also makes Bosco Sport the exclusive outfitter of Russian Olympic teams for the upcoming Winter Games in Vancouver through the Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.

WORLD BANK WARNS OF CLIMATE CHANGE THREAT

MOSCOW — Russia is likely to bear the brunt of changes to regional climate brought on by global warming, according to a World Bank report presented  Wednesday, and government officials are preparing special measures to deal with the negative effects of climate change.

Local Poll Respondents Say They Need $1,437 A Month

To afford reasonable living standards Moscow residents require a monthly salary of 62,000 rubles ($2,122), while inhabitants of St. Petersburg and Nizhny Novgorod need a monthly income of 42,000 rubles ($1,437), according to new research.

Experts at state insurance firm Rosgosstrakh’s Strategic Research Center (SRC) found that on average across Russia, 40,000 rubles would be needed to maintain a reasonable living standard, the Prime-Tass news agency reported.

OPINION

GO, SOVEREIGN DEMOCRACY!

The Oct. 11 elections held in 75 of Russia’s 83 regions ended with an unusual emotional outburst after three opposition parties claimed that there were massive falsifications of the results. After the parties stormed out of the State Duma on Oct. 14, they demanded an urgent meeting with the guarantor of the Constitution — President Dmitry Medvedev.

ZYAZIKOV’S ENDLESS POWER STRUGGLE

Maksharip Aushev, one of the most influential people in Ingushetia, was gunned down near Nalchik on Sunday. He was murdered the day after he bitterly denounced former Ingush President Murat Zyazikov on “Nedelya,” the analytical news program on Ren-TV hosted by Marianna Maximovskaya.

CULTURE

MADE IN BRITAIN

A new exhibition of British contemporary art is now on view at the Hermitage. Part of the museum’s 20/21 project, which aims to collect and display works of art by contemporary artists, the show heralds the second time that pieces from Charles Saatchi’s collection have been displayed at the museum.

CHERNOV’S CHOICE

Tantsy, a new club near Sennaya Ploshchad, was to be a follow-up to Sochi, the bar with DJs and live concerts that closed in August, but has become more like a continuation of the more esteemed but also defunct club Platforma, according to Denis Rubin, who was art director at both venues.

INSPIRATIONAL VOICES

Mirja Ruonaniemi, a petite, agile Finnish woman of 83 with bright black eyes, does not look her age. Her memory still serves her well, too. “On one occasion, already many years after the [Second World] war, I was translating at a peace meeting held in a gym,” she remembers.

RULES OF THE GAME

The Russian obsession with the film Fifth Element is an occasional topic of conversation among the expat community. Whether there is an official law that the film has to be shown on TV at least once a fortnight or whether the programmers simply consider it poor form not to is unclear, but its cult status in Russia is undeniable.