LOCAL NEWS

OLYMPIC WORKERS UNPAID FOR MONTHS

MOSCOW — Hundreds of workers at an Olimpstroi-funded construction site in Sochi have not been paid in months, with some complaining that they are going hungry after giving up their passports as collateral to get food at grocery stores.

The scandal is the latest to hit Russia’s $13 billion effort to ready the Black Sea resort for the 2014 Winter Olympics. Residents displaced by construction for the games have complained that they are not being adequately compensated, while environmental activists say the work is blighting the region.

About 180 people were not working Friday, exasperated by months without pay and desperate for food, said Sergei Dykhalov, who was hired by general contractor Moskonversprom as the site’s crane operator for 36,000 rubles ($1,200) a month.

HUNDREDS PROTEST AGAINST HOTEL CONSTRUCTION

Hundreds of concerned St. Petersburg residents and preservationists gathered in the historic Lopukhinsky Gardens on Saturday to protest plans to build a multistory hotel on the site.

Last April, an area within the small scenic park located on the Petrograd Side was stripped of its state heritage status and sold for an extremely small sum to the private developer RBI, which opened the way for the garden’s destruction, preservationists say.

University Dean Fired, Disputes Official Version

Marina Shishkina, the dean of the journalism faculty of St. Petersburg State University, was fired this month by the university’s rector, Nikolai Kropachev.

During the past year, Shishkina had made statements critical of Kropachev, challenging what she described as “the authoritarian style of managing one of Russia’s oldest and most prestigious universities.

NATIONAL NEWS

TEEN SMOKING CALLED A ‘NATIONAL CATASTROPHE’

MOSCOW — Moscow’s top doctor said Friday that smoking-related diseases are growing and warned that teenage smoking is leading to a “national catastrophe.”

Dr. Leonid Lazebnik painted a grim picture of the harm that tobacco is causing Russians, telling a round table that 65 percent of men and 30 percent of women have smoked at some time in their lives.

In contrast, Lazebnik said, the figures in the mid-1980s were 48 percent of men and 5 percent of women.

He said 24.6 percent of Muscovites are smokers.

“But the scariest thing of all is our future,” Lazebnik said. “In Moscow, 73 percent of boys and 65 percent of girls smoke.

UNITED RUSSIA LEAD DENTED IN ELECTIONS

MOSCOW — Russia’s dominant ruling party United Russia was leading regional elections but suffered a string of surprising setbacks against the backdrop of the economic crisis, results showed Monday.

United Russia — whose overall leader is Prime Minister Vladimir Putin — won less than half the vote in some polls for regional parliaments and in a stunning reversal lost the election for mayor in the Siberian city of Irkutsk.

LOCAL BUSINESS

PUTIN SIGNS RAFT OF DEALS IN DELHI

MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin won support for Rosatom to build a dozen ultrasafe nuclear reactors in India, part of more than $10 billion in deals in energy, arms, telecom and other cooperation signed during his visit Friday.

The trip, Putin’s first to India since December 2007, came as Moscow drives to maintain its position on the lucrative markets for arms and nuclear energy, even as India boosts cooperation with rival suppliers like the United States and France.

AEROFLOT TRAVELERS ANGRY OVER TREATMENT IN NYC

MOSCOW — Aeroflot passengers complained Sunday that they had to sleep on the floor and chairs at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport after bad weather delayed their flight by more than 24 hours.

In Brief

Metro Tender Awarded

ST. PETERSBURG (Vedomosti) — The entrance complex to the new Obvodny Kanal metro station will be built by the company Nevsky Dom.

The results of a closed tender to construct a 30,000 square-meter multifunctional complex comprising the entrance to the new metro station on the corner of the embankment of the Obvodny canal and Ligovsky Prospekt were announced last week by Petersburg Metropolitan.

FEATURES

In the Spotlight: Eurovision

Last Sunday, Russia chose Pyotr Nalich, a quirky singer who became famous through YouTube and isn’t part of the glitzy Russian pop scene, as its entry for this year’s Eurovision Song Contest.

Nalich and his band won a convincing 20 percent of votes, both from the public and the professional jury, which included two movers and shakers in Russian pop: songwriter Igor Krutoi and producer Maxim Fadeyev.