LOCAL NEWS

WAL-MART RETHINKS RUSSIAN STRATEGY

MOSCOW — Wal-Mart, the world’s biggest retailer, may opt to build its own stores in Russia in addition to buying an existing chain, a source familiar with the situation said Thursday.

Working under the radar, Wal-Mart’s Moscow office is looking at these two strategies rather than focusing solely on an acquisition, the source said.

AUSTRIANS SEE KADYROV LINKS IN MURDER CASE

MOSCOW — Investigators probing the murder of a Chechen refugee in Vienna have uncovered strong trails that lead straight to Ramzan Kadyrov, opening the unprecedented possibility that Austria might press charges against the Chechen president.

ANTI-GOVERNOR SLOGAN SPARKS MAY DAY BAN

City Hall stopped democrats from marching on May Day because they were carrying a banner calling for the dismissal of St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko.

Despite having a City Hall-issued permit for the demo, the group of 700 to 1,000 democrats — including representatives of Yabloko, Solidarity and smaller parties and groups — were surrounded and stopped by the police on Saturday at the gathering point near Oktyabrsky Concert Hall on Ligovsky Prospekt and were not allowed to march along Nevsky, the city’s main throughfare, as scheduled.

GREENPEACE SHIP TO TEST WATER QUALITY

The Greenpeace ship Beluga II arrived in the city on Monday as part of its research expedition along the Volga-Baltic waterway aimed at determining pollution levels in Russian rivers.

In Brief

2 Killed in Dagestan

MAKHACHKALA, Dagestan (SPT) — A suicide attacker set off a car-bomb blast that killed at least two police officers and injured seven others Thursday, a Dagestani police spokesman said, Reuters reported.

The bomber detonated the explosives after police stopped his car at a checkpoint about 100 kilometers north of Makhachkala, the spokesman said.

NATIONAL NEWS

OFFICIALS APPEAL DROP OF BRIBERY CHARGES

MOSCOW — Bribery charges were dropped Thursday against the daughter of a dean at Moscow State University, law enforcement officials said, as accusations swirled that a high-level United Russia official lobbied for the case to be closed.

Polina Surina, 26, was released after two days in custody on charges of attempting to receive a 35,000 euro ($46,000) bribe from a would-be student seeking fast-track entry, city investigators said.

RIGHT TO CHARGE U.S. PARENTS SOUGHT

MOSCOW — Russia will demand the right to file charges against U.S. parents who abuse or neglect adopted Russian children during treaty negotiations aimed at unfreezing adoptions after a U.

DRUNKEN SIBERIAN HOLDS MAYOR HOSTAGE

MOSCOW — A drunken sanitarium worker took a Siberian mayor hostage with two hand grenades and tried to storm a law enforcement building before police commandos arrested him Thursday.

No one was injured in the incident.

Igor Golubev, 39, a resident of the Irkutsk region town of Usolye-Sibirskoye, jumped into the car of Mayor Yevgeny Kustos, unpinned the grenades and ordered the mayor to drive to the office of local prosecutors and investigators, Irkutsk regional investigators said in a statement.

INTERIOR MINISTRY TO CUT ITS OFFICE STAFF BY 50 PERCENT

MOSCOW — The Interior Ministry will fire half of the staff at its central office by December, with the candidates for dismissal to be announced by Sept.

Blast Kills 2 in Kabardino Balkaria

MOSCOW — A bomb blast Saturday in Russia’s volatile south that killed a 94-year-old World War II soldier cast a shadow over nationwide May Day celebrations led by Communists, many of them war veterans.

President Dmitry Medvedev moved quickly to order a federal probe into the blast that left another 22 people injured in the North Caucasus region of Kabardino Balkaria, where the Kremlin is battling a tenacious Islamist insurgency.

LOCAL BUSINESS

In Brief

Watchdog Slams Nestle

MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia’s consumer watchdog accused Nestle’s local plants of violating sanitary rules on production, air pollution and worker safety.

Several plants received repeated warnings, said Lyubov Voropaeva, a spokeswoman for the consumer safety service, confirming comments made by its head, Gennady Onishchenko, to the state-run RIA Novosti news service Thursday.

OPINION

THE DANGERS OF NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT

Russia and the United States have signed the New START. Officially, the treaty cuts their weapons by one-third; in reality, each party will only decommission several dozen.

Nevertheless, the treaty is a considerable achievement. It normalizes political relations between the two countries, thereby facilitating their further cooperation and rapprochement.

LENIN’S LOSS IS STALIN’S GAIN

Several years ago, I taught political science at a technical college. Why future engineers were required to study political science is anybody’s guess, but perhaps it replaced the mandatory Soviet-era course on the history of the Communist Party.