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MOSCOW — Most of the customers at a drug store in northern Moscow prefer medicines made abroad because of their better reputation for quality. “At this point, people don’t trust Russian drug makers,” said Larisa Bezuglaya, a pharmacist at the drug store. Svetlana Kopteva, 34, who had just bought a bottle of French moisturizing cream, agreed, saying it didn’t matter that Russian-made drugs were cheaper. “If Russian drug makers improved the quality of their products while retaining lower prices than foreign firms, I might change my mind,” she said. The Russian government is hoping she will. As of 2007, only one out of every five drugs purchased in Russia was produced domestically, and only one of the top 20 producers of drugs sold domestically was a Russian firm — Pharmstandart. |
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THE SANDMAN
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A man takes a nap on the beach of the Peter and Paul Fortress. The sign in the background prohibiting swimming has not stopped hundreds of city residents from cooling off by taking a dip in the murky waters of the River Neva. The hot weather is set to continue until the end of the week. |
 MOSCOW — About 2,000 residents of a small town near Sochi rallied against environmental pollution Sunday evening despite colossal efforts to prevent the gathering after a previous protest drew 4,000 and left the top local official without a job. The protesters gathered on the periphery of the central square of Tuapse, a Black Sea town of 60,000 popular with tourists, ignoring rain and the campaign to prevent the rally, which included closing the square for construction, distributing flyers with false information, closing down the town’s web site, and printing a special issue of a local newspaper with appeals not to attend, residents said.
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 An updated, three-volume edition of the legendary chronicle of St. Petersburg’s criminal underworld “Banditsky Petersburg” by Andrei Konstantinov was last week unveiled by the author, head of the AJUR investigative agency and a noted crime researcher. The classic epic explores the city’s criminal environment, tracing its evolution and transformation over the past 16 years since work on the book began. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — French police have detained three Chechens after receiving a tip from Russian law enforcement agencies that they might be plotting bombings in the Moscow metro. Russian authorities suspect the trio of bankrolling Ruslan Ozniyev, a Chechen man arrested 20 months ago in Moscow on suspicion of planning attacks in the city, Kommersant reported Saturday. |
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MOSCOW — The State Duma approved in a third and final reading Friday a bill that will expand the powers of the Federal Security Service to allow it to issue warnings to people whose actions “create the conditions for a crime. |
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Twenty-eight new bridges will need to be built over the railway between St. Petersburg and Helsinki if massive traffic jams are to be avoided at the current level-crossings that traverse the line after a new rail service to and from the Finnish capital begins at the end of this year. |
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MOSCOW — Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko has used Georgian leader Mikheil Saakashvili in a surprising counterstrike against the Kremlin, although analysts said their alliance is unlikely to last. |
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Record Drownings MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Moscow’s heat wave claimed 25 drowning victims over the weekend as residents sought refuge from the worst heat wave in decades, Interfax reported, citing unidentified health officials. July 17 will go down in history as a “black” day, after a single-day record 11 people drowned in the capital, the news service said. |
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MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev has completed the latest regional reshuffle by appointing new leaders to Bashkortostan and Karelia, Interfax reported Saturday. |
 One of Russia’s most popular newspapers said Friday it had managed to get Paul, the oracle German octopus who accurately predicted the World Cup results, to forecast who will be Russia’s next president, Reuters reported. But Komsomolskaya Pravda said the results of Paul’s prediction for the 2012 presidential election have been sealed until election year. The paper said one of its reporters approached Paul, who lives at the Sea Life attraction in the German city of Oberhausen, and put two sheets of paper with the names of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev in front of the soothsaying invertebrate, which pointed to one of the names with a tentacle. |
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 DRESDEN, Germany — Russian music took center stage at this year’s edition of the respected Dresdner Musikfestspiele, an annual classical music festival in Dresden, which opened in mid-May with a performance by the Russian National Orchestra under the baton of Mikhail Tatarnikov. |
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Russia should legally prohibit the import of devices that operate using GPS satellite positioning technology to help develop the competing Glonass system, Sistema chief Vladimir Yevtushenkov told Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Friday. Under the proposal, consumer navigation devices destined for use in Russia would be required to have a Glonass receiver alongside the GPS one, possibly forcing more gadget makers to move part of their production to Russia. Sistema has discussed the matter “with practically all of the suppliers of such equipment,” including Nokia, Siemens and Motorola, Yevtushenkov said in comments posted on the government web site. |
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 The prosecutor’s office has identified summer cafes working without land lease contracts with City Hall. Obtaining permission for seasonal terraces is very difficult, businessmen say. |
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EBRD Helps Pulkovo MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the International Finance Corporation raised a $200 million loan from a group of eight banks to upgrade and expand Pulkovo airport in St. |
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The Agriculture Ministry’s safety watchdog on Thursday agreed to let 14 Finnish food producers continue sending their goods to Russia until July 23, temporarily lifting a ban over violations of sanitation norms. |
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MOSCOW — AvtoVAZ’s three main shareholders agreed Thursday to a two-part restructuring of the carmaker that will see state-run Russian Technologies boost its stake to 29 percent by 2012 while France’s Renault retains its blocking stake. The federal government gave AvtoVAZ a support package of 40 billion rubles ($1.3 billion) in December to help the struggling carmaker pay down bank debt and repay suppliers. The funds, contributed through Russian Technologies, brought AvtoVAZ’s debt to the state corporation to 65 billion rubles. Renault will provide the equivalent of 240 million euros ($306 million) in equipment and technology to maintain its 25 percent stake through the first phase of the transaction, which will see AvtoVAZ issue additional shares, the carmaker said in an e-mailed statement. |
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 A geographer turned investment banker, Mikhail Slipenchuk has combined his passion for karate and travel with an entrepreneurial streak to turn his Metropol firm into a leading investment company after starting off with a modest $300,000 in the early 1990s. |
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 Last week, paparazzi grabbed the first photographs of Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo’s infant son — whose mother remains a mystery but is definitely not svelte model Irina Shayk. In a bizarre situation, Ronaldo said the baby’s mother preferred to keep her identity secret and that he was the child’s only guardian. He is rumored to have had the baby with a surrogate mother. The first reports that Russian-born Shayk and Ronaldo were dating appeared in May. |
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 It was not long ago that we could say, “We are all Keynesians now.” The financial sector and its free-market ideology had brought the world to the brink of ruin. |
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The departure of one of the very last “Mohicans,” Murtaza Rakhimov, who had led Bashkortostan for two decades as president, is not just a serious change to the political scene. It paints a clear picture of how things are run from the Kremlin. Recall the scandal after the first round of the 2003 Bashkortostan presidential election when ballots that had been printed without the authority of the election commission were confiscated. |
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SYDNEY — Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard leapt ahead in a key opinion poll Monday and sealed a vital deal with the Greens party, underlining her as early favorite for Aug. 21 elections. As Gillard campaigned in the key battleground state of Queensland, the Newspoll survey put her government 10 points clear of the opposition at 55-45 percent, contradicting an earlier study which had them neck-and-neck. |
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Autobahn Picnic BERLIN (AP) — Germany’s autobahns are renowned for average speeds well in excess of 80 miles (130 kilometers) an hour. |
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