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MOSCOW — The Federal Anti-Monopoly Service accused Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk of violating anti-monopoly legislation on Friday and said the firm might face a fine of up to 15 percent of its Russian revenue. The watchdog said Novo Nordisk, the world’s largest producer of diabetes drugs, refused to sign supply contracts with some drug distributors, restricting competition on the pharmaceutical market. “The violation was in the company’s unjustified avoidance and refusal to sign agreements with some buyers and discriminating against some potential partners in favor of existing ones, which has led to limited competition,” the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service said in a statement on its web site. |
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IN THE RING
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Former world heavyweight boxing champion Nikolai Valuyev hands out gloves to pupils at a new boxing center for children at St. Petersburg’s School No. 2 on Nalichnaya Ulitsa. Valuyev opened the boxing school, at which lessons will be free of charge, on Monday. |
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Two scandals marred the “TV Personalities” nominations of the prestigious TEFI prizes ceremony held in St. Petersburg’s Mikhailovsky Theater at the weekend. The first scandal broke when filmmaker Oleg Dorman, who was awarded a prize for his documentary “Podstrochnik” (Literal Translation), which was inspired by the life of the eminent translator Svetlana Lungina, mother of the filmmaker Pavel Lungin.
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MOSCOW — Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov returned from a weeklong vacation in Austria on Monday to announce that he would not resign, despite reports that the Kremlin had given him an ultimatum. Analysts interpreted Luzhkov’s statement as a sign that he had not managed to bargain for a senior post outside the government for himself and guarantees of safety for his business interests. |
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MOSCOW — Alfa Group’s A1 unit said it would invest $15 million in a 49 percent stake in its venture with Cuba’s Commercial Caribbean Nickel. A1 said in a statement Friday that it had created a joint venture with the Cuban state-run company to develop Cuba’s Nicaro mines, extracting nickel and possibly other metals. |
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Would-Be Deputy Slain ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Oleg Denisenko, a 43-year-old resident of St. Petersburg who made an unsuccessful bid for municipal deputy in March, was found stabbed to death in his Nevsky district apartment on Sunday, Fontanka.ru reported. In a preliminary analysis, Nevsky district police believe that Denisenko was murdered on Friday night, though the investigation only started on Sunday when Denisenko’s mother discovered the body with multiple stab wounds, the local news site reported. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — A dispute has escalated over plans to build a mosque in Moscow’s southeastern outskirts, with local residents vowing to send an appeal with about 2,000 signatures to President Dmitry Medvedev and nationalist groups promising to support them. Muslim leaders defend the need for the worship site, saying the capital’s four mosques are overflowing with people. Residents of the Tekstilshchiki district in southeastern Moscow will send Medvedev a complaint signed by more than 1,800 people opposing construction of the mosque, mainly on the grounds that it might cause massive traffic jams in the area on Islamic holidays, activist Mikhail Butrimov told The St. Petersburg Times on Friday. Butrimov leads the movement Moi Dvor, or My Yard, which supports residents in their fight against the mosque. |
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FREEWHEELING
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Cyclists ride their bikes in central St. Petersburg. With the return of residents from their dachas and the start of the school year, traffic jams once again plague the city. |
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MOSCOW — Children’s ombudsman Pavel Astakhov flew Monday to the Dominican Republic to bring home a 12-year-old Russian boy who was abandoned in 2005 in the country by his Russian foster parents. Astakhov plans to bring the boy, Denis Khokhryakov, to Russia by Thursday, his press office said in a statement, RIA-Novosti reported. Khokhryakov, the son of an alcoholic single mother from the Volgograd region, was adopted by Larisa Onopriyenko and Sergei Sologub in 2003, the online daily Gzt.
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MOSCOW — A 52-year-old man was found hanged in a police clink in western Moscow in an apparent suicide — just as the Interior Minister promised to step up care for detainees and the selection criteria for officers. Nikolai Matryonin, who was detained for petty hooliganism, hanged himself using his own belt, Interfax reported Sunday. The man was drunk at the time of his arrest. The Investigative Committee opened an inquiry into the actions of precinct officers who could have prevented Matryonin’s suicide, the report said. Meanwhile, Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev said that people brought to police precincts would undergo medical examinations on arrival and release to make sure that they would not be able to make claims of police mistreatment. |
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 BEIJING — President Dmitry Medvedev was due to meet Chinese leaders Monday with energy cooperation high on the agenda as the Kremlin angles for even closer ties with the world’s second-largest economy. |
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MOSCOW — Former Soviet statesman Gennady Yanayev, who led the abortive 1991 coup against then president Mikhail Gorbachev, died Friday following an illness. He was 73. “Yanayev died after a long and painful illness. He was admitted the night before to a Moscow hospital,” a source at the hospital was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying. |
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MOSCOW — Russia faces an acute shortage of rehabilitation centers for drug users, Federal Drug Control Service chief Viktor Ivanov said at a government meeting Friday. |
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No Light for Mikhalkov MOSCOW (SPT) — The Defense Ministry violated state regulations when it equipped the car of the Oscar-winning film director Nikita Mikhalkov with a flashing blue light, the Prosecutor General’s Office said, Interfax reported Friday. A flashing blue light allows a vehicle to ignore some traffic rules and usually is reserved for state officials. |
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The ninth annual EABIS colloquium on corporate responsibility and emerging markets took place in the city last week. Co-organized by the Graduate School of Management (GSOM) of St. Petersburg State University, it was the first event on such a large international scale to be held in Russia in the field of corporate social responsibility (CSR). This year’s colloquium signified the progression of EABIS from the study of separate problems on collaboration between business and society to the complex analysis of the CSR phenomenon on emerging markets, primarily the BRIC countries. The debate was related to the changing roles of “old” and “new” multinationals as the main global CSR actors. |
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 VORSINO, Kaluga Region — Kaluga Governor Anatoly Artamonov touted the opening of French cosmetics maker L’Oreal’s first plant in Russia on Thursday as the latest step toward boosting his region’s fast-growing economy. |
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More than 1,000 participants are expected to take part in the third St. Petersburg International Innovation Forum, which opens Wednesday at Lenexpo exhibition center and runs through Friday. This year’s participants include the general director of Google Russia, Vladimir Dolgov; State Duma Chairman Boris Gryzlov, and the president of Russoft, Valentin Makarov. |
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MOSCOW — AvtoVAZ has decided to hang on to some of its noncore assets, including a subsidiary that is seeking a 1.2 billion ruble ($38.7 million) loan to build greenhouses for vegetable gardens, Vedomosti has learned. |
 MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev said Wednesday that he wants the Defense Ministry to create a unified research entity similar to one formed by the U.S. Department of Defense in response to the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik. “The country lacks an efficient structure that would deal with demand for so-called breakthrough research and development in the interests of defense and security,” Medvedev said at a session of the Presidential Commission for Modernization and Technological Development of Russia’s Economy. |
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Prime Minister Vladimir Putin held a videoconference in the early hours of Friday morning to congratulate Transportation Minister Igor Levitin and a group of workers on the completion of the Amur highway. |
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MOSCOW — Gazprom and Naftogaz Ukrainy plan to ask the Ukrainian government to amend legislation so that foreign companies can manage Ukraine’s gas pipelines, a Gazprom executive said Friday. Such amendments would give Gazprom the option of investing in Ukraine’s gas routes as part of its consortium with Naftogaz, said Anatoly Podmyshalsky, who heads Gazprom’s department for operations in former Soviet republics. |
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The world’s center of gravity is heading eastward so fast that we Europeans can almost feel the ground moving beneath our feet. Because almost all major actors on the international stage are redefining their roles in response to this tectonic shift, Europe must do the same. |
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Few things can ignite Russian society as much as a noisy case of criminal prosecution for computer piracy. When the case involves huge, powerful Microsoft versus human rights activists, the inevitable result is a barrage of news stories that produce more heat than light. |
 All over the world, Internet users entertain romantic delusions about cyberspace. To most of us web surfers, the Internet provides a false sense of complete freedom, power and anonymity. Every once in a while, of course, unsolicited messages and ads that happen to be mysteriously related to our most intimate habits intrude. |
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Russia was the big loser in the summer spy scandal when it lost its 10 “illegals.” In the subsequent spy swap, Moscow also lost four Russians convicted of spying for the United States and Britain. |
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 MOSCOW — As world military powers look to develop the biggest, baddest weapons, Russia’s armed forces are toying with an alternative: inflatable missiles, tanks and planes. Rusbal, a private Moscow-based company, makes inflatable S-300 missiles, T-80 and T-72 tanks, and Su-27 and MiG-31 fighter jets — all life-sized and, it says, extremely difficult to distinguish from the real thing when viewed by radar or satellite. |
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 TOKYO — Japan demanded Monday that China pull back two fisheries patrol boats from near a disputed island chain that is at the center of the worst diplomatic row in years between the Asian giants. Tokyo also summoned Beijing’s ambassador to demand regular consular access to four Japanese nationals whom China detained amid the ugly spat a week ago for allegedly filming a military facility. |
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JERUSALEM — Settlement building resumed across the West Bank on Monday just hours after a 10-month freeze expired, but the Palestinian leadership held back on a threat to quit peace talks with Israel over the move. |
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CARACAS — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s party won most seats in key legislative elections, but strong opposition gains robbed him of enough votes to easily pass reforms, electoral officials said Monday. The leftist president’s party won at least 94 of the 165 seats in the National Assembly, and the opposition had at least 62, officials said in reporting initial results from a gripping overnight count. |
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NEW DELHI — Hundreds of athletes moved into the Commonwealth Games village in New Delhi on Monday, as a row broke out over statements made regarding preparation for the Games. |
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The implications of the current economic problems in the West — which started with the 2008 financial crisis — on business education will be several, ranging from a change in emphasis in the curriculums to being reflected in the knowledge being taught on MBA programs. More focus will be placed on management skills that provide a deeper understanding of both national and international macro-economic risks for businesses. The implications of unprecedented deficit financing by governments on corporate finance, and the increasing uncertainties in international trade flows and foreign exchange markets (with their respective impact on operations and marketing, for example) will require greater emphasis. |
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 St. Petersburg-based Vadim Pak, who won a scholarship with Manchester Business School two years ago and is in the process of completing his MBA, talked to The St. |
 Applying to universities in the United States can be a grueling and labyrinthine process, especially for international high school students. Few high school students in the U.S. navigate this process effectively, so it is no wonder that Russian students have had a difficult time discerning exactly how to present themselves to admissions committees. Fortunately, Russian students, armed with a few simple tips, should be capable of competing with the most qualified applicants from around the world. |
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 Demand for foreign language courses in the city has picked up again since the peak of the crisis as companies resume their corporate programs and interest in non-European languages grows, representatives of local schools say. |
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Issues Archive