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MOSCOW — Rosatom committed to build Venezuela’s first nuclear power plant, while the South American country agreed to allow Rosneft and TNK-BP to purchase oil assets in Europe and Venezuela as part of a package of 10 agreements signed during a visit by President Hugo Chavez. “A deal in the atomic sphere has just been signed. … I am not sure who will be shaken up by this, but President [Chavez] said that this will elicit different emotional responses from various countries,” President Dmitry Medvedev said Friday, alluding primarily to the United States. He emphasized that the deal was done strictly for business reasons. The United States has been at odds with Chavez over his foreign policy and frequent outbursts against “the Yankee state.” The Venezuelan leader has said in the past that the United States was “on the way down” and used “earthquake weapons” in Haiti. |
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BODY BEAUTIFUL
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A boy examines an exhibit at ‘The Human Body: The Dead Teach the Living’ on Saturday. The exhibition is currently running at the Tolstoi Square shopping complex at 9 Ulitsa Lva Tolstovo. |
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MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev told Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Sobyanin that his priorities as Moscow’s next mayor would be to battle traffic jams and corruption in order to attract more investment. Medvedev announced his decision to name Sobyanin as mayor late Friday, fulfilling expectations raised early that morning when the web site of Rossia One state television prematurely broke the news about Sobyanin’s nomination.
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Infertility problems were at the center of scientific and public attention Thursday when more than 90 members of the medical community and representatives of City Hall gathered at Smolny for the first St. Petersburg international conference devoted to the issue. |
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MOSCOW — A Chechen convicted of slaying Ruslan Yamadayev, a former State Duma deputy and powerful rival of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, on a Moscow street in 2008 was jailed for 20 years Monday, while the Chechen who drove the getaway car got 15 years. |
All photos from issue.
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 MOSCOW — The first nationwide census in eight years picked up steam over the weekend, with both the president and the prime minister attempting to lead the populace by example, meeting with census takers before cameras Saturday. President Dmitry Medvedev, who met a census taker in his residence in the Moscow region’s Gorki village, offered the young woman tea and cookies before answering her questions and even telling how he worked as a census taker in 1989. He said it took him a week to poll every household in the building he was assigned, but he succeeded. “In the end, I reached those who did not respond immediately anyway — I was a persistent man and had more time, being a postgraduate student,” Medvedev said, RIA-Novosti reported. |
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GOLDEN AUTUMN
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A fall landscape at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery on Sunday. Forecasters are predicting rain for much of the week, with temperatures falling to zero degrees Celsius at night. |
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Dozens of St. Petersburg residents attended a rally Saturday to protest plans to demolish the three-story Jurgens House, a historic building in the city center, as the developer Luksor that owns the building waits for final approval from the state construction watchdog. Russian architect Emmanuil Jurgens (1827-1880) built the house at 19 Ulitsa Zhukovskogo for his family in 1865.
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MOSCOW — Moscow police have detained a Peruvian transsexual for attacking and robbing a Muscovite who refused his advances, Moskovsky Komsomolets reported Monday. The 27-year-old male victim, whose name was withheld, was approached by the transsexual in the restroom of an Internet cafe in southwestern Moscow, police officer Valentina Tolcheva told the newspaper. |
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Kindergarten Boss Hit ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The head of one of St. Petersburg’s kindergartens was found dead in an apartment in the city’s southwest at the weekend, a law enforcement source told Interfax on Monday. |
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MOSCOW — U.S. lawyer Jamison Firestone, Hermitage Capital head William Browder and Russian opposition activists face possible charges after police opened a defamation investigation at the request of the senior Interior Minister investigator implicated in the prison death of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. |
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MOSCOW — In the latest bid to fight poor attendance by lawmakers, State Duma deputies are considering installing an expensive video surveillance system able to identify their own members in their dimly lit assembly hall, Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported Thursday. |
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MOSCOW — A wealthy businessman unveiled plans Thursday to create a new party, sparking debate about whether it was another Kremlin-backed project for the 2011 parliamentary elections or the independent initiative of an ambitious entrepreneur. Partia Dela — or Party of Action — offered a populist platform that was light on specific policies, with one notable exception. The party will seek to reinstate direct elections for regional leaders, a policy that recently ousted Mayor Yury Luzhkov has said he plans to campaign for. “We think that a political discussion is needed to create a better environment in the country, and the wrong economic course should be corrected. |
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 MOSCOW — Famed film director Nikita Mikhalkov looms large over a dispute about the collection of fees on imported electronic devices and blank recordable media, a business that could be worth $100 million per year. |
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MOSCOW — A German businessman has claimed success in a multiyear effort to confiscate Kremlin property, saying a court in Stockholm has ordered an arrest on Russian state assets in Sweden. Judge Sakari Alandar of the Stockholm district court, or Tingsr?tt, confirmed Thursday that a decision was made Oct. 11 to seize $4.7 million in property owned by Russia, following a complaint by Franz Sedelmayer. The multimillion-dollar sum is based on an arbitration award that Sedelmayer won in Stockholm in 1998, Alandar told RIA-Novosti. He added that the seizure has not taken place because a fitting real estate object has yet to be identified. Sedelmayer, however, told Kommersant in an interview published Thursday that Swedish court marshals had already seized buildings belonging to Russia. |
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 MOSCOW — Trade relations between Britain and Russia are slowly improving because of inherent commonalities and high level exchanges, said Chris Gilbert, director of the Russian-British Chamber of Commerce. |
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MOSCOW — State Duma Deputy Vladimir Gruzdev’s family foundation will sell its share of food retailer Sedmoi Kontinent to entrepreneur Alexander Zanadvorov, booking a profit on the investment and freeing up funds to build affordable housing in the Moscow region. |
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St. Petersburg’s industrial production index (IPP) for the first nine months of this year was 108.6 percent compared to the same period last year (108. |
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St. Petersburg company Vtorchermet, a Severstal filial specialized in the purchasing and processing of industrial scrap, has won a tender to process the waste of the Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Rus factory, Severstal announced last week. The company expects to receive 200 tons of metal each month from Hyundai. |
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SOCHI — Formula One chief Bernie Ecclestone signed an agreement Thursday for Russia to host a Grand Prix from 2014 to 2020 after talks with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Russian business leaders. |
 As the flagship of the Russian polar fleet, the Akademik Fyodorov, returns from a research expedition in the Arctic Ocean aimed at finding evidence that areas of the continental Arctic shelf belong to Russia, governments continue to dispute the issue, mediated by the UN. |
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MOSCOW — The Communications and Press Ministry is seeking 80 billion rubles ($2.6 billion) next year to help government agencies deploy systems that will allow citizens to get services through the Internet, a ministry official told reporters Thursday. |
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 Although the appointment of Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Sobyanin to the post of Moscow mayor was widely expected, the news set off a barrage of emotional opinions on the Russian Internet. Most were negative. Sobyanin was already being criticized for being a nobody, not a public politician and, most damningly, the closest associate of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin among all the candidates for mayor. |
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Recently, an American friend — an investment banker with a wide range of interests — complained to me about the lack of coverage of Russia in the U.S. media. |
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 The conference business, which has been going through a rough patch as a result of the economic crisis, along with almost every other sector, is showing some signs of a renaissance. Although conference organizers have been struggling, 2010 has brought some obvious positive tendencies, experts say. The tasks facing conference organizers have become more complex as a result of the crisis, says Anastasia Pospelova, a project manager at Vedomosti newspaper’s conference department. |
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 As the popularity of conferences and forums grows around the world, St. Petersburg’s experts — both in the field of organizing events and in providing venues for them — share their experience and offer advice on how to make such events interesting and successful. |
 Edgard Pauly, General Manager, Novotel Hotel It really would be difficult to give too much praise to this city in terms of what it has to offer to those coming here to take part in or organize a conference. First there is the city’s very convenient geographic location. Then there’s the “who we are” factor, in terms of this city’s unique history as a former imperial capital and as a key national symbol. |
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 On one thing, all those involved in organizing conferences are agreed: The conference should run like clockwork. But before any preparations can get underway, the first task is to decide on the location of the conference — whether in the city center or out of town. |
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 MOSCOW — Author Gary Shteyngart, who was in Moscow promoting his new book “A Super Sad True Love Story,” is no stranger to mocking Russia’s foibles. The son of Soviet Jews who moved to the United States with his parents at age 7, Shteyngart has skewered Russian emigres in “The Russian Debutante’s Handbook” and “Absurdistan.” In his current book, however, he turns his satirical sights to his adopted homeland. In Shteyngart’s dystopian America, the Chinese yuan pegs the U.S. dollar, the unitary Bipartisan Party has replaced political factions, and everyone communicates through digital devices that broadcast their credit score and sexual ranking the moment they enter a room. |
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BUTTERFLY EFFECT
/ Reuters
A butterfly perches on a boy’s nose during a visit to St. Petersburg’s butterfly garden Sunday. The garden houses exotic plants and tropical butterflies from South America. |
 MOSCOW — The first word that comes to mind when I think of “Konstantin Raikin: An Evening with Dostoevsky” at Moscow’s Satirikon Theater is “luxury.” It is hardly the only word; hundreds more will follow. But it is surely the most unexpected, which makes me want to start with it. Konstantin Raikin. Alone on stage. Valery Fokin at the director’s table.
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 This week, the former Bolshoi ballerina Anastasia Volochkova, sacked for being too “fat,” is interviewed by OK! magazine. She is a pretty entertaining character, what with her plastered-on makeup, her decision to wear three dresses at her wedding (pink, white and pistachio), and her ambition to be mayor of the Olympic town of Sochi — sadly foiled when she forgot to put her date of birth on the application form. |
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MOSCOW — Five leading Internet companies published an open letter on their web sites Thursday urging Russian lawmakers to exclude intellectual property rights infringement from their realm of responsibility, and proposing what they say are internationally accepted methods to address the problem. |
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In response to “Medvedev Meets Musicians, Makes Putin Crack” by Sergey Chernov, published on Oct. 15. Dear Editor, I have always believed your newspaper to be a model of impartiality. On Oct. 15, I read your article by Mr. Chernov and I realized that I have been very much mistaken. The article was about President Medvedev’s meeting with our country’s famous musicians. |
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 MOSCOW — Anyone who was single, in a sexual relationship and working in the business empire of Vasily Boiko-Veliky was forced to say their marriage vows before a clergyman last week or be fired. “A holy man lives according to God’s rules, and people who follow religious rules are the best employees,” Boiko-Veliky, 51, said during an interview in his office, surrounded by icons and books on religion. |
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 BAGUIO, Philippines — Super Typhoon Megi smashed into the northern Philippines on Monday, causing landslides in mountainous areas, whipping up huge waves along the coast and killing at least one person. Forecasters said Megi was the strongest storm to hit the Philippines since Typhoon Durian unleashed mudslides that buried entire towns and killed over 1,000 in 2006, and was likely the most powerful in the world this year. |
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TOKYO — Japan’s Prime Minister Naoto Kan urged China on Monday to guarantee the safety of Japanese companies and citizens after a wave of rowdy weekend protests sparked by a bitter territorial row. |
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TEHRAN — Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was in Tehran on Monday to garner support for his premiership bid, as his chief rival Iyad Allawi accused Iran of meddling in Baghdad’s political affairs. Maliki flew to Tehran from Amman and went straight into a series of meetings, including with Iran’s first vice president Mohammad Reza Rahimi and with supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to local media. |
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PARIS — French truck drivers blocked roads as protests against pension reforms intensified Monday after the prime minister vowed to do whatever necessary to stop fuel supplies running out. |
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Issues Archive