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 Investigative journalists from the Fontanka.ru online newspaper owned by the Agency for Journalistic Investigations have alleged that there is a St. Petersburg connection in the 1995 murder of Vladislav Listyev, one of the most popular hosts in the history of Russian television. |
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MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Saturday ordered state-owned oil pipeline monopoly Transneft to improve transparency and disclose information about pricing policy and investment programs. |
 The number of cars in St. Petersburg may reach the critical level of 1.7 million by next year, making traffic movement inside the city almost impossible, experts say. During the first half of this year, the number of vehicles in St. Petersburg grew by 5 percent, Mikhail Brodsky, a representative of City Hall, told Delovoi Peterburg newspaper. |
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City Hall issued a permit on Saturday for the March Against Hatred, due to be held on Sunday, Oct. 31. Dedicated to scholar and hate crimes expert Nikolai Girenko, who was murdered by extremist nationalists in 2004, the event will be held on Oct. |
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MOSCOW — Yury Luzhkov has applied for a British visa but has no plans to abandon Russia after being ousted as Moscow’s mayor last month amid a flurry of state television reports linking him and his wife to possible corruption, Lifenews.ru reported Monday. |
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MOSCOW— Gay rights activist Nikolai Alexeyev has sued veteran human rights activist Lyudmila Alexeyeva for calling him a liar, Interfax reported Friday. |
All photos from issue.
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After five years of success in Moscow, the American film festival Amfest will be arriving in St. Petersburg for the first time this weekend. From Thursday to Monday, eight U.S. fiction and documentary films shot in 2008, 2009 or 2010 will be screened at Dom Kino, all of them in English with Russian subtitles. “We will show the independent part of the program that we had at the beginning of October in Moscow, where about a third of the program consisted of mainstream movies,” said Alexei Layfurov, programming director of the festival’s organizer, Coolconnections. “It is composed of films that we spotted at international festivals and that have never been shown in Russia before,” added Layfurov. |
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 MOSCOW — A crowd of up to 2,000 gathered on Moscow’s Pushkin Square on Saturday to demand the ouster of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his Cabinet — just as the State Duma tightened the screws on legislation on protests. |
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Flights Canceled ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Finnish airlines had to cancel about 20 flights Monday due to a strike by Finnish engine mechanics, though flights between St. Petersburg and the neighboring Finnish capital Helsinki were unaffected. On Tuesday up to half of all flights by Finnish airlines were expected to be canceled, and on Wednesday all Finnish flights may be paralyzed, Fontanka.ru reported. If the strike continues, Finnair, Finncomm and Blue1 may cancel all their flights. The strike is not however expected to affect the work of other foreign airlines. About 900 motor mechanics are taking part in the strike to protest labor conditions, including reduced working hours for elderly workers. |
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 Prosecutors on Friday demanded that jailed former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky be imprisoned for an additional six years if convicted in a politically charged second trial, which is seen as a test of President Dmitry Medvedev’s commitment to the rule of law, Reuters reported. |
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MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev made a rare personal response with his Twitter microblogging account on Friday, answering a young student’s request for birthday wishes in a chipper tone at about 1 a.m. It was one of few occasions that Medvedev has sent a Twitter message to a private citizen despite the thousands of messages directed toward him since he signed up for the service in June. |
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MOSCOW — The number of impoverished Russians has decreased in recent years and life expectancy has grown, but 14 percent of the populace is still living below the poverty line and gender discrimination remains rampant, a new UN study says. |
 MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin quickly filled the vacancy created by Sergei Sobyanin’s move to City Hall on Thursday by picking State Duma Deputy Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin as his new chief of staff. Volodin, a staunch Putin ally nicknamed the “margarine oligarch” by the media for his interests in vegetable oil factories, was also appointed as a deputy prime minister by President Dmitry Medvedev, thus acquiring similar political weight to Sobyanin. |
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MOSCOW — New Mayor Sergei Sobyanin on Thursday promised to invest city funds into social issues rather than private companies and hinted that he would revise the Genplan, a disputed plan for the city’s development through 2025. |
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 Russia, once the world’s third-biggest wheat exporter, has extended a ban on overseas sales of grain until July 1 to ensure domestic supply after drought damaged crops, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Friday, Bloomberg reported. More than one-third of the country’s grain crop was ruined by the worst drought in at least a half-century, prompting the government to impose a grain-export ban Aug. |
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MOSCOW — Turkmenistan and Russia bolstered their natural gas relationship on Friday during a visit by President Dmitry Medvedev to his counterpart Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, with both sides hedging their bets as the Chinese market grows and the European one shrinks. |
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MOSCOW — Several major energy companies signed the first capacity supply agreements Thursday in a ceremony that started laying the groundwork for future investment into the Russian energy industry. Siberian Coal Energy Company, known as SUEK, along with OKG-6, Fortum, Inter RAO and others signed the agreements with the industry’s self-regulating groups such as the Market Council. |
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MOSCOW — The traditional fall discussion about the country’s preparation for winter was preceded by an optimistic discourse about hosting the Ice Hockey World Championship and welcoming a new Moscow mayor on board at Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s Cabinet meeting Thursday. |
 MOSCOW — The Russian Academy of Civil Service has started one of the most ambitious anti-corruption programs yet, and it’s aimed directly at the source of the problem — bureaucrats. By the end of this year, as many as 500 officials from the Interior Ministry, the Prosecutor General’s Office and other government agencies will have completed a one-week course at the Kremlin-run academy on how to combat corruption. |
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MOSCOW — United Company RusAl on Friday rebuffed a “derisory” $9 billion offer from billionaire Vladimir Potanin to buy its 25 percent stake in Norilsk Nickel. |
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 Web sites devoted to job vacancies are facing serious competition in the form of another kind of web site altogether: Social networking sites. Of 3,500 top and middle-level managers surveyed by Antal Russia, 70 percent of candidates consider social networking sites to be one of the most useful sources for finding interesting job offers. |
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As the serious economic downturn of the last two years appears to recede, the financial situation of St. Petersburgers is improving. More than half of St. |
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Russia’s estimated 13 to 15 million disabled people face a range of difficulties, not least of which is finding a job. “Although every disabled person has the right to apply to the state employment agency to find a job, in reality it is difficult for jobseekers with physical or any other kind of problems,” said Grigory Trofimov, coordinator of the Association for Helping Disabled People and Those with a Limited Ability to Work. “It is strange, but at such employment agencies there is no distance training or possibility of contacting consultants by e-mail or telephone. You have to be there in person every time.” “Of course, we have a lack of financial support from the state,” he added. |
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 Women in Russia are often paid up to 40 percent less than men for doing the same job, according to data compiled by Ancor recruitment agency. HR experts say that so-called oblique discrimination — when, with the use of various bonuses and incentives, men officially have the same salary as women, but are in fact paid more — is widespread. |
 Along with salary and career growth opportunity, social benefits are among the top criteria for job hunters, according to data from HeadHunter recruitment portal. The Labor Law guarantees employees the right to paid sick leave, an official salary, a paid 28-calendar day vacation and obligatory medical insurance. |
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During the past three years the number of vacancies at French companies operating in Russia has increased by six times, according to research carried out by HeadHunter recruitment portal. |
 While as recently as three years ago, the government had no plans to raise the retirement age in Russia, the prospect of such a move today seems ever more likely. Last week, the Ministry of Finance said it was possible that the retirement age for men could increase from the current age of 60 to 62, and from 55 to 60 for women. |
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 When I gave my first public speech as secretary-general of NATO just over a year ago, I focused on the NATO-Russia relationship because I believe that it is crucial for global, not just European, security. At that time, I thought the relationship to be in urgent need of repair and that NATO and Russia should make a “new beginning. |
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Russian policy is now driven by two factors: the imperative to modernize and the fear of China. Both dictate a move to the West, which is now well under way. |
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 KABUL, Afghanistan — A raid by NATO soldiers and a subsequent airstrike in southern Afghanistan killed 15 insurgents on Monday, NATO said, although a local official initially reported a higher death toll. NATO confirmed there had been an operation involving coalition and Afghan security forces to detain a senior Taliban leader followed by an airstrike in Helmand province. |
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TIJUANA, Mexico — A client at a drug rehab center in the Mexican border city of Tijuana said Monday that a gang of armed men burst into the building and gunned down 13 recovering addicts there. |
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PARIS — France’s massive strikes are costing the national economy up to 400 million euros ($562 million) each day, the French finance minister said Monday, as workers continued to block ports, oil refineries and trash incineration plants to protest a plan to raise the retirement age to 62. |
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TOKYO — The leaders of India and Japan signed a sweeping agreement Monday to increase trade and agreed to speed up talks toward a civilian nuclear energy deal — despite sensitivity in Japan over India’s past atomic test blasts. |
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Issues Archive