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MOSCOW — Trying to understand what is new in the Kremlin’s latest version of its 176-page bill to reform the police force could take considerable time. So the Kremlin, in line with its mantra to fight corruption with transparency, has published the entire bill online — complete with editor’s marks so readers can see what has been crossed out with a green line. The result, lawmakers and analysts said, is a significantly improved bill that takes into account many critical public comments posted on a government web site that carried the initial draft of the bill in August. “More passages have been clarified in the new bill, but many things regarding public control are still unclear,” said Alexander Brod, a human rights activist and a member of the Public Chamber. |
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Mikhail Klimentyev / Kremlin / RIA Novosti / Reuters
President Dmitry Medvedev takes pictures Monday during his visit to Kunashiri Island, one of four islands known as the Southern Kurils in Russia and as the Northern Territories in Japan, and claimed by both countries. The islands were seized by the Soviet Union at the end of World War II. |
 The authorities stepped up repressive measures against Sunday’s Strategy 31 rally in defense of freedom of assembly in St. Petersburg, holding detained activists at police precincts overnight, searching activists’ apartments and investigating several participants for suspected extremism. If they are found guilty, they will face up to three years in prison.
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MOSCOW — As of Monday, a small but devoted army of amateur pilots are able to take to the sky with an hour’s notice instead of waiting 24 hours to get permission from federal authorities. The change might seem small, but aviation authorities call it a revolution for the air industry that promises to help kick-start private aviation by bringing it closer to Western norms. |
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MOSCOW (SPT) — Paratroopers commander Vladimir Shamanov was rushed to the hospital with serious injuries sustained in a car crash that killed one and injured two other military officials near Tula on Saturday morning. |
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LGBT Pride March ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The city’s Moskovsky district administration turned down the request of the St. Petersburg gay movement to organize a meeting on Nov. 5, the St. Petersburg LGBT Pride organization said on its web site Friday. The local LGBT community had submitted a list of three different proposed locations for their meeting: Ploshchad Chernyshevskogo, the vicinity of the Peterburgsky Sport and Concert Complex and the area around the Russian National Library. |
All photos from issue.
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St. Petersburg residents are finally being offered a civilized way to get rid of broken mercury thermometers, used batteries, dead car batteries and other dangerous waste in an ecologically safe way. The Ecomobile, a mobile center for the collection of dangerous waste, was introduced on a trial basis on May 1 this year by the city’s Nature Use, Environment and Ecology Safety Committee, and was unveiled to the press and public by the committee last week. The minibus travels around the city and collects waste from certain points at regular intervals. “Today we are giving every citizen the opportunity to demonstrate their civil responsibility and return dangerous waste to a special service,” Alexei Petrov, deputy head of the Environment Committee, said at the press conference Wednesday. |
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 Cardboardia, a virtual and temporary country, will come to St. Petersburg this week after visiting Moscow, Berlin and Helsinki. Anyone can join in, be creative and even sell their artwork during the festival, which opens at the Bye Bye ballet studio located at 9 Ulitsa Belinskogo near Gostiny Dvor metro on Wednesday. |
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KABUL, Afghanistan — Russian counternarcotics agents participated in a NATO-led drug raid that netted $56 million worth of heroin and morphine, but Afghanistan’s president complained that he had not been informed in advance of the Russian involvement, and his administration demanded a formal apology. Nine helicopters and 70 men were involved in the raid, Viktor Ivanov, head of the Federal Drug Control Service, said Friday, adding that his agency told the United States where the labs were located. Just a week earlier during a trip to Washington, Ivanov accused the United States of failing to dismantle such labs and slow down the flow of heroin into Russia. |
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 Mikhail Kukushkin of Kazakhstan won his maiden career title, upsetting top-seeded Mikhail Youzhny 6-3, 7-6 (2) Sunday in the final of the St. Petersburg Open — his first final appearance. |
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MOSCOW — United Russia intends to team up with the country’s computer gaming community to create educational and social games, the party announced on its web site, and it has the support of a cybergaming group. “I think it is time for interaction between the party and the gaming community,” said Sergei Shirokov, president of the National Professional Cybersport Leagues. |
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MOSCOW — A Kremlin official said Friday that the government would implement by year-end a system for tracking statistics on the fulfillment of presidential orders. |
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Army Numbers Down MOSCOW (SPT) — The military has finished trimming down army personnel from 1.2 million to 1 million as part of its ongoing reform, Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov said Sunday, Interfax reported. Officers make up about 150,000 of the staff, and professional sergeants about 100,000 to 120,000, with the rest being conscripts, Serdyukov said in an interview with Rossia One state television. |
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SAMARA — French power company Schneider Electric and its Russian joint venture partner, Electroshield, will be “closely involved” in the $3 billion modernization of three Rosneft oil refineries, Schneider Electric president Jean-Pascal Tricoire said Friday. The Kremlin-owned oil company Rosneft has allocated $3 billion to upgrade the Samara region refineries over the course of the next five years, Governor Vladimir Artyakov said. Local authorities say they would like to see a domestic company involved in the project. “This joint venture is now viewed as our [local] company,” Artyakov said, encouraging Schneider Electric’s involvement in the project and promising his support. |
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 MOSCOW — Rosatom signed an agreement Sunday to build the first nuclear power station in Vietnam as President Dmitry Medvedev wrapped up a two-day visit to the country. |
 MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has appointed Anna Popova, a deputy economic development minister described by colleagues as a staunch liberal, as the first deputy for his new chief of staff, Vyacheslav Volodin. Putin signed the order Monday and it was published the following day on the government web site. |
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KALUGA — Canadian auto parts maker Magna on Thursday launched its new plant in Kaluga, and said this demonstrated its belief in the strong potential of Russia’s automotive market. |
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MOSCOW — A large number of counterfeit spare parts for the aviation industry enter Russia from former Soviet republics, jeopardizing flight safety on both military and commercial aircraft, Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said Thursday. Ivanov cited Transportation Ministry statistics from an inspection of more than 60,000 aircraft parts that exposed about 14,500 counterfeits. “In plain Russian, they’re all fakes,” Ivanov said, Interfax reported. In 2009 and 2010 alone, the Federal Customs Service filed 19 criminal cases and more than 300 misdemeanor cases in connection with aircraft parts imports, he said. Most of the counterfeit parts are imported to Russia illegally from bordering countries, he said. |
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 MOSCOW — The European Union announced Thursday that it has initiated legal action against four of its own member states in an unusual attempt to end a long-running dispute with Russia regarding overflight fees. |
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MOSCOW — Sales of Apple’s iPad will officially begin in Russia after the November holidays, and although mobile operators will not be selling the popular tablets independently, they are already planning special Internet rates. Mobile TeleSystems and VimpelCom are preparing new rates for iPad users, spokeswomen for the two mobile operators, told Vedomosti. The exact terms of the pricing have yet to be determined. MTS will offer an unlimited rate with payment charged from the user daily, said the company’s spokeswoman Irina Osadchaya, adding that those terms were Apple’s preference. An Apple spokesperson declined to comment on the matter. MTS said its iPad plan would also take into account the services most frequently used on the device — sending e-mail, browsing the web and watching videos on YouTube. |
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 NEWARK, New Jersey — Billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov said the New Jersey Nets will improve, although he backed off his bold prediction of making the playoffs this season. |
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EAST RUTHERFORD, New Jersey — New Jersey Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov said the NBA team has entered into a sponsorship agreement with Aeroflot, marking the first alliance the airline has made with a professional sports team in the United States. The deal was announced Wednesday, less than three weeks after the Nets and vodka company Stolichnaya agreed to a five-year alliance with the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York, where the team is scheduled to move in 2012. |
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 Film director and self-proclaimed monarchist Nikita Mikhalkov caused a big stir Wednesday when he released his 10,000-word political manifesto titled “Right and Truth.” The main theme of the manifesto was that Russia needs a strong leader who will guide the country along its “special path” to become prosperous and powerful. |
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Dear Editor, Until relatively recently, discussions of the possible partitioning of Russia into independent enclaves or even states have been considered unpatriotic and frowned upon. |
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 The heroine of Alexei Fedorchenko’s new movie “Ovsyanki” (Silent Souls) — a tender, subservient woman from provincial Russia — is a wordless role. Yulia Aug’s character, Tatyana, does not utter a single word throughout the 75-minute movie, which was an instant success at the Venice Film Festival earlier this year, where it won an International Film Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI) Prize. “Ovsyanki,” which has since received other awards, including the best feature film award at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival, was released in Russia late last month and has been playing at St. |
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/ For The St. Petersburg Times
Eurovision Song Contest 2006 winners Lordi, a Finnish rock band, will play songs from their new album at Zal Ozhidaniya on Friday. |
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St. Petersburg is preparing to welcome an influx of musicians, dancers and actors from the city of Perm this weekend as part of the Cultural Alliance project between the two cities. The Days of Culture of Perm in St. Petersburg will see a host of diverse exhibitions and theatrical performances as Perm artists present their works through November and December.
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SAN’A, Yemen — Al-Qaeda in Yemen, suspected in a thwarted mail-bombing attempt, appears to be aggressively seeking to recruit American and European radicals who could provide an entryway for the group to carry out attacks in their homelands. Yemen provides a potentially easy entry point for foreign radicals to link up with al-Qaeda, with a number of popular Islamic religious and Arabic-language schools that attract students from around the world. |
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BEIJING — China kicked off a once-a-decade census Monday, a whirlwind 10-day head count that sees 6 million census takers scrutinize apartment blocks, scour migrant areas and scan rural villages to document massive demographic changes in the world’s most populous country. |
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