LOCAL NEWS

PURGE VICTIMS TO GET MEMORIAL CENTER

The Kovalevsky forest on the outskirts of St. Petersburg is to become home to Russia’s first memorial center for the victims of the Red Terror.

The forest, located in the Vsevolozhsky district of the Leningrad Oblast, houses the ruins of a former powder depot that served as a temporary compound for political prisoners who had been sentenced to death.

TRANSNEFT ACCUSED OF STEALING $4 BILLION

MOSCOW — The leaking of an official report suggesting $4 billion was stolen by Transneft insiders during the construction of a pipeline to the Chinese border was greeted Wednesday with the government offering congratulations to the state-controlled oil pipeline operator for completing the project.

CITY PREPARES TO HOST INTERNATIONAL TIGER SUMMIT

Heads of governments and ministers from the 13 countries that remain home to wild tigers will meet next week at the St. Petersburg International Tiger Forum hosted by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in an attempt to stop the decline of tiger populations.

IN BRIEF

Seaport Official Arrested

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The head of St. Petersburg Seaport’s property management was detained on suspicion of blackmail, Fontanka.

NATIONAL NEWS

CRIMINAL CASE OPENED AGAINST PARTY MEMBERS

By launching an “extremism” criminal case against St. Petersburg activists of The Other Russia, the authorities are attempting to stop the Strategy 31 campaign of rallies in support of freedom of assembly while devising a mechanism for banning the party on a federal scale, the party’s local leader Andrei Dmitriyev said this week.

COURT CLEARS EX-YEVROSET STAFF

MOSCOW — A jury on Wednesday acquitted nine former Yevroset employees on kidnapping charges in a surprise ruling that a lawyer for Yevgeny Chichvarkin, the company’s self-exiled founder, touted as a reason to drop related charges against his client.

In Brief

Man Falls in Metro

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A man fell onto the tracks at Sportivnaya metro station at 10.50 a.m. on Tuesday, Fontanka.ru reported.

The man was taken to hospital where he remains in serious condition, the news site reported Yulia Shavel, a spokesperson for the metro, as saying.

LOCAL BUSINESS

NOKIA SAYS IT WILL DO RESEARCH AT SKOLKOVO

MOSCOW — Nokia committed on Wednesday to open a research facility at the Skolkovo high-tech innovation center being set up outside of Moscow.

A memorandum of understanding was signed in a ceremony at the Moskva-City business center, with representatives of the Finnish communications company and the Skolkovo Fund taking part.

PLAN TO SELL STATE ASSETS AGREED

MOSCOW — The government expects to raise a total of 1 trillion rubles ($32 billion) from selling stakes in 10 state assets by 2013, Economic Development Minister Elvira Nabiullina said Wednesday.

CHICHVARKIN OFFERS HELPING HAND WITH IPO

MOSCOW — Former Yevroset co-owner Yevgeny Chichvarkin would be happy to lend a hand in the company’s upcoming initial public offering, he said in an interview published Tuesday.

“I have a lot of free time now,” he told the RBC Daily newspaper during a London interview.

DAILY MOSCOW COMMUTE INCREASES

Forty percent of Muscovites spend more than an hour each way commuting to work or school, according to a survey by the state-run VTsIOM polling agency published Tuesday.

OPINION

MAGNITSKY ONE YEAR ON

One year has passed since

37-year-old Sergei Magnitsky died while being held on trumped-up charges in a Moscow pretrial detention center. Magnitsky was a lawyer at Firestone Duncan law firm and defended Heritage Capital, once the largest foreign investment fund in Russia.

THE KHODORKOVSKY CANCER

Last week, a political leader who had spent the past seven years in custody was set free. That leader once began a speech with these words: “It is not power that corrupts but fear.

CULTURE

STATIONARY MOVEMENT

Local dance enthusiasts will get the chance to try their hand at something different this weekend with a surreal and extraordinary project titled “Butoh Great Spirit.”

The joint dance project between Bereg art center and the Japan Foundation, which takes place in the city this weekend as part of the “Japanese Autumn” festival, comprises a performance, master classes, film showings and an exhibition.

The creation of Butoh dance dates back to the post-war years — the period of student riots and anguish following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — and is usually associated with two names: Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno.

In the beginning, Hijikata created Ankoku-Butoh or “Dance of Darkness,” whose erotic, untamed content and movements represented a form of protest against the contemporary dance scene in Japan, which Hijikata believed was limited to imitating either the West or Noh, a traditional Japanese theater form.

CHERNOV’S CHOICE

Pete Doherty is due to perform in St. Petersburg for the first time ever this week. The former Libertine, who has played in Moscow a couple of times, will perform at 8 p.m. at Kosmonavt on Thursday. (Kosmonavt is a great new music venue opened in the former Soviet movie theater of the same name, close to Tekhnologichesky Institut metro.)

According to promoter Light Music, Doherty will perform solo, accompanying himself on guitar, and his set is expected to last no less than one hour and 40 minutes.

TALES OF A RUSSIAN WAR CORRESPONDENT

Anna Badkhen has covered conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kashmir, Somalia and the Middle East. Having grown up in Russia and worked for The St. Petersburg Times and The Moscow Times, Badkhen moved to the United States in 2004 and has since worked as a war correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle, The Boston Globe, The New Republic and Foreign Policy.

DOWN BY THE RIVER

Despite the grey skies, the glamorous floating restaurant moored in the proximity of the Avrora cruiser looked inviting. We weren’t really planning a cruise — though Volga-Volga offers several per day — and were more in the mood for a meal with a classic St.

WORLD

Qantas to Replace 40 Engines

SYDNEY — As many as half of the 80 Rolls-Royce engines that power some of the world’s largest jetliners may have to be replaced after an oil leak caused a fire and the partial disintegration of one on a Qantas flight this month, the Australian national airline’s chief executive said Thursday.

The 40 potentially faulty engines on the Airbus A380 would need to be replaced with new engines while the fault is fixed, raising the specter of engine shortages that could delay future deliveries of the 7-story-tall superjumbo.