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 MOSCOW — NATO and Russia declared an end to an era of confrontation at a summit in Lisbon on Saturday, but uncertainty lingers over how they can move their current cooperation on terrorism and fighting drug trafficking to the areas of nuclear security and missile defense. “It is a very important stage of building productive, full-fleshed and partnership relations between Russia and NATO,” President Dmitry Medvedev told reporters after the NATO-Russia summit Saturday. A day earlier, NATO adopted a new strategic concept that officially says the alliance no longer considers Russia a threat and pledges to expand security cooperation with Moscow. NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen was even more upbeat Saturday, calling the summit “historic” and a “fresh start” in the alliance’s relations with Moscow. |
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MEETING OF MINDS
Alexander Demianchuk / Reuters
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin (c) shakes hands with St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko next to MMK’s majority owner and chairman Viktor Rashnikov as he attends the opening of a pressed metal articles factory outside St. Petersburg on Monday. |
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In the wake of the scandal around local teacher Olga Kharitonova, who was severely beaten by the stepfather of a first-grade pupil in front of her class, the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly is considering providing 400 million rubles ($12.9 million) in funding to equip all local schools and kindergartens with video-surveillance. Kharitonova, who spent the last three weeks on sick leave after being attacked, returned to work Monday.
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Protesters holding Orthodox Christian church banners and icons, singing prayers and throwing eggs helped to bring the city’s first authorized lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) demo to an abrupt end in St. Petersburg on Saturday. According to organizer Maria Yefremenkova, around 20 counter-demonstrators were already at the site of the planned demo when around 10 LGBT activists arrived. |
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MOSCOW — State Duma Deputy Ashot Yegiazaryan is living in the United States and is ready to cooperate from there with investigators pressing fraud charges against him, his lawyer said Friday. |
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Tourists Killed in Egypt ST. PETERSURG (SPT) — Nine tourists, including several Russians, were killed and 36 others were injured in Egypt after an overloaded bus flew off the highway and flipped over several times Friday evening, RIA-Novosti reported Sunday. The bus, owned by a small company in Hurghada, carried tourists from Russia, Germany and Ukraine who had booked a tour to Cairo, the local governor said, adding that the bus was going well above the speed limit. |
All photos from issue.
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 An Israeli wanted in Colombia for training militias that killed hundreds returned home Saturday after he was released from a Moscow jail, disappointing activists and victims who have tried for years to bring him to justice. Yair Klein is accused of training far-right paramilitary groups in the 1980s that stole land and murdered Colombians during a decade-long reign of terror across the countryside. |
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A Delta Air Lines jet bound for Moscow returned safely to New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport and made an emergency landing after an engine problem. |
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Woman Decapitated ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A women’s headless body was found in St. Petersburg’s Pavlov State Medical University, Fontanka.ru web site reported Monday. According to the journalistic investigation agency AZhUR, the corpse was that of a 59-year-old secretary of one of the university’s heads of department. The police department of the Petrograd district has detained a Chinese citizen on suspicion of committing the crime. The man was formerly a student at the university but was expelled in 2008. Shepherds Killed ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Two Georgian sheepherders were shot dead and 500 sheep stolen at a farm located 40 kilometers south of the capital, Tbilisi, the country’s Interior Ministry said Friday, Bloomberg reported. |
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 MOSCOW — Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov should be called as a witness in the trial against three men accused of killing Chechen refugee Umar Israilov, a court in Vienna said Friday. |
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BANGKOK — The wife of accused Russian arms trafficker Viktor Bout said Monday she will sue Thailand in an attempt to get him released from U.S. custody after the Southeast Asian nation extradited him last week. At a news conference in Bangkok, Alla Bout also said that her husband would fight the case against him and not cut a deal with U. |
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MOSCOW — A former official with the Office for Presidential Affairs was taken into custody Friday on suspicion of bribery. Moscow’s Zamoskvoretsky District Court authorized on Friday the arrest of Vladimir Korniyaka, who together with another former official from the Office for Presidential Affairs, Igor Yerashov, is suspected of extorting a $10,000 bribe while auditing a department in a medical institution that illegally leased out some of its premises for commercial purposes, news reports said. |
 WASHINGTON — In their showdown over the New START treaty with Russia, Democrats and Republicans are charging each other with undermining national security. Who’s right? President Barack Obama’s administration is pushing for a vote this year on New START; Republicans want a delay until a new Congress convenes in January. |
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 The auction of the Astoria hotel building that was scheduled for Nov. 19 was last week postponed until May 25 next year. The city’s Property Fund had put up for auction the historic building of the Astoria hotel, which has a total area of 16,998 square meters and stands on 0.3 hectares of land, for 2.5 billion rubles, or $80.6 million (2.18 billion rubles excluding VAT). The building is currently rented by Gostinichny Komplex Astoria (Astoria Hotel Complex) through 2046 at a fixed rate, which from November 2009 till August 2011 is 3. |
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 MSOCOW — Imports of handmade cigars should return to pre-crisis levels in 2012 after falling by nearly half last year, Russia’s exclusive importer of Cuban cigars said Thursday. |
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Russian mobile network operator Megafon presented new technology Monday that will enable Petersburgers to pay for the metro using their cell phone. Another Russian operator, MTS, and the U.S. firm Ambiq have comparable projects. The project is based on NFC (Near Field Communication) technology that enables the exchange of data between devices over a small distance. |
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Island Agreement ST. PETERSBURG (Vedomosti) — Two days after Roman Abramovich’s company won the tender to redevelop New Holland Island, City Hall concluded an amicable agreement with the former investor of the project. |
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MOSCOW — Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin garnered praise for his openness when he spoke Friday at a conference on taxation in Moscow, but his words made few happy: Business will pay more taxes, and by a lot. New taxes will amount to 2 percent of gross domestic product next year, Kudrin said. |
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MOSCOW — A managerial revolution is underway at Moscow’s Polytechnic Museum, the modernization of which is now Rusnano’s responsibility. The team of the new director, who calls himself a crisis manager, will have to both pull the institution out of crisis and transform it into a modern museum of science and technology. |
 NEW YORK — A businessman once accused of bribing officials in Kazakhstan with tens of millions of dollars was praised as a Cold War hero Friday by a judge who said he helped thousands of Soviet Jews emigrate to the West. U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley III made the comments about James Giffen, 69, as he sentenced him to time served for a guilty plea to a misdemeanor tax count. |
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 President Dmitry Medvedev has called the weekend NATO summit in Lisbon a historic event. NATO’s new strategic concept stressed that the alliance is no threat to Russia. Moscow has agreed to expand its logistical support for the alliance’s effort in Afghanistan. |
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In Yokohama, Japan, at the end of his 10-day Asia swing, U.S. President Barack Obama made a point of reassuring President Dmitry Medvedev that Senate ratification of New START would be his “top priority” during the lame-duck session of Congress. |
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 St. Petersburg’s closest Baltic neighbor is gearing up for the nearest major European film festival to St. Petersburg. Pimedate Oode Filmifestival (translated as the Black Nights Film Festival from Estonian, and known as POFF), is held in Tallinn, less than an hour away by plane or about seven hours by bus. Intentionally or otherwise, the festival counterpoints St. Petersburg’s White Nights festival, a music, ballet and theater festival that takes place in the city every summer. |
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 Last week, in the ultimate fluffy news story, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin hugged a puppy and invited us to think of a name. The male puppy was a gift from the Bulgarian prime minister as Putin visited for talks on a gas pipeline. |
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 MOSCOW — Russian universities are seething after failing to win international recognition in a year when the country has been galvanized by Kremlin calls for modernization. So angry are they that some are calling for the creation of Russia’s own university ranking system. Some might say the problem boils down to a “Squirrel Institute” mentality — an arrogance by scholars that causes them to refuse to learn English or publish their research in English. |
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LONDON — Stocks and the euro currency got an early boost Monday from Ireland’s application for a massive emergency loan, but fears of further financial problems in Europe reined in the optimism. In Europe, the FTSE 100 index of leading British shares was down 9. |
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RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Saudi Arabia’s 86-year-old King Abdullah handed over duties to his crown prince on Monday and left to the United States for treatment of a blood clot and slipped disc, the palace said. |
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Issues Archive