|
|
|
 For two years, a 36-year-old bear who performed during the 1980 Moscow Olympics has been kept with other retired circus animals in a rusty old bus parked on the outskirts of St. Petersburg.
Animal rights activists say they receive only minimal care in their cramped and stinking cages.
Katya the bear was a longtime star of the Bolshoi St. Petersburg State Circus on the Fontanka, where night after night she and another bear delighted children by riding motorcycles around the ring.
During the 1980 Summer Games, the bears were applauded by thousands at a ceremony opening the football competition in St. Petersburg, then called Leningrad. Katya also performed in two movies released in the 1980s.
Since her retirement in 2009, Katya and the painted bus on which she once toured with the circus have not left a parking lot near a busy highway. The aging bear spends the long hours jumping up and down in her cage and trying to crack the rusty metal railings with her chipped and yellowed teeth.
Dozens of other retired circus animals also live in the smelly cages placed inside the bus and a minivan parked nearby. |
|
DEJA VU
MISHA JAPARIDZE / The Associated Press
A shop assistant changes the ruble to dollar exchange rate to 30 rubles per dollar at an exchange booth in Moscow on Tuesday. The ruble lost nearly 3 percent against the dollar Tuesday to a six-month low on the back of the U.S. debt downgrade and a sharp fall in oil prices. |
|
Mariinsky Theater artistic director Valery Gergiev dismissed rumors that the opening of the theater’s second stage would be delayed until 2015 at a news conference last week.
Responding to media speculation that the new venue, which is currently due to open in a year’s time, will not open its doors to spectators until 2013 or even 2015, Gergiev said that although the deadline for the end of the construction is currently being finalized, the maestro will personally make sure that no procrastination occurs.
|
|
Lenta Feud Resolved
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The long-running corporate feud at Lenta has ended after the U.S. private equity firm TPG secured control of the local retailer, Reuters reported Tuesday.
TPG, Russian bank VTB Capital and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development together acquired 44 percent of Lenta for $1. |
All photos from issue.
|
|
|
|
 Russia’s top diplomat called Georgia’s president “a pathological case” who was “very badly brought up” on Monday, signaling no easing of tensions between Moscow and Tbilisi on the third anniversary of the brief 2008 war over South Ossetia.
As a token gesture of goodwill, a Russian air carrier started regular flights between Moscow and Georgia’s city of Kutaisi. But Georgian diplomats faced expulsion from offices in downtown Moscow where electricity was cut off last week. |
|
 MOSCOW — An An-24 plane carrying 36 passengers and a crew of five crash-landed Monday in stormy weather in the capital of the Amur region on China’s border, injuring 12 people, emergency officials said. |
|
BAKU, Azerbaijan — Azerbaijan’s first post-Soviet leader, Ayaz Mutallibov, has returned to his home country for the first time after 19 years in exile to attend his son’s funeral.
Araz Alizade, who co-founded Azerbaijan’s Social Democratic Party, said Tuesday that Mutallibov’s son died of cancer and is to be buried at the family plot in the capital, Baku. |
|
MOSCOW — The Libyan oil tanker fleet could soon be sold to Russian investors, as speculation swirled Tuesday about a reported $300 million deal with the Gadhafi regime, which is under economic sanctions imposed by the United Nations, the United States and the European Union. |
|
MOSCOW — Right Cause’s billionaire leader Mikhail Prokhorov accused United Russia officials on Tuesday of orchestrating the removal of more than 200 billboards bearing his portrait in three cities.
Campaign advertising for the State Duma elections in December is not allowed until the fall, but Prokhorov has financed hundreds of billboards, nominally to promote his web site, made-in-russia. |
|
The Supreme Court upheld on Tuesday the verdict for a former intelligence colonel sentenced in absentia on charges of betraying U.S.-based Russian sleeper agents last year, RIA-Novosti reported. |
|
MOSCOW — A top medical school in Moscow is deeply mired in a scandal over this year’s new students — three-quarters of whom either don’t exist or never applied for enrollment.
The Prosecutor General’s Office on Friday began a check into the Russian State Medical University, which struggled to fend off allegations that its enrollment scheme was a large-scale scam. |
|
MOSCOW — A Belgian national and a Muscovite were detained in the capital over the weekend on suspicion of having sex with three boy prostitutes in public, news reports said Monday. |
|
A Ukrainian court on Monday rejected lawyers’ requests to free former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko from jail during her abuse of office trial, a case the West has condemned as selective justice.
Thousands of supporters and opponents — some claiming they had been paid to show up — broke a police chain outside the security-heavy hearing for the country’s top opposition leader. |
|
|
|
|
The ruble lost more than 3 percent of its value against the dollar, while Russian markets fell in a frantic sell-off on Tuesday triggered by the U.S. debt downgrade and a sharp fall in oil prices.
High oil prices through most of the year helped the government post an unexpected budget surplus, which analysts say could help Russia weather the turmoil as long as it’s brief. |
|
MOSCOW — Russian Railways hopes to complete the share sale of its Freight One cargo subsidiary this year, company president Vladimir Yakunin said Friday. |
|
|
|
 There is little doubt that the embarrassing spectacle of the trial of former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko — and her recent arrest on contempt charges during the proceedings — is causing great damage to Ukraine. And there is little doubt that how Ukraine develops will be of great importance for Europe’s future. |
|
I rarely tell happy stories in this column. Indeed, quite a few of them can be regarded as the obituaries of those who suffered the effects of Russia’s heartless bureaucracy or the country’s unjust social system. |
|
|
|
 “An urgent desire to take a long shower is an appropriate response to watching ‘The Devil’s Double,’ so unsavory is the experience of being immersed in the world of Saddam Hussein’s Caligula-like son Uday and his double, Latif Yahia,” is how Todd McCarthy, a film reviewer with the respected Hollywood Reporter, felt after watching Lee Tamahori’s latest film, which received a special prize at the St. Petersburg International Kinoforum last month.
Tamahori, the director of “Die Another Day,” “The Edge” and “Mulholland Falls,” is full of surprises. |
|
DOMINIC COOPER STARS IN ‘THE DEVIL’S DOUBLE.’ FOR INTERVIEW WITH THE FILM’S DIRECTOR LEE TAMAHORI |
 MOSCOW — Imagine yourself riding a bicycle into Moscow’s Red Square amid a throng of cheering fans with your hands held high in the air. Local charity Downside Up is offering anyone that chance with its annual Charity Red Square Bike Ride.
The 16th annual ride runs Aug. 26 to 28 and — after a 166-kilometer journey through the Kaluga region — ends with a final stretch of six kilometers along the Moscow embankment and into Red Square.
|
|
Ñòó÷àòü: knock, hit, bang, pound
Now that Awful August has begun, you’re likely to see a lot of people surreptitiously spitting over their left shoulder or knocking on wood to ward off the evil that tends to befall Russia this month. Being a good wood-knocker myself, I got interested in the word ñòó÷àòü (knock, pound, bang). With a few prefixes, you can give someone a good and varied pounding.
The unadorned ñòó÷àòü is what you use for superstitious rituals: ñòó÷àòü ïî äåðåâó (knock on or touch wood). Or what you do on a door, figuratively or literally: ß çíàþ, ÷òî åñëè ñòó÷àòü âî âñå âîçìîæíûå äâåðè, òåáå ãäå-òî îòêðîþò è ïîìîãóò (I know that if you knock on every possible door, somewhere someone will open it and help you). |
|
 MOSCOW — Moscow may not be considered the culinary capital of the world, but recently 20 of the world’s best chefs met here to exchange recipes and tips on what to serve world leaders. |
 Last week, Forbes magazine published its list of the highest-earning Russian stars in entertainment and sports, and the top place went to chanson singer-songwriter Stas Mikhailov — who was not even in last year’s rating.
Mikhailov earned $20 million last year, and his name was entered an amazing 14. |
|
High Steaks
Ginza Project’s enormous and diverse restaurant empire now boasts a steakhouse. Ribeye opened in June on the first floor of the upscale former Vanity boutique on Kazanskaya Ulitsa whose top floor houses Ginza’s ever-popular Terrassa. |
|
|
|
 Most Russians know Samara as the country’s aeronautics manufacturing capital. Far fewer would think of it as the birthplace of the nation’s beer industry — yet the local brand, whose history is a metaphor for the town as a whole, has become synonymous with beer itself. |
|
Kaliningrad residents won’t get a chance to vote on whether they want a nulcear power plant in their backyard.
The Baltic exclave’s legislature has blocked a public referendum on the construction of a nuclear power plant, Interfax reported Monday. |
 TEHRAN, Iran — An Iranian lawmaker said the country’s first nuclear power plant will not be on line by late August as planned and blamed the delay on Russia, which is building the facility, local media reported Monday.
The disclosure by Asgar Jalalian, a member of a special parliamentary committee for the Bushehr nuclear plant, reflects the continued difficulties Iran has faced in moving forward with its controversial nuclear program. |
|
 AMSTERDAM — Federal Security Service archivists have published new material from a German officer imprisoned after World War II who shared a cell with Raoul Wallenberg, the missing Swedish diplomat credited with rescuing tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews. |
 LONDON — Britons swept up, patched up and feared further violence Tuesday, demanding police do more to protect them after three nights of rioting left looted stores, torched cars and blackened buildings across London and several other U.K. cities.
Police said they were working full-tilt, but found themselves under attack — from rioters roaming the streets, from a scared and worried public, and from politicians whose cost-cutting is squeezing police numbers ahead of next year’s Olympic Games. |
|
BEIRUT — The Syrian army launched raids on restive areas Tuesday, defying growing international reproach over the regime’s deadly crackdown on a 5-month-old uprising as Turkey’s foreign minister met with President Bashar Assad to express his concern. |
|
TOKYO — The United States sent a representative for the first time Tuesday to the annual memorial service for victims of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, one of two nuclear attacks that led Japan to surrender in World War II.
The U.S. bombing of Nagasaki 66 years ago killed some 80,000 people. Three days earlier, the U. |
Temp: -1°C clear 
Issues Archive