The Moscow Times

Market Matters: Markets Lose Steam After St. Pete Bump
As Russia's business and political elite wound up their weekend gathering in St. Petersburg, the local markets received a short-term lift, but wider concerns over global inflation lingered through the week.

News

Medvedev Won by Curious Numbers
By Nabi Abdullaev / Staff Writer There are numerous curiosities to be found in the official returns of the March 2 presidential election.

Privatized, But Not Yet Liberalized
By Nadia Popova / Staff Writer The jewel in the crown of the Unified Energy System network, OGK-1, will be auctioned off Thursday as part of the culmination of a decade-long sector reform that will see the electricity monopoly officially cease to exist on July 1.

United Russia Plans to Offer Putin Reins
By Nabi Abdullaev / Staff Writer At a two-day congress that opens Monday in Moscow, the pro-Kremlin United Russia party will offer President Vladimir Putin formal membership and its leadership, a senior party official said Sunday.

Kuznetsov Charged in Absentia
By Francesca Mereu / Staff Writer Lawyer Boris Kuznetsov, who was granted political asylum in the United States earlier this year, has been formally charged in absentia with divulging state secrets, his lawyer said Friday.

Top Commander Threatens to Arm Borders
Reuters Russia will take military and other steps along its borders if ex-Soviet Ukraine and Georgia join NATO, news agencies quoted the armed forces' chief of staff as saying on Friday.

Ingush Supreme Court Judge Shot Dead
The Moscow Times Unidentified gunmen shot and killed a senior judge in Ingushetia, a restive province in the North Caucasus.

Foreign Ministry Protests Violation of Bout's Rights
Reuters The Foreign Ministry said Friday that it had summoned Thailand's ambassador to discuss what it called violations of the rights of Viktor Bout, an alleged Russian arms dealer in prison in Thailand.

German Man Suspected Spy
The Associated Press A German man who purportedly passed documents on products with a possible military use to a Russian intelligence agent has been charged with espionage, German prosecutors said Friday.

8 Killed in Moldova Crash
The Associated Press A Sudanese-owned transport plane laden with fuel crashed shortly after takeoff from an airport near the Moldovan capital and burst into flames, killing all eight people on board, authorities said Saturday.

Author Says Censors Halted Hostage Play
Reuters A British-based playwright has accused Russian authorities of Soviet-style censorship after her play, about a real-life hostage siege in Moscow, was canceled on its opening night.

Police Say Body Found Likely Artist's
The Associated Press Berlin police have found a body that is probably that of a missing Russian artist who had been condemned by the Orthodox Church for an exhibit in her home country, authorities said Friday.

Cold War Photographer Dies at 82
The Associated Press Burt Glinn, a photojournalist who covered key historic moments of the Cold War while working with the Magnum Photos agency, including Fidel Castro's 1959 march on Havana and Nikita Khrushchev's visit to the United States that year, has died. He was 82.

HIV Outbreak Leaves Kyrgyz Families Struggling
By Leila Saralayeva / The Associated Press Dilfuza Mustafakulova was a contented wife and mother who helped support her family by working as a teacher in the village school.

Leaders of Moldova, Transdnestr Hold Talks
The Associated Press Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin met the leader of the breakaway Transdnestr republic in eastern Moldova on Friday, the first meeting between the two leaders in seven years. The meeting took place in the town of Tighina, also known as Bender, in an area controlled by the pro-Russian separatists, said Mark Tkaciuc, Voronin's political adviser.

EU Makes Human Rights Priority With Central Asia
The Associated Press Human rights will be a priority in the European Union's relations with Central Asia, a senior EU envoy said Thursday.

Vandals Desecrate Muslim Graves
The Associated Press Vandals have desecrated a Muslim cemetery on Ukraine's Black Sea Crimea peninsula, highlighting persistent ethnic tensions in the region, officials said Friday.

Breaking Down the Power Plan
The Moscow Times Anatoly Chubais, the overseer of Russia's privatization process in the 1990s, took over as chief executive at the country's electricity monopoly in 1998, when the company was in danger of bankruptcy.

Carter to Talk With Hamas
The Associated Press Former President Jimmy Carter said he feels ""quite at ease"" about meeting Hamas militants over the objections of Washington because the Palestinian group is essential to a future peace with Israel. Carter appeared to be getting a cool reception in Israel because of his planned meeting with the head of Hamas. A schedule released by the U.S.-based Carter Center showed no plans for the former president to meet Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni or Defense Minister Ehud Barak during this week's visit, which was beginning Sunday.

Tallies Show Nepal's Maoists Ahead
Reuters Nepal's Maoists were marching to victory in the Himalayan nation's first election in nine years, latest tallies showed on Sunday, a result almost nobody had expected.

Zimbabwe to Recount Ballots
The Associated Press Zimbabwean authorities said Sunday that they would recount the votes from nearly two dozen parliamentary races as the ruling party sought to overturn election results that cost it control of the legislature for the first time in the nation's history.

Italians Vote in Election for 62nd Postwar Government
Reuters Italians voted on Sunday in a parliamentary election that could bring conservative media magnate Silvio Berlusconi back to power for the third time to deal with a deep economic and social malaise.

Business

Serbia Eyes UES Arm for Electricity Work
By Nadia Popova / Staff Writer Inter RAO, Unified Energy System's import and export arm, said Friday that it would sign a protocol Monday with Serbian state-controlled electricity monopoly EPS that could lead to a number of lucrative contracts, a move experts said had political overtones.

Naftogaz, RosUkrEnergo Sign Contract
Bloomberg, Reuters Naftogaz Ukrainy, Ukraine's state-run energy company, said Friday that it signed a contract with Swiss-registered RosUkrEnergo on importing natural gas from Russia, despite efforts by the prime minister to eliminate energy middlemen.

Governor Calls for Pulp Plant on Lake Baikal to Be Moved
Bloomberg Irkutsk Governor Alexander Tishanin on Friday demanded the relocation of a pulp plant that is polluting Lake Baikal, which holds about one-fifth of the world's fresh surface water.

Banker Calls Language a Listings Draw
Bloomberg The Russian language could help Moscow compete with financial hubs to lure companies from around the former Soviet Union to list on its bourses, a Central Bank official said Friday.

Paid Trips to Space May End
The Associated Press Federal Space Agency chief Anatoly Perminov said Friday that the country might stop selling seats on its spacecraft to ""tourists"" starting in 2010 because of the planned expansion of the international space station's crew.

Duma Ratifies UN Anti-Tobacco Treaty
By Max Delany / Staff Writer State Duma deputies floated radical plans on Friday to cut tobacco use after ratifying a United Nations anti-smoking convention.

X5 Soars on Inexpensive Karusel Buy, Earnings
By Maria Ermakova / Bloomberg X5 Retail Group, the country's largest supermarket chain, rose the most in almost six months in London trading after reporting a 61 percent sales increase and saying Friday that it would buy the Karusel chain for less than analysts expected.

Heineken Sees Sales Weakening
By Maria Ermakova and Joram Kanner / Bloomberg Heineken, the largest Dutch brewer, said Friday that growth in its Russian beer sales would weaken this year as the market's expansion slows.

Retailers Prefer Own Stores to Acquisitions
Bloomberg Russian retailers prefer to expand by opening their own stores, rather than acquiring competitors, because the scarcity of potential targets has made takeovers too expensive, PricewaterhouseCoopers said Friday. Companies that opt to expand without purchases made up 56 percent of respondents polled by the accounting firm. The study was based on 23 online interviews with Russian retail companies, New York-based PwC said in an e-mailed statement.

Kudrin Boasts of Growth on IMF Visit
By Halia Pavliva / Bloomberg Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said Friday that the economy would expand faster than initially forecast this year, even as growth in the U.S. slows in the next two quarters.

75 Miners Start Hunger Strike in Wages Dispute With RusAl
The Moscow Times Seventy-five workers at United Company RusAl's North Ural Bauxite Mine in the Sverdlovsk region began a hunger strike Sunday, a union leader said.

Opinion

It's Not All About High Oil Prices
By Yaroslav Lissovolik The key economic priority in Russia is to maintain the high economic growth rates that it has achieved over the past eight years, and recent growth performance has certainly been encouraging. There are reasons to believe that this growth will remain high despite further shocks from global financial turbulence. This is due to the shift in the country's development from fragmentation to integration. The repatriation of capital and labor resources, the decrease in the size of the shadow economy and the country's increased role in the global economy are prominent examples of the country's integration, all of which played a major role in its post-1998 growth performance. This ""integration theory"" challenges the traditional view that high oil prices were the predominant reason for the country's economic expansion.

City Wise

Catch Something Fluttering By
By Lara McCoy Roslof What to Do

Arbat & Main

You Aren't Where You Went
By Mark H. Teeter If the ides of March spelled trouble for Julius Caesar, mid-April makes millions of Americans wary -- and without knives or men in togas. The gainfully employed must lock 'n' load their No. 2 pencils for the annual showdown with the Internal Revenue Service (guess who wins), while high school seniors face an even more fateful reckoning: By April 15, the annual college admissions sweepstakes is finally over, and students must decide where to start the rest of their lives in the fall.

Business in Brief
40% Gas Price Hike by 2011TMK Seeks to Raise $1.3BlnCoffee Brands BoughtYushchenko Suspends SalesLUKoil to Sell U.S. StationsPharmstandard Share SalesFor the Record

From Activist to Arab Expert
By Maria Antonova / Staff Writer A member of the Komsomol in her youth, Tatyana Gvilava has embraced the business world.

Restaurant News
By Nathan Toohey It's not uncommon for warm weather to roll into Moscow and catch the local cafe scene unprepared.

Fashionable Asian Mix
By Nathan Toohey / Staff Writer Neglinnaya is a pretty posh street, lined with fancy stores, self-important banks and five-star hotels.

News in Brief
Media Rebuttal BillBookkeeper Detained, FreedExhibition ClosedDetainee Denied MedicineDeath Toll Hits 9

Silencing Protest With Balloons and Concerts
By Matthew Collin From my balcony in the center of Yerevan, the Armenian capital, I heard a sudden volley of bangs, as flashes of light illuminated the evening sky. A few weeks earlier, I'd been standing in the same place as the crackle of tracer bullet fire resounded in the night. Some people called this ""Bloody Saturday,"" as nine people were killed in pitched battles as riot police put down protests against Serzh Sargsyan's disputed presidential election victory. But this time, the explosions were celebratory -- a display of fireworks ending the day last week when Sargsyan was sworn in to office. This time, nobody died.

Davis Tie Handed to Russia by Injury
Reuters The Czech Republic conceded its Davis Cup quarterfinal to Russia on Sunday after Tomas Berdych injured his ankle against Nikolai Davydenko.

Those Ukrainian, Iranian NATO Blues
By Richard Lourie On the surface, it seems Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin each got what they wanted most at the NATO and Sochi summits. Bush is moving forward with the placement of anti-Iranian missiles in Poland, and Putin kept Ukraine out of NATO, at least for the time being.

Market Matters

Oil and Metals Shine as RTS Breaks 2,100
By Catrina Stewart / Staff Writer The RTS, the country's benchmark stock index, breached the 2,100 barrier for the first time this year, as oil and metal stocks pulled away from the field.

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