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MOSCOW — There are numerous curiosities to be found in the official returns of the March 2 presidential election. At a polling station in the Dagestani town of Kizilyurt, for example, more than 700 voters cast their ballots, but not a single one voted for President-elect Dmitry Medvedev, who captured more than 90 percent of the vote in the republic and more than 70 percent nationwide. While one could imagine a neighborhood where antipathy toward Medvedev runs aberrantly deep, one blogger has crunched official election results and found strikingly anomalous voter behavior across the country. Analyzing official returns on the Central Elections Commitee web site, blogger Sergei Shpilkin has concluded that a disproportionate number of polling stations nationwide reported round numbers — that is, numbers ending in zero and five — both for voter turnout and for Medvedev’s percentage of the vote. The statistical anomalies offer mathematical evidence of election fraud in Medvedev’s victory, math-savvy bloggers, election analysts and economists said. “This is an unnatural distribution, and it ... |
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HOLY HIKERS
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Participants in the “Under the Star of the Virgin Mary” religious procession setting off on Sunday. Believers are walking from St. Petersburg, Vladivostok, Barnaul, Yakutsk, Rostov-na-Donu, Arkhangelsk, Jerusalem and Holy Mount Athos in Greece to meet in Moscow. |
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MOSCOW — Russia’s biggest party created a new role of chairman on Monday and said it would ask President Vladimir Putin to take the job, a possible final clue to the riddle of who will really run Russia after he steps down. Putin has said he will serve as prime minister once his protege, Dmitry Medvedev, is sworn in as president on May 7. But for many ...
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MOSCOW — 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. “Russia will take steps aimed at ensuring its interests along its ... |
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MOSCOW — The Foreign Ministry said Friday that it had summoned Thailand’s ambassador to discuss what it called violations of the rights of Viktor Bout, ... |
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MOSCOW — 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. Kuznetsov, 64, fled the country in July, shortly after authorities began investigating him for purportedly disclosing state secrets by filing a complaint to the Constitutional Court that the Federal Security Service had illegally wiretapped the telephone of his client, former Senator Levon Chakhmakhchyan. The Moscow branch of the Investigative Committee formally charged Kuznetsov on Thursday, said Viktor Parshutkin, one of Kuznetsov’s lawyers. It was unclear whether Russia would seek Kuznetsov’s extradition, as it has with other high-profile suspects living abroad, such as businessman Boris Berezovsky and Chechen rebel envoy Akhmed Zakayev, both of whom have been granted political asylum in Britain. A spokeswoman for the Moscow branch of the Investigative Committee said Friday that no one would be available to comment until Monday. The crime Kuznetsov is accused of is punishable by up to four years in prison. Kuznetsov has defended high-profile clients against government charges and claims that the case against him is a politically motivated attack orchestrated by the Federal Security Service. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services granted Kuznetsov political asylum in February. Kuznetsov insisted that the bugging of Chakhmakhchyan’s phone was a violation of the former senator’s human rights and therefore could not be considered a state secret. |
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ART ATTACK
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Children learning to paint at the Sergei Andriyaka Watercolor School at the Manezh Exhibition Center. As well as masterclasses, the artist is holding an exhibition. |
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MOSCOW — Unidentified gunmen shot and killed a senior judge in Ingushetia, a restive province in the North Caucasus. Khasan Yandiyev, deputy chairman of Ingushetia’s Supreme Court, was driving his Mercedes through the town of Karabulak when the assailants fired automatic weapons at his vehicle, a law enforcement official told RIA-Novosti. The gunmen ...
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A non-political rally was stopped from taking place by the city administration on Friday, and a large contingent of police was sent to the rally’s planned location in the center — only to find that the demonstrators did not show up. The rally’s organizers ... |
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Women’s 10k in St. Petersburg ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — As many as 12,000 local women have signed up to participate in a 10-kilometer run to be held ... |
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Russia’s Police Ministry has said that the number of child sex crimes it has recorded in recent years has risen by more than 25 times as state officials and experts call for stronger punishments for pedophilia, including life imprisonment, execution or ... |
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MOSCOW — A British-based playwright has accused Russian authorities of Soviet-style censorship after her play, about a real-life hostage siege in Moscow, ... |
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 A British Virgin Islands court has ruled that that Sergei Yushchenko was legitimately dismissed and Vladimir Senkin legitimately appointed general manager of Lenta LLC, the local retail enterprise whose shareholders August Meyer and Oleg Zherebtsov are ... |
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NEW YORK — Russia, the world’s biggest energy exporter, plans to repay early about $3 billion owed the World Bank as oil and gas revenue help ease the ... |
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MOSCOW — The Moscow District Arbitration Court rejected a second appeal by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP’s Russian unit against a 380 million rubles ($16 million) back-tax claim, a spokeswoman for the auditor said. Investigators say the auditor illegally ... |
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Land for Sale at Auction ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The St. Petersburg Property Fund plans to auction off a land plot on Sytninskaya Ulitsa in the Petrogradsky ... |
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MOSCOW — 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. ... |
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MOSCOW — State Duma deputies floated radical plans on Friday to cut tobacco use after ratifying a United Nations anti-smoking convention. Potential measures ... |
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MOSCOW — 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 ... |
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KIEV — Mironovskiy Hleboproduct SA, Ukraine’s biggest poultry producer, plans to hold an initial public offering in London to fund its expansion. The company ... |
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MOSCOW — 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. “It does look much better than last month,” said James Fenkner, managing director at Red ... |
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 MOSCOW — Heineken, the largest Dutch brewer, said Friday that growth in its Russian beer sales would weaken this year as the market’s expansion slows. ... |
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MOSCOW — 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 ... |
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MOSCOW — The Russian language could help Moscow compete with financial hubs to lure companies from around the former Soviet Union to list on its bourses, ... |
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KIEV — 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. The agreement ... |
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NEW YORK — A Faberge icon in a silver frame studded with rubies, sapphires and emeralds and a gigantic tsarist-era porcelain centerpiece are among the ... |
 MOSCOW — 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. “Saving the lake is a task of global importance because high-quality ... |
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NEW YORK — The Russian government will allow banks to bid for as much as 600 billion rubles ($25.6 billion) in budget funds to shore up liquidity, said ... |
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MOSCOW — 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. Alexander Anisimov, deputy head of the local Independent Miners’ Union, said by telephone late ... |
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 KASHIRA, Moscow Region — The jewel in the crown of the Unified Energy System network, OGK-1, will be auctioned off Thursday as part of the culmination ... |
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 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 ... |
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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 ... |
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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 ... |
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If theIdes of March spelled trouble for Julius Caesar, mid-April makes millions of Americans wary — and without knives or men in togas. The gainfully employed ... |
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ROME — She had no desire to be just another smiling face in Italian politics. So when porn star Milly D’Abbraccio designed her campaign posters, it was obvious she was going to show off her bottom. Targeting her male fan base, the veteran of Italy’s adult ... |
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WASHINGTON — The World Bank plans to invest up to $3 billion over the next two to three years in stock and bond indices, to stabilize its income and safeguard ... |
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JERUSALEM — Israel’s secret service has declined to assist U.S. agents guarding former U.S. President Jimmy Carter during a visit in which Israeli leaders have shunned him, U.S. sources close to the matter said on Monday. Carter angered the Israeli government with plans to meet Hamas’s top leader, Khaled ... |
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 NARYAN-MAR, Nenets Autonomous District — When an airplane carrying LUKoil workers crashed in the far north of this Arctic region three years ago, killing 29 of 52 people on board, many blamed the weather. When, one year later, in March 2006, a helicopter carrying victims’ relatives to a commemoration ... |
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The Czech Republic conceded its Davis Cup quarterfinal to Russia on Sunday after Tomas Berdych injured his ankle against Nikolai Davydenko. World No. 9 Berdych fell when he lunged for a forehand baseline shot on a break point against Davydenko’s serve ... |
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AUGUSTA, Georgia — Trevor Immelman survived a double-bogey at the 16th hole to become the first South African to win the U.S. Masters in 30 years with ... |
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WASHINGTON — A boycott of Olympic ceremonies by world leaders over China‘s crackdown in Tibet would be an evasion of responsibility and less effective than quiet diplomacy, the U.S. national security adviser said on Sunday. The remarks by White House ... |
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LONDON — Manchester United surged six points clear at the top of the Premier League with a 2-1 comeback victory over Arsenal at Old Trafford on Sunday ... |
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Rubin Stays on Top BELGRADE (Reuters) — Surprise leaders Rubin Kazan stretched their perfect start to five matches after a brace by Turkey striker Gokdeniz Karadeniz helped them to a 4-0 away rout of Khimkhi. Dynamo Moscow stayed second, two points behind the leaders, after Bulgarian Tsvetan Genkov ... |
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 Cambridge, U.K.,-based Vladimir Bukovsky is a living link between today’s Russian opposition and the Soviet dissidents of the past. Bukovsky, who spent 12 years in a Soviet prison as a political prisoner before he was released and exiled to the West as the result of a strange exchange with a Chilean ... |
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