Former rugby sevens player Vuyo Zangqa talks about taking the reins of the Narvskaya Zastava Rugby Club and growing the sport on snow-baked fields
Just as tourism was beginning to recover, an attack on a busload of South Africans highlights the dangers of travelling in Egypt
‘Russians do not refer to “the Russian Revolution” — they call it “October”’
Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan has said the outcomes of the G20 summit shows that everyone is aiming towards balanced economic growth.
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In St Petersburg, an underground arts movement is challenging the zeitgeist of greed, using kindness to turn old buildings into Utopias of creativity.
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/ 29 February 2012
Saint Petersburg passed a controversial law banning "homosexual propaganda", in defiance of protests by gay rights groups.
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/ 19 February 2008
Top-ranked tennis stars Roger Federer and Justine Henin received the Laureus Awards on Monday as the world’s top sportsman and woman for 2007. Federer won an unprecedented fourth Laureus, all in succession, while Henin was voted top for the first time. South Africa won the world team of the year award after going unbeaten to win the Rugby World Cup.
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/ 26 November 2007
President Vladimir Putin accused Washington on Monday of plotting to undermine December parliamentary elections seen widely as a demonstration of his enduring power in Russia. Putin, drawing on resurgent nationalist sentiment ahead of Sunday’s poll, also said Russia must maintain its defences to discourage others from ”poking their snotty noses” in its affairs.
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/ 26 October 2007
World number four Nikolay Davydenko has been fined 000 for not trying hard enough during his shock defeat by Croatian qualifier Marin Cilic at the St Petersburg Open on Thursday. ”Nikolay Davydenko was fined 000 for lack of best effort in his second-round match against Marin Cilic,” the governing body for men’s tennis, ATP, said in a statement on Friday.
Riot police wielding batons beat, kicked and chased anti-Kremlin protesters through the heart of St Petersburg on Sunday, a day after Russian authorities snuffed out a similar rally in Moscow. In the last few months police tactics against opposition marches have been to forcefully clear them off the streets after a certain period of time.
To ride in a golf cart or not to ride? That was the question driving a wedge between Group of Eight (G8) leaders even before they sat down for talks on Sunday. The G8 leaders were trying to bridge differences on the Middle East, energy and Iran’s nuclear programme. But on how to travel around the summit site they looked far apart.
Group of Eight (G8) leaders on Monday launched a fresh bid to pin down an elusive global trade pact, seeking to give a positive outcome to a big-power summit riven by discords over the Middle East. Hopes of progress towards unblocking deadlocked world trade talks raised spirits at the end of the G8 summit in St Petersburg.
Group of Eight (G8) leaders have been told Iran is seriously considering a package of incentives aimed at getting it to halt its nuclear programme, South African President Thabo Mbeki said on Monday. He said he passed on that message during his meetings with G8 leaders in the Russian Federation.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair was on Sunday night seeking to orchestrate concerted European pressure to prod a reluctant France into bigger cuts in farm protection as stalled global trade talks entered a make-or-break two weeks. The French president said the summit was not the venue for trade talks and insisted that the G8 should confine itself to an annual -billion package of aid.
World leaders were concluding an annual economic summit on Monday in hopes that their statement blaming Middle East fighting on Hamas and Hezbollah and recognising Israel’s right to self defence would help break the cycle of violence.
World leaders pledged on Sunday to keep Africa’s woes in mind and to track actively their progress on cutting poverty and supporting development, a move welcomed by campaigners. British Prime Minister Tony Blair put assistance for Africa at the top of the agenda at the Group of Eight summit he hosted in 2005 but this year’s host Russia initially ignored the topic.
The leaders of the Group of Eight industrialised nations will seek on Sunday to close a widening rift over how best to calm violence in the Middle East. Israel’s bombing of Lebanon has forced its way to the top of the agenda of the G8 summit in St Petersburg, driving a wedge between the United States, a strong backer of Israel, and those who say Israel is being too violent.
The United States and Russia announced on Saturday a plan to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons by setting up international enrichment centres as their leaders sought to give a boost to a big-power summit. US President George Bush and Russia’s Vladimir Putin unveiled the initiative at a news conference after talks ahead of a Group of Eight summit that starts in earnest on Sunday.
Russian and United States negotiators failed on Saturday in marathon talks to strike a bilateral deal to pave the way for Russia to join the World Trade Organisation, a US trade spokesperson said. A Kremlin spokesperson said talks would keep going but gave no details. ”The Russian-American negotiations are continuing and will continue,” Dmitry Peskov told a news briefing.
United States President George Bush was expected to press President Vladimir Putin at a weekend G8 summit over concerns the Russian leader is reining in the rights of the country’s opposition and media. Pledging to ”continually remind Russia” that good ties with the West depend on sharing common democratic values, Bush was due to arrive in St Petersburg from Germany on Friday.
Finance ministers from the world’s most-industrialised nations were upbeat on Saturday about the state of the global economy, despite global jitters over rising interest rates and tumbling stock indices. While the final statement issued by the Group of Eight ministers focused firmly on the dangers of galloping oil prices, it made no mention of the recent declines on world markets.
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/ 21 October 2005
A 93-year-old driver apparently suffering from dementia fatally struck a pedestrian and drove for 4,8km with the man’s body through his windshield, police said. Ralph Parker was stopped after he drove through a toll booth on the Sunshine Skyway, traffic homicide investigator Michael Jockers said.
Sex offenders tracked by the state are banned from public hurricane shelters in Florida under a new policy that allows them to weather the storms in prison instead. The policy was created to keep sex offenders and predators away from children, said Robby Cunningham, spokesperson for the Department of Corrections.