Word: russian
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What can you get for a single unit of Britain's poor, battered currency? Not much - apart from power, influence and an entrée into the highest echelons of the British establishment. These are the potential byproducts of an agreement reached on Jan. 21 by Russian oligarch and politician Alexander Lebedev to buy London's largest newspaper, the Evening Standard, from its current owners Associated Newspapers for the nominal fee of one pound sterling...
...bargain-basement price is arguably the least startling aspect of a transaction that if confirmed next month following a staff consultation process - and barring any intervention by the British government - will open a new and bizarre chapter in Anglo-Russian relations. Lebedev, after all, is a former KGB operative, who spied on Britain under diplomatic cover during the Cold War, by his own account scouring news sources such as the Standard for tidbits to feed to his handlers back home. His exotic pedigree has caused a few splutters. Richard Ottway, a Conservative MP, said he felt that "the fact that...
...peak, that fortune was believed to be around $3 billion, amassed after Lebedev abandoned espionage in 1992 in favor of a more lucrative occupation as a businessman. Lebedev became chairman of Russia's National Reserve Bank and acquired a substantial stake in Russian national carrier, Aeroflot. The smoothest path to prosperity in Russia is to court the political establishment, not to challenge it, but Lebedev has not shied away from political activism. In September 2008 he joined forces with former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to found an opposition movement called the Independent Democratic Party of Russia. In partnership with Gorbachev...
...Against that background, the prospect of owning the Standard must seem like a walk in the park, even as Lebedev contemplates plowing "tens of millions of pounds" into the loss-making publication. He told the Financial Times the Standard could be used "to help [Russian Prime Minister Vladimir] Putin to fight corruption" in Russia, but has also promised to maintain the paper's editorial independence. (See pictures of Putin's youth camp...
...Pond and Herbert Senn were well worth the price of admission and generated audible awe at the rise of the curtain for the second act. The second act might be the one realm in the ballet trajectory that is familiar to almost everyone. Anyone can hum along to the Russian dance, even as Jared Redick wows with a series of split jumps reaching extraordinary levels of elevation and flexibility. An implausibly hyperextended Kathleen Breen Combes in the Arabian dance was sultry and intoxicating, as was her partner, Jaime Diaz. And was there ever a Dew Drop who lived...