SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1019 (86), Tuesday, November 9, 2004
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TITLE: Deputies Oppose End of Nov. 7 Holiday
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Deputies of the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg, the cradle of the Russian Revolution, on Thursday voted against moves to shift the Nov. 7 holiday of the revolution's anniversary to Nov. 4. 
 
That is what has been proposed in a bill backed by the pro-Kremlin United Russia party and Vladimir Zhirinovsky's nationalistic Liberal Democrat party. The State Duma is to vote on the proposal on Wednesday.
 Vadim Tyulpanov, speaker in the Legislative Assembly and head of the St. Petersburg branch of United Russia, tried to water down the city lawmakers' objections so as to avert possible tensions with his colleagues at the federal level, city deputies said.
 A bill presented in the State Duma last week proposed getting rid of the Nov. 7 holiday, which in Soviet times commemorated the 1917 Great October Socialist Revolution and since 1996 has been named the Day of National Reconciliation and Accord, and replacing it with a holiday on Nov. 4 to be called the Day of People's Unity. 
 The revolution took place in October according to the old-style Julian calendar in force before the revolution, but under the Gregorian calendar adopted afterward it was in November. 
 The bill also suggests extending the New Year holidays from Jan. 1 until Jan. 5, abolishing the celebration of the Constitution Day on Dec. 12, and cutting the Labor Day celebration on May 1 from two days to one day.
 Local deputies were last week invited to back the bill and, if they had any objections, to file them in a supplement.
 "In its first version the document said that we approve everything, suggesting that objections would only be allowed in the supplement," Oleg Nilov, the Legislative Assembly deputy who initiated amendments to the original document, said Monday in a telephone interview.
 "I said that that while the document itself would be presented to federal officials, the supplement could be just lost in which case it would appear as if we were in favor," said Nilov, who is a member of Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov's Party of Life.
 Nilov's amendment resulted in a heated debate in the city parliament that is controlled by a United Russia majority, but in the end the document was passed with the objections recorded in the resolution itself, not in the supplement, the deputy said.
 "The word 'no' has disappeared from the vocabulary of our representatives, who are obliged to click their heels in front of officials of a higher rank," Nilov said. "It looks very disturbing to me, but the word 'no' doesn't exist for this majority."
 About 30,000 people, mostly pensioners, gathered at the Oktyabrsky Concert Hall on Sunday morning for a Communist rally. Demonstrators walked along Nevsky Prospekt to Palace Square bearing red banners with Soviet slogans and photos of Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin and Belorussian president Alexander Lukashenko.
 On Palace Square, speakers accused authorities of planning to turn the population into a crowd of the "mentally disordered and perverts," protesting against low pensions and state salaries as well as attacking U.S. and Western policy, according to reports in the local media.
 "Europe wants to humiliate Russian citizens because they are the bearer of the main idea of human civilization, the idea of Communism," Fontanka. Ru quoted one speaker as saying Sunday.
 Seventy-seven percent of Russians are against shifting the holiday from Nov. 7 and 21 percent are for it, according to a survey conducted last week of 1,500 respondents in 102 cities, towns and villages across Russia by ROMIR Monitoring agency. 
 The agency explained the results as being due to a habit being formed over the 70 years the Revolution Day was celebrated - until the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991 Nov. 7 was the nation's main holiday.
 "I'm glad that my colleagues had enough conscience and character to pass the resolution they did, because the most Russians want to keep the Nov. 7 holiday," Legislative Assembly lawmaker Vladimir Yeryomenko said Monday in a telephone interview.
 "The day of the October Revolution cannot be just thrown away from the calendar, because this is a significant part of our history, the same as the 1789 revolution in France, which was also followed by cruelty, but is still remembered," he said. And I'm glad the resolution was passed here in St. Petersburg, where [the revolution] was started."
 Yeryomenko, who has been a member of the Communist faction at the Legislative Assembly, recently joined the pro-Kremlin United Russia faction at the city parliament.
 "When somebody joins the United Russia faction, everybody is saying that this person is obliged to act according to the herd instinct, but this case proves that people have different points of views and will not simply salute to the government any time it wants them to," he added.

TITLE: Soldiers' Mothers To Form Party
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - After 15 years of assisting conscripts who suffer from hazing or wish to avoid compulsory military service, the respected Union of Soldiers' Mothers Committees is going into politics with the creation last weekend of the United People's Party of Soldiers' Mothers.
 
A total of 164 committee activists from 50 regions gathered on a boat in Moscow's Northern Port for a two-day founding congress Saturday and Sunday to lay out their main goals of abolishing the Soviet-era compulsory draft system and of participating in the next State Duma elections, in 2007.
 "We do not consider ourselves an opposition force. We do not have any opponents among politicians, but we do have certain demands for the executive power," said Valentina Melnikova, who was elected chairwoman of the new party Sunday and heads the Union of Soldiers' Mothers Committees.
 Melnikova said that although her party leans toward liberal values, it is willing to cooperate with any political party to achieve its goals.
 The liberal Yabloko party said Monday that it is ready to work with the United People's Party of Soldiers' Mothers. "We are in complete sympathy with them," Yabloko deputy leader Sergei Mitrokhin said by telephone.
 Other parties made no public comment, but Melnikova said she is in frequent contact with Boris Nemtsov, a founder of the liberal Union of Right Forces party, which worked closely with the Soldiers' Mothers Committee on military issues in the last Duma.
 The Union of Soldiers' Mothers Committees was founded in 1989 to combat hazing and other human rights violations in the military. It has for years helped parents keep their sons out of the military, often by showing them how to cite medical problems as reasons not to serve.
 The group, which has committees in 53 regions, has come under fierce fire from military officials, who accuse activists of interfering in internal problems. 
 Last year Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov accused the group of standing in the way of military justice, saying soldiers should take complaints to their superiors and not go on "marathon" treks in search of support.
 A Duma deputy from the nationalist Rodina party, Viktor Alksnis, accused the group late last month of being "a foreign agent" seeking to undermine the defense capability of the military and called for a federal investigation. "They are fulfilling political orders from Western countries," Alksnis said at the time.
 The organization denies the allegations.
 Melnikova acknowledged Sunday that the new party may encounter bureaucratic problems when it tries to register with the Justice Ministry.
 "We understand that any kind of odd thing might happen with our Justice Ministry," she said.
 "The priority for now is to boost the number of the party members," Melnikova said, adding that regional committee members are usually well-respected in their localities and have the authority to run for regional and federal legislative seats.
 She could not say how many members the party has now. Some 3,000 activists currently work as unpaid volunteers in the 53 committees across the country.
 The Duma is expected to consider a bill raising the number of members that each political party must have from 10,000 to 50,000 in its first reading this month. The bill also requires a party to have offices in at least of the country's 89 regions.
 The new party does not have any financial backers yet and has appealed to several oligarchs for support, Melnikova said. 
 "Realistically, there will not be any support until it becomes clear what will happen to Khodorkovsky," she said, referring to jailed Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who has been charged with fraud and tax evasion in a case widely believed to be linked to his political and business ambitions. Khodorkovsky had funded Yabloko, the Union of Right Forces and the Communist Party.
 Melnikova stressed last month that her party would not accept any money from foreign donors.
 Regional committees have received grants from the European Union, the philanthropist George Soros and businessman Boris Berezovsky.
 The Union of Soldiers' Mothers Committees has won several international awards, including the Right Livelihood Award, known as the Alternative Nobel. Some delegates at the weekend party congress voiced concern that the political work might distract activists from their main mission of advocating servicemen's rights.
 "I will support this party if they are as persistent and consistent as the committee is in its work now," said Valeria Mamkhogova, an activist in the southern regions of Karachayevo-Cherkessia and Kabardino-Balkaria.
 But others were eager to get to work.
 "No other existing party will promote laws protecting young people from incidences like the one that took the life of my son," said Alesya Oyun, 44, who last saw her son Mergen,19, when he was drafted into the army three years ago.
 Oyun, who heads the Tyva committee in eastern Siberia, believes her son died in a hazing in Krasnoyarsk, where his regiment was stationed and he simply disappeared. She said the military has yet to offer any explanation for his disappearance.
 Melnikova said that the group's regional committees will continue to operate as they do now.
 "We are helping hundreds of thousands of people across the country. If we stop, no one else will do this for us," she said.
 The fact that the new party's name echoes the names of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party and the populist People's Party is a mere coincidence, Melnikova said. 
 "Its not our fault that good words such as 'United' and 'People's' have been usurped by United Russia and the People's Party. This does not mean that we cannot use them as well," she said.
 "We are quite united in our efforts to grow a healthy future generation, and we are indeed a people's party formed from below," she said.

TITLE: Little Recognition of Tsar Liberator
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The freeing of Russia's serfs should be a cause for celebration, but there is little recognition of the man behind it.
 
While Russians look back to "strong" leaders like Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, Tsar Liberator Alexander II does not seem to get the credit he deserves.
 Alexander II freed the serfs in 1861, two years before Abraham Lincoln was able to do the same for the United States' slaves.
 Releasing the serfs was a key step to reviving the fortunes of a backward state and the talents released added much vigor to the bustling late 19th century Russia.
 Russian peasants had not always been bound to their masters. Serfdom developed over hundreds of years.
 In medieval times, although the peasants did not own land they could move wherever they wanted. They were allowed to settle if they did a certain amount of work for the landowner whereupon they became members of the local peasant commune, or <i>sotnia.
 </i>There was one day a year when peasants could move freely - St. George's Day, Nov. 26 - provided they owed no debts to the sotnia.
 The process that ended in serfdom began in the 16th century, when Moscow ended the right of the peasants to move, declaring them forever bound to the land they worked. Though not yet considered property, it was all too easy for them to become economically bound to the landowner.
 Should the harvest, ostensibly the peasant's only form of income, fail, taxes still had to be paid.
 Between 1718 and 1765, many enactments were passed that blurred the distinction between territorial servitude and personal bondage. As personal liberties shrank, the process creating serfdom became complete in 1767 when Catherine the Great declared owners' power over the serfs beyond the reach of the law. By now, serfs didn't even own the clothes on their backs.
 Indeed, it was a hard life, as E. M. Almedingen, late Russian expatriate novelist and historian writes, &quot;The grimmest pages of Uncle Tom's Cabin cannot be compared with some of the incidents during the first half of the 19th century.&quot;
 By 1856, the year Alexander II was crowned, more than 40 million serfs worked the Russian soil, and he began the five years of prep work it would take to free them.
 There were many reasons behind this decision. Alexander II was spurred on by his personal conviction that serfdom was unjust, however, money also played a role.
 At the time, military conscription was for a lifetime, but the empire could no longer financially support such an army. However, sending men trained in war craft back into abject slavery would be akin to inviting revolt.
 Alexander II first asked landowner's cooperation, but without any plans or even an outline to follow no noble was going to aid in the destruction of his livelihood.
 The problem was twofold - the land and the serfs. A secret committee formed to examine the problem, answering the question of who the land would belong to, how to legalize the peasants' right to work it, and making sure the landowners would come out of the deal relatively unscathed. 
 What followed was a hammering out of every personal property question imaginable, all the way down to if the peasants would own the shovels they used.
 In the end, it was decided to give the peasants the land and their houses, but not as a gift; they were to pay off the cost over a number of years.
 Those opposed to the reform found a strange bedfellow in the Church, which owned many serfs.
 Only a few bishops spoke for liberation, saying that slavery and Christianity were incompatible, while most reasoned that everything in the possession of the church was in the hands of the Lord, and to free the serfs would be to drive them to Satan.
 Throughout 1858, Alexander II traveled the nation talking to all levels of the society, pushing for reform, and in 1861 his Reform Bill was sent to the Council of State with the demand that it be settled in a fortnight and ready for the beginning of the agricultural cycle in spring.
 It was signed on Feb. 19, printed throughout the empire on March 5, and on the first Sunday of March, read to all serfs.
 That day Alexander II declared, &quot;Today is the happiest day of my life.&quot;
 After achieving this watershed in Russia's history, one could expect a grateful population and their descendants would remember him removing their fetters for eternity.
 So where are the monuments, the days of memory to this leader? Has he been forgotten?
 Until the Bolshevik Revolution monuments to the Tsar dotted the Russian landscape, even standing in small provinicial towns.
 One notable story is that of the monument in Ryabinsk - a bronze memorial by the great sculptor Alexander Opekushin. It stood for four years, from 1914 until 1918 when it vanished.
 Longtime residents say it was removed from its pedestal and dropped into the Volga. This was quite a feat, as the statue weighed 2.5 tons.
 Recently, a team of divers searched for the statue, but they encountered many difficulties, including the strong current of the river, coupled with its depth (9 meters), the water's murkiness, and the metal content of the water, which necessitated the use of a special probe for bronze. Needless to say, the visage of the liberator was not found.
 Perhaps more noteworthy was the monument that stood over Moscow's Tainitsky Gardens. So immense was it that it could be seen from across the Moscow River. The statue was also constructed by Opekushin, and was housed under a canopy surrounded by a gallery of red Karelian granite, but was demolished in 1918 by the Bolsheviks.
 Most monuments to Alexander II still standing are located outside of the Russia. There is one in front of the Bulgarian capital Sophia's parliament building featuring the Tsar astride a horse and holding a declaration of liberation.
 This marks Alexander II's most successful foreign policy achievement - the successful war of 1877-8 against the Ottoman Empire that resulted in the liberation of Bulgaria.
 Perhaps one of the best known stands in Helsinki's Senate Square. Alexander II is well known there for his constitutional reforms that paved the way for a regularly convening Finnish parliament.
 Part of the reason for this destruction of monuments in Russia may be attributed to what a recent Moscow News article by Sergei Leonov describes as &quot;a regular alternation of reforms and counter reforms&quot; in the succession of Russia's rulers.
 Alexander II was succeeded by his toughguy son Alexander III, who reversed many of his father's reforms.
 &quot;The results of most of them were wiped out by Alexander III, whose reign, in fact, brought about the term 'counter reforms.'&quot; Leonov wrote.
 The terms &quot;reform&quot; and &quot;counter reform&quot; in this context have more to do with where the government chooses to place its emphasis: on strengthening civil society or on maintaining the state, he added.
 Leonov says the regime of President Vladimir Putin bears a striking resemblence to that of Alexander III, who came to power following huge social upheaval. 
 Both rulers have given priority to state structures, and are aware of the country's shaky place in the international arena.
 But the future isn't entirely grim for the memory of Alexander II. Recently the Union of Right Forces, or SPS, commissioned a new monument of him. It is completed, but stored in a Moscow warehouse, indefinitely awaiting public display, as no agreement has been reached as to where it will stand or when.
 With any luck, the Tsar may once again look over Moscow in the near future.
 Until then, those who wish to remember the Tsar will simply have to visit St. Petersburg's Church of Our Savior on the Spilled Blood, erected on the site where he was killed in 1881.
 It is perhaps more of a monument than any of us could ask for ourselves or any other Tsar, for that matter.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>Death in Custody
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The City Prosecutor's Office is investigating the shooting of a suspected thief who had been detained by police, Interfax reported Friday quoting local law enforcement.
 The suspect grabbed a gun from the policeman who was interrogating him Thursday night at police station No. 33 in the Moskovsky district and shot himself, according to a police statement.
 
 
<b>Armed Man Held
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - St. Petersburg police on Friday afternoon detained a 33-year-old man who was carrying a hand grenade, an electric detonator, TNT explosive and bullets from a Kalashnikov machine gun, Regnum reported Friday quoting the police.
 The police have opened a criminal case against the suspect, the report said.
 
 
<b>Murder Suspects Held
 </b>

CHERKESSK (SPT) - The two main suspects in the assassinations of seven residents of Cherkessk were detained in St. Petersburg last week, Interfax reported Saturday quoting the Prosecutor's Office of the Northern Caucasus.
 "The suspects Azamat Akbayev and Temirlan Bostanov were detained last night in St. Petersburg as a result of operative search measures," Interfax cited Boris Karnaukhov, the Northern Caucasus deputy prosecutor as saying Saturday.
 
 
<b>Spain to Return Cross
 </b>

NOVGOROD (SPT) - Spain has agreed to return a cross taken from the Novgorod's Sophia Cathedral by the Spanish Blue Division during World War II, Interfax reported Friday, citing the regional government.
 The cross will be returned in the next week, the report said.
 Blue Division soldiers were sent to the region by dictator General Francisco Franco to assist Adolf Hitler on the eastern front. When the cross fell down from the cathedral after a bombardment in 1942 it was transported to Spain.
 
 
<b>Garden Restoration
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Sestroretsk's Holland Gardens that were founded by Peter the Great in Dubki Park located in Sestroretsk are to be restored, Interfax reported Friday quoting City Hall.
 "The gardens should be restored [because] this is a real example of garden landscape from the times of Peter the Great, of a regular garden of the beginning of 18th century," Interfax cited Konstantin Plotkin, an adviser to the city's committee to protect architect monuments as saying Friday.
 The original plans for the gardens of 1722 foresaw fountains, Plotkin said, but because of engineering difficulties none were built.
 "Only these parts that have been in existence will be restored," he said. 
 The restoration planning is scheduled to be completed by the end of this year with works to be completed in two years, he said.
 
 
<b>Stadium for Demolition
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT)- Kirov Stadium, the biggest sports arena in the city, will be demolished with residential buildings to be constructed on its site, Regnum reported Friday quoting anonymous sources in City Hall.
 Officials are negotiating conditions for the deal with a potential investor, who has not been identified.
 In place of the Kirov Stadium, City Hall plans to build new arena for 50,000 people on Prospekt Blukhera, which is expected to be financed by Gazprom, the state-controlled gas monopoly.
 
 
<b>Dalai Lama May Enter
 </b>

MOSCOW (SPT) - The Dalai Lama may be allowed to enter Russia for exclusively pastoral reasons, Interfax quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Troyansky as saying Friday.
 "It is well-known that our country respects the desires of Russian Buddhists, who have repeatedly requested that Dalai Lama's pastoral trip to Russia be allowed," he said. "The possibility of Dalai Lama's - I emphasize it - pastoral trip and its conditions is being considered."
 Earlier Friday, Kalmyk President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov had said the Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of part of the world's Buddhist community, is due in the Kalmykia region on Saturday and will stay there until November 17, Interfax reported.
 
 
<b>Call to Prosecute City
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) -Legislative Assembly deputy Alexei Kovalyov has urged the city prosecutor's office to open a criminal case against bureaucrats of the city's maintenance headquarters for exceeding their authority, Ekho Moskvy in St. Petersburg reported Thursday.
 Kovalyov said that "the headquarters in not an organ of executive power in St. Petersburg and has no authority. However, it tells authorities on how to spend budget money." 



TITLE: Physicist Found Guilty on Spy Charges
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - A jury on Friday found a Russian physicist guilty of spying for China in a case rights advocates have said is part of a campaign of intimidation against academics by the FSB.
 
The jury at the Krasnoyarsk Regional Court in Siberia found Professor Valentin Danilov guilty on all counts, and a judge is expected to deliver a sentence later this month. The decision - one of the first to be made by a jury in Russia - overturns an earlier acquittal.
 Speaking in a telephone interview from his home in Krasnoyarsk, Danilov insisted that he was innocent and said he would appeal his conviction.
 &quot;The charges are sheer nonsense,&quot; Danilov said. &quot;It's a political trial.&quot;
 Danilov, 53, was arrested in February 2001 and accused of selling classified information on space technology and misappropriating funds from Krasnoyarsk State University.
 He spent 19 months behind bars before being acquitted by a jury last December. Danilov and his lawyers argued that the information he provided was no longer classified and came from open sources.
 Prosecutors successfully appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that the defense had broken evidence rules by discussing documents in open court that had been ruled inadmissible. They also claimed the defense leaked information about jury deliberations. The high court ordered that Danilov be retried.
 The Danilov trial was one of the first in Russia to be heard by a jury. 
 Earlier this year, a jury found Russian defense analyst Igor Sutyagin guilty of espionage on charges he sold sensitive military information to a British company that Russian investigators claimed was a CIA cover.
 Danilov and Sutyagin were among several Russian scholars and journalists prosecuted for alleged espionage by the Federal Security Service, the main KGB successor.
 
 


TITLE: Replica of Peter's Flagship Marks Its 10th Birthday
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The frigate Shtandart, a 20th century replica of the first ship in Peter the Great's navy, celebrated its 10th anniversary Thursday by taking its friends, former crew members and builders for a sail.
 
Boasting 28 cannons and 10 sails attached to three masts, the 30-meter-by-7-meter replica was lowered by crane onto the Neva River behind Smolny Cathedral - the same spot from which the original was launched in 1703 - in summer 1999.
 &quot;Over the 10 years we have covered 35,000 miles, visited dozens of ports across Europe and brought up hundreds of teenagers in the patriotic spirit of the Russian marine history,&quot; television channel Rossiya showed Shtandart's captain, Vladimir Martous, telling reporters Thursday at the celebration. &quot;But most importantly, for all of us, each journey has been a precious school of life.&quot;
 The Shtandart replica was built using 18th-century technologies in a replica 18th-century shipyard constructed specially for the project. The British government contributed $1 million to the project in 1994 and many donations helped the project succeed. It took five years to complete the boat. 
 Martous, with 10 professional shipbuilders and 30 students, recreated what originally took the combined efforts of 3,000 workers. The crew members call it an epic of heroism.
 Peter the Great ordered the Shtandart to be built on Jan. 22, 1702, at the height of the Northern War with Sweden, and became its first captain. The ship was partly responsible for repulsing the Swedish naval assault on St. Petersburg in 1705, and was the first ship of what later became Russia's Baltic Fleet.
 Martous said that his inspiration came from seeing a model of the Shtandart in the State Hermitage Museum's Menshikov Palace in 1987. At the time he was building a yacht with his father.
 &quot;I fell in love the moment I saw it,&quot; he said. &quot;My whole life has been built along this path.&quot;
 Although the original plans for the Shtandart drawn by Peter the Great haven't survived, Martous said the model in the Menshikov Palace was remarkably precise and detailed, and, with the help of a researcher, he was able to recreate the vessel.
 The Shtandart typically spends its summers sailing around European routes while, in winter, it is moored in St. Petersburg, and operates as a museum targeting schoolchildren interested in Russian history. 
 Over its history Shtandart has been through difficult, even desperate times, when the crew couldn't risked letting the ship be damaged during cold Russian winters. 
 But now the frigate has made a name and reputation, and is looking forward for new travel and new people to join the crew.

TITLE: Incident at Nuclear Plant Leads To Panic
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A minor incident at the Balakovskaya nuclear power plant created widespread panic in Saratov and nearby regions, with people clearing iodine off drugstore shelves and several being rushed to the hospital with symptoms of iodine poisoning.
 
Reactor No. 2 at the Balakovskaya nuclear power plant, located outside the Saratov region city of Balakov some 900 kilometers southeast of Moscow, shut down Thursday after a pipe burst, but there was no radiation leak, the Federal Nuclear Power Agency said in a statement Friday.
 However, the incident, which was first reported Friday morning, sparked a panic after Saratov radio stations reported the news along with advice to residents on how to protect themselves from radiation, Gazeta.ru reported. Greenpeace environmental activists then hit the streets in Saratov cities and towns to distribute leaflets explaining how to protect oneself from a radiation leak.
 Some local residents said they saw a white cloud above the plant and did not believe the authorities' assurances, suspecting a cover-up like the one that followed the 1986 explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, Russian media reported.
 &quot;I tell you that there will not be a second Chernobyl. It is not those times any more when you hide information,&quot; Igor Maly, head of the local branch of the Emergency Situations Ministry, said on NTV television.
 Sergei Kiriyenko, President Vladimir Putin's envoy to the Volga Federal District, made a quick visit late Friday to Saratov to try to calm fears. He personally inspected all four reactors at the power plant.
 But rumors spread quickly throughout the day that authorities were trying to hush up the danger and informally advising schools to let children go home early, Russian media reported. Some kindergartens rushed to seal their windows.
 Adding to the speculation was the unusual appearance of several generals and about a dozen government vehicles with black military license plates, Kommersant reported Saturday. The officials were there as part of a regularly planned Emergency Situations Ministry exercise, the newspaper said.
 Worried Saratov residents cleared drugstore shelves of iodine and more expensive iodine-based medicines such as sea kale and vitamins, RIA-Novosti and the Regnum news agency reported. Some vendors at outdoor markets started selling iodine to panicked customers at 10 rubles a drop, the Newsinfo.ru web site said. At least seven people checked into Saratov hospitals with symptoms of iodine poisoning.
 &quot;The whole city lost their heads,&quot; Anna Vinogradova, head of Saratov's department of environmental protection, told Kommersant. &quot;All the telephone lines were busy. People were telling each other to drink vodka, take iodine and no matter what not to use public water.&quot;
 Reports of panic also poured in from the neighboring Tambov, Penza, Ulyanovsk and Nizhny Novgorod regions as well as Astrakhan and Rostov, even though the two regions do not border Saratov.
 The nuclear power plant's reactor was restarted early Saturday and was running normally, Interfax reported. 
 Russia has 10 nuclear power plants with a total of 30 nuclear reactors, which are regularly shut down for repairs or due to minor accidents.

TITLE: Papers Say Russia Is Better Off With Bush
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Most Russian newspapers declared Russia better off with a re-elected U.S. President George W. Bush and turned to horseradish, idiots and President Vladimir Putin's friendship with Bush to argue their points.
 
&quot;It's in the Hat&quot; read the headline next to a picture of Bush adjusting a cowboy hat in the popular daily Moskovsky Komsomolets. 
 &quot;Bush's victory is beneficial for Russia,&quot; Alexander Livshits, Putin's former economic adviser, wrote in a commentary next to the article. &quot;We know him, we know members of his team. We are used to them, and they are used to us. 
 &quot;Furthermore, George Bush's administration does not tell us how to live. It does not interfere much with our country's domestic affairs. And the personal relationship that our two presidents have established is also important.&quot;
 Moskovsky Komsomolets did take the opportunity to offer a comment on U.S. domestic affairs. &quot;The 2004 elections showed that a party that comes out in favor of abortions, supports the demands of gays for legal marriages and the demands of the scientific community to allow stem-cell research on human embryos cannot currently govern the United States,&quot; it editorialized.
 Izvestia said Washington is likely to adopt a tougher approach to Moscow over the next four years, but this would have happened regardless of who had won Tuesday's presidential election.
 &quot;Nonetheless, the Kremlin prefers the Republicans,&quot; Izvestia wrote. &quot;Under them, the tougher approach will be less significant. This is due mainly to the personal relationship between Bush and Putin. 
 &quot;The Democrats would have criticized Russia much more severely for rolling back reforms, for cracking down on freedom of speech, for Khodorkovsky and for Chechnya.&quot;
 Putin called Bush on Thursday to congratulate him on his victory. The Kremlin said the two discussed future contacts, including summit meetings together.
 Izvestia needled Putin for openly supporting Bush's re-election during the campaign, comparing it to the Kremlin's backing of Abkhaz presidential candidate Raul Khadzhimba, who failed to win the Georgian region's Oct. 3 election and is now disputing the vote results.
 &quot;Unlike elections on post-Soviet territory, this time the Kremlin bet on the real favorite, not the fake one,&quot; Izvestia said.
 Gazeta devoted three pages to the U.S. election and published results of an ironic readers' poll in which respondents answered the question, &quot;Were the votes in America counted fairly?&quot;
 Thirty-six percent said vote counters &quot;counted like they wanted to&quot;; 27 percent said &quot;they counted with their minds&quot;; 14 percent said &quot;Veshnyakov helped,&quot; referring to Central Elections Commission chief Alexander Veshnyakov, who traveled to the United States to observe the vote; 12 percent said &quot;the truth will never be discovered&quot;; and 9 percent said &quot;they counted with their hearts.&quot;
 Military newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda was also pleased with Bush's victory, citing the U.S. president's hesitance to interfere in Russia's domestic affairs.
 U.S.-Russian relations &quot;are more pragmatic and stable under Republican control,&quot; it said. &quot;This is primarily due to the Republican Party's political style, which focuses its efforts on business relationships and is not distracted by the domestic problems of its allies and partners.&quot;
 Politics sometimes makes for strange bedfellows, and Komsomolskaya Pravda published a quote from prominent human rights activist and harsh Putin critic Valeria Novodvorskaya in which she backed Putin's pick.
 Asked who she supported in the election, she said: &quot;The Republicans. They don't give anyone money for nothing and tend to act decisively to defend freedom, and not only at home. Bush rid Afghanistan of the Taliban and Iraq of [Saddam] Hussein and promised to deal with Cuba. And Kerry showed pure demagogy.&quot;
 Liberal daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta, owned by Boris Berezovsky, the Putin critic and wealthy businessman who lives in exile in Britain, offered a markedly different assessment of the U.S. election.
 &quot;Bush's victory in America is unlikely to be a 'big present' for Russia,&quot; international affairs analyst Alexander Bogaturov wrote. &quot;First, the Americans gave him a new mandate for conducting foreign policy from a position of power, which was good for us while it was not aimed against us. Now it is completely impossible to know where the U.S. president's focus will be with his burning desire to reorganize the globe according to his own understanding of good and evil.&quot;
 Bogaturov said Bush's victory could have negative ramifications on liberalism in Russia. &quot;Most importantly, the victorious atmosphere of militant Republicanism that rules America, given our psychological dependence on America (although we try not to admit it), will inevitably induce new anti-liberal tendencies in our country.&quot;
 Another Berezovsky-owned newspaper, Kommersant, editorialized less in its coverage Thursday and put its election story in the bottom corner of the front page. But it did use a play on words in its headline, which can be read as &quot;America Didn't Drop the Fool&quot; or &quot;America Didn't Mess Around.&quot;
 Sovietskaya Rossiya reminded readers that neither Bush nor his challenger, John Kerry, were good for Russia, writing that &quot;horseradish is no sweeter than a radish.&quot;
 The communist-nationalist newspaper said the United States &quot;has one policy: America Uber Alles!&quot;
 Nonetheless, Sovietskaya Rossiya said Bush was the lesser of two evils.
 &quot;The soft-spoken American Demo-crats are more dangerous for Russia than the rude Republicans,&quot; nationalist commentator Vyacheslav Tetekin wrote. 
 &quot;As a rule, Democratic presidents try to strangle Russia with 'friendly' hugs. ... Republicans tend to unceremoniously demand that a Russian leader ... simply do something to defend their own interests.&quot;
 Meanwhile, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev said Thursday that Bush must find a way in his second term to address the anti-Americanism that Gorbachev said has spread around the world, Interfax reported. 
 &quot;Anti-Americanism in the world is a certain fact now,&quot; Gorbachev said. &quot;It has reached a huge scale, and I believe that ignoring it and acting unilaterally, without caring about anyone or anything, would not work as logical and serious politics.&quot;

TITLE: Physicist Stored Plutonium In Garage
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - A former nuclear physicist voluntarily surrendered several containers containing plutonium in the eastern Siberian town of Zmeinogorsk, but local police are considering charging him with illegal possession of radioactive materials, news agencies reported last Tuesday.
 
Leonid Grigorov, 56, a former employee of a local mining company, turned over 10 containers containing plutonium-238 and cadmium to the police, RIA-Novosti reported, citing the Altai branch of the Emergency Situations Ministry.
 Plutonium-238 cannot be used for nuclear weapons because it generates so much heat that the weapon would not be stable, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. However, it can be used to build a so-called dirty bomb, which combines radioactive material with conventional explosives and contaminates an area with the radioactive material upon detonation.
 Grigorov, who worked as a nuclear physicist for the Zmeinogorsk mining company until it shut down in 1992, said he found the containers in 1997 in a garbage dump where some mine equipment had been sent instead of being shipped to Radon, the federal radioactive waste enterprise, Strana.ru reported. 
 Grigorov said he took the containers to his garage for safekeeping and wrote several letters to the authorities alerting them of his find, but no one replied.
 He decided to hand over the containers after reading in a newspaper that the police were buying weapons from civilians and offering them amnesty. 
 Police, however, are considering pressing charges, Strana.ru said.
 There were conflicting reports on how much plutonium was in the containers and how many containers Grigorov had. The local branch of the Emergency Situations Ministry said there were 10 containers and four contained a mixture of plutonium and cadmium, RIA-Novosti said. Strana.ru, citing local police, said Grigorov surrendered eight containers and each contained 50 grams of plutonium-238. 
 One milligram of plutonium-238 sells for $8.25 on the legal market, putting the value of Grigorov's find at about $3.3 million, Strana.ru said.
 Federal Nuclear Power Service spokesman Nikolai Shingarev and Igor Putilov, spokesman for the Altai branch of the Emergency Situations Ministry, said plutonium-238 could not be used in a nuclear bomb and that it is widely used in mining and other industries. 
 Authorities regularly detain people on charges of possessing or trying to sell radioactive materials and have taken steps to boost security at nuclear arsenals and civil nuclear facilities.
 Some facilities remain poorly guarded, and authorities have abandoned their skepticism about possible nuclear terrorism. President Vladimir Putin is pushing for a United Nations convention to fight nuclear terrorism.
 The turmoil after the Soviet collapse offered opportunities for insiders at nuclear facilities to steal nuclear materials, and a few may have some stashed away, said Ivan Safranchuk, head of the Moscow office of the Washington-based Center for Defense Information. Few would be able to sell the materials, he said. &quot;People who have access are middle-aged, have a very tight and stable circle of acquaintances, and have no knowledge of a foreign language. Any attempt to sell would draw attention.&quot;

TITLE: Deputy Complains of Kremlin's Pressure
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - United Russia deputies are under enormous pressure from the presidential administration to approve Kremlin-backed legislation, and a senior administration official told a group of deputies last summer that they had not been popularly elected and must follow orders, United Russia Deputy Anatoly Yermolin said.
 
Yermolin, the first State Duma deputy in the Kremlin-controlled faction to publicly speak out against the Kremlin, made the accusations in an open letter to the Prosecutor General's Office, the Constitutional Court and Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov, and he asked that he and his colleagues be protected from Kremlin harassment.
 The presidential press service declined to comment Thursday.
 Yermolin wrote that a senior administration official bluntly told a meeting of 15 United Russia deputies, including himself, that they could not consider themselves popularly elected representatives of the people, Kommersant reported Thursday. 
 &quot;Remarks by one deputy that several [Kremlin-backed] bills had been drafted with obvious mistakes, contradicted the Constitution and could harm the faction's reputation caused unprintable swearing, advice to keep his opinion to himself, and an order to vote the way they were told,&quot; he wrote. 
 Yermolin refused to name the official, but Russian media identified him as Vladislav Surkov, the deputy head of the presidential administration who coordinates the Kremlin's work with United Russia and oversees the Kremlin's relations with the Duma.
 Yermolin told Kommersant that at least half of the faction's deputies face similar pressure. United Russia controls the 450-seat Duma with 305 deputies. 
 Yermolin could not be reached for comment Thursday, but he told Interfax that he was seeking clarification as to how to protect himself from pressure and whether officials who use foul language to pressure deputies can be fired.
 &quot;I have no intention of leaving the United Russia faction ... but I intend to maintain my right to vote on certain issues the way I believe is right and not the way I'm being told from above,&quot; he said. 
 Some United Russia officials suggested that Yermolin has ongoing ties to embattled oil giant Yukos and this had prompted him to speak out. Yermolin participated in various education projects sponsored by Yukos during the decade before he was elected to the Duma last December.
 &quot;It is not quite clear why Yermolin decided only now to talk about events that, according to him, occurred last summer,&quot; said Lyubov Sliska, the first deputy Duma speaker and member of United Russia.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>Naval Ships Leave
 </b>

MOSCOW (AP) - Two naval ships left Thursday for the Mediterranean, where they are to take part in NATO anti-terrorist patrols, the Interfax-Military News Agency reported. 
 The Pytlivy and Smetlivy ships belong to the Black Sea Fleet, based in Sevastopol, and are expected to spend at least two months at sea, said the Navy's commander-in-chief, Vladimir Kuroyedov. They will take part in Operation Active Endeavor, which has monitored the Mediterranean since Sept. 11, 2001.
 
 
<b>Putin at Auschwitz
 </b>

WARSAW (AP) - President Vladimir Putin is expected to attend the 60th anniversary of the Auschwitz death camp's liberation on Jan. 27, Polish officials said Thursday.
 Putin and the presidents of France and Israel are due to join their Polish counterpart, Aleksander Kwasniewski, in commemorations at the former Nazi camp in southern Poland.
 One million to 1.5 million prisoners perished in gas chambers or died of starvation and disease at Auschwitz. 



TITLE: Doubts on Numbers of Beslan Captors
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The number of terrorists who stormed the Beslan school in September may be higher than previously estimated, local officials said.
 
Fatima Khabalova, chief of the North Ossetian parliament's information and analysis center, told Interfax on Thursday that there have been remains of adults found at the site of the ravaged Beslan school, indicating that there could have been more hostage-takers than the 32 previously estimated.
 Khabalova said that all of the adult hostages killed in the Sept.1-3 hostage-taking drama have been identified, suggesting that the other remains could be those of terrorists. She did not say how many remains were found or when they were discovered.
 Four children killed in the school remain to be identified, RIA-Novosti reported Thursday. More than 330 people died in the Beslan school attack, including an estimated 172 children. 
 Both federal prosecutors and North Ossetian officials have previously asserted that there were 32 hostage-takers. Thirty-one of them were killed and their bodies retrieved, while one survived and is in custody, officials have said. So far the bodies of 17 terrorists have been identified.
 However, some witnesses' accounts have indicated there could have been more hostage-takers, while Russian media speculated that some of the terrorists could have escaped in the confusion as vigilantes and security forces charged into the school after two blasts went off inside the building.
 Stanislav Kesayev, head of the North Ossetian parliamentary commission investigating the Beslan attack, was the first official to publicly cast doubt on investigators' assessment that there were 32 terrorists.
 &quot;Witness testimony taken by the federal and North Ossetian parliamentary commissions indicates that there were more than 32 militants,&quot; Kesayev told Interfax on Tuesday.
 The North Caucasus branch of the Prosecutor General's Office is investigating the attack on the school, with the assistance of the Interior Ministry and other law enforcement agencies. 
 Officials at the North Caucasus branch of the Prosecutor General's Office and the Prosecutor's Office of North Ossetia declined to comment when reached by telephone Thursday.
 The Federation Council's commission convened Thursday to hear testimony, including from Rodina leader Dmitry Rogozin. After the session, Rogozin told the media that his testimony would help the commission determine the number of terrorists, but he would not provide his own estimates. 
 Rogozin said that it was &quot;quite probable&quot; that there were more than 32 terrorists.
 However, Alexander Torshin, head of the Federation Council's commission, told reporters that he had no information on whether there could have been more than 32 terrorists. Torshin said commission members plan to meet with Kesayev to hear his evidence.
 Komsomolskaya Pravda on Thursday published an interview with a man who identified himself as a member of one of the commando units that fought terrorists at the school on Sept. 3.
 In the interview the man, whom Komsomolskaya Pravda identified only by his first name, Vasily, claimed that he had counted 52 terrorists and that three, rather than one, of them were captured alive.
 Komsomolskaya Pravda said it could not confirm whether the man had indeed participated in the operation, but still ran the interview.

TITLE: Bill Lets Undercover Police to Break the Law
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Prosecutor General's Office has drafted a controversial bill offering police officers immunity from prosecution if they break the law while working undercover in criminal gangs or in sting operations.
 
The bill, which has yet to be submitted to the State Duma, is an amendment to a law regulating the operational and investigative activities of law enforcement and security agencies.
 The bill applies to police detectives who may have to buy drugs or weapons from suspected dealers to catch them red-handed, Gazeta reported last Tuesday. 
 &quot;Such situations occur very often in the everyday work of law enforcers, and all security and law enforcement agencies have called for the law to be amended,&quot; said Gennady Gudkov, a Duma deputy with the pro-Kremlin United Russia party and a former security officer.
 Similar laws exist in the West, Gudkov said by telephone Tuesday.
 Police detectives already buy drugs and weapons in sting operations that are usually videotaped, but technically their actions are illegal. To avoid prosecution, detectives are required to prove the need to break the law in court.
 The bill also seeks to make it easier for police detectives to entrap suspects in criminal gangs by allowing them, among other things, to steal and transport weapons or drugs.
 The proposal was announced Friday by Deputy Prosecutor Vladimir Koles-nikov, Gazeta reported. A spokes-woman from the Prosecutor General's Office would not comment on the bill.
 If adopted, the legislation could open the way for police abuse. Police are notoriously known for such practices as planting drugs and guns to blackmail people or to make false arrests to flatter their statistics. The Interior Ministry has busted several groups of police officers on suspicion of running extortion rings over the past year.
 &quot;If this amendment is adopted, measures of strict control over these crimes should be established as well. Otherwise, things could descend into chaos, especially in this country,&quot; Gudkov said.
 The Prosecutor General's Office presented another controversial proposal Friday. Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov proposed a bill allowing authorities to detain terrorists' relatives in the event of a hostage crisis and use them as a negotiating tool. Some deputies denounced the proposal as inappropriate and unconstitutional.

TITLE: Freight Tax Proposed
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: ST. PETERSBURG - Russia may introduce a road payment for foreign transportation companies as early as in 2005, Igor Levitin, Minister for Transport said in Moscow on Wednesday, Interfax reported.
 
Levitin said that, in order for the road taxation system to be introduced, his agency needs to run the scheme past the State Duma. He did not exclude the introduction of such a scheme in the coming year.
 Russian roads are not suitable for the transportation of heavy freight vehicles, he added. &quot;A load transported on our roads is not permitted to exceed 10 tons, whereas most heavy goods vehicles are carrying up to 40 tons,&quot; Levitin said .
 The minister also pointed out that &quot;today all states except Russia collect money for the entrance of foreign automobiles and trucks into the country&quot;. Transit through the territory of the European Union can be taxed as high as $50, depending on the transporter's weight capacity. 
 The money received is then used to repair and reconstruct roads.
 &quot;In this situation we have only two choices: to introduce similar tolls or to ask all other countries not to collect money from Russian transporters,&quot; said the minister, MosNews reported . 
 &quot;I believe that we have to choose the first option.&quot;
 Levitin did not, however, consider that the road taxes should be particularly high. 
 &quot;We cannot fall into extremes,&quot; he said. &quot;If the collection is too high, no freight carriers will come [to Russia].&quot;

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>Anti-Putin Rubles
</b> 

MOSCOW (MOSNEWS) - A judge in Kaliningrad has ordered a halt to criminal proceedings instigated after a local student stamped 100 10-ruble bills with the slogan "Russia without Putin" and circulated them. The judge said the act bore no corpus delicti, the Gazeta.Ru Internet newspaper reports. The criminal case was instigated in March 2004 after 21-year-old Mikhail Kostyayev, a student and a member of the radical Nationalist-Bolshevik party asked a printing shop to make a "Russia Without Putin" stamp for him. He then stamped 100 10-ruble bills and circulated the banknotes. The money surfaced in Kaliningrad shops on the eve of the presidential elections. The police found Kostyayev six weeks later. They searched his apartments and found the computer with a layout of the anti-Putin stamp. Prosecutors launched a case under the statute insulting a public official. However, the judge ruled that the proceedings be stopped as the prosecutors had not questioned the aggrieved party - President Vladimir Putin. The law stipulates that the court session cannot be started without this. The prosecutors' protests in a higher court instance were rejected. Kostyayev was satisfied with the decision, but plans to sue the Kaliningrad prosecutor's office over damages to his honor and dignity. He wants 100,000 rubles (about $3,300) compensation. 
<b>Rzhevka Airport Sold
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Rzehvka airport was sold after just a 10- minute auction, NTV reported Monday.
 Following its 10-year epic decline, the aviation company Rzhevka was started at a price of only 13.6 million rubles ($489,200). 
 Three companies were interested in the auction and after two additions of 50,000 rubles each on the asking price, the bidding stopped and the sale was complete.
 The airport, runway and aircraft hangar were thus sold at 13.7 million rubles ($443,000). Photon became the new owner of Rzhevka.
 After local authorities were unwilling to take the company under their control, the troubled aviation company, under heavy financial strains for a long time, declared bankruptcy this year.
 
 
<b>Putin Names Wingman
 </b>

MOSCOW (AFP) - Russian President Vladimir Putin has named a key ally who, like him, once worked in the former Soviet secret service, as board chairman of state airline Aeroflot, the company said Friday.
 Viktor Ivanov, 54, a KGB general in the Soviet era and the former second in command of Russia's security service, was appointed to his post Thursday, an Aeroflot spokesman said by telephone.
 His appointment is the latest in a line of former Russian security service agents who have grabbed top administration posts in the country's most vital companies.
 Putin has also named senior administration officials in charge of top Russian energy and media conglomerates, sweeping out figures who were once loyal to his predecessor and mentor Boris Yeltsin.
 These include senior officials named in charge of the natural gas monopoly Gazprom, the Transneft oil pipeline and the Russian electricity monopoly SEU. 



TITLE: Regions Show the Best Retail Centers
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: St. Petersburg's Sennaya shopping mall shone as one of the front-runners at a two-day industry gathering organized by the Russian Council of Shopping Centers late last month.
 
Reflecting the retail industry's aggressive search for new markets beyond Russia's two main cities, it was the regions, however, who made the strongest showing overall, with a Volgograd mall taking this year's award as the best retail center.
 The Russian Council of Shopping Centers held the competition for the second year in a row and presented the awards at the Investment in Retail conference in Moscow at the end of October.
 Unlike last year, when Moscow projects dominated the nominations, this year's shortlist of nominees for best shopping center, as well as Sennaya retail center on Sennaya Square, consisted of projects from regional cities such as Perm, Volgograd, Nizhny Novgorod, Yekaterinburg and Ufa.
 A panel of judges - including big industry players from the private sector and representatives of city and federal government - determined the year's top retail project on the basis of criteria developed by the International Council of Shopping Centers, a global trade association with 44,000 members in more than 70 countries. The criteria included assessment of marketing, concept and planning, architecture and design, and management.
 The prize for best shopping center went to Volgograd's new retail landmark, the Park House mall. The three-level project, which opened early in 2004, features more than 27,000 square meters of space for lease and a parking lot for 1,300 cars. The center's anchor tenants include Mexx, Belle Postel, Svyaznoi, Henderson and Sela.
 &quot;The progress that retail development in the regions has made in just a few years is truly impressive,&quot; said Natalya Oreshina, director at Stiles &amp; Riabokobylko, the local affiliate of Cushman &amp; Wakefield Healy &amp; Baker. &quot;It is analogous to what has been accomplished in other European countries, [but there] this process took several decades.&quot;
 Organizers said that the reason no Moscow shopping centers had competed for the prize was that there have been no new projects in the capital this year to match the success of last year's winners, Atrium and Mega mall.
 &quot;The rating is quite representative of what happened in the course of last year on the market, as there were no major openings [in Moscow] in 2004 until recently,&quot; said Philippe Beurtheret, deputy head of the retail department at Jones Lang LaSalle. Another trend, he said, is that more and more companies are combining development, marketing and property management. 
 In contrast to Moscow, supermarkets and hypermarkets have been popping up all over St. Petersburg over the past two years, and several developers have said that the city's retail market is far from being saturated.
 Vladimirsky Pasazkh, located about a kilometer east of Sennaya Square, is another of the city's newer shopping centers. It's eye-catching design, good location - near Kuznechny market and Nevsky Prospekt - and its 24-hour Lend supermarket have made it extremely popular.
 A Moscow firm, Delta-Servis that runs the capital's Golden Babylon shopping mall, did succeed in the Best Management Company of 2004 prize, determined on the basis of experience, technology, tenant relations and financial results.
 The judges' special prize went to Garant-Invest Group for its 38,000-square-meter retail park project in southern Moscow, which is scheduled for completion in fall 2005. 
 Unlike shopping malls, retail parks - also known as power centers - are a group of specialized stores over a large area that offer wares at discount prices.
 The winners and runners-up of the award will receive an invitation to participate in the European Shopping Center Awards, a major industry contest that has been held for the past 29 years. 
 &quot;Of course it would be impossible to include everyone in the rating. Besides, this would mean the same contender winning the first prize over and over again,&quot; said Maxim Gasiyev, director of retail department at Colliers International. 
 &quot;However, I believe it is a great experience for participating companies, as the competition can help them learn more about their strong and weak points. It also gives an incentive to other players to achieve better results.&quot;
 There are only two ratings in the domestic retail real estate sector. The second one is organized by Commercial Real Estate magazine.
 
 <i>
Staff writer Katherine Ters contributed to this article. </i>

TITLE: Moscow Rents Jump By 40%
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Retail rents on Tverskaya Ulitsa jumped as much as 40 percent over the past year, making Moscow's shopping mile the tenth most expensive street to rent retail space in Europe, a new survey has found.
 
In a global ranking of 45 countries' most expensive shopping streets, Tverskaya ranks even higher, in seventh place, up from eighth in 2003, according to the annual &quot;Main Streets Across the World&quot; report, prepared by real estate consultants Cushman &amp; Wakefield Healey &amp; Baker.
 With average retail rents of $3,500 per square meter per year, Tverskaya tops Tokyo's Ginza ($3,348) and Zurich's Bahnhofstrasse ($2,395) but still is dwarfed by New York's Fifth Avenue ($10,226) and Paris' Champs Elysees ($7,648), which hold the top two places in the survey by country.
 Moscow's retail market is among the world's top performers. Citywide, rents for shops have grown 13.1 percent since last year, the report said, &quot;reflecting the buoyant retail sector which continues to experience a great level of activity.&quot;
 By comparison, rental growth amo-unted to only 5.1 percent in Western Europe and 8.1 percent in the Asia Pacific region.
 &quot;However, with new supply now emerging in Moscow, competition will increase and rents are stabilizing,&quot; the study said. &quot;To date, Moscow has been the main target for retailers but numerous domestic and international chains are now seeking to establish a presence in other large cities,&quot; the study said.
 Of the four Russian locations mentioned in the report, three were in Moscow - Tverskaya, Manezh Square ($3,000 per square meter per year) and Novy Arbat ($1,600). St. Petersburg's most expensive street, Nevsky Prospekt, trailed behind at a modest $550, slightly less than rents on Tallinn's Viru Street. 
 Opinions are split on whether rates on Tverskaya will continue to grow. Rates may have already peaked, said Natalya Oreshina, retail property consultant at Stiles &amp; Riabokobylko, the local affiliate of Cushman &amp; Wakefield Healey &amp; Baker.
 &quot;Existing rental rates are not supported by an [equally high] turnover at that location. Therefore we are seeing a high rotation of shops there,&quot; she said.
 Other experts disagreed. &quot;As far as Tverskaya is concerned, we expect its rental rates to grow for at least two or three more years,&quot; said Yulia Nikulicheva, deputy director at Jones Lang LaSalle in Moscow.
 She added that several deals recorded in 2004 - including the recent lease of shops at 12 Tverskaya - are already in the vicinity of $6,000 per square meter per year.
 Although some rents jumped by 40 percent, the year-on-year average hike for the street was more in the vicinity of 10 percent, Nikulicheva said.
 For many luxury brands it is a matter of principle to maintain a high profile in the capital, said Nikulicheva. &quot;It is very important for major international brands to have a flagship store on Tverskaya.&quot;
 Many retailers are even willing to endure losses as long as they occupy an exclusive location, said Maxim Gasiyev, retail director at Colliers International.
 &quot;Rental rates will likely continue growing, as the retail market continues to boom [and] no new shopping space is coming on line along Tverskaya,&quot; said Gasiyev.

TITLE: Ramstore Boldly Enters the City's Retail Ring
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Turkish company Ramenka marked its arrival on St. Petersburg's retail scene by opening the first of its Ramstore hypermarkets planned for the city on Monday.
 
The 5,200 square meter store at Gulliver shopping complex is Ramenka's 29th project in a list of supermarkets, hypermarkets and shopping centers in Russia.
 Already, the company promised to open its next Ramstore hypermarket in a city residential area by the end of this year. A further shopping center will arrive by the middle of 2005, to be located next to Udelny Park.
 Ramenka sees its target as 10 percent of the organized local retail market, with a total of 15 new stores planned to open in St. Petersburg within four to five years.
 The city's established large retail firms assure they will not lose ground without a fight. &quot;For a company that's just entered the St. Petersburg market, it will be very hard for them to get a ten-percent market share within a few years,&quot; said Lenta's PR officer Svetlana Shorina to business daily Kommersant.
 &quot;We have been working here for 11 years and we know our customers very well; that is one of the main qualities of success,&quot; Shorina said.
 Another retail city player, Paterson plans to &quot;intensely develop in residential areas applying an aggressive pricing policy to combat the competition,&quot; the chain's St. Petersburg director, Vladimir Prokhorenko, said to Kommersant. However, Ramstore said it trusts its variety and appeal to the mass audience to help win over the customers.
 &quot;Our target audience spans the entire range of customer segments, from very cheap promotional products appealing to budget customers, to a wide gourmet foods section with top tier prices,&quot; said Ozgur Tort, deputy director of Ramenka, and Ramstore's marketing director.
 The company believes exactly such a wide appeal - a 30,000 item selection - will attract the variety and volume of customers it is targeting.
 &quot;What we understood [from our market research study] is that local consumers here have especially begun to demand variety - a European-style selection suitable for all income levels,&quot; said Tort.
 The newly-opened store carries a selection of both food produce and consumer goods, with an expected 35 percent of sales to come from textiles, home goods and appliances.
 Most of the items featured at Ramstore are produced locally, with over 60 percent of all goods from St. Petersburg producers. All the ingredients for the in-store bakery and ready-cooked meat sections are also purchased locally, Tort said.
 In terms of consumer goods, however, most are imported from China and Europe. Surprisingly, only a few of the textiles come from the firm's base country Turkey.
 &quot;We have the benefit of offering low prices on our imported products, since we do our own importing,&quot; said Tort. 
 &quot;While our layout seconds the one in Moscow shops, the product range [in St. Petersburg] is different,&quot; said Tort. 
 Explaining why the chain has not made its city entrance four or five years ago when other large consumer retailers, such as Pyateorochka and O'Kei, started to expand their local activities, Tort listed logistical problems and difficulties in securing suitable locations.
 &quot;Ramenka's stores had a delay in coming to St. Petersburg, but long preparations paid off,&quot; Tort said. &quot;That's why we will be able to open another four stores [in St. Petersburg] very quickly, within eight to ten months.&quot;
 The Udelny park shopping center, currently under construction, will be Ramenka's largest investment in the area, as the company is building the 35,000 square meter complex from scratch.
 &quot;The center will collect the most important famous brands from St. Petersburg and Moscow under one roof,&quot; Tort said. The complex will also feature another Ramstore hypermarket, with a 5,5000 square-meter net trade area.
 Ramenka has invested about $30 million in the construction of the center, compared to $1.5-million for its store in Gulliver, where Ramenka is renting space, on par with other tenants at the shopping mall.
 &quot;That is not a large investment for us and we expect it to pay off in three to four years time,&quot; said Tort.
 Beside the Udelny park complex, Ramenka said it also plans to open a 50,000 square meter shopping mall in the city center in 2006, although the location was not disclosed.
 City retail representatives said, however, that they simply did not see where such a large area in the center could be secured, Kommersant reported.

TITLE: Music in the Money House: Mixing Business with Pleasure
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Now at 23, Alexei Ushakov, better known as DJ Romeo, is a successful self-made businessman, who's turned his passion for dance music into a career.
 
With five records to his name, his own label, and a recently opened caf&eacute;-club on Nevsky Prospekt, Romeo's ambitions fly still further: opening a restaurant in St. Petersburg in the spring and becoming the world's greatest DJ in 10 years. 
 &quot;I know what to motivate myself with, be it beautiful girls, new records to play, the scene or the upcoming vacations,&quot; said Romeo, who plans to take a break from his busy schedule in the winter, sunbathing on the beaches of Miami and Rio de Janeiro. &quot;Money is the last motivator for me,&quot; he said. &quot;But, when there is nothing positive left about a gig I have to play, I remind myself that at least it'll be 'cash for peanuts'.&quot;
 Romeo has not always been the fashionable and wealthy socialite he poses as today. Eight years ago, just after finishing 10th grade, he first went to radio station Record determined to get a job after a chance meeting with the station's PR director at a party.
 &quot;I was sporting bright-yellow jeans and a sparkling jacket - the trendy get-up at the time, but I guess I had something that convinced them to hire me,&quot; said Romeo, half-laying on the couch in the back room of his posh caf&eacute;-club Barbie's Day &amp; Night, smoking a shisha.
 Romeo started working for the commercial department at the radio station, while deejaying in the city clubs at night. &quot;I rarely got more than three hours of sleep in those days,&quot; he said. 
 He also took up the post of a part-time VJ (presenter) at the station, hosting two shows weekly - something he does still, only the hours have shifted to primetime. 
 &quot;I didn't like VJing at that time,&quot; he said. &quot;I couldn't play just the music I liked, since there was the format of the station to observe. I had to play a lot of pop songs, and I don't like pop,&quot; he explained.
 Romeo continued playing in various city nightclubs, such as the trendy club 'Absent', where he soon became popular with the crowd. &quot;I just played what I liked and it got people going,&quot; said Romeo. &quot;I mean, I played a mix which included the same commercial dance hits [other DJs played], but my sets had a sort of energy people could feel and respond to positively.&quot;
 Romeo's music genre of choice has always been house music, spanning from its lightest to the heaviest manifestations, he said, with lots of Dutch-artist influences in the early days. 
 With club popularity, sales from record releases started to rake in the cash.
 Romeo worked with four city record store chains - Titanik, Iceberg, 505 and Kinomir, doing his own promotion to get the deals. &quot;Of course, the situation in Russia is going to change within two or three years, as the country adopts stricter anti-piracy laws [subject to its entrance in the WTO], and that will affect the entire music industry,&quot; said Romeo. Nevertheless, his records have been selling at top prices, with people paying as much as 700 rubles for a CD, when most discs in Russia now can be bought for under 300 rubles, or $10.
 After leaving Absent as the resident DJ and art-director in 2003, his name already well-known to the city's trend-conscious audience, Romeo began working independently.
 He started touring a lot throughout Russia, playing anywhere from Moscow to Irkutsk. &quot;Different people liked me for different things,&quot; said Romeo. His fans span teen-age girls, who admire the DJ persona, 40 and 50 year-olds, who like Romeo's no-strings feel-good music, and more.
 &quot;Romeo is developing a niche on the [commercial] music scene, which hasn't been explored much yet,&quot; said friend and colleague, Pavel Vorontsov. &quot;There is a demand for 'image music' in the world - music that reflects a personal lifestyle, where the DJ name is like a brand. In that niche Romeo has great potential,&quot; said Vorontsov. A few Moscow DJs are working in the same direction, he said. 
 Romeo began to play European clubs as well, placing major night-life spots such as Ibiza, London and Barcelona high up on his list. &quot;I'll stay in St. Petersburg until I see I have no more room for growth here. I love Piter, but it is too gloomy here during most of the year - it gets you down, makes it difficult to wake up. And I've slept through too much in my life already, &quot; he added.
 However, getting ahead in Europe, where competition is ten times that at home, requires major business skills. 
 &quot;I take care of my own market positioning. In European clubs I often have to lower prices in order to secure the first gig. The industry is very word-of-mouth, so once you get your foot in the door it gets easier from there,&quot; said Romeo. As he speaks, his phone is ringing constantly: some are personal calls, but most are business: apparently a gig in Madrid has just been secured at $700 a pop. 
 &quot;The more money you make the easier making money gets,&quot; said Romeo. &quot;It's been tough, but I was always sure that I have something unique [to give to people], and that certainty has kept me going when others would have given up,&quot; he said. 
 Romeo's life revolves around the glamorous combination of expensive cars, glittery dance floors and fashionable people. &quot;At one point I though life was getting better for everyone, but then I realized it was just me,&quot; he said confidently.
 When asked about his relations with the world outside the limousine window, Romeo said he keeps to his limits. &quot;I do what I can to make the people in my circle feel better. But I can't do that globally.&quot;

TITLE: Yukos Begins a Legal Fight Back
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Yukos' core shareholder, Group Menatep, has taken the first step toward suing Russia in international courts for compensation over the massive drop in Yukos' share value since the legal onslaught against it began, Menatep director Tim Osborne said Thursday.
 
Menatep sent a letter to President Vladimir Putin at the end of last week, serving notice that the group could sue under the terms of the Energy Charter, an international treaty aimed at protecting the interests of investors, which Russia signed in 1994 but has not yet ratified.
 The official notice gives the administration three months to reach an amicable settlement before Menatep can launch proceedings in an international tribunal.
 &quot;We have just served them notice that we wish to begin the compulsory negotiation process,&quot; Osborne said. He said Menatep had discussed the notice for some time as a way to get the government to answer their calls for talks.
 Osborne said that Menatep, which controls about 60 percent of Yukos, could sue for the drop in share value since the onslaught began last year. The company's market capitalization has plummeted from $32.3 billion before Khodorkovsky's arrest last October to $6.3 billion now. 
 The notice is being served by two Cyprus-based entities, Hulley and Yukos Universal, through which Menatep holds its shares in Yukos. Cyprus is also a party to the treaty, which offers protection to investors against expropriation of assets by a state, or measures deemed equivalent to expropriation.
 A group of Swedish investors in Yukos has also indicated it could take the government to international arbitration in a letter sent to Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref.
 Faced with a possible fire sale of its main production unit, Yuganskneftegaz, Yukos said Wednesday it was calling an emergency shareholders meeting for Dec. 20 to decide whether to file for bankruptcy, or restructure the company in the event of a last-ditch settlement being reached with the government.
 At the meeting, shareholders will be presented with a stark choice: settlement or bust. 
 But investors can only vote for the settlement or &quot;anti-crisis&quot; plan, which is aimed at staving off a sale of Yugansk as payment for Yukos' $14 billion in outstanding back taxes, if the government agrees to it. 
 &quot;The anti-crisis plan ... has to be approved by shareholders and the relevant state authorities,&quot; Yukos board chairman Viktor Gerashchenko said in a statement Thursday.
 Settlement proposals forwarded to the government to pay off the tax bills include an offer made by jailed former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky to hand over his stake in Yukos, as well as debt rescheduling, the possibility of raising international loans and the sale of noncore assets, Yukos CEO Steven Theede said in an interview Wednesday.
 Each proposal requires the approval of the government. Asset sales are currently prohibited under a court-imposed asset freeze, while raising financing from international banks is impossible while the company still does not know the total value of its tax bills, Theede said.
 &quot;There would be considerable borrowing power if we had a final resolution as to what the liabilities were,&quot; Theede said. He said the company had been in talks with some international banks on the matter, but none of them could be termed &quot;serious&quot; until the company knew its final tax liability.
 Yukos officials have been in talks with top-level Kremlin and government officials over the proposals for months. But Theede said the government has never indicated whether it was ready to accept any of them. 
 Last Monday the government appeared to dash any hopes for a settlement by serving the company with massive new tax claims for 2002 worth just over $9 billion.
 Both Menatep and Yukos have said they consider a sale of Yugansk illegal and have threatened to sue.
 Osborne said Thursday a decision on whether to file for bankruptcy should lie with the company's management and board. &quot;We'll be waiting for a recommendation,&quot; he said. &quot;But if the government continues with the ludicrous approach of using incredible tax assessments while selling off assets for a song, bankruptcy may be obvious.
 &quot;It seems to me beyond the credibility of any government that it can drive its most successful company into bankruptcy on the basis of a personal vendetta.&quot;
 Menatep's threat to take the Russian state to international arbitration may not get too far, because the treaty has yet to receive parliamentary ratification, making it unclear what the state's legal obligations are. 
 &quot;The manner and extent to which a state's acceptance of provisional application of a treaty creates legal obligations is not completely clear under international law,&quot; said Tim Gould, a spokesman for the Energy Charter's secretariat in Belgium.


TITLE: Caucuses Railway to Restart
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - Transportation ministries of Russia, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan are entertaining plans to revive traffic on the Trans-Caucasus Railway, which was severed by a war outbreak in Abkhazia and Nagorny Karabakh.
 
&quot;The countries' presidents, transportation authorities and business representatives have expressed support for this project, which will revitalize transport links between our countries,&quot; Transportation Minister Igor Levitin told reporters last week after an earlier visit to Georgia. Levitin said that a company would be set up to restore and operate the Trans-Caucasus Railway, which crosses the territory of Georgia and Armenia and has access to Turkey's railway network.
 Russian Railways, or RZD, will participate in the company from the Russian side, Levitin said.
 The railway, stretching 2,300 kilometers in Soviet times, connected Black Sea ports with central Russia, operated passenger services to vacation resorts and handled more than 15 million tons of transit cargo per year. Levitin said that Georgia has promised to provide information on the condition of the railway later this month.

TITLE: Ruble Goes From Strength to Strength
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: The ruble rose again against the dollar late last week in very heavy trading, as the market challenged the Central Bank's resolve to cap the currency despite high oil prices and a weaker greenback, dealers said.
 
More than $3.8 billion traded hands Thursday, 10 times more than the previous day and more than three times the daily average.
 Rubles for &quot;tomorrow&quot; delivery rose to 28.765 to the dollar, the price at which the Central Bank was seen buying dollars. Nearly every trade in the session was at that level. For Friday rubles were fixed at 28.7811 
 The Central Bank reins in the ruble, which could otherwise rise on the back of booming oil revenues, to help President Vladimir Putin's pro-growth agenda - but the market is betting the authorities will give in to appreciation pressure. 
 &quot;I think the ruble is going to climb,&quot; said Interprombank dealer Valery Svinin. 
 Last month the Central Bank unexpectedly allowed the ruble to climb more than 1 percent against the dollar and many believe there is more to come. 
 Late last week Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said ruble appreciation was necessary to contain inflation, which analysts see at 11 percent this year, a percentage point above the government's target. 
 &quot;Many people hope the Central Bank will in some way react to the results of the elections in the United States, high oil prices and a rise in the euro,&quot; another trader said. &quot;Sooner or later it will happen.&quot; 
 The dollar hit 8 1/2-month lows against the euro Thursday as investors resumed selling the U.S. currency on worries about the country's growing current account deficit in the wake of President George W. Bush's re-election. 
 Central Bank gold and forex reserves in the week ending Oct. 29 rose $2.1 billion to $107.3 billion, a much smaller rise than the record $5.1 billion jump the previous week, reflecting less dollar-buying intervention.
 &quot;We expect the reserves will continue to increase through at least the end of first quarter'' of 2005, said Anastasia Shalina, an analyst at Bank Zenit. 
 Foreign currency and gold reserves are surging as the Central Bank buys dollars being brought into the country by oil and gas exporters to prevent the ruble from strengthening, which would make imported goods cheaper and hurt domestic producers.
 &quot;As long as the Central Bank sticks to its current currency policy&quot; and oil prices are high, the reserves will rise, Shalina said.
 Russia posted a budget surplus of 504.9 billion rubles ($17.5 billion) in the first 10 months of 2004, or 3.7 percent of GDP, a Finance Ministry official said Thursday, quoting preliminary figures. 
 Spending was 2.242 trillion rubles ($77.9 billion) on income of 2.747 trillion rubles. The government forecasts a surplus of 505.8 billion rubles in 2004, or 3.1 percent of GDP, after high oil prices boosted revenues this year. The surplus was 476.4 billion rubles in January to September, or 3.9 percent of GDP. 
 The stabilization fund, designed to bail out the budget if oil prices collapse, hit 404.4 billion rubles ($14.1 billion) on Nov. 1 from 349.7 billion rubles Oct. 1.
 <i>
 (Reuters, SPT, Bloomberg) </i>

TITLE: City's State Orders Key to Reform in All Areas
TEXT: The actions of the of the reformers in Governor Valentina Matviyenko's team are quite chaotic. They are trying to reform every aspect of life in the city at once, which carries with it a well-known danger: trying to do everything at once you may come away empty-handed. But in this case they have already achieved a quick victory with one of their reforms that gives them a powerful stabilizing factor - the reform of the city's state orders.
 
The mechanism of management of the city's state orders plays a system-forming role - because the way that the city budget is distributed is closely tied to the orders and has a strong effect on the work of the city administration in all aspects of city life. In addition, without an honest, transparent system of city orders it would not be possible, for instance, to introduce a competitive market for communal housing services.
 Eighty percent of all residential buildings in St. Petersburg have neither formed a condominium nor a house committee. Because of this they are managed by state district housing agencies. All the money goes through these agencies, from household tariffs and to budget subsidies. They organize the servicing of these houses. To attract private firms to do this work, tenders would have to be introduced. The way that these tenders are conducted is dependent on the system of city state orders.
 Before Matviyenko's team arrived at Smolny that system was organized in the interests of various branches of the city government's committees and honest tenders were not possible. And it is understandable - who would want to lose out on controlling cash flow of 66 billion rubles ($2.3 billion), the current revenues spent on communal housing services. It was for this reason that Andrei Likhachyov's attempt, in his role as the head of the city property committee, to introduce a market for communal housing services failed: the tenders were falsified under the system of state orders that then existed.
 There is an analogous situation in other spheres of the city's activities. It is not possible to reform them without introducing order to the system of state orders. All previous reforms in St. Petersburg - under Anatoly Sobchak and Vladimir Yakovlev - did not take this into account and were doomed to failure. Matviyenko's team began exactly by transforming the system of state orders and having achieved a significant victory in this key area the conditions for progress in other directions have been set up.
 The reform of city orders already has a real influence on those activities where no reform is even noticeable yet. For instance, in road construction - very slowly there has been a shift to seven-year contracts for servicing of new or repaired roads, while the monitoring of the state of the roads will be performed independently by a firm that will have been selected via a tender. It was in this area that a curious story occurred.
 The reform of the tender commission occurred in February. Documents prepared by the committee responsible for roads were not accepted. It took the commission 2 1/2 months to re-do their work, the tenders were held up and the results were eventually announced only in July. As a result, the budget made saving of 700 million rubles ($24 million) by Sept. 1 when most of the tenders had been held, but it sent shivers through the road construction sector.
 In contrast to their traditional practice, the construction companies began work at the beginning of the season at their own expense, without having approved financing, having in their hands only long-term agreements with the roads committee that are to be on a yearly basis, subject to a spending limit. The delays in receiving the first pay-outs and significantly reduced contract payments compared to those usually paid, caused the companies great problems. The deputy head of the economic committee Yekaterina Goloulina commented: &quot;The roads contractors were used to working without approval, but the ground rules have changed. As a result, those who want to continue working as before will be taking on big risks.&quot;
 In traditionally organized spheres, where budget funds were distributed according to &quot;understandings,&quot; the reform of state orders has introduced a new risk factor - the unpredictable outcome of tenders. The tenders have become honest and apart from saving budget funds have led to real competition between market players. The previous cartel of companies, who worked out who got what between themselves, started to fall apart. The immutable laws of economics forces them to end their corrupt deals and come up with competitive offers. Their profits and revenues may be falling, but markets are becoming more civilized. In this way the reform of state orders fulfilled two main tasks: it raised the efficiency of budget funds (work is being done for less money without a lowering in quality) and the market got healthier.
 
 <i>Vladimir Gryaznevich is a political analyst with Expert Severo-Zapad magazine. His comment was first broadcast on Ekho Moskvy in St. Petersburg on Friday. </i>

TITLE: No Ways Tired
TEXT: So the great American electoral <i>agon </i>has staggered to an end. And despite a final gurgle on the banks of the Ohio, the outcome is clear: George W. Bush - a legitimate president at last - can go back to doing what he does best: killing people for corporate profit and personal aggrandizement. 
 
Yes, it's a hard blow for the world. Yes, it's a deep shame for American democracy, poisoned by lies, fear, greed and hysteria. Yes, it means that tens of thousands of innocent people will now be killed - by more war, more neglect, more ignorance, more repression, more brutality, more hatred, more fanaticism. Yes, it means that the planet will be gashed with more wounds, smeared with more filth, left to wither and die. Yes, it's a giant step backward for the human spirit, back to the muck of arbitrary rule by vicious elites and their ham-fisted goons, their well-wadded courtiers, their yapping sycophants. Yes, it means that somewhere out there, in the blood-dimmed haze of a dark age falling, Lucifer and bin Laden are lighting cigars and raising a glass to toast the victory of their good friend George.
 These are the facts, and they can't be altered. But how to respond to this catastrophe? Shall we weep, moan, rend our garments, cover ourselves with sackcloth and ashes? Shall we sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of republics? 
 Shall we cower in the shadows and sing glamorous dirges for the Lost Cause, for vanished glories and broken dreams? 
 Or shall we come out fighting, unbowed, heads high, laughing fools to scorn, rejecting at every turn the moral authority of murderers and thieves to rule our lives, determine our reality, act in our name? 
 Let's dispense with lamentation - give not a single moment to that emotional indulgence - and get right back to work, more determined than ever to bear down harder, dig deeper and excavate the radioactive nuggets of truth still glowing beneath the slag-heap of ruin that Bush and his terrorist partners have made of the world. 
 Let's fight, let's reject, let's resist - without violence, the weapon of the stupid, the hormonal secretion of evolutionary backsliders in thrall to the chemical soup in their heads, dull primitives dressing up their ape-lust for power with scraps of religion, philosophy and cant. Let's fight these pathetic, malfunctioning wretches who lay their hands on our world and rape it like beasts in mindless rut. Fight them with the truths we find, exposing their crimes and deadly hypocrisies to the people they've suckered, perverted and betrayed. 
 This is not an insurmountable task, no matter how impervious the Bush Machine - that monstrous conglomeration of judicial bagmen, Congressional rubber-stamps, hard-right media moguls, dopehead radio ranters, sex-crazed theocrats, neo-conservatives, neo-Confederates, war profiteers, think-tank bleaters, Wall Street sharks, oilmen, Moonies, gun nuts and woman-haters - might appear at the moment. Let's look at the facts. 
 Despite four years of the most relentless barrage of propaganda, deceit, misinformation and fearmongering ever hurled against a free society, more than 54 million people voted to reject Bush and all his works: his Hitlerite policy of aggressive war; his gulag system of torture and lawless detention; his savage assault on civil rights, the environment, working people and the poor; his systematic destruction of social programs; his transfer of sovereignty from individuals and communities to the iron grip of his corporate donors; his trashing of hard-won international agreements on nuclear weapons, conventional arms, war crimes, global warming, the rights of women and the protection of children; his unleashing of rabid religious zealots into the bowels of government to set policies on science, health, education, welfare, while sucking up billions in public money to fund their sectarian causes.
 Such mass dissent - even in &quot;wartime,&quot; in the face of the Machine - is surely cause for hope. Moreover, recent academic studies show that a large majority of Bush supporters actually disagree with him on everything from the Kyoto treaty to missile defense to international law to workers' rights - but somehow believe that he shares <i>their</i> views. 
 Most Bush-backers also still believe that Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida colluded in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction - yet this same majority says that the conquest of Iraq would be illegitimate if there were no WMD and no 9/11 connection.
 Thus more than half of the Bush voters oppose his actual policies, including the criminal war in Iraq - they just don't know it yet, because they're mired in carefully cultivated delusion.
 Of course, many Bush voters are <i>willfully</i> deluded, glad to be suckered and betrayed. They love the ludicrous puppet-show of his supposed greatness, his all-seeing wisdom, his mandate from God. 
 They get teary-eyed at the thought of his honesty and goodness - while he kills 100,000 innocent people in Iraq, as a new medical study shows, with a brutally stupid military aggression based on lies and fantasies, fomenting more terrorism with each new barbarity and gorging his cronies on blood money. This hard core will never respond to the truth. 
 But if we can enlighten even the smallest percentage of Bush's razor-thin majority, then support for his murderous folly and waste will quickly erode. 
 One by one, the puppet-strings will snap, and America's headlong plunge into tyranny, bigotry and endless imperial war can perhaps - perhaps - be halted, even reversed.
 It's worth the fight. Let's take it on, let's take them down. In the words of the old spiritual, let us be in no ways tired. The road back to sanity and justice starts now.
 <i>

 For annotational references, see Opinion at www.sptimesrussia.com </i>

TITLE: Japan Struck By New Temblor
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TOKYO - A magnitude 5.9 earthquake rocked northern Japan on Monday, injuring at least eight people, near the area where the country's deadliest earthquake in years struck last month. 
 
The quake, which hit at 11:16 a.m., appeared to be an aftershock to last month's magnitude-6.8 temblor. It was centered close to the earth's surface in the Chuetsu area of Niigata prefecture, the Meteorological Agency said. 
 The operators of the high-speed &quot;bullet&quot; train line between Tokyo and Niigata suspended service to conduct safety checks. One train derailed last month when the initial quake struck almost directly under its tracks. 
 Television footage from Niigata showed swaying power lines. Three weaker temblors of magnitudes 5.0, 4.5 and 4.2 struck in succession in the 30 minutes following the initial aftershock, the Agency said. 
 The quake posed no danger of a seismic tidal wave, it said. 
 A man was injured after being briefly buried by a small landslide, said Atsushi Moriyama, a spokesman for Niigata prefecture. Five kindergarten students and their teacher also were injured when a wall they were walking past collapsed and a woman was injured after losing control of her motorbike. 
 Takeshi Minagawa, an official at the town hall in Nakanoshima, among several towns where the quake shook strongest, said he felt 10 seconds of vertical rocking. He said it felt stronger than other aftershocks, but no damage was reported in the town. 
 Several roads were closed in Nakanoshima while officials confirmed if they were safe to use after the quake, Minagawa said. 
 The Oct. 23 jolt that struck Niigata and aftershocks in the days that followed killed 39 people and injured more than 2,000. It was the deadliest quake to hit Japan since 1995, when a magnitude-7.2 quake killed 6,433 people in the western city of Kobe. 
 Thousands of people in the area are still living in temporary public shelters or are camped out in tents and cars because their homes are ruined. Agency officials warned residents to avoid damaged structures because there was a greater risk they could crumble. 
 &quot;Aftershocks are still occurring in this area and there is high probability another quake of the same strength will strike again within the next month or so,&quot; Masahiro Yamamoto, an agency official, said in a televised news conference. 
 Located along the Pacific &quot;Ring of Fire,&quot; Japan is one of the world's most earthquake-prone countries. A magnitude 5 earthquake can cause damage to homes if it occurs in a residential area.

TITLE: Brother and Sister Convicted For Sending Spam E-Mails
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LEESBURG, Virginia - A brother and sister who sent junk e-mail to millions of America Online customers were convicted last week in the nation's first felony prosecution of Internet spam distributors. 
Jurors recommended that Jeremy Jaynes, 30, be sentenced to nine years in prison and fined Jessica DeGroot, 28, $7,500 after convicting them of three counts each of sending e-mails with fraudulent and untraceable routing information. 
 A third defendant, Richard Rut-kowski, 30, was acquitted after deliberations of 1 1/2 days. All three defendants live in the Raleigh, NorthCarolina, area. 
 Prosecutors compared Jaynes and DeGroot to modern-day snake oil salesmen who use the Internet to peddle junk like a &quot;FedEx refund processor&quot; that supposedly allowed people to earn $75 an hour working from home. 
 Prosecutors had asked the jury to impose a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison for Jaynes, and to consider some amount of jail time for his sister, whom they acknowledged was less culpabale. 
 Defense lawyers asked jurors to spare the defendants prison terms. 
 David Oblon, representing Jaynes, argued that it was inappropriate for prosecutors to seek what he called an excessive punishment, given that this is the first prosecution under the Virginia law. He also noted that his client, a North Carolina resident, would have been unaware of the Virginia law. 
 Oblon called the jury's recommendation of nine years in prison shocking. 
 &quot;Nine years is absolutely outrageous when you look at what we do to people convicted of crimes like robbery and rape,&quot; Oblon said. 
 When Jaynes and DeGroot are formally sentenced in February, Circuit Court Judge Thomas Horne will have the option of reducing the jury's sentence or leaving it intact. He cannot increase it. 
 Horne also has not yet ruled on an earlier motion asking that the cases be dismissed. He said during the trial that he had a hard time allowing the prosecution of DeGroot and Rutkowski to go forward to the jury. 
 The attorney Oblon said Jaynes &quot;is convinced of his innocence&quot; and he expects the conviction will eventually be set aside. 
 Even if Horne refuses to set aside the verdict, Oblon can appeal and challenge the new law on constitutional grounds. The defendants have said the law is an unconstitutional infringement of free speech. 
 Virginia prosecuted the case under a law that took effect last year which bars people from sending bulk e-mail that is unsolicited and masks its origin. 
 


TITLE: U.S. Marines Attack Fallujah Stronghold
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEAR FALLUJAH, Iraq - U.S. forces stormed into the western outskirts of Fallujah early Monday, seizing the main city hospital and securing two key bridges over the Euphrates river in what appeared to be the first stage of the long-expected assault on the insurgent stronghold. 
 
An AC-130 gunship raked the city with 40 mm cannon fire as explosions from U.S. artillery lit up the night sky. Intermittent artillery fire blasted southern neighborhoods of Fallujah, and orange fireballs from high explosive airbursts could be seen above the rooftops. 
 U.S. officials said the toughest fight was yet to come - when U.S. forces enter the main part of the city on the east bank of the river, including the Jolan neighborhood where insurgent defenses are believed the strongest. 
 The initial attacks on Fallujah began just hours after the Iraqi government declared 60 days of emergency rule throughout most of the country as militants dramatically escalated attacks, killing at least 30 people, including two Americans. 
 Several hundred Iraqi troops were sent into Fallujah's main hospital after U.S. forces sealed off the area. The troops detained about 50 men of military age inside the hospital, but about half were later released. 
 The invaders used special tools, powered by .22 caliber blanks, to break open door locks. A rifle-like crackle echoed through the facility. Many patients were herded into hallways and handcuffed until troops determined whether they were insurgents hiding in the hospital. 
 Salih al-Issawi, head of the hospital, said he had asked U.S. officers to allow doctors and ambulances to go inside the main part of the city to help the wounded but they refused. There was no confirmation from the Americans. 
 &quot;The American troops' attempt to take over the hospital was not right because they thought that they would halt medical assistance to the resistance,&quot; he said by telephone to a reporter inside the city. &quot;But they did not realize that the hospital does not belong to anybody, especially the resistance.&quot; 
 During the siege of Fallujah in April, doctors at the hospital were a main source of reports about civilian casualties, which U.S. officials insisted were overblown. Those reports generated strong public outage in Iraq and elsewhere in the Arab world, prompting the Bush administration to call off the offensive. 
 Sunday's action began after sundown on the outskirts of the city, which has been sealed off by U.S. and Iraqi forces, and the minaret-studded skyline was lit up with huge flashes of light. 
 Flares were dropped to illuminate targets, and defenders fought back with heavy machine gunfire. Flaming red tracer rounds streaked through the sky from guerrilla positions inside the city, 65 kilometers west of Baghdad. 
 As dawn broke Monday over Iraq, the roar of jet aircraft could be heard in Baghdad heading west toward Fallujah. 
 Before the assault began, U.S. commanders warned troops to expect the most brutal urban fighting since the Vietnam War. 
 Underscoring the instability elsewhere in Iraq, several heavy explosions thundered through the capital even as government spokesman Thair Hassan al-Naqeeb was announcing the state of emergency, which applies throughout the country except for Kurdish-ruled areas in the north. 
 Iraqi interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said the state of emergency is a &quot;very powerful message that we are serious&quot; about reining in insurgents before elections set for late January. 
 &quot;We want to secure the country so elections can be done in a peaceful way and the Iraqi people can participate in the elections freely, without the intimidation by terrorists and by forces who are trying to wreck the political process in Iraq,&quot; he told reporters. 
 Allawi said nothing in public about the beginning of the attack in Fallujah, although U.S. commanders have said it would be his responsibility to order the storming of the city.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>Ivory Coast Turmoil
 </b>

ABIDJAN (AFP) - Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo appealed Monday for calm after two days of looting and violence against French nationals as France deployed reinforcements following the deaths of nine French troops in an airstrike. 
 French ministers said the situation was tense but under control and there were no immediate plans to evacuate their 14,000 nationals from the west African country despite mob violence targeting foreigners, including the looting and torching of businesses and homes. 
 Paris, backed by the European Union and African Union, toughened its stance towards Gbagbo after his partisans called people out into the streets in defiance of French forces.
 
 
<b>Tesco to Sell Music
 </b>

LONDON (Reuters) - Leading supermarket chain Tesco on Monday launched a music download service, entering a market dominated by Apple Computer's iTunes.
 Tesco said songs will be available at www.tesco.com/downloads and its service will be compatible with more than 70 different music players. Shoppers will be able to download more than 500,000 songs at a cost of 79 pence each.
 "Music buying is changing," Tesco.com Chief Executive Laura Wade Gery said in a statement. "As the price of portable digital music players falls, customers will demand more choice."
 
 
<b>French Protester Killed
 </b>

NANCY, France (AP) - A French anti-nuclear protester was killed yesterday in eastern France when his leg was severed by a train carrying radioactive waste to Germany, a police official said. 
 According to an early investigation, Sebastien Briat, a 21-year-old protester from the nearby Meuse region, died from injuries sustained when he and other activists were surprised by the train as they prepared to chain themselves to the rails, police officials said. 
 Previous shipments of radioactive waste to Gorleben have drawn thousands of protesters, but the demonstrations have faded, however, as the German government last year embarked on a plan to phase out nuclear power altogether and close its remaining 18 nuclear power plants by about 2020.
 
 
<b>Macedonian Poll Fails
 </b>

SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP) - Macedonia's national referendum Sunday on abolishing local autonomy for the country's ethnic Albanian minority failed, authorities said.
 The State Election Commission said turnout was only 26.2 percent - well below the 50 percent needed. Although a large majority of the ballots cast were in favor of revoking Albanian autonomy, the initiative collapsed because of the low turnout, said Zoran Tanevski of the Election Commission.
 Defense Minister Vlado Buckovski hailed the outcome as a victory for the government that earlier this year pushed through a law redrawing municipal districts to make ethnic Albanians a dominant force in 16 out of 84 districts. The law infuriated Macedonian hard-liners, who forced the referendum to try and block the reform. 
 



TITLE: Safin Hits 16 Aces in Paris Masters Win
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PARIS - Marat Safin overwhelmed Czech qualifier Radek Stepanek 6-3 7-6 6-3 with the help of 16 aces Sunday to win his record-tying third Paris Masters title. 
 
Safin, the 2000 U.S. Open champion, claimed his 14th career championship. Stepanek was appearing in his first ATP Tour final and was trying to become the first qualifier to win a Masters Series tournament since Albert Portas at Hamburg in 2001. 
 &quot;I played solid, a pretty good level of tennis this week,&quot; Safin said. &quot;I will have a couple of days off now and go back to Moscow. No tennis. Just private stuff. I've been playing for the last five weeks and I want to sleep in my bed ... finally.&quot; 
 He also won the Paris Masters in 2000 and 2002, and lost to Andre Agassi in the 1999 final. Boris Becker is the only other player to have won the Paris indoor event three times. 
 Safin, a former No. 1, has won five Masters titles, including in Madrid last month. He dictated the match against Stepanek from the outset, breaking serve immediately to move ahead 3-0 in the first set, which he wrapped up in only 35 minutes. 
 Safin felt he could &quot;break Stepanek at any time,&quot; which led the Russian to be overconfident and let his concentration lapse in the second set. 
 &quot;I could not focus,&quot; Safin said. &quot;I started to believe it would be easy and almost paid the price.&quot; 
 Stepanek fell behind by a break early in the second set, then came back, and had two break points with an opportunity to lead 4-2. But Safin saved those. 
 &quot;I failed to convert my chances,&quot; Stepanek said. &quot;Marat plays so quickly on his backhand, it's very hard to get his big shots back. But I gave all I had.&quot; 
 Safin got increasingly frustrated as Stepanek appeared to get back into the match. At one point, he smashed his racket violently to the ground and shook his head - then looked at Stepanek. 
 Stepanek led 5-4 in the second-set tiebreaker, but he fell apart, losing three straight points. 
 &quot;He almost got me in the tiebreak. It could have been a different story,&quot; Safin said. &quot;I didn't want to get drawn into a five-set match with a serve-and-volleyer.&quot; 
 He hugged and patted Stepanek at the net after clinching victory and then applauded the crowd with his racket. 
 Safin is hugely popular with the French fans, who broke into chants of his name as they rose to cheer.
 Meanwhile, in Spain, Amelie Mauresmo barely finished celebrating one title when she focused her sights on other goals: winning the WTA Tour Championships and finishing the season ranked No. 1. 
 Mauresmo shook off a slow start and beat Russia's Vera Zvonareva 3-6 6-2 6-2 Sunday to successfully defend her Advanta Championships title for her fifth tournament victory of 2004. 
 Mauresmo seems poised to make a splash this week in Los Angeles at the season-ending tour championships. Mauresmo has won two straight tournaments, including in Austria last week. 
 She considers herself the favorite heading to LA. 
 &quot;Yeah, I guess so, when you win these kind of titles,&quot; she said. &quot;I'm in shape, I feel confident on the court and my game is there.&quot; 
 She has a shot at ending the season at No. 1, where she spent five weeks after the U.S. Open despite no Grand Slam titles. 
 &quot;I'm getting closer and closer,&quot; said Mauresmo, second to Lindsay Davenport in the current rankings. &quot;I don't put too much pressure on this. The most important thing for me was to reach it anytime during the year and during my career.&quot;
 This was her 15th career title, with others this year coming in Berlin, Rome and Montreal.
 &quot;Consistency is what I have been looking for, for years. I have finally reached that in 2004,&quot; she said. &quot;I'll take that.&quot;

TITLE: New York Knicks So Bad That Shock Jock Walks Out
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK - The New York Knicks were so bad in their home opener, even Howard Stern was offended. 
 
The shock jock and his girlfriend walked out of Madison Square Garden in disgust midway through the third quarter Saturday night, long after fans began booing the Knicks in a 107-73 loss to the Boston Celtics. 
 Paul Pierce scored 28 points, Ricky Davis added 20, and the Celtics shot 56 percent to win for the first time this season after opening with two losses at home. 
 Boston blew fourth-quarter leads in both of those games, but there would be no repeat this time against a Knicks team that was even shakier on defense than it was on offense. 
 The 34-point loss was the team's largest losing margin in a home opener. 
 &quot;I would have booed, too, if I was a fan. The way we played tonight we deserved to get booed,&quot; Stephon Marbury said. &quot;We were terrible. In all areas of playing basketball we were bad tonight. Everything that entails going into winning a basketball game, we had none of it.&quot; 
 Boston certainly did. 
 Pierce took care of the outside shooting, and the rest of the Celtics repeatedly drove inside, exerted greater effort on the boards and came up with nearly every hustle play against an undersized and nonaggressive Knicks defense. 
 Boston began pulling away late in the first quarter, then closed the first half with a 13-0 run. 
 When the boos began they weren't all that loud, but the disparaging decibel level increased tenfold by the time the Knicks walked off at intermission after Tim Thomas ended the half by firing up an airball off an isolation play. 
 &quot;This is New York. We wanted to win in the worst way and play our best basketball, but each and every night it's not going to happen,&quot; Thomas said. &quot;But for that to happen, it was just uncalled for. It was just a terrible night.&quot; 
 The third quarter began with a turnover by Kurt Thomas - one of 19 by New York - a 3-pointer by Gary Payton, a miss by the Knicks and a 3-point set shot by Pierce for a 61-36 lead. 
 The Celtics led by as many as 33 before the third quarter ended, and the only suspense in the fourth quarter revolved around how many fans would stay for the end. (About 8,000 did).
 Pierce shot 10-for-18 from the field and 6-for-6 from the line with 10 rebounds and eight assists. Payton added nine points, leaving him 15 shy of becoming the 29th player in NBA history to score 20,000.


TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: <b>Radcliffe Back to Form 
 </b>

NEW YORK (SPT) - World record holder Paula Radcliffe has rebounded from her Athens Olympics traumas with a dramatic victory in the closest finish yet to the women's New York City marathon.
 The 30-year-old Briton, who dropped out of the Olympic marathon in August after starting the race as favorite, was neck-and-neck with Kenyan Susan Chepkemei until the final meters where she pulled away to win by four seconds in 2:23:10 on Sunday.
 "I don't think today was about sending out messages and I think it's very difficult to make up for it," Radcliffe said.
 
 
<b>All About Tszyu
 </b>

GLENDALE, Arizona (AP) - Kostya Tszyu (31-1) knocked Sharmba Mitchell down four times - three in the third round - to retain his IBF junior welterweight belt.
 The last time, the relentless native of a Russian steel-mill city dropped Mitchell to his knees with two combinations, then a right hand, two lefts and a right before referee Raul Caiz stepped in at the 2:48 mark. 
 Tszyu was credited with a seven-round technical knockout of Mitchell (55-4) when they fought on Feb. 3, 2001. But that was because Mitchell had to retire after reinjuring his left knee. 
 This time, Tszyu, a former champion of all three major divisions, left no question about his supremacy at 140 pounds, getting his 25th knockout and improving to 15-1 in world championship bouts. It is likely that Tsyu will next meet Britain's undefeated Ricky Hatton in a mouth-watering prospect.
 
 
<b>Eagles Have Landed
 </b>

PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania (AP) - The Pittsburgh Steelers made certain there's nobody unbeaten now in the NFL, except for Ben Roethlisberger.
 The Steelers combined their still-flawless new quarterback with a touch of the old- a Jerome Bettis of yesteryear and a defense that was tough - to dominate the Philadelphia Eagles 27-3 Sunday and leave the NFL without an undefeated team.
 In other games, The Patriots rebounded from their loss last week to the Steelers by routing the St Louis Rams, while the San Diego Chargers kept up their surprise start to the season. Drew Brees led San Diego to its third straight win - a 43-17 pounding of the New Orleans Saints in which he threw for 257 yards, four touchdowns and no interceptions.
 
 
<b>Zenit Title Hopes Dead
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - FC Zenit saw their title hopes finally dashed after a 3-2 loss to FC Moscow on Monday night. Despite taking an early lead at Petrovsky, thanks to an Igor Denisov goal, Zenit conceded three goals before gaining a Lukasc Harting consolation strike before the final whistle. 
 Zenit had seen their two Moscow rivals, Locomotiv and CSKA, overhaul their lead at the top of the table but suffered a late-season collapse to drop out of a title race that looked to be, at one point, within their grasp.
 Zenit also suffered a dissapointing 2-1 reverse to Lille of France in their UEFA Cup clash Thursday. A Kerzha-kov goal was not enough to bring any points back to Russia.