SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1043 (9), Friday, February 11, 2005
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TITLE: Hotel Sold in Multi-Million Dollar Deal
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: In one of the largest-ever Russian property deals, British luxury hospitality chain Orient-Express Hotels has snapped up a 93.5 percent stake in St. Petersburg's historic Grand Hotel Europe for about $100 million. 
 
"We feel the competitive situation is good" because it is one of only two top hotels in the city, Simon Sherwood, president of Orient-Express Hotels, said in a statement, referring to Rocco Forte-managed luxury hotel Astoria. "The balance of strong business demand in winter and strong tourist demand in summer assures high occupancy levels."
 The five-star, 301-room Grand Hotel Europe, which opened its doors in 1875 at the intersection of Mikhailovskaya Ulitsa and Nevsky Prospekt, is the country's oldest operating hotel and one of St. Petersburg's most famous addresses. 
 Orient-Express, best known for its legendary railway tours on the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express in Europe and the Eastern & Oriental Express in Asia, also owns 48 deluxe leisure properties in 22 countries, 40 of which it manages. The company, which is primarily interested in trophy, landmark properties, owns the likes of the Ritz Hotel in Madrid, the Cipriani Hotel in Venice and The Observatory Hotel in Sydney.
 Orient-Express is special within the hospitality industry in that the company not only manages, but also owns hotels. The chain's revenue for 2003, the last full year for which figures were available, came to $329.5 million.
 Orient-Express Hotels did not disclose the price of its acquisition Thursday, saying only that total investment over three years is expected to be roughly $125 million. Financing for the deal came from International Finance Corporation, a subsidiary of the World Bank, as well as "a syndicate of banks," the company said.
 In addition to buying a 93.5 percent stake in the historic luxury hotel, Orient-Express is assuming full management and operational control. It also announced plans to refurbish the hotel, acquire a building next door connected to the premises and purchase the remaining 6.5 percent stake still held by the City Hall.
 Orient-Express said it was buying the hotel from a "group of international investors." No further details were given.
 In Soviet times all the city's hotels were owned by the state and its stakes were sold off in often murky deals during the 1990s. The secondary market refers to real estate deals that do not involve the government - ones in which a property has already been privatized and is being sold by one private entity to another. 
 In 2002, City Hall sold 40 percent in the hotel to Switzerland's GHE Holding firm, pushing the firm's stake to 70 percent, for a symbolic 32.8 million rubles (roughly $1 million) on condition that the company would restructure the hotel's outstanding $60 million debt. 
 The deal was investigated by the Audit Chamber and found to be within the law.
 The remaining stake was owned by Cyprus-registered Mir Hotels and Liechtenstein's North-Western Tours.
 Since 1995 Hotel Grand Europe has been managed by Germany's Kempinski Hotels & Resorts and Orient-Express had to buy their management agreement from them as part of the transaction. Kempinski confirmed that it was no longer operating the hotel as of Thursday, but would comment further.
 "The Grand Hotel Europe ceased to be a member of Kempinski Hotels & Resorts effective Feb. 10," Reto Wittwer, company's president and CEO said in a one-sentence communiqué sent out Thursday.
 The hotel's new general manager is Thomas Noll, formerly general manager of the Corinthia Nevskij Palace hotel. Kempinski will not be finishing its involvement in the city: a new five-star Kempinski hotel is set to open in St. Petersburg soon. 
 The Grand Hotel's former manager, Henri Blin, will remain with Kempinski but at a hotel in Budapest, he said.
 Noll, a German, said Thursday in a telephone interview that the hotel is well-known to the German-speaking community and is likely to continue to be a focus for their important events. 
 German President Horst Koehler was a recent guest at the Grand Hotel Europe. 
 The new Kempinski hotel will reside in a renovated 19th-century historical building on the Moika embankment, near the Hermitage Museum. It will have close to 200 rooms, some opening to a panoramic view of the Palace Square and the Church on the Spilled Blood. 
 Stephane Meyrat, senior consultant at Hotel Consulting & Development Group, said that Kempinski's management of the hotel had added value to the deal and made it "more attractive for a foreign investor." 
 Market watchers estimated the stake acquired by Orient-Express may have cost between $85 million and $95 million.
 As much as $40 million could be spent on the hotel's refurbishment, while the buy-out of Kempinski's management agreement had probably set Orient-Express back by another $6-$10 million, said Rob Stoddard, vice-president at Monab Development.
 "This could be the most significant hotel transaction in Russia's history," Stoddard said, adding that Orient-Express, as a "very tourism-oriented company," is likely to be looking for properties to acquire in Moscow once it secures its St. Petersburg presence.
 Orient-Express's decision to enter the Russian market via St. Petersburg is also indicative of Moscow City Hall's reluctance to loosen its grip on the capital's hospitality industry, market experts said.
 "St. Petersburg is far more open to foreign investment," Stoddard said.
 Orient-Express, which also operates boat and railway tours all over the world, said it is considering launching a 50-cabin luxury, five-star-class yacht that would offer week-long cruises between Moscow and St. Petersburg. 
 "Based on their previous work, I think it will make sense for them to buy another property in Moscow and put the two hotels on one package tour," Stoddard predicted.
 No hotel in Moscow is fully owned by foreign investors as the city retains a blocking or a controlling stake in the vast majority of local hotels. Lack of transparency on the Moscow hotel market - exemplified by the recent Rossiya Hotel tender or the Moskva Hotel redevelopment debacle - also makes the city less than attractive for investment.
 "Overall it is simply easier to make a hotel deal in St. Petersburg than in Moscow," said one market expert on conditions of anonymity.
 "There are less political strings attached to projects in St. Petersburg," Meyrat agreed.
 As a comparison to the grand scale of the acquisition deal, there is Russia's first institutional deal that occurred in October 2003. Britain's Fleming Family & Partners acquired Gogolevsky 11, a Class A office center for roughly $30 million. 
 Other large publicized deals include the purchase of Moscow's Berlin House office and retail center last May for over $40 million by Switzerland's Eastern Property Holding and the acquisition of a $50 million unfinished class A office center on Ovchinnikovskaya Naberezhnaya by Russia's Perm Financial & Industrial Group.
 A Moscow-based consultant, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the sale was a positive sign for Russia's real-estate market.
 "It's an indication of there being a secondary market available for quantifiably great properties," he said in a telephone interview.
 The consultant said that such deals had been in the wind early and mid last year, but none had been realized.
 "The international press about business conditions in Russia has not been good," he said. 
 Real estate and especially institutional investors had also been quite choosy, which did not match what the 15-year-old market could provide. 
 However, deals like the one for the Grand Hotel Europe showed that if investors were prepared to meet the market, commercial real estate could offer foreign investors good returns, he said.

TITLE: Student's 
 Murder
 'Solved'
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The murder of a Vietnamese student in downtown St. Petersburg down in October has been solved and those responsible, members of a skinhead group, have been arrested, the city prosecutor's office aid Wednesday.
 
The police have detained five suspects and expect to arrest more soon, city prosecutor Sergei Zaitsev said at a briefing.
 "Five people have already been arrested and at least as many again will be arrested later," Interfax quoted him saying. "All of these people are skinhead types. We know who did the stabbing and what weapon they used."
 All of the suspects belong to a local extremist group White Energy, the prosecutor said.
 On Oct. 13, 2004 Vu An Tuan, a 20-year-old first-year student at the St. Petersburg Polytechnic University, was walking to Petrogradskaya metro station after attending a friend's birthday party at the Pavlov Medical Institute dormitory when he was attacked at about 10 p.m.
 There were about 18 attackers. They had shaven heads and black clothes and boots, according to witnesses questioned by the police.
 Tuan managed to run a few meters before the men caught up with him and stabbed him, police said. He died on the spot with at least five deep knife wounds.
 The assassination resulted in a wave of protests by the foreign student community in the city, who said they are regularly the victims of racist attacks. Until this week, the police and City Hall had tried to represent the case as "hooliganism," saying there was no evidence of racist motivations.
 But now, the prosecutor has confirmed the murder was not a spontaneous attack by ordinary hooligans.
 "The suspects committed a planned assault," Zaitsev said.
 However, the police continue to insist hooliganism was the cause of another crime that local human rights advocates have said was obviously committed on grounds of racial hatred - the killing of nine-year-old Tajik girl Khursheda Sultanova on Feb. 9 last year.
 "Four people are in detention and other participants in the attack have been detained," Zaitsev said. "According to our information, there were at least 14 attackers, although we haven't caught the actual killers yet."
 "For the moment, this crime is not classified as one committed on the grounds of national hatred. This is an ordinary crime linked to unemployed youths, who were excited after drinking alcohol," he said.
 About a dozen teenagers, armed with a knife, knuckledusters, chains and bats attacked Yusuf Sultanov, 35, his daughter Khursheda and nephew Alabir, 11, in the city center at 4 Pereulok Boitsova about 9 p.m. a year ago.
 Sultanov and the children were on their way home from a walk to one of the ice slides in the city's Yusupov Garden. The group of teenagers followed them, and then hit Sultanov on the head with a heavy object from behind.
 The attackers also hit the boy on the head, but he managed to hide under a car parked nearby.
 The group then turned to the girl and stabbed her 11 times in her arms, chest and stomach. Khursheda died from blood loss before an ambulance arrived. 
 The man and the boy managed to survive the attack and were hospitalized with head injuries.
 Meanwhile, the prosecutor's office has made little progress in investigating the murder of Nikolai Girenko, an expert on extremist issues allegedly killed by skinheads in the doorway of his apartment on June 19 last year.
 "On the course of investigating Nikolai Girenko's assassination a great deal of work has been done with different versions examined, including the involvement of skinheads or domestic reasons," Zaitsev said. 
 "We haven't been able to reach any conclusions and are going over the basic elements of the case again."
 Racism in Russia has been growing at an alarming rate in recent years with about 16 percent of population supporting the idea of "Russia for Russians," with the number of supporters growing, according to a report presented by human rights advocates in Moscow on Wednesday.
 "A sense of ethnic [superiority] is getting stronger in the consciousness of the average citizen in Russia today, the level of xenophobia is growing and radical nationalistic groups are becoming active," said Alexander Borod, head of the Nationalism, Xenophobia and Anti-Semitism project in State Duma, the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights reported.
 "A rapid shrinking of the space for the activity of democratic forces in Russia has led to a result that the role of opposition has started to be assumed by representatives of nationalistic parities, which exploit high levels of xenophobia and aggression in society, and the unhappiness of the population with complications caused by reforms," the report said.

TITLE: Chechen Ombudsman: Both Sides Kidnap
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Kidnapping is the biggest human-rights problem in Chechnya, the republic's acting ombudsman Lyoma Khasuyev said Thursday in the St. Petersburg suburb of Pushkin.
 
"Kidnappings are committed by both sides: the fighters and the federal special services, including Chechen policemen," Khasuyev said at a news conference about a training program for the staff of the Chechen Ombudsman in Pushkin this week.
 Khasuyev said fighters usually kidnap people "out of revenge," while Chechen police and special services do so "for investigation purposes."
 "However, federal troops and police do not inform the relatives of the people they get for investigation or questioning about their actions," Khasuyev said. "Therefore, by law those actions are also considered to be kidnappings."
 Khasuyev said people are usually kidnapped by masked people wearing military uniforms, who often drive military vehicles.
 The complaint is not new. Since the war restarted in 1999, Chechens have complained not only that family members are kidnapped, but they are summarily executed, often in situations where federal troops seem the most likely offenders. 
 The kidnappers appear to target young men, regardless of whether they have been involved in fighting, although everyone appears to be at risk, Chechens complain.
 Moscow says it is fighting international terrorists in Chechnya.
 Khasuyev arrived in Pushkin together with 14 other staff of the Chechen Ombudsman office, which was opened in October of 2004, to attend the training program sponsored by the Council of Europe and the European Union.
 Alvaro Gil-Robles, Commissioner for Human Rights for the Council of Europe, who lectured the Chechen staff on Thursday, said that kidnappings are "a gangrene for the future of the republic."
 "It is necessary to stop the impunity of those who commit them," Gil-Robles said, adding that on Wednesday he had discussed the issue with the Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov in Moscow.
 "We touched upon the information which comes to me that representatives of Chechen Interior Affairs Ministry take part in some acts of violence," Gil-Robles said
 Gil-Robles said Thursday that Ustinov told him "in the last few days some high-ranking officials of the ministry were questioned on some cases initiated in Chechnya."
 In October, Ustinov said that authorities should be allowed to detain relatives of terrorists by force as a "counter-hostage-taking" measure. Federal authorities are believed to have recently detained the relatives of Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov in an effort to force him to surrender. Maskhadov last week announced a cease-fire and called for peace talks.
 The Kremlin has not yet responded.
 Gil-Robles called for an end to "all kinds of violence in Chechnya" by all sides, whether they are taking part in military activities or violent actions in Chechnya.
 "It is intolerable if someone decides to enforce their ideas with the help of guns and bombs," Gil-Robles said. 
 Those who call themselves separatists, "should defend their ideas by voicing them, and not through use of violence and terror," he added.
 Khasuyev said "Chechens are citizens of Russia, and they don't want freedom from Russia."
 "Small nations usually want to be a part of a big country ... While international terrorism divides nations and people," Khasuyev said.
 Gil-Robles, who visited Grozny in September said that "Grozny needs big restoration," and that Chechen people need jobs.
 "It's a shame that the city is in such poor condition," Gil-Robles said. "While Chechen young people need prospects and work."
 Among the positive things taking place in Chechnya, Gil-Robles noted that Chechen children go to school, and payouts for damaged property have begun. 
 However, he said in many cases "to get compensation people have to pay a bribe from 30 percent to 50 percent of the compensation sum."

TITLE: Stalin Statue 
 'Due to Go To Yalta'
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A controversial statue of World War II Allied leaders Josef Stalin, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt will be unveiled in front of the Livada Palace in the Crimea, the Ukraine, on May 9, sculptor Zurab Tsereteli said in St. Petersburg on Thursday.
 
"The statue of the Big Three will be completely finished by then," Tsereteli said during a visit to the city's MonumentSculptura plant, where the statue is being completed.
 May 9 will be the 60th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany.
 Tsereteli said the Crimean authorities have signed a decree on erecting the statue.
 The idea of erecting the statue caused protests from Crimean Tatars last week, when the 60th anniversary of the meeting of the Allied leaders near Yalta was celebrated. Doubts were raised over whether the statue would be erected at all.
 Crimean Tatars, whose ancestors were deported by Soviet dictator Stalin in horrific conditions in 1944, said they would not tolerate the statue of Stalin on their land. 
 The statue is believed to be first of the dictator made since the 1950s.
 Tsereteli said he created the sculpture "to mark a grandiose historical event, which changed the way of history, also in favor of the Soviet Union."
 "We can't close our eyes to history," Tsereteli said.
 He said he worked on the statue of Stalin not to promote the dictator, but to portray him as a historical figure.
 Tsereteli said he dislikes Stalin, especially since his grandfather was repressed and executed in 1937.
 Tsereteli said he has been working on the monument for the last two years at the request of Ukrainian authorities. 
 The statue, which weighs 10 tons and is 3 meters high, shows the three leaders as shown in a photo they posed for in front of the Livada Palace on Feb. 4, 1945.
 "My aim was also to show the leaders' characters," Tsereteli said.
 The impression given that Stalin dominates the statue reflects that he was the host of the event, he said.
 Tsereteli, who is creating a monument dedicated to the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, said the monument is to be erected in the town of Bayonne, New Jersey, on Sept. 11 this year.
 The 140-ton monument, 30 meters high features a big eye with a tear, Tsereteli said.

TITLE: Israeli Businessman Kidnapped
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: An Israeli businessman was kidnapped in downtown St. Petersburg in broad daylight Wednesday, the city police reported.
 
"He was pushed into a car parked on Nevsky Prospekt at about 10 a.m. and driven away, according to statements by witnesses," city police spokesman Pavel Rayevsky said Thursday in a telephone interview.
 He provided no further details.
 But according to the Agency of Journalistic Investigations, the kidnappers have demanded money from relatives of the businessman, who is identified as 33-year-old Boris Suris, head of the company Achlama, which imports Herbalife products to Russia. The businessman was pushed into GAZ-31028 with tinted windows, the report said.
 A few hours after the kidnapping, Pavel Suris, the businessman's father, got a phone call from an unidentified caller who told him to take an audio tape from a mailbox, the agency said, quoting anonymous sources within the police.
 The tape contained the kidnappers' demands, which according to the police, did not specify how much should be paid for Suris to be freed or how it should be handed over.
 The Israeli Embassy in Moscow had no comment.

TITLE: Channel 5 Protesters Refuse to Back Down
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: St. Petersburg's Citizens' Resistance movement on Wednesday resumed its picket at Channel 5's live-to-air studio on Malaya Sadovaya Ulitsa and of the head office at the channel on Ulitsa Chepygina in protest at allegedly biased reporting by the city-owned television station, Yabloko said Thursday.
 
A discussion with representatives of City Hall's media committee on Tuesday failed to make any breakthroughs on the movement's demands. Although the movement suspended the protest Thursday after being promised a meeting with the channel's management, the activists said they had no intention of backing down.
 "We continue to demand live broadcast time for the opposition and objective coverage of activities of the parties and movements that are in opposition to City Hall and the measures they undertake," Yabloko spokesman Alexander Shurshev said Thursday in a telephone interview.
 Alla Manilova, head of the media committee, on Tuesday agreed to meet some demands, but the decision to resume the protest came after her insistence that City Hall has no influence on Channel 5's coverage, Yabloko representatives said.
 "She confirmed that some reports covering opposition activity were biased, but said City Hall had nothing to do with it. She promised that Channel 5 journalists who were blamed for this would correct their approach in the future," Shurshev said.
 "Manilova also promised that a new schedule for the channel, which is to be approved by September this year, will include a political show with opposition politicians," he said. "That's too long to wait. And her statement that she has nothing to do with the channel's policy doesn't ring true because City Hall owns almost 70 percent of the channel's shares and Manilova is also member of its board of directors."
 "That's why we decided to resume the protest," Shurshev said.
 On Monday night Channel 5 issued a statement accusing the opposition of trying to influence its editorial policy.
 "Their allegations that all information is filtered by editors can only raise a smile from professionals," the statement said. "The authors of these accusations don't understand what they are talking about."
 On Wednesday, police detained two Yabloko representatives who were picketing Channel 5's office because the activists were standing near the office of the channel and not outside NTV's studio, which City Hall had said was the place to conduct the picket. Maxim Reznik, the head of Yabloko in St. Petersburg, and a colleague, were taken to a police station, but were released soon after.
 Channel 5 management said it would not hold meetings with the opposition or include them in any programs, Larisa Konashenok, the channel's spokeswoman said Thursday in a telephone interview.
 "As for a political show, a program of this kind would require additional technical and creative resources," she said. "But it is obvious to any person with a sober mind that the opposition does not have any constructive approach to the problem of the welfare reforms, for instance. It is clear that discussion with them is impossible."

TITLE: Actor Burov Takes on Culture Role
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The new head of City Hall's culture committee, actor Nikolai Burov, is giving up his role as a cowardly and corrupt post office manager in Gogol's "The Government Inspector." 
 
However, Burov will keep playing the dynamic Professor Henry Higgins, who turns a flower girl into a lady in Shaw's "Pygmalion," as he strives to maintain St. Petersburg's role as Russia's cultural capital.
 Speaking at his first news conference, Burov said Thursday he will fight for performing troupes to have their own theaters, maintain an open-door policy for those who want his attention and tighten ties between the city's culture and tourism industries. 
 In a peculiar career twist, Burov, one of the leading actors at the Alexandrinsky Theater, is quitting one of his most successful shows, Gogol's "The Government Inspector," to devote more of his time and effort to his new official post.
 "I have 3 billion rubles ($107,000) to deal with and 161 cultural institutions to supervise," the 52-year-old said.
 The 161 institutions do not include the federally run State Hermitage Museum, State Russian Museum, or the Mariinsky or Alexandrinsky theaters. 
 He and his team are working on a new concept for the city's cultural development, which is due to be delivered by September, he added. 
 But Burov has already determined some priorities. 
 He pledged to protect St. Petersburg's many itinerant theater companies, which he sympathetically calls <i>tvorcheskiye bomzhi,</i> or cultural tramps.
 &quot;Even such internationally renowned troupes as the Boris Eifman Ballet Theater don't have their own studio,&quot; he said. &quot;At the same time, a number of local theatrical and musical venues perform in near-empty halls. So, if only 17 percent of seats in the Music Hall are occupied on average, then we should probably think of letting the venue out for a certain number of days.&quot;
 Burov said he would be impartial in commercial matters.
 &quot;Being an actor myself, I am well aware that it is not only theaters that need support and protection but that sometimes audiences have to be protected from the actors,&quot; he said. &quot;So every decision will be individually tailored and carefully made, without a wholesale approach.&quot;
 Burov supports the idea of a cultural internet portal or other information outlet to distribute culture and tourism news. &quot;In most places, where tourism is a profitable industry, culture and tourism professionals work together,&quot; he said. &quot;I am going to try and do the same.&quot;
 Burov is not planning to give up performing. He has two performances scheduled in February, and another three in March. 
 Governor Valentina Matviyenko appointed Burov three weeks ago after consulting local cultural figures. Support for Burov was almost unanimous.
 &quot;We are happy to see a person with first-hand experience in the field but who is not a bureaucrat,&quot; said Sergei Shub, director of the Baltiisky Dom Theater.
 Burov has promised not to follow the bureaucrat's habit of staying put in his office. 
 &quot;If people have to line up to see an official, that only means the officials aren't being very efficient,&quot; he said. &quot;I am going to go out a lot to see people myself.&quot;

TITLE: Koreans Invest $100M In Oblast Shale Quarry
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A Korean corporation plans to invest about $100 million into the building of an oil shale processing plant in the Leningrad Oblast.
 
Under an intentions agreement signed Tuesday, the corporation also has the further possibility of buying a controlling share package in the local shale quarry.
 The agreement, signed by oblast governor Valery Serdyukov and the Korean investors, specified that 80 percent of the $128 million needed for plant construction will come from the Korean I-One Corporation. The remaining 20 percent will be added by domestic companies or the regional government.
 The oblast land is rich in oil shale resources - a dark brown shale from which oil can be obtained by heating. An oblast company, Leningradslanetz, runs the world's third-largest shale quarry. The company, one of Oblast's largest employers, has about 3,000 staff in the town of Slantsy, but the mining operation has been troubled by the absense of a local processing facility.
 Grigory Fraiman, general director of Leningradslanetz, said the mine has no way of developing its future production without its own resource-processing base.
 Leningradslanetz has the annual capacity to mine over six million tons of shale fuel. Traditionally it sent the oil shale to the Baltiskaya power station in Estonia where it was burned for electricity.
 Since the break up of the Soviet Union, the factory and the quarry have found themselves on different sides of the border. However, this factor has made the operation increasingly costly and complicated, Fraiman said.
 &quot;Currently there exists no home market for slate utilization and the Korean project would serve as a basis for our future independence,&quot; Fraiman said in a press statement.
 Oblast officials say a Korean purchase would be a great opportunity for the quarry to capitalize on its rich resources and propel future development.
 The next step will take place in North Korea, where there will be a signing of a memorandum between the two sides that is expected to lead to a final investment agreement.
 No date for plant project completion has yet been determined. The project has, however, passed the state expertise and has been affirmed by ecologists, the Oblast government said.
 Leningradslanetz's largest shareholders are Petroplus LLC (40 percent) and oblast authorities (20 percent).

TITLE: Ban on Dutch Plants to Lift
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Russia will lift the ban on imports of flowers and certain plants from the Netherlands from Tuesday.
 
The country's experts are expect to fly to the Netherlands late this week to examine plant storage conditions, the Agriculture Ministry confirmed Wednesday, RIA Novosti said.
 Imports of Dutch plants were suspended in December, after small insects called California thrips were found in several flower containers entering Russia.
 Several months of negotiations have resulted in the Agriculture Ministry arriving at a list of regulations that the Netherlands has agreed to comply with.
 Starting February 15 all flower imports will require phytosanitary certificates with special Russian holograms. There will be specific border checkpoints for plants, tobacco, cacao beans, tea, and soybeans, all of which will resume imports from that date.
 The import of Dutch vegetables and fruits will undergo similar control procedures as of March 1, RIA Novosti reported.
 Russia intends to introduce unified phyto-sanitary certification of plants imported from the European Union countries as of April 1 to replace certificates currently signed by Russia with certain EU member states.
 The Ministry said the certificate should boost import quality control and guarantee safe produce for the entire European Union.

TITLE: Peterstar Expands into the Kaliningrad Region
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Peterstar, the St. Petersburg-based telecommunications company, announced its purchase of Kaliningrad regional operator Telecom Zapadnoye Parahodstvo (TZP). This counted as the company's seventh expansion move since the start of 2004.
 
Peterstar would not disclose the price of the acquisition due to an agreement with TZP, but did state that it will finance the deal directly, the company's press office said Wednesday.
 TZP is the third-largest alternative operator in the Northwest's Kaliningrad region, with a $.2 million profit in 2004. It holds licenses for telephone lines, Internet services, project and construction work. 
 The acquisition is intended to help Peterstar become the provider of choice for corporate clients in the Northwest, the company's general director Victor Koresh said Tuesday. He added that the company has allocated about $15 million for expenditure in 2005. 
 Peterstar hopes not only to retain the loyalty of TZP's customers, but that the deal will spark off interest in other local business clients, Koresh said.
 &quot;Several customers of our recently acquired Murmansk regional telephone operator, ADM-Murmansk, also have significant shipping operations in the Kaliningrad seaport,&quot; he said.
 In Murmansk Peterstar's clients include the cargo seaport and the commercial fisheries. In Kaliningrad the company hopes its clients will be the Northwest shipping company - the former owner of TZP, as well as the Baltic Tobacco factory and other city plants, the company's press office said.
 The Kaliningrad region has been considered an important territory for regional business development. It borders Poland and Lithuania and has a non-freezing port on the Baltic Sea, which makes it an attractive place for tourists and businesspeople. The city itself has a population of 400,000.
 Among other telecom providers in the region is West Baltic Telecom, a subsidiary of Golden Telecom. The company is also one of the market leaders, with profits of $5 million in 2003, according to company figures.
 &quot;The company holds a twenty percent market share,&quot; Golden Telecom's press office said, adding that TZP has been a transactions partner for certain operations in the past.

TITLE: Kudrin Sets Out His Plans for Federal Tax Service
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin on Wednesday set out to investors the government's plans to shake up the Federal Tax Service, which is being reformed after high-profile tax cases have hammered confidence in economic policy.
 
The tax authorities played a key role in the battle for Yukos and have sent more potentially-damaging signals to investors with claims against VimpelCom and Japan Tobacco Inc., though claims against VimpelCom were later reduced.
 Kudrin, whose ministry has been formally in control of the Federal Tax Service after last year's administrative reform, told investors at a conference organized by The Economist newspaper that the government is moving to address their concerns. 
 &quot;There are concerns about the state as a regulator, above all in the tax sphere,&quot; Kudrin said. The government has worked out &quot;a set of proposals for improving tax administration, which should remove those concerns,&quot; he said.
 Every tax inspectorate will have a separate department for dealing with complaints from taxpayers, Kudrin said. Tax claims above a certain amount will be subject to review within the tax service, he said.
 Tax probes will have a limited time period to prevent disruption to businesses, and there will be caps on repeated tax probes and restrictions on the types of documents that can be demanded, Kudrin said. 
 Most of the changes could be made within a month because they do not require new legislation, he said.
 The proposals, drawn up by the Finance Ministry and the Economic Development and Trade Ministry, in consultation with the presidential administration, have been approved by President Vladimir Putin, who said Tuesday that the country needs to simplify its tax administration. The Cabinet will look at the proposals at the beginning of March, Prime-Tass quoted a source in the government as saying.
 Kudrin said direct foreign investment fell to $6.6 billion in 2004 from $7.5 billion in 2003. In a frank speech, he said corruption and the judicial system remain problems but that the government is set on creating an open economic system integrated into the world economy.
 &quot;Economic policy would benefit from a clear statement that it is about building a modern competitive economy, which turns resources into value efficiently for the benefit of a wide section of the population,&quot; Roger Munnings, chairman and chief executive officer of KPMG in Russia and the CIS, said in an interview at the conference. 
 &quot;Part of that is that foreign investment is welcome where it brings value to the country.&quot;
 But some were skeptical. Oleg Deripaska sparred with Kudrin from the podium about the government's tax policies. Deripaska is chairman of the board of directors of Basic Element, one of the country's biggest industrial groups, with control of Russian Aluminum.
 Deripaska said enterprises in his group get hit with tax probes four to five times a year and said growth would suffer until there is a presumption of innocence in tax matters and the chaos of tax probes is sorted out.
 Deripaska criticized the government for failing to understand the importance of big business and slammed the Central Bank for being a closed organization with almost no transparency.

TITLE: Golden Parachutes in the War on Terror
TEXT: If the era of Mikhail Gorbachev will be remembered for anti-alcohol campaigns and perestroika, and Boris Yeltsin's administration for elections and privatization, then perhaps President Vladimir Putin's regime will be remembered mostly for its war on terror. Putin was appointed prime minister in 1999 as apartment buildings exploded in Moscow, followed by Dubrovka, Beslan and suicide bombings.
 
The initiatives aimed directly at combating terror - the second Chechen war, the so-called peace process in Chechnya and putting metal detectors in public places - have not been sufficient to stop the rising tide of terrorism.
 At the same time, the processes unfolding behind the slogans of the war on terror could have serious consequences for Russia's economic and political development. First and foremost, they include the siloviki's stronger role in the state, limitations on freedom of speech, the undermining of democratic institutions and, finally, the slowdown in military reforms.
 It is no surprise that a country that is at war and confronting the threat of terrorism is increasing its military spending. In the United States, defense spending has increased several times in recent years. However, we should not forget that a rapid increase in spending can have a negative impact on the economy. For example, expanding the Israeli military budget from 9 percent of GDP in 1968-72 to 16 percent in 1973-91 made a significant contribution to the country's rising inflation. Of course, Russia's defense spending is substantially lower, and for the time being we do not have to worry about skyrocketing inflation. Yet if spending continues to grow at the current rate, it is very possible that it could become a serious factor affecting inflation. 
 The state will only be able to balance out this influence by reducing other types of government spending. The federal budget for 2005 already cuts social spending while giving more funding to the military. But there is no guarantee that more money will reduce the threat of terrorism, as there is absolutely no public monitoring of how these funds are spent and the military is riddled with corruption.
 Along with more defense funding, military agencies and officials have also gained more and more political influence. The change in Russia's leadership allowed powerful new figures to redistribute property to their own advantage. Stalled gas industry reforms, the Yukos affair and stronger state control over the oil industry all reflect this general tendency. 
 Whether this is part of a long-term plan on the part of the siloviki or whether it is happening spontaneously is up for debate. Yet one thing is clear: The process will continue. It is not surprising at all that we sometimes hear talk of disgraced oligarchs' ties to Chechen terrorists. If you get creative enough with terms like &quot;terrorism&quot; and &quot;the war on terror,&quot; you can justify almost anything in Russia today.
 Many observers have already noted that eliminating gubernatorial elections, limiting the freedom of the press and making the State Duma subservient to the Kremlin will not help us fight terrorists. Yet setting limitations on democratic freedoms and strengthening autocracy are typical reactions in countries confronting terrorism and separatism. Even in a country like France, Algerian independence proved a serious trial for democracy. The Kurdish independence movement has slowed the process of Turkey's democratization, even though the country wants to become part of the European Union. Many violations of democratic freedoms in the world's poorest democracies, such as India and Sri Lanka, are also associated to a large extent with separatist movements. 
 It is more than likely that if terrorist attacks continue, the Russian authorities will be forced to turn to extreme measures, and the presidential initiatives of Sept. 13, 2004, will become just one of many steps toward dismantling democratic institutions in the country.
 The inability to protect the public, not to mention the difficulty of waging a war against one's own people, can play cruel tricks on people like the siloviki in democratic states. As the Abu Ghraib prison scandal proves, violating human rights - even those of terrorists from other countries - is perceived extremely negatively in developed liberal democracies. 
 Thus, in their attempt to avoid responsibility for their actions, the siloviki are instinctively trying to limit the powers of democratic institutions. 
 The slowdown in military reforms has become one of the most important consequences of the terrorist attacks in Russia. The main argument in favor of postponing reforms is their cost. Yet at the same time, officials want to do away with deferrals in order to draft students, which will likely lead to increased costs in supporting the army. All the concerns about the cost of reforms recall the old Russian saying that &quot;the stingy pay twice.&quot; Other arguments can be heard behind the economic worries, namely that it would not be a good idea to move to a new way of recruiting and supplying the army when the country faces the threat of terrorism and armed conflicts.
 The costs of the universal draft system are huge, and they will not fall with time. They include the notorious artificial demand for education, widespread corruption helping draft dodgers, and finally the damage to the health of those who do wind up in the army. Despite the high costs, doubts remain as to whether the military is capable of protecting the public should war break out. In a certain sense, this is not the Russian military's main goal. It emerged in its current form during the relatively peaceful era of the Cold War, when victory was not decided on the battlefield but by counting weapons. This is why the entire military system needs to be reformed in order to counter the threat of terrorism.
 The term &quot;golden parachute&quot; is often used in business: A company's CEO who shareholders believe is threatening the future of the company is sent into retirement with a fat pension package. In other words, shareholders pay the CEO to leave. This is exactly what Spain did with its generals when it became a democracy.
 In Russia, it seems that the time has come to put out to pasture the most passionate opponents of military reform by giving them a golden parachute. The salaries and monetary benefits for high-ranking military officials have increased rapidly, and if we add the profits they make from controlling the various resources that move through their agencies, it turns out that they are already costing the country a significant amount. As a reasonable and well-conducted reform of the military should reduce the irrational use of funds, paying top brass to leave would not put too much of a strain on the federal budget.
 Civilian experts need to be involved in planning and implementing reforms, and military organizations themselves need to be placed under strict public control. We need reform in order to improve the military's readiness to combat terror. However, terrorism is forcing the country to move in a completely different direction.
 
 <i>Ksenia Yudayeva is a member of the expert council at the Carnegie Moscow Center and director of applied programs at the Center for Economic and Financial Research in Moscow. She contributed this comment to Vedomosti, where it originally appeared. </i>

TITLE: Managers Without Borders
TEXT: I wonder if St. Petersburg City Hall is brave enough to let the foreign company that plans to get into the cleaning business this year serve as an example to local providers of communal services. The newcomers may show local companies how to deal with staircases, yards and garbage, all of which are shockingly mismanaged in St. Petersburg. 
 
In January, City Hall announced plans to sign a deal that puts the German company Peter Dussmann in charge of providing communal housing services to 104 residential buildings in the city center. The Germans have promised to organize their employees so that residents will be able to contact service people at any time. They also pledged to provide their staff with mobile phones and good salaries of about 16,000 rubles ($570) a month.
 I hope that the average plumber will not spend it all on more liters of vodka - in addition to what many service professionals habitually consume on their way to work, at work and after work. At least, this is what most St. Petersburg residents experience when they need to call the plumber. Whenever he shows up, he reeks of alcohol, no matter what time of day he is called in to tackle a leak.
 The reaction of the local communal service providers to the upcoming changes was fantastic. They were obviously scared of losing their shirts and for this reason started promoting their point of view in the local media. They claimed that &quot;the Germans won't be able to cope with local conditions.&quot;
 In other words, &quot;What's good for a Russian will kill a German,&quot; as the popular Russian saying goes. Perhaps this is what local communal service providers expect will happen with the German expansion into the local market. The main point of this proverb is that Russians are convinced that only they can tolerate and even thrive under extreme conditions. This includes the boiling temperatures in Russian bathhouses and the huge amounts of vodka Russians consume. By the way, the Finns share these predilections, so they are not really things that set us apart.
 Filth is what is truly fatal for Germans and Finns. Unfortunately, dirt has become an inescapable part of Russian society, which developed without private property. Anyone who doesn't believe this should take a look at the shoulder right after you cross the Finnish-Russian border. Trash litters both sides of the road once you pass the sign saying &quot;Russia: Speed limit 90 kilometers per hour on freeways.&quot;
 I think Russians can learn to keep their country clean. For this reason, the introduction of German property management ideas can only be a good thing for St. Petersburg. Just look at the project launched in Almaty, Kazakhstan, in the 1990s, when a French company took over the management of the public water system. In a couple of years, the people in Almaty completely forgot what it was like to live without hot water for a month in the summer, an experience that Russians know all too well.
 Germans may do the same for St. Petersburg, but only if the strong lobby from local communal service providers fails to convince Governor Valentina Matviyenko that they should be allowed to maintain their bloated payrolls. 
 Much of their staff will probably have to be fired anyway, not because of the specifics of the local environment, but because of their work ethic.
 In the end, it doesn't matter what a manager's nationality is - German, British, American or Russian - provided they are good at what they do. A good manager doesn't tolerate employees with flasks in their pockets staggering around on the job. 
 For this reason, the communal service providers should face facts: The Germans will invest and earn a profit, and in return, Russians will get to live in clean, well-maintained buildings.

TITLE: Graphic novelty
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Comic book art, virtually an unknown genre in Russia, has for the last three weeks been in the spotlight at the <i>mediath&eacute;que</i> information center of the French Institute with the exhibition SPb.Nouvelles Graphiques, a display that showcases the work of four comic book artists based in St. Petersburg. 
 
The exhibition, which featured several finished pages by the young artists, as well as draft pages which gave an insight into the creative process, began on Jan. 20 and wraps up Friday, before possibly moving to another venue.
 David Dos Santos, head of the mediath&eacute;que center, explained how the unusual exhibition came about. 
 I met Dmitry Yakovlev, the organizer of this exhibition, here at the mediath&eacute;que. He was interested in our quite extensive collection of French 'BDs' [<i>bandes dessin&eacute;es,</i> the French term for comic books], and suggested a collaboration, Dos Santos said. 
 Being Belgian, I was raised in the culture of the BD, so it's a passion for me. I thought it was a great opportunity to find out about the presence of comics in St. Petersburg.
 Dos Santos also sees the exhibition as an opportunity to enrich comic book art as a genre and, in a small way, to influence the cultural scene. 
 I want as many people as possible to see these works. I would also like to send examples to France, to get the reaction of French publishers. I think that would be very interesting.
 Yakovlev developed his passion for comics after visiting the mediath&eacute;que almost two years ago. He is one of a small band of enthusiasts struggling to get the comics scene off the ground in a country that has no tradition of the art form and almost no outlet for it.
 There are practically no comics in Russia, let alone St. Petersburg, Yakovlev said. There have been a few attempts to launch publishing projects, but they haven't been very successful. Of course you can see comics such as 'Shrek,' 'Terminator,' that kind of movie tie-in, but not real comics.
 Yakovlev said there were two reasons he wanted to put the exhibition on at the French Institute.
 Firstly, so that French people who go there can see what Russians can do, and secondly, so that Russian people who go there, who maybe don't know the culture, can start to take an interest in it. They can start by reading the albums in the French Institute's collection.
 With dozens of volumes of classic and contemporary European comic books in its collection, the French Institute may be the only point of contact for comic book enthusiasts in St. Petersburg. 
 The pages on display in the mediath&eacute;que exhibition show an impressive range of styles and media with obvious influences coming from both the European and the Japanese (<i>manga</i>) scenes.
 One of the artists, Anastasia Vassilyeva, who draws under the pseudonym Namida, explained her artistic background and influences. 
 I trained at the Institute of Publishing. My specialty was book illustration - doing covers for books and illustrations for children's books. I started doing comics about two years ago. 
 Namida's art, with its beautiful, intense colors, and strange, expressive characters seems to be strongly influenced by the European school of comic books, predominantly that of France and Belgium. Like her fellow artists, she cites French-Yugoslav maestro Enki Bilal as one of her influences. 
 I also like Japanese manga a lot, but me and my friends are chiefly influenced by European comics. We like the style of art better, but also we feel closer to the European scene - Japan feels further away, Namida said. 
 Another artist, Lyudmila Steblanka, goes under the pseudonym REI. She works for Melnitsa, an animation studio that made the recent feature-length cartoon Alyosha Popovich and Tugarin Zmei. 
 Her exhibition work, entitled Menya.net - a pun on a web address which translates as I Am Not Here - is just as stylized as Namida's, but with more subdued colors, intense shadows and experimental lettering devices. REI cites Bilal as an influence. 
 If these two artists show an affinity to the European BD scene, Nadezhda, the work of another artist, who calls herself Tatka - real name Tanya Pogramovka - reflects a strong influence of manga and <i>anime</i> (its animated counterpart), while works by the fourth artist in the exhibition, Roman Sokolov, are more cartoony in style. Executed in black ink, the work has an almost graffiti feel and, with a guns and gangsters its subject matter. It is a stark contrast to the works by the other three artists on show.
 The mediath&eacute;que is the only place it is possible to view the work of these comic artists. Comic book art in Russia remains a minority interest and few publishers are willing to take the risk of losing money by printing comics that don't sell. 
 It's really difficult to get work in comics at the moment, Namida said. The market isn't really very well developed here, so it's difficult to get published. The closest thing is probably to find work on an advertising project that uses comic-type images.
 Yakovlev said that various attempts to get the Russian comic books industry off the ground have ended in disappointment.
 Most recently, the publishing house Nitusov published several comics, 'Peter Pan,' a translation of a French BD, as well as several Russian comics in album format, but they weren't successful. They only sold about a third of their print run before folding. 
 Yakovlev said there are several reasons why these publishing ventures have failed to take off.
 Usually it's due to a poor publishing plan, lack of information and poor distribution, he says.
 When Yakovlev tried to find out what comics were available on the Russian market he discovered that Nitusov had already published a few comics but only in Moscow. He went to Moscow to obtain copies of Nitusov comic albums and personally distributed them around St. Petersburg shops.
 Aside from that, there is a solitary publisher, MK Kniga, in St. Petersburg, who have so far published one volume of Herg&eacute;'s adventures of Tintin, 'The Cigars of the Pharaoh.' They say that the project is not yet finished, but so far only volume has been released.
 Olga Davtyan is a lecturer at the Smolny College of Free Art. For the last few years she has been running a course on comics and illustration, focusing on French comics as well as illustration for children's books.
 Davtyan, who has also translated comics for the Russian market affirms that, in the Soviet Union, comics were treated with suspicion.
 Comics were regarded as a bourgeois, non-Soviet genre. I don't think there was any particular reason why this was the case. Of course literature has always been highly regarded. Comics were possibly associated with American mass production and propaganda, she said.
 Davtyan is guardedly optimistic about the future for comics in Russia.
 Perhaps there is a future - but not soon. Comics aren't valued at the moment, perhaps because of their mass-production aspects. It could take a long time.
 Despite the lack of outlets for the work, Yakovlev said there is much enthusiasm among potential creators of comic books in Russia.
 For the last three years there has been a Comics and Manga Festival in Moscow - 'KomMissiya.' Hundreds of artists and enthusiasts come along. 
 The annual festival is a chance for budding creators to get together and talk about their craft and to meet seasoned professionals from different countries. All four exhibitors at the French Institute show have won prizes at the festival. The next festival takes place in May. 
 Yakovlev would like to see the festival come to St. Petersburg. 
 It's too early to say whether that's going to be possible, he said. 
 Yakovlev said, the best advice for aspiring creators is to bring their work to the KomMissiya festival to get known.
 Meanwhile, one-off events like the French Institute show are the only chance for comic artists to show off their work. 
 Dos Santos said the reaction to the exhibition has been extremely positive. 
 It has really got people talking, he said. People like to discuss the artwork on display, or even compare it with the books that we have in our collection here. 
 For those not fortunate enough to catch this exhibition, which closes Friday, there may be a second chance. On the strength of the interest shown in the subject at the French Institute, Quo Vadis internet caf&eacute; on Nevsky Prospekt plans to continue showing the exhibition. According to Olga Kulikova, a spokeswoman for Quo Vadis, the exhibition will open some time in the next two weeks. 
 
 <i>
French Institute, 20 Moika. Tel: 117 0995, 312 9635. Links: www.ifspb.com </i>

TITLE: CHERNOV'S CHOICE
TEXT: R.E.M's management has disagreed with local promoters who claimed that the band's stadium concert could still have taken place despite serious delays, if the band had made concessions. In a fax message to The St. Petersburg Times, R.E.M's manager Bertis Downs and European agent Bob Gold wrote:
 
&quot;We are writing in response to press reports in which - regretfully - the promoter blames R.E.M. for the cancellation of its concert in St. Petersburg. The promoter's version of events is both unfair to R.E.M, and an inaccurate report of what actually happened.
 &quot;The only reason R.E.M. canceled the show was as a result of a <i>force majeure</i> event: the failure of transportation resulting from the hours-long delay at the Estonia border that kept the trucks carrying R.E.M.'s equipment from arriving at the venue in time to properly mount an R.E.M. concert. That was the reason stated at the time, and is the only reason for the cancellation. 
 &quot;Please note that R.E.M. had been advised by the promoter that back-to-back shows in Tallinn and St. Petersburg were feasible. Considering what happened, it now seems apparent that back-to-back shows were virtually impossible. R.E.M. relied on the promoter's professional advice, which ultimately proved overly optimistic...&quot;
 The Manchester-based DJ and producer <strong>Martin Lever,</strong> who frequently plays in St. Petersburg, responded to the news about a DJ set by Phil Hartnoll, formerly of <strong>Orbital,</strong> which had been publicized as a full live concert by the now-defunct band.
 In an e-mail message he denounced &quot;bad practice in terms of St. Petersburg promoters making false claims about DJs and artists... This practice only serves to reinforce the stereotypical external view of Russia and St. Petersburg,&quot; he wrote.
 &quot;I am speaking from experience because twice in the last three months two promoters have claimed that I was to play at their events. They have continued to place advertisements even after I had been tipped off by friends in St. Petersburg and asked the promoters to withdraw all false and inaccurate publicity.&quot;
 Even if there are reputable promoters in the city, wrote Lever, &quot;the external perception of St. Petersburg is not good and is becoming worse.&quot;
 &quot;It isn't too late to repair the damage. The quickest and easiest way to tackle this problem is for customers, DJs and artists to boycott those who persist in misleading the public.&quot;
 However, there is still some interesting music on the local scene. <strong>Boy Novice,</strong> a fine electronic dub band from Finland, will perform at Red Club on Saturday.
 Boy Novice is a Helsinki-based international band with one member originally from Boston, U.S., one from Dublin, Ireland and the rest from Turku, Finland. 
 &quot;Musicially they rely on heavily dub-influenced rhythms which are not that far away from the likes of Nightmares on Wax or Massive Attack,&quot; wrote Joose Berglund of the Helsinki-based label Stupido about the band.
 <i>
 - By Sergey Chernov </i>

TITLE: Top this
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Okay, I have to admit it: I am absolutely addicted to Italian cuisine - pizza, lasagna, and pasta of all kinds. When it comes to <i>la cuisina italiana</i> I seem to have an insatiable appetite. So when I discovered a little Italian restaurant opposite Vladimirsky Sobor my heart jumped for joy. A piece of <i>la dolce vita</i> just a few blocks away. My friend and I made our way to the restaurant, curious to know what Italian cuisine tastes like outside its native country.
 
When it comes to food, Italians have no sense of humor. Though often imitated, an Italian would probably find little praise for the art of pizza-making abroad. A genuine Italian pizza has a thin base topped with juicy tomato sauce and mouth-watering genuine buffalo-milk Mozzarella cheese, baked in a proper oven. That's a tough act to follow.
 I remember my first stay in St. Petersburg some years ago. My roommate was an Italian and half of her heavy suitcase was filled with Italian olive oil, Italian tomato sauce, Italian spices, and so on. &quot;Only genuine Italian ingredients can be used and only Italians can prepare them property,&quot; she said with a serious mien.
 An important thing about eateries are their interiors. At Pizzissimo it can be described as modest but tasteful and cozy: a vaulted roof, terracotta floor tiles, dark wooden chairs and tables, and quiet background music. One of the three halls was particularly nicely decorated - wine bottle displays and a fake fireplace lending a comfortable atmosphere to the room. 
 The restaurant offers two sizes of pizza and distinguishes between &quot;white&quot; and &quot;red&quot; pizza. The latter are topped with tomato sauce while the former are Mozzarella-based. Since tomatoes constitute an indispensable pizza ingredient, I did not pay much attention to &quot;white pizza&quot; and opted for a small Napolitana (175 rubles, $6.25) topped with tomatoes, cheese, anchovy filets, and spices. My friend settled on a large Capricciosa (185 rubles, $6.61) strewn with slices of ham, tomatoes, cheese, mushrooms, artichokes, and spices. 
 As a first course dish, I opted for gnocchi <i>al quattro formaggio </i>(125 rubles, $ 4.46), which are small potato dumplings served with a rich sauce made from four kinds of cheese. Making gnocchi is one of those skills that seems so simple, but is actually something akin to knitting a sweater - easy only if you have learned it from an older relative. Otherwise, instead of light, delicate pillows, the dumplings resemble mushy, slimy blobs. The art of gnocchi-making is alive and well at Pizzissimo.
 My friend had decided to try something lighter, a salad, and against my advice settled on Giotta (170 rubles, $ 6.07) a combination of marinated onion, shredded red cabbage, and slices of fried beef. Later, he described the dish as &quot;rather strange,&quot; and regretted the choice.
 Then the highlight of the meal arrived: <i>la pizza.</i> I need no more than one word to describe it: <i>buonissima!</i> Without doubt, this was the best pizza I have ever eaten in St. Petersburg and a match for the Italian original. The Napolitana exceeded all my expectations. A thin base covered with juicy tomato sauce and melted cheese - an Italian's dream! Since my friend has never been to Italy he could not draw a comparison but agreed that the pizza hit the mark.
 Our stomachs were full to bursting. Still, I could not resist having a dessert. And what could round off a good dinner better than Tiramisu, the most heavenly of Italian <i>dolce</i>? Tiramisu means &quot;pick me up&quot; in Italian and once tasted, it will leave an indelible impression on anyone who has tried this combination of eggs, mascarpone cheese, sponge fingers, cream, espresso coffee, rum, a little bit of sugar, and shaved chocolate. Pizzissimo's version (150 rubles/ $ 5.36) was enjoyable, although a bit more sugar and slightly less coffee would have perfected it.
 When leaving the restaurant, I asked our waitress about the secret behind their pizzas. &quot;Our chef, Renato Andrenelli, is Italian,&quot; she said smiling. It seems my former roommate was right - the art of pizza must be left to the Italians. <i>Buon appetito! </i>

TITLE: Ready for take-off
PUBLISHER: the new york times
TEXT: The famously eccentric and reclusive empire builder Howard Hughes was born alone and died alone, the two times in his life when he was no different from anyone else. For the rest of his life, the high-flying Hughes seemed to have drifted in from some distant aerie where exotic birds hatch far from everyday worries. At age 18, he was both an orphan and a millionaire (one identity begat the other), and while he could never be called ordinary, in the following two decades his wealth and all that it afforded brought him a very American kind of celebrity. 
 
It is that celebrity, fueled by money, stoked by matinee looks and playboy style, which preoccupies The Aviator, Martin Scorsese's visually sumptuous if disappointingly hollow account of Hughes's early life. Written by John Logan, the story principally covers the late '20s through the '40s, when Hughes, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, was gadding about both Hollywood and the aviation world. The mogul's first brush with popping flashbulbs and screaming fans came with his directing debut, Hell's Angels, a World War I chestnut about two fighter-pilots and the free-spirited floozy for whom they both tumble. The 1930 film consumed three years and millions of dollars, and while its aesthetic worth is tenuous, the proto-Bruckheimer emphasis on action and spectacle put its maker on the map. 
 Hughes entered filmmaking more as a technophile than an artist, spending more time worried about the fluffiness of the clouds in Hell's Angels than the acting. With deep enough pockets, he could fail at the box office and keep making movies, which probably appeals to any director who, like Scorsese, enjoys playing with large train sets. It's possible that Hughes's outsider status also resonated with Scorsese, who has had an uneasy relationship with Hollywood despite a lifelong love for its golden age. If nothing else this new film is another of the director's testaments to that love, an attempt to recreate the Hollywood dream that preceded Hughes's nightmare, by making a movie that looks and often plays as if it could have been made during the classic studio age. 
 The film opens with Hughes's mother bathing her young but somewhat over-age son in a scene that looks like an outtake from Citizen Kane and plays like a prelude to incest. From there it's a hop, skip and a jump-cut to Hollywood with Hughes neck deep in Hell's Angels and loping about Los Angeles hotspots. In these early scenes DiCaprio captures Hughes's oddball charm and confidence, in particular in a beautifully played scene where he puts the moves on a cigarette girl. The actor has a soft, pretty face designed for callow seductions and youthful exuberance, notwithstanding the small and very serious crease furrowed between his eyebrows. The crease works as a kind of performative accent mark, deepening and easing as Hughes builds his empire, crash-lands a plane and tees off with Katharine Hepburn (Cate Blanchett). 
 Before he stopped cutting his toenails and hair and spiraled into oblivion, Hughes earned a reputation as a serial romancer. Hepburn was only one of many conquests, but she plays a central role in The Aviator because she gets Scorsese closer to the black box at the center of the story. Blanchett doesn't look a thing like Hepburn, a discrepancy she tries to overcome by adopting a purposeful gait and delivering an overblown approximation of the actress's legendary lock-jaw. For the most part Blanchett sounds as if she's channeling one of Hepburn's own overblown performances. But she gives the story a shot of adrenaline and, more important, does her job by making Hughes seem palpably human. So much so that when she runs off with Spencer Tracy you feel her absence immediately. 
 The Aviator suggests that Hughes never got over Hepburn; the same could be said of the film. There's so much that's right with Scorsese's movie, from its bold color design to the witty way the director links Hughes's obsession with women to his love of planes, it takes a while to pinpoint why it never takes flight. Part of the problem is Hughes, or rather, the film's conception of him. There's nothing intrinsically interesting about fabulous wealth, and in Hollywood rich men who dabble in movies, play with toys and bed actresses are a dime a dozen. Hughes was a rich man who aspired to greatness, but what made him a legend, what inspired the biographies, the films and the jokes wasn't the heights he reached, but the depths. 
 One of Scorsese's signatures is that he can get inside a character's head by moving the camera or cutting into a scene. When Henry Hill is coked out of his gourd in Goodfellas the jumpy camerawork and breakneck editing are similarly jazzed, and when Jake La Motta takes a blow in Raging Bull it feels as if you're getting smacked around in the ring alongside him. If the first hour of The Aviator flows it's because Hughes is at the top of his game and Scorsese is riding the character's highs with a visual style that is equally fluid and effortless. But when Hughes starts falling apart, Scorsese loses his momentum. The film drifts into seemingly endless takeoffs and landings and a drawn-out drama involving Hughes's competitors and featuring Alec Baldwin and Alan Alda as a matched set of vipers. 
 Sometime between the drift and the drama Hughes locks himself in a screening room, strips off his clothes and begins a babblogue that unfortunately for both the actor and his director initially echoes a similar meltdown in Scorsese's Taxi Driver. DiCaprio tries hard to pull off a pantomime of madness, but neither he nor Scorsese taps into the pity and terror underlying the episode, even when the director throws a halo of light around the character's head. Hughes died a skeletal drug addict, broken-off hypodermic needles embedded in his arms. He was a freak and an outcast and eventually a figure of public fun, which perhaps explains why Scorsese tends to play the character's tics for light laughs, even when they don't seem very funny. 
 The director makes a halfhearted effort to pin Hughes's emerging obsessive-compulsive disorder on his mother, mostly by drawing attention to his breast fetish and milk consumption. Most of this comes across as crudely comic, a decision that speaks to the film's confusion of tone. Hughes built an entire movie around Jane Russell's full-figure bosom in the only other feature he directed, a 1943 western called The Outlaw. In The Aviator, Hughes's fixation on Russell's breasts, which coincides with his construction of a similarly monumental airplane nicknamed the Spruce Goose, signals a calamitous regression. Scorsese exploits the comedy in this mommy-mammary nexus, but either because he isn't interested in Hughes or doesn't want to go too dark he fails to mine its tragedy. 
 There are moments in The Aviator that speak to Scorsese's genius, like the image of Hughes's hand suspended in the air because he can't bear to touch a doorknob. Yet the man attached to that hand remains blurred, beside the point of the director's virtuosity. It's notable that in his film Scorsese alludes several times to Orson Welles's Citizen Kane, which comes across as an attempt to invest The Aviator with a comparable grandeur. But the allusions to Kane only underscore that, by telling this particular Hughes story, Scorsese has compromised his dark gifts for commercial palatability. He lavishes attention on the surfaces of Hughes's life - the glossy women, the gleaming planes - an approach that shows a director overly willing to attend to the surface of his talent instead of its depths.

TITLE: Rebel with a cause
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A big mirror is the last thing a person who just climbed out of pile of garbage wants to see, but it is definitely necessary to look at your reflection to check how much you need to clean yourself before you face the world.
 
This is exactly what could be said of the Russian society brightly reflected in the new movie Russkoye (It's Russian) which was released in St. Petersburg on Wednesday.
 Russian habits do not bring happiness, the movie's slogan screams from the screen.
 Russkoye is seen as one of those extremely rare homegrown movies that shows a real picture of how Russian people behave, what kind of problems they have and underlines the most typical qualities of the national character.
 Sometimes, the truth hurts.
 The movie, shot by director Alexander Veledinsky, is based on autobiographical tales written by the controversial author Eduard Limonov, the leader and chief ideologist of the National Bolshevik Party (NBP), the members of which, mostly young people with radical right-wing views, have recently been storming governmental headquarters, hitting the street to protest against the latest Kremlin's initiatives, and are sometimes imprisoned for expressing their extreme nationalist opinions.
 In 2001, Limonov, 62, was detained and charged with the illegal purchase of weapons and organizing a criminal group. He spent two years in prison before being sentenced to a four-year term in April 2003, but was released on parole a few months later. The court originally charged the NBP leader with ordering the purchase of six Kalashnikov assault rifles, plotting to overthrow the government and terrorism.
 Limonov has recounted stories from his childhood in 1950s Kharkov, Ukraine, in the stories Teenager Savenko, Young Scoundrel, We Had a Great Era, It's Russian and My Negative Hero. 
 They tell the story of a decent 16-year-old boy who falls in love, has no money, gets in a life of crime and ends up in a mental institution - in other words who simply lives a Soviet life.
 They are sort of a joke with no punchline, Veledinsky said of Limonov's stories which form the basis for the movie. This is a movie about love and the course of true love never runs smoothly. Even in soap operas the guys suffer.
 [Limonov's] works interest me, Veledinsky said. I respect him as a person, but I'm attracted by his works first of all. His tales are about problems of people who live in suburbia, which are well known to me because I spent my childhood in a suburb of Gorky [now Nizhny Novgorod] myself, the director said.
 Russkoye, which stars Andrei Chadov as the young Limonov, is the first adaptation of the controversial writer's work, but it is expected to be followed up by others in the near future.
 I watched it and treat it from a pragmatic and constructive point of view, Limonov said in an interview printed in Afisha magazine last month.
 They didn't let me take the screenplay with me when I was in jail, so I had to look through it while my lawyer was visiting me. Basically we just had 20 minutes. I glanced though it and that was that, he said.
 Among other things I heard that Veledinsky is a talented director. I watched his [television serials] 'Law' and 'Brigade.' 'Brigade' is very popular in jail and people watch it with pleasure. That is basically it. I have remarks in relation to the movie, but this is not my job, Limonov said.
 For viewers, and those in their early 60s especially, the movie is seen as a nostalgic trip down memory land that attempts to show how post-war Soviet society was built.
 When I watched it I noticed that all the realities shown in the movie are very familiar to me because I was born about the same time as Limonov, a member of the audience told Veledinsky at a Question &amp; Answer seesion held shortly after the film's St. Petersburg premiere on Wednesday. I felt some sort of longing for that time, and remembered about all the chaos of life which has led to the sorry state Russia finds itself in now. 
 Today we walk up and down the the stairwells in houses, seeing mail boxes burned and destoyed by young people and think: why? For what reason do they do it? This movie gives a clear answer - they are acts of restlessness and animosity, he said.
 Other participants in the Q&amp;A did not appreciate this view and told the man to sit down, shouting that he should ask questions rather than make comments. But Veledinsky thanked him. The director then suggested that Russian society has got a lot to do to clean up the mess left behind by the Soviet era, which in many ways has deformed the Russian national character.
 The mentality in Russia obviously changed when half of the country spent time in [Stalin's] prison camps, the director said.
 
 <i>
Russkoye is showing at the Avrora cinema. </i>

TITLE: Hello, Dolina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The most moving moment at Saturday's concert by Larisa Dolina and the Igor Butman Big Band at the Oktyabrsky Concert Hall came midway through the second half when, after a quite lovely rendition of &quot;Georgia on My Mind,&quot; Dolina dedicated the song to the memory of the late, great Ray Charles.
 
The performance was easily the most soulful of the evening from this usually brittle vocalist, but only a handful of the audience acknowledged the dedication. This was a shame, and perhaps the audience was expecting a different kind of show from Dolina, a stalwart of obnoxious Russian pop and a fixture in Alla Pugachyova's repertory company of ageing showbiz monopolists. 
 But in serving up two dozen English-language jazz, soul and blues standards which made up the &quot;Carnival of Jazz&quot; double-bill with Igor Butman and his 16-member band, Dolina deserves credit for trying to broaden popular Russian taste. For nearly three hours the 3,000-strong sell-out crowd heard no Russian words sung and few spoken. Butman counted in the band in English, Dolina called &quot;Oh, yeah!&quot; when the spotlight fell on individual instrumentalists, and away from the microphones the two stars even had an audibly sarcastic conversation in English - seemingly about the audience's apparent lack of appreciation (&quot;This is Jazz!&quot; &quot;Yeah, and this is Russia...&quot;).
 However, from where I was sitting, most of the crowd got into the swing of things, and swing is what Butman's band does best. The no-frills concert opened with a technically sharp rendition of Quincy Jones' &quot;Soul Bossa Nova,&quot; an upbeat, slightly comic instrumental, given new lease of life by the Austin Powers movies. Then Dolina sauntered on for &quot;Hello, Dolly,&quot; a song which is pretty difficult to foul up. More challenging standards followed, such as &quot;Satin Doll&quot; and &quot;Nice Work If You Can Get It,&quot; set to Duke Ellington-like band arrangements with scat solos borrowed directly from Ella Fitzgerald, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Among the slow numbers, &quot;My Funny Valentine&quot; ground to a deadening halt, while &quot;Summertime&quot; lacked the intimacy required of the lullaby it is meant to be.
 Butman, a world-class saxophone player who has been compared to Wynton Marsalis for his showmanship, driving virtuosity and role as a popularizer of jazz, laced together some numbers with controlled &quot;a capella&quot; solos which held the hall enthralled. At one point he threw in a phrase from &quot;Kalinka,&quot; a good trick to test what one feels he knows could be an indifferent audience during these extended flights of fancy; on this occasion it took the bait with a burst of applause. 
 Dolina's voice undoubtedly has an unyielding power in the middle of its range, and she knows how to skip quickly past the upper and lower parts of melodies to disguise its limits. But when she added the odd forced &quot;Whooo!&quot; during the impeccable turns taken by Butman's players as the rest of the band ploughed smoothly on, its metallic edge glinted unappealingly. 
 However, Dolina's intonation and pronounciation of sometimes complex English lyrics has improved since I saw her singing &quot;New York, New York&quot; on television some years ago.
 Leaving the classic songbook behind after the interval, the band opened with the punchiest instrumental of the night - and a Russian orginal. Swinging down the theme from &quot;Nu Pogodi!&quot; - a '60s Soviet cartoon in the mold of Tom &amp; Jerry - set the stage alight, and the pop, blues, soul and even funk of the second half favored Dolina's voice, but not at the expense of Butman's classy band. 
 Songs like &quot;Get Back,&quot; &quot;In The City,&quot; and a weirdly raucous &quot;God Bless the Child,&quot; alternated with slower classics like &quot;Georgia&quot; for a varied if not exactly radical program of jazz pop. And &quot;New York, New York&quot; didn't turn out to be the literal showstopper Dolina's television fans might have expected. Instead, for the last song and two encores, Dolina, Butman and band lobbed a great deal of manic energy into Stevie Wonder's &quot;Sir Duke,&quot; a catchy, feelgood tribute to the greats of American jazz, including Count Basie, Ellington and Fitzgerald. It was a fitting end to an odd night which Dolina's largely elderly, well-heeled and slightly puzzled audience seemed to enjoy despite themselves.

TITLE: Peter the Great
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A scene from the Mariinsky Theater's production of Tchaikovsky's opera The Enchantress. Pyotr Tchaikovsky, arguably Russia's most popular composer, is being celebrated with a festival of his work at the Mariinsky Theater. The event, which kicks off Saturday with David Poutney's production of &quot;The Enchantress,&quot; runs through Feb. 20 and features over two dozen performances of Tchaikovsky's operas, ballets and chamber music.
 
The Mariinsky's artistic director, Valery Gergiev makes just one appearance during the festival, to conduct &quot;The Enchantress&quot; on the opening night.
 Tchaikovsky is deeply connected to the Mariinsky: six out of his nine operas and two of his three ballets had their premieres at the theater. It was at the Mariinsky that the composer himself conducted the premiere of his own opera, &quot;The Enchantress,&quot; also known as &quot;The Sorceress,&quot; in 1890.
 During the festival, the company is showing some of the composer's most acclaimed works, including &quot;The Queen of Spades,&quot; &quot;Eugene Onegin,&quot; &quot;Mazeppa,&quot; &quot;Sleeping Beauty&quot; and &quot;The Nutcracker.&quot;
 Over the past 10 years the Mariinsky has put on a series of festivals devoted to the music of a particular Russian composer. These events are not typically timed to an important date or anniversary - as is the tedious and hardly logical habit of virtually all Russian companies - and are meant to reflect the company's view of what is most resonant with modern day audiences or is worth reviving. The works of Sergei Prokofiev, Igor Stravinsky, Dmitry Shostakovich, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Modest Mussorgsky have already been featured in the series.
 The Mariinsky's repertoire abounds with Tchaikovsky's works. The composer, whose style interweaves Russian passion, vigor and intensity with Western European influences, is the country's most worshipped musical idol. In other words, any Russian opera and ballet company will tell you that &quot;there can hardly be too much of Tchaikovsky.&quot; 
 &quot;The precious thing about Tchaikovsky is that his music touches both the hearts of uninitiated audiences who barely listen to any classical music and genuine music connoisseurs,&quot; said Mariinsky spokeswoman Oksana Tokranova.
 At the Mariinsky, the composer's nearest rival in terms of numbers of works performed is perhaps Richard Wagner, with the entire tetralogy &quot;Der Ring des Nibelungen,&quot; &quot;Parsifal,&quot; &quot;Der Fliegende Hollander,&quot; &quot;Lohengrin&quot; featured in the company's roster of works, along with a concert version of &quot;Tristan and Isolde.&quot;
 Some of the Tchaikovsky pieces co-exist in the playbill in two versions. Traditional and experimental versions of &quot;The Queen of Spades,&quot; &quot;Eugene Onegin&quot; and &quot;The Nutcracker&quot; can be seen. &quot;Sleeping Beauty&quot; can also be seen in two different productions: a reconstruction of Marius Petipa's 1890 original work and a Soviet-era adaptation by Konstantin Sergeyev which has been performed at the Mariinsky since 1952.
 But with this festival, the Mariinsky is not following a &quot;compare and contrast&quot; pattern, and will only show one version of each work.
 The spirit of Tchaikovsky will be present during the intervals as well, as his instrumental pieces will be played in the breaks. On Sunday, the company is organizing a Tchaikovsky Day, when a concert performance of &quot;Iolanta&quot; in the morning is followed by a film about the composer, a subsequent chamber concert in the White Foyer and &quot;Sleeping Beauty&quot; in the evening.
 The festival also features a series of four free day-time performances held in the White Foyer on Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday Feb. 20 at 3.30 p.m. 
 These chamber concerts showcase Tchaikovsky's instrumental works, famous opera arias and unjustly forgotten romances sung by some of the company's younger stars of the likes of tenor Daniil Shtoda and mezzo-soprano Yekaterina Semenchuk.
 Most Russian singers routinely complain there is a lobby against Russian operas in Western Europe, where the Italian operas reign the repertoire, and there is little political will to change it. Tchaikovsky's &quot;Eugene Onegin&quot; and &quot;The Queen of Spades&quot; are usually the exceptions to this rule. 
 Gergiev said he is convinced that Tchaikovsky's &quot;The Queen of Spades&quot; deserves to be on the same plane with the world's top five operas, like Bizet's &quot;Carmen&quot; and Verdi's &quot;La Traviata&quot; and &quot;Otello.&quot;
 Gergiev's opinion is fully shared by his troupe. For the renowned Mariinsky tenor Vladimir Galuzin, Tchaikovsky's &quot;The Queen of Spades&quot; is the greatest ever dramatic opera, and the greatest drama ever written. 
 &quot;I adore singing Otello and Kalaf [in &quot;Turandot&quot;] but Hermann's passions are genuinely bottomless, this is just a breathtaking experience to live through his story,&quot; he told The St. Petersburg Times in a recent interview. 
 &quot;Perhaps the dramatic element in many other European operas is often scarcely present because it has been underestimated, and the reason why I love the Russian opera so much is that they give you a genuine human drama as well as the music, and it is not just all about the melody.&quot;
 
 <i>
For festival's complete schedule, see listings or visit the Mariinsky Theater homepage at www.mariinsky.ru </i>

TITLE: Italy in pictures
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Renato Bertelli's &quot;Head of Mussolini,&quot; an iconographic 1933 sculpture that likens the Italian dictator to a two-faced Janus, is one of the highlights of the new exhibition of Italian modern art at the State Hermitage Museum.
 
Called &quot;Futurism. Novecento. Abstraction. Italian Art of the 20th Century,&quot; the display is the first ever exhibition highlighting Italian modern art in Russia. 
 The exhibition, running through April 10 at the museum's Nikolayevsky Hall, features over 90 works created between the 1900s and 1950s by the cream of Italian modern artists, including Carlo Carra, Fortunato Depero, Lucio Fontana, Giorgio de Chirico, Giorgio Morandi, Felice Casorati, Mario Mafai, Renato Guttuso and Alberto Savinio.
 The exhibition's straightforward title gives a hint about the structure of the display, as well as its content: the visitors are guided through three styles that reflect the way Italian art was evolved and developed in the last century. Produced with the support of the Italian Foreign Ministry, the exhibition showcases collections from the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto, Gallery d'Arte Moderna of Turon and Milan's Civiche Raccolte d'Arte.
 The post-war &quot;Abstraction&quot; section at the chronological end of the show takes in several familiar genres, such as Surrealism and neo-Realism, and the curators chose not make these more recent movements a focus, but rather a coda to the two major movements in Italian art in the first part of the 20th Century.
 Many artists whose works make up the show are obscure to regular museum-goers in Russia, even though some of them have a direct connection with the country or the Russian artists. Few people are familiar with the paintings of the Futurist Fortunato Depero, whose spectacular sense of colour and warm humor gained him wide recognition and fame in Europe. His 1917 &quot;Rotation of Ballerina and Parrots,&quot; (Mechanical Ballerina) is a wonderful example of the artist's style: his brightly colored graphic objects emerge out of a juxtaposition of geometrical and technical shapes with natural and living forms. 
 In 1916-17, Depero met impressario Sergei Diaghilev, who commissioned the artist to do set designs and costumes for ballet &quot;The Song of the Nightingale&quot; set to music by Igor Stravinsky. 
 The project was never realized but gave an impulse to Depero's deeper interest in theater designs. The artist later created sets for a number of Italian companies.
 An often unacknowledged influence on Russian Futurism, Italian Futurism first emerged in 1909/10 when a manifesto was published in Le Figaro calling for a new art based on the beauty of technology and enhancing the energy of speed, power and social change. 
 The Novecento (Italian for &quot;20th Century&quot;) movement was a reaction to Futurism. Its members - Campigli, Casorati, Martini and Sironi - spoke out against Futurism in the 1920s and proclaimed a return to &quot;pure national art,&quot; rooted in the Renaissance and Classicism, catering to the masses of people and liberated of alien - meaning foreign - infuences.
 Novecento openly supported fascism, and Mussolini was among the speakers at the movement's first official meeting in 1923 in Milan.
 &quot;One can trace so much in the paintings of Novecento artists: there are influences of Antiquity, the Renaissance, Classicism as well as nods towards primitivism or Etruscan art,&quot; said the exhibition's chief curator Albert Kostenevich, chief of research in the Hermitage's Department of Western European Art.
 Mussolini's was among the few totalitarian regimes where alternative artistic styles weren't suppressed and persecuted by the state in the 20th Century, with only the actual topics being tabooed. 
 In Kostenevich's opinion, this tolerance could be explained by a simple, and personal, reason: Il Duce's mistress, Margherita Sarfatti, was a prominent art critic. She came from a high-profiled Venetian Jewish family. &quot;Sarfatti was a highly educated woman with a refined taste in art, and she had a profound influence on Mussolini.&quot; Kostenevich said. &quot;But Mussolini's taste in art is naturally a much less known subject than his political activities. We know Mussolini the dictator but only can guess about Mussolini the art collector.&quot;
 Renato Giuseppe Bertelli's 1933 &quot;Head of Mussolini (Continuous Profile)&quot; is one of the key works in the show. 
 Black, shiny, and as polished as Nazi army helmets from World War II, this modern take on portraiture reflects the Futurist precepts of time and motion. The head, made of bronzed terra-cotta, looks as if spinning around and reminds one of two-faced Janus with a double-faced head, each looking in opposite directions.
 The parallel this dynamic sculpture has with the Roman god of beginnings and endings, didn't stop Il Duce from approving the design and making the work an official portrait.
 It shows the distinctive profile of the Italian dictator, which looks exactly the same even when rotated 360 degrees, which makes the sculpture seem more mechanical than human. The work, originally made in ceramic, was later manufactured in metal, produced in large numbers to serve for propaganda, and placed in government offices and even offered for sale. 
 
 <i>
Links: www.hermitagemuseum.org </i>

TITLE: North Korea Says It
 Has Nuclear Arms
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea announced Thursday for the first time that it has nuclear weapons and rejected moves to restart disarmament talks any time soon, saying it needs the armaments as protection against an increasingly hostile United States. 
 
The communist state's pronouncement dramatically raised the stakes in the two-year-old nuclear confrontation and posed a grave challenge to U.S. President George W. Bush, who started his second term with a vow to end North Korea's nuclear program through six-nation talks. 
 &quot;We ... have manufactured nukes for self-defense to cope with the Bush administration's ever more undisguised policy to isolate and stifle the [North],&quot; the North Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency. 
 Previously, North Korea reportedly told U.S. negotiators in private talks that it had nuclear weapons and might test one of them. Its UN envoy told The Associated Press last year that the country had &quot;weaponized&quot; plutonium from its pool of 8,000 nuclear spent fuel rods. 
 But Thursday's statement was North Korea's first public acknowledgment that it has nuclear weapons. North Korea makes all important statements in the name of its Foreign Ministry spokesman and spreads them through KCNA, the isolated state's main news outlet. 
 North Korea's &quot;nuclear weapons will remain [a] nuclear deterrent for self-defense under any circumstances,&quot; the ministry said. &quot;The present reality proves that only powerful strength can protect justice and truth.&quot; 
 Since 2003, the United States, the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia have held three rounds of talks in Beijing aimed at persuading the North to abandon nuclear weapons development in return for economic and diplomatic rewards. But no significant progress has been made. 
 A fourth round scheduled for last September was canceled when North Korea refused to attend, citing what it called a &quot;hostile&quot; U.S. policy. 
 In recent weeks, hopes had risen that North Korea might return to the six-nation talks, especially after Bush refrained from any direct criticism of North Korea when he started his second term last month. 
 On Thursday, North Korea said it had no intention to rejoin such talks any time soon. 
 &quot;We have wanted the six-party talks but we are compelled to suspend our participation in the talks for an indefinite period till we have recognized that there is justification for us to attend the talks,&quot; the North said. 
 North Korea said it made the decision because &quot;the U.S. disclosed its attempt to topple the political system in [North Korea] at any cost, threatening it with a nuclear stick.&quot; 
 Still, North Korea said it retained its &quot;principled stand to solve the issue through dialogue and negotiations and its ultimate goal to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula remain unchanged.&quot; 
 Such a comment has widely been interpreted as North Korea's negotiating tactic to get more economic and diplomatic concessions from the United States before joining any crucial talks. 
 In his State of the Union address earlier this month, Bush only briefly mentioned North Korea, saying Washington was &quot;working closely with governments in Asia to convince North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions.&quot; 
 Bush's tone was in stark contrast to his speech three years ago, when he branded North Korea part of an &quot;axis of evil&quot; with Iran and Iraq.
 The nuclear crisis erupted in October 2002 when U.S. officials accused North Korea of running a secret uranium-enrichment program in violation of international treaties. Washington and its allies cut off free fuel oil shipments for the impoverished country. 
 North Korea retaliated by quitting the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in early 2003 and restarting its plutonium-based nuclear weapons program. Its plutonium facilities had been frozen in return for oil shipments and other benefits under a 1994 deal with Washington. 
 The North had also claimed that it completed reprocessing 8,000 spent fuel rods previously unloaded from its 5-megawatt reactor and kept under UN seals under the 1994 deal. The reprocessing could yield enough plutonium for several nuclear bombs. 


TITLE: Iran Says It Won't Stop Atomic Program
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TEHRAN, Iran - President Mohammad Khatami vowed Wednesday that no Iranian government would ever abandon the progress that the country has made in developing peaceful nuclear technology.
 
The comment did not augur well for negotiations with the big three European powers who are currently trying to persuade Iran to cease permanently the enrichment of uranium.
 Khatami warned that if the talks with Britain, France and Germany fail, his government will not be bound by its undertaking to suspend enrichment.
 &quot;If other parties [to the negotiations] are not committed to their promises, we will not be committed to our promises at all,&quot; Khatami told a meeting of foreign diplomats in Tehran. The Europeans have promised Iran economic and technological aid in return for cooperation on the nuclear issue.
 Khatami then went further and warned of a course of action that would reach far: &quot;If we feel you [Europeans] do not fulfill your promises, we will adopt a new policy, and the responsibility of its huge consequences will lie with those who broke their promises,&quot; he said. He did not say more about this policy.
 Uranium enriched to low levels can be used for fuel for nuclear power stations. Enriched to high levels it is used for atomic bombs. Iran says it seeks enriched uranium only for power stations, but the United States believes it wants to build nuclear weapons.
 &quot;Neither my government, nor any other [Iranian] government can give a convincing reply to people [who seek our] giving up peaceful nuclear technology,&quot; said Khatami, whose second and final presidential term ends later this year.
 &quot;Iran has achieved nuclear technology without the help of others, and it will never give up its right [to use it] under illegitimate pressure from others,&quot; Khatami said.
 Khatami drew attention to opinion polls that show most Iranians want the country to continue with its nuclear development.
 The nuclear program is perhaps the only issue that all sides of the political spectrum agree on in Iran. The program is a point of national pride.
 Khatami reiterated that Iran would never make nuclear weapons. He said the country was a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and had reaffirmed its commitment to the peaceful use of nuclear power in November.
 The United States says it supports the European negotiations with Iran, but U.S. officials say privately they expect them to fail. The United States has long wanted the International Atomic Energy Agency to refer Iran to the UN Security Council, which has the power to impose sanctions on the country.
 


TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: HP Ousts Fiorina 
 </b>

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Hewlett-Packard Co. on Wednesday ousted Chairman and Chief Executive Carly Fiorina, the architect of a controversial $19 billion merger with Compaq Computer that never produced the results she promised.
 Chief Financial Officer Robert Wayman, who was named as interim chief executive, said HP did not plan to split the company up, but that the board would not be "closed-minded" on strategy changes once it locates a new CEO.
 Fiorina, considered one of America's most powerful businesswomen, drew effusive praise and criticism during her more than five-year tenure at HP, but the company turned in erratic financial results under her, and the board said its chief concern was to improve "execution" of strategy.
 
 
<b>UN Ban on Sex
 </b>

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - UN peacekeepers have been banned from having sex with the local population in Congo following allegations of widespread abuse of women and girls, the United Nations said Wednesday.
 UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan disclosed the new "non-fraternization" regulations in a letter to the Security Council in which he called for 100 extra police and French-speaking investigators to "root out" the abuse and prevent further sexual exploitation.
 Over the past year the United Nations has probed 150 allegations against some 50 soldiers for sexual exploitation of women and girls.
 
 
<b>Pope to Leave Hospital
 </b>

VATICAN CITY (AP) - Pope John Paul II's spokesman has hinted that the ailing pontiff might be discharged soon from the hospital, saying he hopes the next scheduled medical bulletin will be the last. 
 The 84-year-old pontiff was rushed by ambulance late night Feb. 1 to Rome's Gemelli hospital for emergency treatment. John Paul's ninth night in his private mini-ward on the 10th floor was uneventful, the Italian news agency reported shortly before dawn Thursday. 
 
 
<b>Smallest Baby Released
 </b>

MAYWOOD, Illinois (AP) - A baby born weighing less than a soda can and believed to be the smallest ever to survive went home today after nearly six months in the hospital.
 Rumaisa Rahman's prognosis "is very good," and she is expected to have normal physical and mental development, said Jonathan Muraskas at Loyola University Medical Center outside Chicago.
 Rumaisa weighed 244 grams at birth and measured just 24 centimeters long. The little girl is now 2.5 kilograms, and almost 24 centimeters long. 
 
 
<b>Saudis Start to Vote
 </b>

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - Forty years ago, in municipal polls limited to big cities, a candidate would slaughter a few sheep, throw a dinner party in a tent to announce his candidacy and, on election day, drive supporters to write their names on his list. 
 It was a different story Thursday, when Saudis began voting in the country's first nationwide elections. 
 They dropped ballots in boxes designed according to international standards and chose among candidates who ran Western-style campaigns, including posters, phone text messages and newspaper ads.

TITLE: MacArthur Sets Round-the-World Record
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: FALMOUTH, England - One world sailing record apparently isn't enough to satisfy Ellen MacArthur. 
 
She already has designs on several others. 
 MacArthur celebrated her solo around-the-world record Tuesday by setting off flares, spraying champagne and holding an emotional reunion with her family after her long journey. 
 The 28-year-old Briton sailed into Falmouth harbor on England's southwest coast also knowing she had been awarded a damehood, becoming the youngest person to receive Britain's highest royal honor. 
 MacArthur's 23-meter trimaran B&amp;Q circumnavigated the world in 71 days, 14 hours, 18 minutes, 33 seconds, crossing the line late Monday. 
 That broke the existing record of Francis Joyon of France by more than a day. 
 &quot;It's a brief pause in a nice story,&quot; she said as she was given a rapturous welcome from 8,000 people on a flotilla in the harbor and hundreds more lining the cliffs above the town. 
 &quot;When I left the boat, I wasn't sad, I wasn't particularly emotional,&quot; she said. &quot;It's not the end for this boat. There will be other records.&quot; 
 MacArthur has been lauded by Prime Minister Tony Blair, French president Jacques Chirac and the man whose record she broke. 
 &quot;It's been an extraordinary experience,&quot; she said. &quot;My head is spinning at the moment.&quot;
 MacArthur's first priority is rest. 
 &quot;I'd like to spend some time with my family and switch my brain off,&quot; she said. 
 Her next challenge probably will be the west-to-east trans-Atlantic record, which she missed by 75 minutes in B&amp;Q last year. 
 She's expected to try next year to beat the 18-day record for sailing around Britain and Ireland. MacArthur also has her sights on the Shanghai-to-London record, an old 19th-century tea clipper route. That record stands at just over 67 days. 
 MacArthur completed the 26,000-mile circumnavigation at 10:29 p.m. Monday, crossing an imaginary finish line between Ushant, France, and the Lizard peninsula on England's south coast. She berthed in Falmouth on Tuesday morning. 
 MacArthur wasn't sure when - or if - her record would be broken. 
 &quot;Who knows? That is an impossible question,&quot; she said. &quot;It was possible to break the record by a week, but I didn't have the weather.&quot; 
 She also had to deal with other problems. MacArthur fixed a broken mainsail and overcame a nasty burn, bruises and extreme exhaustion. She never slept for more than 15-30 minutes at a stretch, totaling only four hours a day. 
 Sailing in a trimaran also had its challenges. 
 &quot;The boat is always vibrating, there's always noises, there's stress,&quot; she said. &quot;The speed comes with a very high price on it and that's not just directly linked to technology. The motion of the boat can be horrendous.&quot; 
 MacArthur's journey was closely followed on the Internet. Numerous web cams captured the highs and lows of the trip, and MacArthur explained her challenges in her online diary. 
 &quot;There were more lows than highs, no doubt about it. I'm not going to hide that,&quot; she said. &quot;It was and is exceptionally difficult to communicate how tough this was. I sit here and say that and it's as though I'm lying. But it really was very, very difficult.&quot; 
 A sporting celebrity in France since finishing second in the Vendee Globe around-the-world race in February 2001, MacArthur's profile has now rocketed in Britain. 
 She doesn't think the extra attention will change her. 
 &quot;I'll just try to take each day as it comes,&quot; she said. &quot;I do this because I love it, not for anything else. It's humbling more than anything else.&quot;