SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1071 (37), Friday, May 20, 2005
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TITLE: Finnish Guard's Strike May Close Border
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Finnish frontier guards are threatening to go on strike and possibly stop road and rail traffic passing across the Russian-Finnish border for 11 days from May 31.
"Almost all our frontier guards at Russian-Finnish checkpoints will stop work to demand higher salaries and the protest a new wage system," Reijo Kortelainen, chairman of the labor union that represents most Finnish frontier guards, said Thursday in a telephone interview from Finland.
"The strike will definitely affect the passage of people and transport at the border, which will at least become slow," Kortelainen said.
About 17,000 people travel every day through the checkpoints of the Russian-Finnish border.
Anne Pajalin, director of representative office of Finnish-Russian Chamber of Commerce in St. Petersburg, said Thursday that the strike could have very serious economic consequences.
"If the border gets closed it will be a catastrophe," Pajalin said. "Delays at the Russian-Finnish border are already catastrophic."
Delays particularly affect the process of shipping goods, when perishable products get spoiled, delivery contracts are broken and those who deliver goods face big fines.
Delays would be serious for travelers, too, especially those, who will be made late for business meetings.
Trade unions in Finland are very strong and are often successful in their industrial disputes, she added.
Earlier, the Helsingin Sanomat quoted Kortelainen as saying the strike might even lead "to a possible closing of the border" or "at least the level of check-ups will be compromised."
The strike will cause significant delays to freight traffic, he said.
The strike is planned for 6 a.m. on May 31 through June 11, if the dispute remains unresolved. If the union does not get the desired result after the first strike, it will hold more strikes, he said.
The guards chose the Russian-Finnish border for this purpose because "it's the most important point of the border" and will make the Finnish government pay attention to the guards' claims, Kortelainen said.
The guards are not only demanding higher wages, but also want to protest against a new pay system getting introduced in Finland.
The new system would have an adverse impact on public servants doing their basic duties, the Helsingin Sanomat quoted him saying.
Commodore Matti Möttönen, of the Frontier Guard Headquarters, said Thursday in a telephone interview from Finland that the the government is not prepared to raise guards' wages, especially because the union has not stated the size of its claim.
While 90 percent of the guards at the border are threatening to strike, other guards will do everything possible to let people and transport cross the border in both directions if it takes place, he said.
"Border crossings will be open, traffic will pass, the customs services will work normally," he said.
This could be achieved by minimizing the number of checks, he said.
"Maybe we won't check passenger traffic leaving Finland at all, or not all the passengers, or we may just check their passports," he said.
Understanding the importance of the traffic across Russian-Finnish border, Finland will "try to guarantee there would be no financial losses," he added.
The service will not be hurt financially because those on strike will not be paid, he said. Möttönen said the staff of Finnish frontier guards perform several tasks, including border monitoring for illegal migrants, inspections at checkpoints to see if passengers' documents are in order, patrolling the checkpoints and coast guard activities. The service employs 3,100 people.
TITLE: EU Distant
Despite Will
In Provinces
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: IMATRA, Finnish Karelia - While the development of relations between the Russian border town Svetogorsk in the Leningrad Oblast and its Finnish neighbor Imatra has been frozen for more than a decade, officials and citizens in both towns want closer contact, they said at a conference in Imatra on Tuesday.
In the years since the Iron Curtain between Russia and Western Europe collapsed, business contacts are still more a matter of declarations than specific initiatives and are limited by the attitudes of the Finnish and Russian governments. Imatra and Svetogorsk were once one town and probably have the closest relations of any towns along the EU-Russia border.
"Shopping tours are the beginning. Everything starts with shopping tours," Imatra Mayor Tauno Moilanen said in his speech at the conference, Media, Democracy and Communications in the EU and Russia, organized by the Imatra unit of the South Karelia Summer University.
"This is how business relations started between Tallinn and Helsinki," Moilanen said.
Once Finnish shoppers started going to Tallinn, Finnish producers were also able to sell their goods in Estonia to those shoppers, he said.
"At the moment we are at a watershed and should follow developments with great care," he added. "Russia is going to become a World Trade Organization member sometime soon, which means guarantees for investments and other things. Both cities are ready then to announce loudly their intention to cooperate more closely."
Such widely discussed plans as creating a free economic zone in Svetogorsk where Finnish companies could set up production lines, announced at the end of the 1990s, have not been realized.
"There is too little cooperation between Imatra and Svetogorsk," said Yulia Geliza, deputy editor of a Svetogorsk media company.
"I personally visit all the conferences in Imatra, but get invited to participate in them only from the local Russian trade representative's office. Nobody from here invites me," she said.
A new border checkpoint that opened recently between Imatra and Svetogorsk has little to do. Leningrad Oblast officials said this is partly because a new $70 million road between Vyborg with Svetorgosk that could attract larger traffic to the crossing has not been built, although it was planned ages ago.
The existing road is winding and the scene of many accidents while there is only a single-track railway line between Vyborg and Svetogorsk.
Officials said a breakthrough could still be made on June 14 when Leningrad Oblast representatives meet with representatives of neighboring EU regions that have already signed cooperation agreements. Imatra signed its agreement in 1992.
One of the biggest projects under way in Svetogorsk is setting up a business center that would process all the applications for permits and approvals from Finnish business people coming to the city on the "one window" principle, where all questions could be resolved without a lot of time being spent visiting different officials. Seventy percent of the $260-million project comes from the Finnish Ministry of Trade and Industry.
"It is too early to talk about any results from this project, because the business center was, actually, officially opened just yesterday," an adviser on international relations in the Svetogorsk administration said Tuesday.
Another promising initiative is to set up a special venture fund to assist Finnish companies investing in Russia's northwest. The budget of this project is $6.4 million.
It should be attractive to foreign businesses because Svetogorsk has vacant land on which production lines can be built and a relatively big resource of cheap labor force. In addition, the engineering capacities of the Svetogorsk paper production plant are not fully used by the factory.
While Finnish officials are talking about the need for a free economic zone in the area in order to increase its attractiveness, Svetogorsk officials are convinced the investment project would be successful enough without this added incentive.
"The negotiations between potential investors and regional authorities are advanced so this project will be started quite soon, I can assure you," said the adviser, who declined to be named. "As for the tax breaks on the local level, [investors] will have no problems getting them. If we talk about federal taxes, a bill has been prepared and is awaiting discussion in the State Duma. Investors will come to Svetogorsk even without a free economic zone. The area is big and attractive in itself."
Vladimir Kovalev attended the conference as a guest of the South Karelia Summer University.
TITLE: Nations on Baltic Extend Nuclear Power Plans
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Nations around the Baltic look set to continue operating nuclear power plants for many years despite Western fears about their safety.
The Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant, or LAES, located in the settlement of Sosnovy Bor west of St. Petersburg operates reactors similar to the one involved in the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Plans are advanced for an about $350-million project to lay an undersea cable from the plant to Finland that will allow LAES to sell electricity to its northern neighbor.
In addition, former Nuclear Power Minister Yevgeny Adamov, speaking before he was detained in Switzerland, said Lithuania's Ignalina plant is safe and should not be shut down.
Ignalina also operates Chernobyl-type reactors.
As part of its agreement to join the EU, Lithuania pledged to shut down one reactor before 2005, which it did in December, and to set a date for the closure of the other - probably 2009.
Meanwhile, Russian ecologists say it's not right for Russia to sell nuclear energy to other countries.
"Such sales are a commercial matter, but when nuclear waste from producing energy for other countries remains in the country where it's produced, it also means additional risk for our population," said Alexander Nikitin, an ecologist for the St. Petersburg branch of Norwegian-based ecological organization Bellona.
Plans to lay a power cable across the Finnish Gulf were approved by the Finnish foreign and trade and industry ministries and the Russian government last year.
Sergei Averyanov, spokesman for LAES, said Wednesday that the cable would be constructed so that energy could flow in either direction.
It will require Russia and Finland to build substations to transform alternating current into direct current when transmitting energy and to transform it back when receiving it, he said.
It is yet not clear when the project will be started because ecological evaluations have not yet been conducted and not all the funding has yet been found, he said.
LAES itself will not receive any financial benefit from the project because its energy is sold in Russia on the federal market. Electricity sold to Finland also comes from other Russia's energy sources, which are all united into one energy system, he said.
Finland's interested in Russian energy is probably not because it didn't have enough power of its own, but because it hopes to buy energy from Russia at a profitable price, Averyanov said.
Nikitin said that regardless of the sales, the plans to extend the operations of LAES are of concern.
"LAES has reactors of Chernobyl type, which despite having been or are getting modernized, still belong to that unsafe type of reactor," Nikitin said.
Averyanov said each of the two new reactors, planned for 2013 and 2015, will produce 1,500 megawatts compared to the 1,000 megawatts of the four existing reactors. The new reactors would not be Chernobyl-type and will meet international safety standards.
However, construction of the new reactors was still under discussion and no financial decisions on them have yet been made.
Finns have long been concerned about LAES' four reactors, built in 1970s and 1980s, the Helsingin Sanomat wrote this week.
Although the initially planned 30-year life span of two of the reactors has come to an end, the Russian power company running the units wants to extend their operation by another 15 years.
The Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority of Finland, or RNSA, has provided 7 million euros ($8.9 million) to upgrade safety at the plant.
Heikki Reponen, the head of the expert service unit of the RNSA said weaknesses were noted in operational and fire safety systems, and in the shielding of the plant, the Helsingin Sanomat wrote.
Finland supplied the plant with fire detectors and fire fighting equipment, turnstile gates, card readers, and other access control devices. A radiation monitoring network has been built around the power plant and the readings can be seen in Finland.
Meanwhile, Bellona reported that the closure of Lithuania's Ignalina plant might be postponed.
The first unit of the Ignalina nuclear power plant started in 1983, and having an operating life lasting until 2029, was shut down on Dec. 31. Lithuania also pledged that it would shut down the second unit. It was designed to work until 2031 but is to be shut down in 2009.
The plant plays a considerable role in Lithuania's economy and it has exported much of its production to neighboring countries. Lithuania is receiving billions of dollars from the European Union to close it down.
Unified Energy Systems is building a non-nuclear plant in Kaliningrad that is intended to make up some of the shortfall to the region and its neighbors.
However, Adamov said in April that Ignalina had been upgraded, was safe, and that the only reason to close it is political.
TITLE: Plea to Remove Ammo
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Kronshtadt officials have called for the former fortress' ammunition dumps to be emptied after a woman died and four people were hospitalized with burns when fire broke out in an ammunition storage area Tuesday.
It took several hours to extinguish the fire, during which access was closed to the causeway to Kotlin Island where the city is located about 30 kilometers west of St. Petersburg.
Viktor Surikov, head of the Kronshtadt administration, informed Governor Valentina Matviyenko and other officials about violations of procedures for the storage and handling of ammunition.
"There were many violations and we know about all of them and it's a pity that the Defense Ministry has not treated the matter seriously enough," he said.
The incident is a "serious signal" to remove the ammunition from the island because "we have no right to put the lives of 50,000 people at risk," he added.
All those injured were staff of the area where the ammunition was stored.
The island holds large amounts of munitions, some dating back to World War I, in an arsenal that serves the entire navy. The Baltic Fleet also uses the island as a base.
Andrei Alyabyev, spokesman for the emergency service of St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast, said one woman received burns to 40 percent of her body.
Navy spokesman Igor Dylago said the fire was caused by "careless handling of depth charges."
The bomb, which caused the fire, had no explosive charge, but there was gunpowder in its motor, which caught fire and set off about 20 other shells located close to it.
Interfax quoted an identified source in the prosecutor's office of the Kronshtadt military garrison, as saying the reason for the explosion at the section was the unprofessional action of a civilian specialist.
No one could be reached who could explain what a civilian was doing handling military explosives.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Manevich Probe
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - An investigation into the assassination of former St. Petersburg's vice-governor Mikhail Manevich has been extended until Nov.18, Interfax reported Tuesday.
The investigation was due to end Wednesday, but the case reportedly required further examination. Citing the city's FSB office, Interfax reported the case will not be closed until those responsible are found. The circle of suspects has been narrowed to a minimum, the agency said.
Manevich was killed on Aug. 18, 1997, when he was shot through the roof of his car in the city center.
Hazing Case to Court
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The prosecutor's office of the Leningrad Military District has sent the case of 12 runaway marine conscripts, to the court, Interfax reported.
The conscripts said they fled their detachment because of abuse by senior officers, and the investigation has identified the two assailants.
The conscripts deserted from the suburb of Lomonosov on the night of April 6 and contacted prosecutors.
Inventor Remembered
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - A memorial plaque commemorating Alexander Popov's involvement in the creation and development of wireless communication opened on Wednesday, Interfax reported.
The plaque was installed at St. Petersburg's State Electrotechnical University, where Popov once worked.
"On May 7, 1895, Alexander Popov demonstrated the possibility of the transmission and reception of short and long signals from a distance of 64 meters by means of electromagnetic waves, when a specially developed portable device reacted to electric oscillation," it says.
Shostakovich Museum
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Prominent cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and his wife, singer Galina Vishnevskaya aren't giving up their plans to create a museum dedicated to Dmitry Shostakovich in a local apartment, which was seized this week, Interfax reported.
Rostropovich bought the apartment, on Ulitsa Marata, where Shostakovich lived from 1914 until 1934.
The musician had earlier said he plans to open a Shostakovich museum there on Sept. 15, 2006, the 100th anniversary of the composer's birth.
Rostropovich's neighbors are claiming renovations damaged their property and are seeking a compensation of 316,728 rubles ($11,323) through the court. A hearing is scheduled for Friday.
Governor's New Term
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The city's Legislative Assembly passed a law on Wednesday extending the terms of the governor and lawmakers from four years to five years, Interfax reported.
Speaker Vadim Tyulpanov said the main reason behind the amendment was financial, as less frequent elections will save a lot of budget money.
The amendment won't affect the current governor and deputies.
Capital Shuns Elections
MOSCOW (SPT) - The Moscow City Duma has rejected a bill that would have meant the mayor of Moscow and the governor of St. Petersburg should be elected, not appointed, Interfax reported Wednesday.
During the debate, lawmaker Yevgeny Bunimovich, one of the bill's authors, said that "in all Russian cities, besides Moscow and St. Petersburg, the citizens are allowed to elect their heads of administration."
"Moscow and St. Petersburg were the first cities [in post-Soviet times] that won the right to elect their governors, and it is insulting that now these cities are deprived of it," he said.
Moscow Tsoi Statue
MOSCOW (SPT) -A monument to St. Petersburg composer and rock-singer Viktor Tsoi may to be installed in Moscow in a square at the intersection of Universitetsky Prospekt and Prospekt Vernadskogo, Interfax reported.
The location was recommended by the monumental art commission of the Moscow City Duma during their meeting on Tuesday. The recommendation must be confirmed by deputies.
Servicemen Acquitted
MOSCOW (AFP) - Four Russian special forces officers were acquitted Thursday of murdering six Chechen civilians in a trial that human rights activists describe as a test case for Russia's readiness to admit responsibility for war crimes in Chechnya.
The jury accepted the soldiers' argument that they were acting under orders when their unit in January 2002 shot the six civilians, including a pregnant mother of seven.
TITLE: Gazprom CEO Miller Says Ring Fence to End This Year
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller said Wednesday that there were no obstacles to liberalizing the gas giant's share market and that the process would be completed by the end of the year.
A perequisite for the long-awaited liberalization is for the state to take a controlling stake in Gazprom. On Tuesday, Gazprom announced that the government had ditched plans to merge the gas company with state-owned oil firm Rosneft and instead would boost its stake in the gas company in a complex share-buying scheme.
"This decision is final. It will be carried out before the annual shareholder meeting on June 24," Miller told Kommersant in an interview published Wednesday.
"Under the planned scheme, liberalization will take place right after the state consolidates more than 50 percent in Gazprom," he said. "There won't be nuances. It will be a full liberalization."
Later, on NTV, Miller said the process of lifting the so-called ring fence would be completed by the end of 2005.
While many industry watchers initially applauded the abandonment of the ill-fated Rosneft-Gazprom merger, some cast doubt on whether the government's complicated scheme for gaining a majority in Gazprom could be wrapped up in little more than a month.
The failure of the deal also raised questionsas to whether if President Vladimir Putin - who had publicly backed the tieup - was in control of Kremlin factions that had clashed over the terms of the merger.
Under the new plan, the government will boost its stake in Gazprom by buying shares from its subsidiaries in cash at market prices. The needed 10.7 percent stake is estimated at about $7 billion.
The government will park 100 percent of Rosneft into newly created Rosneftegaz to attract loans from foreign lenders, according to the Economic Development and Trade Ministry. Later, Rosneftegaz will be liquidated and Rosneft will go public to help pay for the loans. Kommersant reported on Wednesday that the government would use its 10.7 percent Gazprom stake as collateral for the loans.
The paper suggested that up to 30 percent of the company might be sold directly to China's CNPC or India's ONGC.
The Economic Development and Trade Ministry was not available for comment, and an Industry and Energy Ministry spokesman said he was not aware of such possibilities being discussed.
Analysts agreed the execution of the plan was very risky.
"Technically it could be done with the state simply taking the 10.7 percent stake from Gazprom subsidiaries and being indebted to Gazprom," said Valery Nesterov, oil and gas analyst with Troika Dialog.
"But the valuation sum of the assets has not yet been identified, the terms [of the loans] are not known, and it will take foreign banks time to agree on the loans. Especially given their negative experience with Yukos and Rosneft, Gazprom may not see its billions until next year."
Rosneft itself has debts of some $20 billion.
"I do not expect share liberalization to happen all that quickly," said Nesterov. "It is easy to issue a presidential decree but not so easy to change a law."
The 1999 law that limited foreign ownership of Gazprom to 20 percent is still in place, he said.
Also, the IPO scenario makes the unlikely assumption that portfolio investors will agree to pay for Yuganskneftegaz - the key Yukos asset that Rosneft bought on borrowed money last year - a second time, Aton said in a research note Wednesday.
Stanislav Naumov, a spokesman for the Industry and Energy Ministry, dismissed analysts' reservations.
"All the necessary work will be completed to allow us to make a decision that will be clear-cut and transparent for market players," he said. Nevertheless, the investment community seemed divided on the prospects for success.
Moody's upgraded Rosneft's issuer credit rating to investment grade on Wednesday, raising it three notches to Baa3 from Ba3. The rating agency said that uncertainty over the oil firm's legal position had subsided after the Gazprom merger was called off.
Standard & Poor's, however, lowered its corporate credit and senior unsecured debt ratings on Rosneft to B- from B, citing the company's high debt levels and tight liquidity.
TITLE: Khodorkovsky Could Get a Lighter Sentence
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Moscow court reading the verdict in the trial of oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky said Thursday it considers him to have committed fraud, but indicated he could receive a lighter sentence than prosecutors originally sought.
Khodorkovsky and co-defendant Platon Lebedev were on trial on seven charges including fraud, tax evasion and embezzlement in a case that many observers say is Kremlin revenge for Khodorkovsky's political activities.
In the fourth day of the laborious verdict process, Judge Irina Kolesnikova said Khodorkovsky - the former head of the Yukos oil company and once considered Russia's richest man - and Lebedev had committed theft by fraud. But she said the court's sentencing would be guided by a section of the law calling for four to 10 years' imprisonment, rather than five to 10.
The section that would be used was in effect in 1995, when the court says Khodorkovsky and Lebedev acquired shares in a fungicide research institute through a rigged privatization auction. The indictment had charged a violation of a law that came into effect later.
The decision raised the prospect that the court could impose sentences lighter than the maximum 10 years sought by prosecutors in the politically sensitive case.
Under Russian procedures, a trial verdict, which is read aloud, is not a simple declaration of whether a defendant is guilty, but a long summation of prosecution and defense arguments and court commentary. A firm statement on guilt and on sentencing does not come until the end of the process.
The court session adjourned until Friday after about three and a half hours of reading the verdict.
The reading so far has left little doubt that the defendants would be found guilty on six of the charges, but questions remain about the seventh charge, which had been one of the key elements of the case. That charge, which said Khodorkovsky and Lebedev acquired shares in a fertilizer component company in an arrangement similar to the charge detailed Thursday, has not so far been read out in the verdict.
Defense lawyers have speculated that the court has dropped that charge because the statute of limitations has expired. The allegedly rigged purchase took place in 1994.
When the final statement might come was unclear. The verdict documents are being read aloud at the pace of about 10 pages an hour and a thick stack of papers remained.
"It's glacial!" fumed Robert Amsterdam, a Canadian lawyer on the defense team, who said he believed the pace was a clear effort at exhausting the public's attention span.
Police lined both sides of the street outside the courthouse with crowd barriers and set up metal detectors, as they have every day this week. A small knot of anti-Khodorkovsky protesters gathered across the street to stand vigil.
The case against Khodorkovsky and Lebedev is founded on the claim that the pair acted as part of an "organized criminal group" to commit economic crimes as the country wrenched itself out of Soviet ways.
TITLE: Court to Mull Lack
Of Web Information
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A private citizen's complaint that not all government agencies having a web site is in violation of his constitutional right to information was upheld by the St. Petersburg city court Tuesday.
Lawyer Yury Skobin's suit had previously been rejected by a lower court.
Skobin, a "non-commercial partner" of the city's Institute of Information Freedom Development, can now return to the Krasnogvardeisky district federal court and file his complaint against six government agencies again.
"The rights [to public information] are clearly stated in the Constitution and in the Information and Information Protection law," he said Tuesday in a telephone interview.
"Furthermore, Federal Provision No. 98, published February 2003, provides a detailed specification of the federal bodies' responsibility to create Internet sites and maintain citizens' access to information about their activities," he added.
When Skobin first filed the complaint in March, 14 of 89 federal ministries and agencies did not have their own web sites. Skobin selected six federal bodies that he deemed the most important in terms of being sources of information to charge with failure to implement the law. The six are the Health and Social Development Ministry and its federal agency, the federal agency for technical and export control, the federal employment agency, the federal registration and the federal nature habitat control agencies.
The Krasnogvardeisky court refused to accept his complaint, asking him to furnish proof that the web sites did not exist.
Mikhail Grigoriyev, a lawyer with Competence Consulting, said Thursday that the city court's ruling still allows the Krasnogvardeisky court to cite another reason for refusing Skobin's case, but generally it will accept the higher court's ruling.
The Federal Agency for Use of Natural Resources said it had no knowledge of the case. However, the Health and Social Development Ministry, which is also responsible for employment and health agencies, said three sites are already developed and will be up and running "in the near future."
The cost of developing a web site for a federal agency ranges from 1 million to 3 million rubles ($36,000 t0 $100,000), a local web design studio specialist said.
Skobin said he is not looking for any commercial gains from the case, but simply wants to force the agencies to develop the sites and create a precedent for further action.
Varvara Borisova, a representative of the Institute for Information Freedom Development, said Thursday in a telephone interview that the most likely result of the case will be that the governmental agencies will have their sites up and running before a verdict is given, in which case Skobin may drop his suit.
However, the mere existence of a working Internet site does not necessarily have any practical value for the public. Even those federal bodies that have web sites fulfill their responsibilities only in form, but not in content, Borisova said.
"Provision No. 98 lists 40 specific bits of information that a site has to have and not one ministry fully complies," she said.
Catherine Andersen, an expert for British NGO The Campaign for Freedom of Information, said there is nothing surprising about the lack of information. "Governments always want to conceal information about their activities," Vedomosti quoted her saying Wednesday.
However, IIFD's Borisova said Skobin and his "ideological partner" -the institute - do not want any state secrets revealed.
"We are not aiming for the agencies to disclose any sort of 'secret' information," she said. "What we want is the availability of useful and oftentimes necessary public information that is still hard to pull from officials, some of whom continue to operate in the old Soviet style of 'the less the better.' That information includes customs regulations, vacancies, projects developed by agencies, public tenders and other information the federal bodies are obliged to publicize."
TITLE: Be Informed, Hotel Investors Told
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A grasp of Russia's intricate legal and tax system, along with a presence of reliable local partners are among the key determinants of success for foreign investors in the city's hotel industry, according to a seminar held by the American Chamber of Commerce on Thursday.
The city's history and artistic riches have made it a perennial tourist draw, one of the top destinations in Europe. But the shortcomings of the local hotel industry have in the past threatened to undercut St. Petersburg's potential and weaken its appeal to visitors.
The city administration has made the development of tourist infrastructure one of the keystones of its economic program. Around 150 hotels operate now and the city government intends to boost the number of hotel rooms by 10,000 to 12,000 in the next five years.
"The program for expansion of the hotel industry is a strategic project and a strategic goal for St. Petersburg," said Alexei Pavlovich of the department for information and analysis of City Hall's committee for economic development, industrial policy and trade.
City Hall's strategy is to lower administrative barriers to entry, ease the legal requirements and facilitate access to information, he added.
Foreign investors and local experts endorsed the strategy while cautioning against excessive government regulation and red tape. The seminar examined the prospects for investment in St. Petersburg hotel infrastructure and revealed that considerable opportunities for future growth are occasionally weighed down with burdensome legal and financial terms.
In recent years, two of the city's prime hotels were acquired by foreign proprietors. In 2002, International Hotel Investments Benelux bought Corinthia Nevskij Palace Hotel. Last February, British luxury hospitality chain Orient-Express Hotels gained a 93.5 percent stake in the five-star Grand Hotel Europe for around $100 million. This was the largest property deal ever completed in Russia.
In a marked contrast with the hospitality industry in Moscow, which remains largely closed to foreign capital, the local city administration auctioned off the controlling stakes in five hotels in the past year alone. More public sales are expected in the months ahead. The total sum of resulting investments amounted to $28 million, according to Colliers International 2005 Russia Real Estate Review.
Orient-Express Hotels owns luxury hotels and other facilities from Italy to South Africa, so the purchase of the storied Grand Hotel Europe was a logical choice for the franchise, said Adrian Constant, the company's vice president.
"It was very clear to us that Grand Hotel Europe, being an iconic hotel in Russia, would be a hotel that our clients would identify with," he said.
"Another thing that was very important is that this was actually a hotel with a history of success, one that worked very well in the past."
Most of the company's concerns prior to the venture were eventually dispelled, although project financing remained a challenge. Constant especially praised a local team of legal advisers that was hired to provide counsel on the transaction. The company is now on the lookout for other potential investments in Russia.
The earlier acquisition of Corinthia Nevskij Palace Hotel by International Hotel Investments was motivated by an optimistic appraisal of St. Petersburg's popular appeal.
"We saw a strong potential of the city to be a tourist destination in the future," said Joe Portelli, resident head of the company's Russia division.
The particular size and location of the hotel fitted the profile of the properties that the corporation has traditionally found most appealing.
The appropriate strategy for prospective investors is to approach the city's hospitality industry with ambition and confidence, but to proceed with caution.
"From our point of view, the key points for a successful investment were to know the target market very well, to be very patient and very creative," Constant said.
"Always try to discover and understand all the risky issues that will arise and be flexible with the structure you created at the beginning."
TITLE: One Lot Sale For the Seaport
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A federal property committee decree stipulating the city and federal government sell their stakes in the St. Petersburg Sea Port in one lot was signed Thursday, Interfax reported. The decree also set the price for the federal package of 20 percent of seaport stock at 105 million rubles. The price for the city's 28.8-percent stake will be determined by City Hall, a committee official said. Governor Valentina Matviyenko originally proposed selling both the federal and the city seaport stakes as one lot, after a January 18 auction for the federal stake was canceled. The Federal Property Committee later confirmed the proposal saying that a separate sale of the stakes would "lower the price of the package to be auctioned off first." The consolidated stake will be sold at an auction before the end of the year, said St. Petersburg Vice Governor Yuri Molchanov in April. He estimated the price at $4 million to $6 million. The seaport reported a 43 percent profit growth for 2004 on Tuesday.
TITLE: City Growth Above Average
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: St. Petersburg's economic performance in the first quarter of this year shows that the city is developing faster than the rest of the country, said Vladimir Blank, head of City Hall's committee for economic development, industrial policy and trade.
Speaking at a conference Tuesday, Blank said that direct investment in the city increased by 6 percent, salaries rose by 6 percent and retail sales grew 17 percent compared to the first quarter of 2004.
"A positive trend that continues to develop in the city is the growth of various retail chains in all districts of the city and the growth of service providers," Internet agency Fontanka.ru quoted Blank as saying. There were more than 4,800 cafes and fast food outlets operating in the city as of April, he said.
City expenditures have also increased, with most money being spent on education. According to Blank's committee's statistics, expenditures on communal services, healthcare and sports and social policy follow.
However, the figures may indicate a nominal, not real growth, city research specialists and economists say.
Dmitry Kanayev, director of Gortis Marketing Research and Consulting agency said Thursday in a telephone interview that much of the additional disposable income and retail spending came from the replacement of in-kind benefits with cash payments. This put more cash into circulation, but did not really improve the city's economic situation, Kanayev said.
"Once you take away the 13 percent inflation rate and take monetization into consideration, the figures start to look at bit more realistic," he said.
Another factor adding to the picture is the government's fight against unregistered operators. "Smolny's crackdown on 'shadow businesses' brings in income that has previously gone unrecorded, but it isn't necessarily real growth," Kanayev said.
As for increasing expenditure, the city especially needs to increase capital spending, complete infrastructure and invest in new projects, Fitch Ratings analyst Andrei Piskunov said in an earlier comment to The St. Petersburg Times.
"Last year capital expenditure accounted for about 12 percent of the city's budget, which is by and large made up of tax revenue. The increase in spending levels would be a positive factor for the city rating level, which is reviewed once a year, Piskunov said.
TITLE: A Road Map to Nowhere
TEXT: The expected and the only outcome of the recent Russia-European Union summit was the endorsement of the road maps for Russia-EU cooperation in the spheres of external security, economy, justice and home affairs, and education and research, also known as the Four Common Spaces. The idea of "common spaces" was hit upon at the St. Petersburg summit back in May 2003, and it took three biannual Russia-EU summits to draw up and agree on the road maps, or concrete agendas, for each realm of cooperation. The actual endorsement of the four road maps proves that the Russian and the EU bureaucracies are capable of delivering some sort of agreement, albeit a belated one. Yet while this undoubtedly comes as a relief to diplomats, it hardly constitutes a major political success. The truth is that these road maps do not lead Russia and the EU away from the two main problems in their relationship: increasing awareness of each other's differences and failing mutual strategies.
The idea of common spaces emerged at a time when both Russia and the EU were becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the entire architecture of their relationship, including the founding principles, policy instruments and actual results of this interaction. The EU was frustrated by the fact that, during the course of Vladimir Putin's presidency, Russia's trajectory of power has appeared distinctly different from one based on "shared values" and an approximation of EU legislation, as envisaged by the EU-Russian Partnership and Cooperation Agreement, or PCA, of 1994.
By the early 2000s, the EU had come to realize the limits of its engagement in Russia's domestic affairs and, more importantly, the limited leverage it had in the actual policies of Russia's leadership. For its part, Moscow was seeking ways to strengthen its European policy in order to better serve Russia's economic and security interests, without affording the EU an opportunity to interfere in what Russia considered its sphere of sovereignty, in Chechnya, for instance.
It was generally held that both sides would achieve better results if they proceeded in a more pragmatic manner, namely by selecting issues of mutual interest and sweeping other problems under the carpet. Another underlying cause of mutual disillusionment, and also a driving factor in the search for a new formula for Russian-EU interaction, was the EU enlargement of 2004 and the EU's increasing ties with Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova. Moscow did not want to be sidelined by the EU or to be treated like just another of the EU's neighbors. Instead, Russia wanted to be the EU's strategic partner, as befitted a great power. Thanks to these tensions, the idea of four common spaces gained prominence in Russia-EU affairs.
Now, two years later, the notion of common spaces appears to be failing both conceptually and practically. The main conceptual weakness of this approach is that, while it is supposedly the official "vision of the future development of Russia-EU partnership," in the words of the EU document, it doesn't quite correlate with actual Russia-EU relations. The common spaces had no bearing on the Russia-EU relationship when it cooled during the recent elections in Ukraine and Moldova.
Moreover, there is very little practical coordination between Russia and the EU regarding frozen conflicts in Transdnestr and the South Caucasus. This exposes the limits of the common spaces as a means of accommodating Russian and EU stances toward the former Soviet Union. Despite the formal inclusion of security issues on the common spaces agenda, Russia and the EU will likely remain divided about the future of the region.
The gap between the vision of the common spaces and the real situation is wider than ever when it comes to the economy. Although Russia and the EU have subscribed to the idea of the Common European Economic Space - that is, a free-trade zone and the approximation of EU economic legislation by Russia - there is little evidence that Moscow and Brussels regard it as a relevant or feasible objective. A case in point is the slow development of structural economic reforms in Russia, particularly those concerning state energy and gas monopolies. Moreover, the problems encountered by several big European investment projects in Russia, such as TNK-BP, IKEA and the Siemens-Power Machines deal, reveal that in order to survive in Russia's economy, Western companies have no choice but to adapt their business plans to Russia's unwritten economic laws, and not the other way around. Political centralization, corruption and the uncertainty of decision-making processes in Russia's economy render the idea of a common economic space unfeasible.
While acknowledging the conceptual flaws in the four spaces, it can be argued that the real value of this approach comes from what it may someday accomplish. Yet what emerges from the speeches of Russian and EU officials is that the four spaces represent only a loose framework for Russia-EU cooperation, thus enabling the two sides to cherry-pick issues of mutual interest like transit to Kaliningrad and visas. The wording of the road map documents is a mix of the same old Russian talk of good intentions and the subtle expressions on the "need of harmonization" and "finding a common ground" typical of the EU. Anyone outside the bureaucrats' guild might find it difficult to understand the difference and the practical meaning of such statements as "establishing dialogue," "intensifying cooperation" and "enhancing partnership."
At the same time, the nitty-gritty of bureaucratic diplomacy can only be assessed against the conceptual backdrop outlined above. In many ways, the weakness of Russia's European policy stems from the fact that interaction, not to mention integration, with the EU is only one of the many dimensions of Russia's foreign policy. There are many aspects of its political and economic development that drive Russia both toward and away from the EU. In the end, Russia and the EU are two very different actors, and the current logic of their relationship is determined by their internal differences and not by external arrangements, be they the PCA or the four common spaces.
The four road maps will not lead Russia and the EU toward a genuinely common space. At worst, they may turn into a facade for concealing mutual disillusionment. At best, they can serve as an interface for disclosing the key differences in Russia's and the EU's perceptions until the two sides arrive at a clear decision about their relationship.
Vadim Kononenko is a researcher at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. He contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times.
TITLE: Meet the Belarussian Opposition
TEXT: Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko says there won't be any "banana revolutions'' in his country. But a hodgepodge of activists is hoping to prove him wrong. Here are glimpses of three whose names you will see often in the months ahead.
Anatoly Lebedko: Lebedko is not yet known outside of opposition circles. Unlike the new Ukrainian president, Viktor Yushchenko, Lebedko is not wealthy and has never been prime minister. But he does share one experience with the Ukrainian: Both men have come close to death at the hands of foes.
Last Oct. 18, Lebedko joined 5,000 protesters on Minsk's October Square demonstrating against elections that were marred by ballot-box stuffing, intimidation of candidates and falsification of election returns.
Lebedko was an obvious target: At 43, he heads the pro-free-market United Civic Party and is the front-runner for the democratic Five-Plus Coalition's presidential nomination.
Lebedko says security agents forced him into a pizza parlor across the street from October Square. They beat him for several minutes, then he fell unconscious. He remembers waking up in the restaurant and the police chief slapping him in the face. Then he blacked out again and awoke in a moving car. After arriving at the police station, he said, he felt ill and was taken to a hospital.
Nurses urged Lebedko's wife Svetlana not to leave the patient's side. "They said someone should always watch what medicines they were putting in me,'' Lebedko said, alluding to the secret police lurking in the hospital corridors. After five days in the hospital, Lebedko spent three weeks at home recuperating. The attack - and his ongoing perseverance - elevated him from a cerebral, almost gentle former student of French history to a serious political contender.
Sergei Kalyakin: Kalyakin would probably suffocate Lebedko if he hugged him too hard. The former apparatchik is avuncular and bearish. When he serves his guests dinner, he expects them to eat and drink until they collapse. He learned politics in the Soviet Union the way big-city mayors did in the United States: rising through party ranks, cobbling together allies, learning how to give and take political jabs. He is convinced that most Westerners don't understand Marx and that, if they did, the world would be a better place. He remains a devout communist - albeit one who believes in free elections, the fourth estate and equal justice under the law. He is loved by people who hate his politics.
The 52-year-old former radio technician and Communist Party recruiter would like to be president. Apparently the Lukashenko government doesn't like that idea. On Oct. 17, 2004, the day of the elections, three government-issue cars tried to run Kalyakin off the road. He filed a complaint with police but later received a letter telling him he was imagining things.
So far, Kalyakin said, no one has harassed his family, although many other democratic activists contend that because of their political activity, their spouses have lost jobs and their children have been denied admission to universities.
Stanislav Shushkevich: The 70-year-old nuclear physicist and former speaker of the parliament is still a force in democratic circles, revered and in some cases reviled for his role in ushering in Belarussian democracy in 1991 and then, cataclysmically, losing it. Shushkevich helped forge Belarus' first liberal government in the immediate post-Soviet period.
But in 1994, democratic leaders became enmeshed in a nasty squabble that paved the way for Lukashenko's populist, backward-looking presidential bid.
Today, Shushkevich is no longer considered a viable candidate. But he still has the presence of someone who matters. Unlike Lukashenko, who has few dealings the rest of Europe and the United States, Shushkevich has spent time on the world stage.
In 1991, it was Shushkevich, together with Boris Yeltsin and Leonid Kravchuk of Ukraine, who formally dissolved the Soviet Union. Today, he sounds bitter. "If one one-thousandth of what goes to Iraq went to Belarus,'' he said in a recent interview, "we would have a democracy.''
Peter Sadovnik, political editor of the Hill newspaper in Washington, contributed this comment to the Los Angeles Times, where it appeared in longer form.
TITLE: Another day with Eno
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Brian Eno, who spent six months in St. Petersburg in 1997, returns to the city for the live premiere of his latest collaboration with Algerian-born, Paris-based singer Rachid Taha. The British musician, producer and lecturer who contributed to Taha's 2004 album "Tekitoi?," has recently released an album with King Crimson's Robert Fripp. Eno was also active in the British general election earlier this month and was in New York working with Paul Simon.
During his stay in St. Petersburg in 1997 Eno made two audio-visual installations, at Pavlovsk Palace and the State Russian Museum's Marble Palace, and wrote a monthly column about life in St. Petersburg for the British Sunday newspaper The Observer.
Interviewed by The St. Petersburg Times at his London studio, Eno spoke about his love for Arabic music, his new album of "proper" songs and his views on Russia.
Q: You spent a lot of time in Russia in the past, but you will be performing in Russia for the first time?
A: That's right, it's the first time that I've ever played in Russia. I don't perform much anywhere, so I'm not really a very active performer. I had some installations in Russia, though.
Q: What's your role in the upcoming Russian concerts? Do you see yourself as a member of Rachid Taha's band?
A: Yes, that's right. I'm using my various electronic devices to change the sound of some of the instruments, and I also have a synthesizer there. So I do play sometimes and I sing backing vocals.
Q: Is it true that you have developed some software specifically for the concerts?
A: I didn't develop it. It's some equipment that is available already, but I think I'm the first person to really use it in this way. So my use of it is original, I think.
Q: Can it be said that the Russian concerts will be the world premiere of your performing with Taha?
A: I did one other show with him in Paris [on April 1]. That was a sort of experimental show to make sure that everything worked. But yes, that's the only other experience of it.
Q: What do you find interesting about Taha?
A: First thing I like and have liked for a long time Arabic music. I've liked it for a very long time. I have a quite big collection of Arabic records. So I'm very open to that kind of music. Then what's interesting about Rachid is he's sort of made a new kind of music, halfway between Western rock and Arabic music, so Western rock and rai, actually it's the kind of music he comes from, which is Algerian popular music. And it's very, very, very exciting on stage. It's really one of the most exciting stage things I've ever seen, his performances. And so for me it was a way into Arabic music as a performer. As I said I've loved it for years, I have many, many, many records of Arabic musicians and singers, but I've never been able to perform it before.
Q: How did you meet him?
A: I met him because his manager also used to be a manager of Fela Kuti, and Fela Kuti is possibly my favorite musician in the last 50 years, I guess. When Fela died, I was asked by an English black music magazine to write an obituary about Fela. And his manager saw this and said he thought it was the best obituary that has been written about him. He asked me if he can quote that on the records of Fela's that he was going to re-release. They were just re-releasing all of his albums, which is a huge number. So I said, of course, you can. And then to say thank you he sent me all the albums when they came out again. And then we kept in touch and he said to me one day, "Oh, I have this guy coming over from Paris to play, you might like to check him out." And so I met Rachid. And actually one of the most interesting things that Rachid was playing in his set was this song which is one of my favorite Arabic songs. It was a hit for a singer called Farid al-Atrash, I think in the early 1970s or something like that, it's a classic song called "Habina." And they were very, very surprised that I knew this song. I know all the words of it, in fact. I don't know what they mean, but I can sing the song in Arabic.
Q: Taha also sings The Clash's "Rock the Casbah." (The 1982 song was inspired by the banning of rock music in Iran under Ayatollah Khomeini.) Do you find that he gives it a new meaning?
A: Oh yes, it's very funny for a start. There's something that's very funny about him turning the piece round and turning it back into an Arabic piece. I think actually it's extremely good, I think it's better than The Clash's version, actually. And I think The Clash like it as well.
Q: One article actually described Rachid Taha as "France's first punk rocker."
A: Really? It's funny because he is a strange person on stage. He's not really punk exactly. He's somewhere between a kind of cabaret nightclub performer and a punk. Something very peculiar about his stage persona. It's not so aggressive as the punk stance is. In fact, he's not aggressive. He sort of makes fun of himself, in a way, so it's not quite forceful as punk tends to be.
Q: Is there any language barrier (between you and him) as he sings in Arabic and French more than in English?
A: He hardly sings in English at all. And in fact he mostly sings in Arabic. There's a couple of songs where he sings a bit of French, but mostly it's Arabic. Well, that doesn't bother me at all; as I say, I've been listening to Arabic records for a long time, so I like the sound of the language a lot, even if I don't understand it. But I've never been so interested in the meaning of songs anyway, so to me it's fine if he sings in a foreign language.
Q: Why are the concerts in Russia, rather than in London, for instance?
A: Well, I have a feeling about Rachid. I think what Rachid is doing musically and politically is very, very important. And the two places I would really like him to be heard and accepted are Russia and America. This is because I think it would be good for both of those countries to embrace an Arabic artist, you know, somebody who is clearly from that culture and is proud of it. He's an interesting character, because his politics are not at all simple, he's not a kind of obvious Islamist, he's quite critical of the Arab world, but he's quite critical of the Western world as well. So his political position, which is very much a part of what he's doing, I think, is quite subtle. It's not an obvious position. But mostly, I think, you know, I would really love to see him being a big success in America. You know, America and Russia are two countries that both have a problem with Muslims. That would be good if they could get over that sooner or later.
Q: Do you follow the political situation in Russia? It looks like you have an interest.
A: Yes, I mean all I know about the political situation in Russia is really what I read in our newspapers and in The St. Petersburg Times, that's all I read. So I don't really know the internal Russian view of the situation, if you understand what I mean. But I see a real difficult situation going on for people. You know, there's [President Vladimir] Putin who undoubtedly in some respects has been very good for Russia, but it seems to me he's becoming more and more like an old-style Russian leader. He's becoming more and more authoritarian. So I think this is a problem, even though I can understand why people like him as well. He has pulled things together. But I hope he doesn't go down that road.
Q: You took part in yesterday's elections in the U.K. supporting the Liberal Democrats. Was there any hope that they would win?
A: No, there was never a hope that they would win. What I hoped was they could become the second party, rather than the third party. Their political position is more left-center than Labour's position. So Labour have gone increasingly to the right, and of course the Conservatives are on the right. So we have had a situation where there's really no proper opposition in England. We don't really have an opposition party. And I hoped that the Liberal Democrats would be able to take that position of being the new opposition party. However, it hasn't happened. The election results to me are sort of disappointing, because nothing very much changed, actually. Life goes on as it was before.
Q: Returning to music, your most recent recorded work was "The Equatorial Stars," the collaboration album with Robert Fripp. How did it happen?
A: Well, you know, Robert and I made two records together, many years ago. We made our first record 30 years ago, actually. Or even more. Yeah, 32 years ago, I believe, was our first album together.
Then we made another one 30 years ago. ["No Pussyfooting," 1973, and "Evening Star," 1975] And then - a long, long silence. So, anyway, we stayed friends all these years and he worked on a lot of my records. And then since the time we first made records together, my whole practice as a composer has changed a lot. Of course, I use computers now and the all sorts of possibilities that came up with computers. And I started to think, "Hm, this could be interesting, Robert and I, I might be able to do something good in this new world of music. So I said to him a few years ago, whenever we started this record, two years ago or something. I said, "When you come over and will see if we can try some new things." Because what we've done has always somewhat depended on whatever technology was around at the time. And my sort of use of that technology to do new things with. So it was a totally pleasurable record to make. As always working with him. We've always had a very good time. We share same kind of humor. There's always a lot of laughing going on.
Q: You have done an album of "proper" songs recently, which will be released next month ["Another Day on Earth."] What kind of songs are they? It's very interesting because it's something that people probably didn't expect from you.
A: I hope so. Yes, I mean it is something that people didn't expect. It's kind of harder thing for me to do than to make an ambient record. I can make ambient records during my sleep now, if I want to. It's very easy for me that area. So I was interested to make some music in what is a very challenging form, namely the song format, it's a very difficult form to work in.
So I had a couple of thoughts in my mind. One is I want to do new things with voices that people haven't done or haven't been doing much of. And I want to do new things with sound, the kind of things that don't usually appear in songs. So some of the ideas I learned in instrumental music I want to transfer in the songs. Instrumental and ambient music, you know. And that's what I've been doing.
Q: You are planning to have it released in Russia first, rather than in the rest of the world. Why?
A: I thought it'd make a nice change. I want to release in Russia and China first just to make a difference, because everything always goes by the same routine. Of course, it's released in England first with the English newspapers do it, and then the Russians get it after a long time. I thought, let's change it around a little bit. That also gives me a chance to fly over some British journalists to Russia, St. Petersburg, probably where they can actually see the country because most British people have never been to Russia. They have no idea whatsoever about it, how it might be. So it's a sort of slightly educational enterprise.
Q: That's very interesting that you want more people in England to know about Russia and St. Petersburg.
A: Yes, I think Russia is a very, very interesting place because for 70 years they developed as a sort of parallel culture. Not ours, not depending on us, separate, highly cultured, but a separate society. So therefore it's a kind of very interesting laboratory experiment that we can learn something from. And we should take it seriously, you know, the political view in the West is "Oh, we won the Cold War," you know, "Russia lost," so the idea is the whole last 70-80 years of Russian history can be forgotten about. And I don't believe that.
Q: You wrote six columns from St. Petersburg for The Observer in 1997 - was it also an educational thing for you?
A: Yes, think so. It's too easy to take the political story that's told about Russia in the West. It's one story, the story of the Cold War and the failure of communism and blah, blah, blah. That's one story. The other story is, you know, you have a living rich culture there, in many ways more passionate and committed than ours is. And I think that's something we should be paying attention to. And, of course, I think the same thing about China as well. I also want to get people interested in that place.
Q: You'll leave for New York tomorrow to work on a project with Paul Simon. What is it like?
A: I'm helping him to write some songs ... In fact, what I'm doing really is making new musical landscapes for him to write songs over, that's basically what I do.
Q: There were press reports recently about you joining Roxy Music's reunion this summer.
A: No, no. It's not true. It was in the bloody Times newspaper which is the worst English newspaper, and then it's of course been repeated hundreds of times everywhere, but it's not true and never was true.
Q: I re-read our interview from 1997 today. You said then that "music on its own is a dying medium." Do you still think so?
A: Yes, yes, I do. What I mean by that ... I don't mean dying, I mean it's taking, it occupies a smaller part of the public cultural conversation. And I think that part will keep getting smaller. You know, all I'm saying is there was a time when music was the way people spoke to each other, certainly in the 1960s and the 1970s, and, in Russia, in the 1980s, I would say, as well. And I don't think it's true anymore, and people speak to each other in a lot of different ways, now, including music, but music doesn't have the same sort of central position that it used to have. That's OK. Things change, you know.
Brian Eno will perform with Rachid Taha at Manezh Kadetskogo Korpusa on Tuesday. www.enoweb.co.uk
TITLE: CHERNOV'S CHOICE
TEXT: Brian Eno returns to the city for the first time in seven and a half years to perform "Arabic rock" as a keyboard player and backing vocalist for Algerian-born, Paris-based singer Rachid Taha.
In Russia Taha's band is also to be joined by guitarist Steve Hillage, formerly of the seminal French prog-rock group Gong, who produced, co-wrote and played on "Tequitoi?," Taha's most recent album.
Eno and Taha will perform at Manezh Kadetskogo Korpusa on Tuesday. See interview, page i.
The former Can singer Damo Suzuki is forming his Damo Suzuki's Network with local rock and jazz musicians this week. Network is his ever-changing band with only one constant member, that is, Suzuki himself.
This time, Suzuki will be backed by two St. Petersburg-based foreign musicians, Richard Deutsch of Austria's experimental band Metamorphosis on guitar and Britain's Marcus Godwyn on percussion. Godwyn leads his own local band The Time of Noise and frequently appears with different lineups at such experimental-music venues as GEZ-21.
Russian players will include Moscow's bassist Igor Vdovchenko, local drummer Katya Sidorova, and Markscheider Kunst's trombone player Shamil Shamsutdinov.
The Japan-born Suzuki's fame dates back three decades to the early 1970s, when he was the lead vocalist for the influential Krautrock band Can. Performing Germany's version of progressive rock, Can's influence can be heard in most European and U.S. leading alternative acts of the last few decades, including Sonic Youth and Public Image Limited, the post-punk band fronted by John Lydon (formerly the Sex Pistols' Johnny Rotten).
Mark E. Smith, of the legendary post-punk band The Fall, even wrote a song - "I Am Damo Suzuki" - as a tribute to the singer in 1985.
Meanwhile, a DVD of Suzuki's first local concert, which took place at Red Club in October 2002, is scheduled to be released some time this week.
Suzuki will perform at Platforma on Sunday.
Poimanniye Muravyedy, the local band that blends reggae, Latin and punk, will premier its new album this week. Called "Koroli Chetverga" (The Kings of Thursday), the album is the follow-up to its 2004 debut, "V Rayone Appendiksa" or "In the Region of the Appendix."
"I think we came with a tighter sound [on the album], there's less teenage stuff," said Alexei "Jose" Pavlikhin, the band's singer and lyricist, by phone this week.
"While the first album's subject matter was indeed in the region of the appendix, this one is probably more adult."
The album's title, "The Kings of Thursday," means "the best of the worst," said Pavlikhin, explaining that the band frequently performed on week-days, rather than on more attractive weekend dates in the past.
The band's debut was released on the Shnur'OK label owned by Leningrad leader Sergei Shnurov, who was enthusiastic about the band's music, but the second album is due on Rocket Music, a small local indie label that also has three other underground bands on its roster.
- By Sergey Chernov
TITLE: Nameless pleasures
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: NoName's interior is about as featureless as its name suggests. With just one medium-sized room, NoName is one of a new breed of trendy restaurants in the city, the design concept of which can be summed up by the maxim "less is more": chocolate brown, unadorned walls, white sofas, fancy unisex toilets, halogen lamps... you get the picture. Like the restaurants Imbir, Fasol, or Moskva, NoName attracts a well-dressed crowd of DJs, PR managers, art directors, businessmen and, of course, journalists.
I felt a little underdressed when we were greeted at the front door by a beautiful hostess in crushed velvet. I thought she might turn us away after glancing at our shabby clothes and muddy boots, but instead seated us right in the window, so that pedestrians might gaze up in awe at us - holey jeans, Turkish footwear and all.
Expats in St. Petersburg wear many hats. For example, I've been known to teach English, write reviews, sing jazz, and translate the odd menu here and there. So, when the newly opened NoName's tempting menu was e-mailed to me, I was inspired to taste the dishes I so lovingly translated with my partner and trusted dining companion.
Therefore, the real highlight of the meal occurred when our young and attractive waiter brought the English translation of the menu we had created. Part of me feels bad to have robbed English-speakers of one of the most enjoyable moments of the St. Petersburg dining experience, namely the poorly translated menu, littered with "crabs" and "hens." But menus were not created as a form of entertainment - they exist to help patrons make appropriate and informed choices.
Our waiter, who seemed unusually well-trained and competent, took our drink orders first. NoName offers only Tinkoff Platinum beer on tap (140 rubles, $5), which is pricey but tasted "really freakin' good" according to my companion. I had the house Merlot (120 rubles, $4.30), served in a large glass that dwarfed the somewhat minuscule amount of wine served.
Like any self-respecting Petersburg restaurant, NoName has a sushi bar. We decided to forgo sushi and instead chose starters and entrees from the diverse international menu. My partner, keeping with the Japanese theme, decided on shrimp yakitori (170 rubles, $6) and salmon teriyaki (210 rubles, $7.50), while I selected classic French fare: onion soup (80 rubles, $2.85) and duck breast sautéed with prunes in red wine sauce (360 rubles, $12.85), served with a side of dauphinois potatoes (80 rubles, $2.85).
The shrimp yakitori, three Japanese shish kebabs, was devoured in about thirty seconds. Drizzled in a sweet sauce and served with a charming little salad, the shrimp were plump and juicy, broiled to perfection. The salmon teriyaki also received rave reviews from my unforgiving partner, both a hard-nosed critic and a connoisseur of all things teriyaki.
I can say that I know a thing or two about onion soup. It was my favorite childhood soup, thanks to the generous helpings of gooey cheese melted on top. NoName's onion soup was delicious, tasted authentic and was served with large cheesy croutons.
The duck was sensational. With its tender chunks of meat, covered in sweet sauce and prunes, the duck dish was rich and flavorful. The side of potatoes baked in cream sauce was delicious, although it was a little too filling. All the entrees were accompanied with a basket of complimentary warm, wheat rolls, which the waiter informed us were baked on site, and herb butter.
As a sweet finish to the meal, we ordered tiramisu (135 rubles, $4.80) and mulled wine (200 rubles, $7.15). The tiramisu was more like a cream custard than cake, but delicious nonetheless, and plentiful enough to feed three.
NoName's bland, inoffensive atmosphere and innocuous house music playing in the background make its fantastic food the true star of the dining experience. At NoName, the food speaks for itself.
TITLE: Nouveau riches
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Languid, sensual and curvy nymphs with flowers in their long streaming hair, exuberant lilies and magnolias, and other favorite Art Nouveau motifs can now be explored at the State Hermitage Museum's General Staff Building.
The collection, occupying two halls on the second floor, is now part of the museum's permanent display.
The Hermitage boasts a small yet exquisite collection of Art Nouveau works. The exhibition shows all the greatest names of the caliber of jeweler Rene Jules Lalique, glassware makers and designers Emile Galle, Daum Freres and Louis Comfort Tiffany.
On display are some of the finest examples of Western European and American glassware of the late 19th century to the 20th century. The exhibition also features original works of English glass and porcelain.
The porcelain collection is modest but features a marvelous set of fifteen bisquit figurines of dancers made by the sculptor Agathon Leonard van Weydeveldt, which were made in Sevres, France.
As Natalya Guseva, deputy head of the Hermitage's Russian Culture History department and the display's curator, points out, the exhibition provides a rare opportunity to focus on a particular style in applied arts.
"We see the evolution from organic to functional Art Nouveau," she said. "The Russian works, especially from the Imperial porcelain factory, are shown alongside Western European items to create a wider context."
The French term art nouveau ("new art") is used to describe the modern art that emerged during the two decades preceding and following the turn of the 20th century. Despite being termed new, Art Nouveau was deeply rooted in pre-existing styles, including, in particular, Rococo and Gothic. Some of the works clearly adapt ancient Celtic motifs.
Siegfried Bing, an enterprising Parisian art dealer, patron and critic of German origin, is directly associated with the style's name. In 1900, Bing opened a gallery called "L'Art Nouveau Bing," and his role as a sponsor of young talent and connoisseur with a keen eye for new design played a crucial role in the emergence of the new style.
Sigfried's son Marcel Bing was a talented Art Nouveau jeweler.
In America, the Art Nouveau movement is identified with fine glassware maker Louis Comfort Tiffany. The Hermitage's exhibition pays tribute to the master: the display opens with a stunning 1900 stained glass panel, made for Baron Stieglitz's Art and Design School in St. Petersburg (currently the Mukhina Academy For Art and Design). The panel glimmers with abundant magnolia blossoms fashioned from pieces of shiny and matte colored glass.
The patterns, forms and motifs in Art Nouveau were inspired by nature, celebrating a verdant, idealized wilderness with a generosity of shape, line and color. The style's signal signature is its flowing, curvilinear shapes that earned Art Nouveau nicknames like "noodle" and "cigarette-smoke style."
In Art Nouveau, ethereal mystical figures like mermaids or nymphs are surrounded by organic shapes drawn from both flora and fauna.
The style flourished in France, and some of the most fascinating designers made the town of Nancy their home, including the Daum Brothers. Their chandelier formed from blackcurrant leaves and and a lamp with bats make a stunning impression at the Hermitage exhibit.
Art Nouveau thrived by juxtaposing artistic expressiveness and functionality. The Hermitage displays a tortoise-shell lorgnette alongside an electric doorbell. Art Nouveau patterns were used in household items catering to a wide audiences, from furniture to posters to signposts. Guseva calls it the era of artistic urbanization.
"In no way an exclusive artwork, a typical Art Nouveau object served to please middle-class people who wanted an aesthetic element in a practical and functional item, and the artistic note could reveal itself in various forms: shape, line or color," Guseva said. "We are displaying items of the kind that average well-off St. Petersburgers were likely to use."
A standout item in the display is a fine carved Melzer corner sofa used by Russia's last tsar Nicholas II and his family.
"We made the connection after an archive picture was discovered showing the royal family resting on the sofa in their summer residence in Peterhof," said Larisa Yakovleva, one of the exhibition's curators.
Although Art Nouveau is now an internationally accepted single name, 100 years ago the style existed under a string of names depending on the country where it flourished. Germans referred to it as "Jugendstil," Italians called it "Stile Liberty" and in the U.S., it was known as "Modern Style." In Austria, Poland and the Czech Republic, it was called "Sezessionstil."
There were specific reasons for this confusion: in Germany, the style got its name from "Jugend" magazine, which covered modern art, while in Italy it was a reference to an influential patron promoting the new art.
TITLE: Try, try again
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The courtly kitsch of Faberge jewelry fuses with the cartoonish monstrousness of animated ogre Shrek in the "The Magic Nut," a new ballet that premiered at the Mariinsky Theater on May 14.
Featuring sumptuous yet garish sets and costumes by Mikhail Shemyakin, the new ballet fails to break new ground in choreographic terms. The sets are as gaudy as the choreography is faceless and bland, and the latter revolves around the ostentatious designs.
The Bulgarian-born choreographer Donvena Pandurski gives audiences a ballet with hardly any memorable scenes. She assembled the piece from the classical pas familiar to Mariinsky audiences and well-rehearsed by the dancers, yet there is a distinct lack of flavor to the performance.
The corps de ballet moves confidently through a series of classical cliches towards an ending that sends no message.
"The Magic Nut" replaces Kirill Simonov's 2003 "Princess Pirlipat," which premiered to sour reviews and hasn't really been shown much since.
The plot of "Princess Pirlipat" comes from of E.T.A. Hoffmann's story "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King." In 1891, choreographer Marius Petipa commissioned Tchaikovsky to write the music for a ballet based on the tale. The work that resulted, "The Nutcracker," left out the story of Princess Pirlipat, an omission that Shemyakin hoped to redress with the new ballet, which he conceived as a prologue to be shown with his own 2001 rendition of "The Nutcracker," also choreographed by Simonov.
Unfortunately, Shemyakin's second attempt at the idea, the full-length "Magic Nut" has lost the Hoffmanian feel of "The Nutcracker." Its dark, grotesque humor, spookiness and gothic atmosphere have all mysteriously vanished.
No official comment has been offered as to why the ballet now appears in an extended version. A logical guess is that the one-act "Pirlipat" was difficult to sell on its own, while an evening comprised of "The Nutcracker" and "Princess Pirlipat" would be too long to sit through, especially for younger audiences.
As in "The Nutcracker," Drosselmeyer is danced by Anton Adasinsky of Derevo dance troupe, while his nephew is performed by Andrei Merkuriyev. But Pandurski has turned Drosselmeyer from manipulative and sinister conspirator into a fussy errand-boy serving the king. This change contributed to the general fidgety feel of the entire work.
The libretto, which was written by Shemyakin, has been stretched to make for a nearly two-hour ballet.
The core remains the same. The ballet starts with the rat cardinal Kryselieu giving the newborn Princess Pirlipat a nutcracker doll, which scares her and is, therefore, returned. The rats then steal sausages from the banquet being thrown by the king to celebrate Pirlipat's birth. The king, furious, sentences the rat aristocrats to death. The remaining rats launch a vendetta against the king and Drosselmeyer, who told the king that the rats stole the sausages.
Sixteen years later, the rats get their revenge by putting a spell on Pirlipat and turning her into a nutcracker. However, Drosslemeyer and his nephew steal a magic nut, Krakatuk, from the rats and break the spell. However, as Pirlipat dances with Drosselmeyer's nephew, to whom she is newly engaged, the groom accidentally collides with the rat Krysilda, who curses him and turns him into a nutcracker.
But "The Magic Nut" now features two new scenes, one in an in underwater kingdom, where Drosselmeyer and his nephew are looking for the nut, and one in a heavenly kingdom abundant with satyrs, cupids and Bacchus characters. Composer Sergei Slonimsky, who was commissioned to write the original "Princess Pirlipat" score, has extended it for the new ballet.
The underwater kingdom is very densely populated with Shrek-like characters, making it quite tough for the Drosselmeyers to navigate between sirens, jellyfish, sea horses, seaweed and sea demons of all imaginable kinds.
In the scene, the nut-seekers are seduced by a voluptuous frog (Yekaterina Osmolkina), whose unambiguous bump and grind got adult audience members hot under the collar. The scene ended in slight confusion. A massive sedan-chair carrying a giant mermaid with two sets of breasts got stuck on the edge of the stage, causing an impromptu subaquatic traffic jam.
In 2003, Shemyakin was criticized for dressing almost all of the dancers in heavy crinoline costumes, and further hampering their movements by making them perform with giant masks and richly decorated hats. His luxurious costumes dictated, suggested and limited movement all at once.
But Shemyakin this time has made it easier for dancers, noticeably reducing the size of masks and puffs. Even so one winces at the thought of how sweaty the dancers were getting under the weighty masks. The dancers instantly evoked those poor people dressed in oversized furry animal costumes who take to the streets to offer you pizza, chewing gum or flyers on an unbearably hot mid-summer day. I always take whatever they hand me and wish that they will finish their miserable shift a few minutes early.
Shemyakin's "The Magic Nut" would have been a smash hit, talk-of-the-town sensation - if it had been done in a puppet theater.
TITLE: Destruction
of Amazon
Accelerating
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BRASILIA, Brazil - Deforestation in the Amazon rain forest in 2004 was the second worst ever, figures released by the Brazilian government showed Wednesday. Satellite photos and data showed that ranchers, soybean farmers and loggers burned and cut down a near-record area of 10,088 square miles of rain forest in the 12 months ending in August 2004, the Brazilian Environmental Ministry said.
The destruction was nearly 6 percent higher than in the same period the year before, when 9,500 square miles were destroyed.
The deforestation hit record numbers in 1995, when the Amazon shrank a record 11,200 square miles, an area roughly the size of Belgium or the American state of Massachusetts.
The Amazon forest - which sprawls over 1.6 million square miles and covers more than half the country - is a key component of the global environment. The jungle is sometimes called the world's "lung" because its billions of trees produce oxygen and absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Environmentalists were shocked with the new figures, which were announced nearly a year after the Brazilian government announced a $140 million package to curtail destruction.
"It's a tragedy, a demonstration that more needs to be done by the government," said Paulo Adario, the head of Greenpeace's Amazon program. "Clearly, Amazon deforestation is not one of the government's priorities right now."
Government officials were expecting an increase in destruction of only about 2 percent.
"We will intensify our actions to fight illegal deforestation in the most critical areas," Environment Minister Marina Silva said in a statement.
She noted that deforestation in several Amazon states decreased compared to the previous period thanks to the government's efforts to implement "more lasting and effective" measures.
TITLE: Islamic Rebels Seize Uzbek Border Town
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KORASUV, Uzbekistan - Rebels cherishing the prospect of a strict Islamic state were firmly in control of this border town Wednesday, throwing up a new challenge to the government as it tried to prove to skeptical diplomats that its troops didn't fire on innocent civilians.
"We will be building an Islamic state here in accordance with the Quran," rebel leader Bakhtiyor Rakhimov told The Associated Press in Korasuv, a town of 20,000. "People are tired of slavery."
The government of President Islam Karimov dismissed those claims as "nonsense," but Rakhimov said he has 5,000 followers ready to fight any troops that try to crush the rebellion.
There was no sign of Uzbek officials in Korasuv Wednesday. The officials apparently fled the town when rioters attacked police and government offices Saturday, a day after the violent confrontation in the nearby city of Andijan.
Thursday, however, residents reported that government troops reclaimed control here.
The rebels in Korasuv did not appear to be armed. "We don't have weapons, but if they come and attack us we will fight even with knives," Rakhimov said.
Regardless of officials' attempt to shrug it off, the insurgency in Korasuv ratchets up the stakes for Uzbekistan, a U.S. ally in the war against terrorism. Observers of the impoverished Central Asian region have long feared that any social unrest could be used by Islamic groups to promote their own goals.
The uprising in Andijan that set off the violence Friday focused largely on social and economic demands. But it may have provided the opening Islamic militants have craved.
"While one cannot call Uzbekistan an Islamic country, and other sources of the conflict in Uzbekistan are social and clan-based, Islam as a very strong ideology, a strong factor, will be ready to fill the ideological voids created by the regime of Islam Karimov," Russian analyst Stanislav Belkovsky said in Moscow.
"So I consider that in the coming two to three years, an Islamic revolution and the Islamization of Uzbekistan is unavoidable. Of course this will be accompanied by bloodshed," he said.
Karimov's government has blamed the unrest on militants and has denied that troops fired on any civilians, though an AP reporter saw troops opening fire on protesters in Andijan on Friday. The government cites 169 dead in Andijan, but opposition activists say more than 700 were killed - more than 500 in Andijan and about 200 in Pakhtabad - most of them civilians. Interior Minister Zakir Almatov on Wednesday vehemently dismissed allegations of a crackdown by troops in Pakhtabad.
Judging by Friday's shooting, the government's first response was to crush the Andijan uprising before it could spread farther. But the emergence of a second hotspot in Korasuv, 20 miles to the southeast on the border with Kyrgyzstan, has coincided with an intense international focus on Uzbekistan - attention that may be staying Karimov's hand.
Uzbek officials took foreign diplomats and journalists on a lightning-quick tour of Andijan on Wednesday, showing them a prison and the local administration building and arranging meetings with local officials, as the top U.N. human rights official called for an independent investigation.
The delegation was kept blocks away from the people of Andijan, leaving little chance for an objective assessment of Friday's violence.
Almatov ignored a reporter's request to visit a school where a prominent doctor had said 500 bodies were stored after the violence. The doctor spoke on condition of anonymity out of fears for her safety.
After three hours in Andijan, the delegation was treated to a lavish lunch of the national lamb-and-rice dish, plov, and flown back to the capital, Tashkent. Some diplomats complained the trip was too short and that there was no opportunity to speak to residents.
"I think we need to be realistic about how much can be achieved in a whistle-stop tour of ambassadors in a large delegation format over such a short period," said British Ambassador David Moran. "I think what we need now is a systematic process of openness that will enable the international community to make an authoritative assessment of the scale and nature of what happened here."
It was equally difficult to assess just how great a force - and whom - Rakhimov and his Islamic followers in Korasuv represent.
Rakhimov's men, clad in traditional V-necked white shirts and embroidered skull caps, could be seen scattered around the town.
"All decisions will be taken by people at a mosque. There will be rule of Shariah law," Rakhimov said. "Thieves and other criminals will be tried by the people themselves."
Rakhimov said he and his supporters did not belong to any specific Islamic organization. "We are just people," he said. "We just follow the Koran."
Ikbol Mirsaitov, a Kyrgyz expert on Islam, speculated that some of the rebels may have been people who escaped from prison in Andijan on Friday, because they had very short beards - indicating they had grown them in the past few days.
TITLE: Al-Qaida Terrorist Calls for Bloodshed in Iraq
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq's top al-Qaida terrorist, angered by a postelection lull in violence, ordered insurgents a month ago to intensify attacks, and his lieutenants began plotting their deadly mission during a secret meeting in Syria, a top U.S. military official said Wednesday.
The Syrian meeting, possibly attended by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi himself, has led to one of the bloodiest periods since the U.S.-led invasion two years ago. Nearly 500 people have been killed - including an Iraqi general mowed down in a driveby shooting Wednesday - since the country's new Shiite-dominated government was announced April 28.
Several Shiite and Sunni Muslim clerics were among the victims, raising fears that sectarian tensions could ignite a civil war.
A chilling, rambling Internet audiotape purportedly by al-Zarqawi denounced Iraq's Shiites as U.S. collaborators and said killing them is justified.
"God ordered us to attack the infidels by all means ... even if armed infidels and unintended victims - women and children - are killed together," said the speaker purported to be al-Zarqawi. "The priority is for jihad so anything that slows down jihad should be overcome." The tape could not immediately be authenticated.
In response to al-Zarqawi's call, there had been 21 car bombings, mostly suicide attacks, in Baghdad during May, compared with 25 such attacks in all of 2004, the official said. Nearly 130 car bombs have exploded or been defused since late February.
In one of the latest bombings, all that was found of the attacker was his foot taped to the car's accelerator, indicating he'd been forced to carry out the suicide mission.
TITLE: Grenade Thrown at Bush was Threat to Life
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON - A hand grenade that landed within 30 meters of President Gerge W. Bush during his visit last week to a former Soviet republic was a threat to his life and the safety of the tens of thousands in the crowd, the FBI said Wednesday.
The grenade was live but did not explode.
The White House, which initially said Bush never was in danger, said the incident May 10 in Georgia's capital has led to a review of security at presidential events.
FBI agents are still investigating in Tbilisi, where tens of thousands of people heard Bush speak in strong support of Georgia's efforts at democratic development.
It was unclear how much danger the president faced.
According to the FBI's initial investigation, the grenade failed to explode only because of a malfunction. The activation device deployed too slowly to hit the blasting cap hard enough, agent Bryan Paarmann said.
The grenade was a knockoff of a Soviet-designed RGD-5, a fragmentation grenade with a lethal range of about 100 feet, according to a source.
"We consider this act to be a threat against the health and welfare of both the president of the United States and the president of Georgia as well as the multitude of Georgian people that had turned out at this event," Paarmann said.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Kylie Treated for Cancer
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Pop diva Kylie Minogue is undergoing medical tests in the Australian city of Melbourne in preparation for breast cancer surgery later this week, her management said in a statement Thursday.
Initial tests showed the cancer was confined to the breast.
Minogue announced Tuesday that she had been diagnosed with early breast cancer and postponed her Australian and Asian "Showgirl Tour" concerts.
"Kylie is currently undergoing tests at a first class medical facility in Melbourne in preparation for an operation this week by one of Australia's leading surgeons," said the statement.
EU Constitution
NANCY, France (AFP) - The leaders of France, Germany and Poland joined forces in eastern France in support of the EU constitution, 10 days before the French vote on the treaty in a crucial referendum.
Aides to French President Jacques Chirac said they hoped his summit with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski would send a strong message to undecided voters about the strength of Europe.
150 Feared Drowned
DHAKA, Bangladesh (Reuters) - Divers battled strong currents to reach a ferry nine meters under water Thursday as hopes faded for more than 150 people feared drowned three days after the over-crowded ship sank in a turbulent Bangladesh river.
Police and rescue officials said eight bodies had been retrieved by Thursday after the M.V. Raipura went down with 200 passengers in the Jamuna river about 100 km west of the capital, Dhaka.
About 50 people survived, with 150 trapped inside the ferry, authorities said.
North Korea in Talks
TOKYO (Reuters) - U.S. officials met with North Korean officials in New York last week to discuss American policy toward the Stalinist state, the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo said in a statement Thursday.
"We can confirm that we had working-level contact with North Korean officials on Friday, May 13, in New York," the statement said.
The United States, China, Japan, South Korea and Russia are trying to persuade North Korea to return to six-nation talks on its nuclear weapons programs.
TITLE: New Law Protects Traditions Of Beer-Loving Brewers' Fans
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MILWAUKEE, Minneapolis - Millions of baseball fans have chugged Milwaukee's finest beer while grilling burgers and brats before Brewers games over the last quarter century - and it turns out every one of them was imbibing illegally.
A city ordinance passed in 1980 - and which city officials are about to override - says it's unlawful for anyone to drink alcoholic beverages in public parking lots or public structures.
That would include the parking lots around Miller Park, which was built on the site of the old County Stadium instead of downtown in part because the team wanted to maintain the "tailgating" tradition.
It's as much a part of the Brewers as the secret stadium sauce, giant racing sausages and their lederhosen-clad mascot, Bernie Brewer, who used to slide into a giant beer mug at the old ballpark.
The drinking tailgaters, many of whom wanted to get a buzz before the game to avoid the higher costs of ballpark concessions, were all breaking the law.
Who knew? Almost nobody.
That is until Milwaukee police took over security duty at the ballpark this season. Alderman Michael Murphy, who represents the Miller Park area, said a vigilant police sergeant told him he'd have to ticket tailgaters between $50 and $250 for drinking alcoholic beverages outside the ballpark.
Murphy didn't want fans being taken for felons just for sampling some of Brew City's best beverages and has introduced legislation that allows tailgate drinking as a "special event."
"I tried to make it illegal to drink Budweiser," while keeping locally brewed Miller products free of fines, Murphy joked. The city's Common Council is scheduled to vote on a permanent exemption Friday, and it's not expected to receive any opposition.
"You're talking about Milwaukee here," Murphy said with a laugh.
TITLE: Man U Focuses on Cup Final
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MANCHESTER, England - Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson understands why fans are so upset that Tampa Bay Buccaneers owner Malcolm Glazer is taking over the team.
Though Ferguson avoided questions about the $1.47 billion takeover, he did say he hoped fans would put aside their anger in time for the team's FA Cup final against Arsenal on Saturday in Cardiff, Wales. Supporters have threatened demonstrations at the match.
"Of course the fans are emotional," Ferguson said Wednesday. "Given the loyalty they have shown over the years it is understandable. But I'm sure they won't let us down either. It's their game, too. It is their big day as well as ours. They want us to win the Cup."
Ferguson, however, sidestepped all other queries, saying he only wanted to talk about the Arsenal match.
"This is not the time to be talking about all the issues regarding Malcolm Glazer taking over the club," Ferguson said. "It doesn't affect the team. I won't be answering questions about the issue because my job is Manchester United manager. It's always been that."
Ferguson has been Manchester United manager since 1986, leading the club to eight league titles and five FA Cups. He said the arrival of Glazer, who now has a controlling interest of more than 75 percent in the club, wouldn't affect what happens on the field.
"My main concern has always been the team, especially when you're playing a Cup final," Ferguson said. "That focus has got to be 100 percent doing your job properly. That applies to everything. All the rest is periphery."
Earlier this week, Glazer increased his stake past the 75 percent mark and now has the power to take the team private.
There has been speculation that Glazer's arrival could put Ferguson's future with the club in doubt. Man United finished third in the Premier League this season, and a loss to Arsenal would leave the Reds without a trophy this year.