SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1080 (46), Tuesday, June 21, 2005
**************************************************************************


TITLE: Oborona
 Opposition
 Protests At
 Putin Home
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A new opposition movement Oborona, or Defense, held its first protest against the policies of President Vladimir Putin on Monday by hanging a sign on a half-destroyed building at 5 Baskov Pereulok, near the place where Putin spent his childhood.
 
About 20 young people, supported by the St. Petersburg branch of Yabloko party hung up a sign outlining the most controversial actions undertaken by the Kremlin within the last five years that have harmed thousands of civilians and law enforcement staff.
 "A hooligan grew up here who would become the pugnacious, KGB employee and future Russian president V.V. Putin. His achievements are Chechnya, Kursk [submarine disaster], Nord-Ost, Beslan, censorship and the vertical of power," the sign said.
 The members of the movement placed an imaginary counter below the poster that displayed the figure 1,000, the number of days left until the end of Putin's second term when, according to the Constitution, he should leave the Kremlin.
 Putin's opponents fear that the Kremlin will tamper with the Constitution to allow the president to stay longer in office.
 "We placed this sign on a half-ruined building to show the state Russia has been in the years since Putin came to power," Oborona spokesman Alexander Shurshev said Monday in an interview .
 "We want freedom, we want to express our views openly and will defend our rights to do so," he said.
 The protest proceeded without incident. The police stood on the other side of the street, watching the event and sometimes smiling. It appeared most of them did not even know what the action was about before the sign, which was covered with black material, was unveiled.
 "I have no idea what this is about. Probably about the state of this collapsing building or something?" one policemen said to a colleague standing beside him.
 The police removed the sign soon after the protest ended.
 Maxim Reznik, head of St. Petersburg's branch of Yabloko, said that several participants were detained and their clothes ripped apart at a similar protest organized by Yabloko and the National Bolshevik Party on Tuesday last week.
 "People were protesting against violations of human rights and freedoms in front of the city prosecutor's office," Reznik said in an interview Monday. It looked as the police decided to detain as many people as could fit in a bus that they had, so they detained 28 people. The protesters didn't want to go to the police station and tried to resist, so the police ripped off their clothes while dragging them to the bus."
 The incident occurred on the first day of the International Economic Forum where Putin spoke.
 "There were several very young female NBP members, whom the police wanted to leave in jail for 30 hours. Just imagine what would have happened to them there? Only when [Mikhail] Amosov, [head of Yabloko faction in the Legislative Assembly] has called to the chief of the local police the girls were released," Reznik said.
 Meanwhile, a similarly small number of Oborona members in Moscow had a small clash with an unidentified pro-Kremlin opponent.
 "In 1,000 days the epoch of the current president will be finished. We don't need a successor, we need a democratically elected president," Interfax quoted Ilya Yashin, head of Oborona in Moscow, as saying. After he finished his speech he was hit by a few tomatoes thrown by a person standing to one side. His colleagues have accused the pro-Kremlin Nashi movement of interrupting the event.
 The police detained the tomato thrower, but said the person did not belong to any political movements.
 "The detainee did not have any documents with him and until now his relation to any political movement has not been determined," Interfax quoted a police representative as saying Monday.
 Oborona was created this month to unite young people who oppose Putin's policies and has support from Yabloko, Idushchiye bez Putina, the Union of Right Forces, Our Choice party and the Group to Support Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
 The organization is reportedly hanging signs or posters that are critical of the Kremlin in city streets. The signs are usually removed by the police as soon as they are reported to law enforcement officers.

TITLE: OECD:
 Business
 Is Stifled
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russia must forge ahead with significant administrative, judicial and economic reforms if it is to make a clean break with its business-stifling Soviet legacy, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said Monday in a toughly worded report. 
 
The Paris-based OECD, which represents a group of industrialized nations, said Russia deserved praise for the reforms it had already undertaken, but much needs to be done to get rid of rampant corruption and heavy-handed state intervention in the economy. 
 "The patronage dispensed by individual officials - particularly those charged with managing state property or large financial flows - can be enormous," the report said, "while the weakness of the administrative machinery makes it easy for officials to use that power to pursue narrow or political ends." 
 The nearly 200-page report, called "Russia: building rules for the market," said the state's commitment to the rule of law was weak, and pointed to the high-profile campaign against the oil company Yukos. 
 The politically charged assault on Russia's one-time biggest oil producer and its founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky has battered investors' confidence. A giant bill for unpaid taxes triggered the transfer of Yukos' main production unit to a state-owned oil company in December, while Khodorkovsky - who sponsored opposition parties in the run-up to 2003 elections - was in May sentenced to nine years in prison on fraud charges. 
 "The state cannot easily make a commitment to rule-governed behavior. The weakness of that commitment has been evident in the political and legal campaign against the oil company Yukos since July 2003," the report said. 
 While Yukos was the most prominent example, prosecutors and police have "frequently been deployed against businessmen who were in conflict with federal or regional authorities," the report said. It called the state's behavior "more interventionist, less rule-governed - and sometimes predatory." 
 Despite soaring prices for oil, Russia's main export commodity, the nation's economic growth is slowing. The Economic Development and Trade Ministry downscaled its gross domestic product growth forecast to 5.8 percent for this year, after growth of 7.1 percent in 2004. 
 Analysts have blamed slowing growth in Russia's crucial oil sector on the Yukos clampdown, as well as a tough tax regime that sucks up windfall profits - removing companies' incentive to invest in developing their business. 
 On Monday, the Federal Statistics Service said that growth in the natural resources extraction sectors, including oil, gas and metals, was up only 3 percent in the first quarter compared to 7.2 percent the year before, Dow Jones Newswires reported. 
 At the same time, the government has come under harsh criticism for hiking budget spending at a time when it seems unlikely to keep inflation within an 8 percent to 10 percent corridor. 
 The report cited the need for key sector reforms. Chief among them are reforms of the gas sector - "one of the government's major policy failures," according to the OECD - which is dominated by the opaque and inefficient natural gas behemoth Gazprom. 
 Ultimately, the report said an overhaul of Russia's corrupt and "personalized" bureaucracy, inherited from the Soviet era, as well as judicial reforms would determine whether the nation's economy would grow over the long term. 
 "There is an enormous amount to do and it would be both unrealistic and unfair to believe that any government could do it all at once," the report said.

TITLE: Slain Race Expert Girenko's Works Printed
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Two volumes of works by slain St. Petersburg ethnic and racial issue expert Nikolai Girenko, were launched on the first anniversary of his death Monday.
 
The first volume, "Sociology of Tribe" comprises studies on African tribes as a social form, while the second book, "Ethnicity, Culture, Law" features selected articles on human rights and ethnic issues. 
 Among the titles are "Violence and Survival Strategies," "Nation and Nationalism: Pro and Contra," "National Minorities in St. Petersburg: conditions of survival," "State and National Minorities" and "Confronting Nazism, Racism and Xenophobia."
 The books were published by city publishing house Carillion with a circulation of 500 copies of each volume, to be distributed free of charge. They were launched at the Regional Press Institute.
 Girenko was shot through the door of his apartment on June 19 last year. Soon after a nationalistic group claimed on its web site to have ordered his execution. No one has been charged with his death.
 His supporters said Monday that Girenko was a talented respected scientist who combined his academic career with intensive human rights activities. 
 "Whenever we asked him to deliver a lecture or prepare a report thus sometimes putting his own academic career aside, he never refused," said Boris Pustyntsev, head of the local branch of human rights group Citizens' Watch.
 Alexander Vinnikov, a senior official at the St. Petersburg Union of Scientists, of which Girenko was a member, and one of the editors of Girenko's books, said the publication of the books was more than a commemorative gesture. 
 "These books are precious live thoughts. The plans and drafts of books show the direction and serve as an impulse for further research by experts in the future," he said.
 A vocal critic of racist and neo-Nazi groups, Girenko had often warned against growing extremism. He regularly provided expert evaluations for criminal investigations and trials involving ethnic issues.
 He assisted the city prosecutor's office in several high-profile court cases, including the 2002 murder of Azeri watermelon vendor Mamed Mamedov and an ongoing investigation of a local skinhead group known as Schultz-88.
 Governor Valentina Matviyenko had promised to take the investigation under her personal control. No statement followed from the Smolny on Sunday on the occasion of the anniversary.
 But Girenko's colleagues are hopeful that the murder will eventually be resolved.
 Pustyntsev said his most recent meeting with the investigators three days ago made him think there are good chances of catching the killers.
 "The investigators have identified a circle of people who they feel may lead to the organizers of the crime," Pustyntsev said. "This strategy proved useful during the investigation of the murder of [ex-Duma deputy] Galina Starovoitova."
 At this point, however, nobody is even trying to predict how long it may take for the killers to be identified.
 It took five years to complete the investigation on the Starovoitova murder followed by a trial lasting some 18 months.
 Human rights advocates argue the city authorities should also shoulder some of the blame because the killers were able to carry out their vendetta largely because they felt they have a high chance to escape.
 "City authorities have long ignored the existence of extremists in the city by portraying their activities as hooliganism," said Yury Vdovin, also from Citizens' Watch.
 Vinnikov said Girenko was the country's leading expert on extremism in Russia.
 "He fought against prejudice, discrimination and racism but never against people," Vinnikov said Monday. "Even his political opponents, who I feel are ultimately responsible for his murder, he treated without personal respect, confronting ideas, not personalities." 
 Girenko's circle of colleagues and friends find him irreplaceable and the importance of the loss has only been growing.
 "He was like a father for us, and we are still sort of drifting without him," said Tounkara Aliou, president of the African Union in St. Petersburg. 
 Girenko was at the heart of the foundation of the organization in 2000 and Aliou was his personal friend. Aliou said Monday about 2,000 Africans have made their home in St. Petersburg.
 "He not only represented us when some of us applied for a refugee status or a work permit, but brought us together as a united group able to defend its interests," Aliou said. "We miss him very much."

TITLE: Judge Denies She Colludes
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Responding to criticism from former judges and the press, Moscow City Court's chief judge, Olga Yegorova, said that she neither colludes with prosecutors nor gets city judges fired for dissent and leniency.
 
"The judge's job is to issue a verdict. I have never interfered with their decisions," Yegorova said in an interview published Monday in Gazeta newspaper. 
 "Yes, there were some cases when I called the judge and asked about the way things were being done, but never about the essence of the decision the judges took." 
 Former Moscow judges Alexander Melikov and Olga Kudeshkina have accused Yegorova of pushing for their ouster over what they said was a refusal to bow to pressure from prosecutors for harsher sentences.
 Melikov, a former judge at the city's Dorogomilovsky court, was reported in the press as saying that he lost his job after Yegorova accused him of showing unfounded leniency in a verdict. 
 Kudeshkina, a former Moscow City Court judge, said she was fired after she refused a demand by Yegorova to produce a guilty verdict in the case of Pavel Zaitsev, the Interior Ministry investigator who was looking into allegations of fraud at the Tri Kita furniture store. 
 The Supreme Qualification Collegiate of Judges fired Melikov last year and Kudeshkina in 2003.
 Yegorova said that Melikov was fired because some of his verdicts contained "crude violations of the law," and not for acquitting more defendants than other judges.
 She defended the Moscow City Court's record, saying that its acquittals rate was 30 percent last year.
 Yegorova also said that Kudeshkina's accusation that the Moscow City Court colluded with the Prosecutor General's Office was "nonsense."
 "We have working relations with the prosecutor's office," she said.
 Yegorova strongly denied allegations that judges and court were corrupt and said Russian judges were "the most honest and respectable people."
 Yegorova was appointed to head the Moscow City Court in 1999 by then-President Boris Yeltsin over the objections of some senior city and federal judges. In her first year in office, 17 judges resigned from the court, according to a report by the Independent Council of Legal Experts.

TITLE: Call to Set Limit On Strike Action
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Finland's State Employer's Office on Monday invited border guards and their employers to define the limits of their labor dispute before a round of escalating month-long industrial action began Tuesday, the online edition of the Helsingin Sanomat reported Monday.
 
The guards went on strike from May 31 to June 11, during which inspections on the Russian-Finnish border were severely reduced. No settlement was reached.
 Finland is eager that any further industrial action be limited in such a way that security during the IAAF World Championships in Helsinki in August could still be guaranteed. 
 Last week the government experienced a setback when its proposed emergency strike law got stuck in parliament. 
 But Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen has insisted that the government will not withdraw the controversial bill 
 "If a settlement cannot be reached, ... there has to be a back-up plan - a law that will allow the state to safeguard its borders against criminal elements who might come here with their weapons to spoil the sporting event," the Helsingin Sanomat quoted Vanhanen as saying.


TITLE: City Has 70 Ruble Billionaires
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: More than 70 St. Petersburgers have assets worth more than 1 billion rubles ($35 million), a rating of the city's richest residents by Finans magazine and the weekly Predprinimatel Peterburga, Rosbalt reported Friday.
 
The city has only one dollar billionaire - Andrei Rogachev, a member of the supervisory board of Pyatyorochka, whose assets are valued at 32.4 billion rubles ($1.15 billion), the report said.
 In February, the country had a total of 39 dollar billionaires.
 The youngest dollar millionaire in St. Petersburg is Andrei Molchanov, aged 33 years and 10 months, who is the president of construction group LSR. Deputy city governor Yury Molchanov is his stepfather, the report said.
 Three women are on the rich list. They are Tatyana Franus, a member of the supervisory board of Pyatyorochka, who is worth 1.8 billion rubles; Irina Bitkova, head of the board of the Severo-Zapad forest industry company, who is worth 1.4 billion rubles; and Marina Varvarina, who received her husband's shares in the Orimi enterprise after he was murdered in 2000. Her assets are valued at 1 billion rubles, the report said.

TITLE: Estonian Lawmakers Ratify Border Treaty
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TALLINN, Estonia - Estonian lawmakers ratified a long-awaited border treaty with Russia on Monday but only after adding a reference to the Soviet occupation of the country in a preamble. 
 
The amendment was included despite warnings from Moscow not to add any declarations that would be unacceptable to the Russian side. 
 Moscow has refused to recognize the five-decade Soviet occupation of the Baltics, saying Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania willingly joined the Soviet Union. 
 Lawmakers in the 101-seat Parliament ratified the treaty in a 78-4 vote. Nineteen lawmakers did not take part in the vote. 
 The ratification had been put on hold last week, because the main opposition party, Res Publica, said it would boycott the vote unless a reference to the Soviet occupation was added in the preamble. 
 Res Publica spokesman Siim Mannik said the five largest parties in Parliament agreed on adding a clause about the occupation derived from a declaration by Estonian lawmakers in 1992. 
 "This amendment was accepted to the preamble of the treaty. This was actually the main point we were seeking," he said. 
 Estonia was occupied by Soviet troops in 1940. Invading Nazi troops took over the Baltics in 1941, but the Soviets returned in 1944 and re-incorporated the three states. They remained part of the Soviet Union until its collapse in 1991. 
 On Friday, Russia's Foreign Ministry issued a statement warning Estonian lawmakers not to modify the text of the treaty, which was signed by government leaders in May. 
 The Foreign Ministry said it expected the document to be approved "without any legal or political formulations that would be unacceptable to the Russian side." 
 Moscow has said Estonia must ratify the treaty before Russia does. 
 Russia balked at signing a planned border treaty with Latvia in May because Latvia insisted on attaching a statement similar to the one approved Monday in Estonia.

TITLE: Figure Skating
 Champ Marries
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Russian figure skater and three times world champion Yevgeny Plushenko, 24, got married to St. Petersburg State University student Maria Yermak in St. Petersburg on Saturday.
 
The wedding ceremony took place in the restaurant of the Astoria hotel from where the guests walked to St. Petersburg's Wedding Palace No. 1, where the union was registered, Smena newspaper reported Monday.
 In keeping with a city tradition, Plushenko himself and his new bride went to the Strelka on Vasilyevsky Island, where newlyweds traditionally break a bottle of champagne, drink champagne and dance. They also went to the Summer Garden.
 Plushenko's wife, the daughter of a St. Petersburg businessman, is a third-year sociology student.
 The couple became acquainted a year ago when Plushenko drove around the city in his red Maserati and saw a pretty dark-haired girl driving in an open-top sports car. Plushenko did his best to catch up with the sports car, local media reported.
 It said the future bride did not recognize Plushenko. Her friend who sat next to her in the car told her who he was.

TITLE: Judges Call for Safer Courts
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The St. Petersburg Judges Council decided Friday to ask the city police to provide officers who will maintain security in courts.
 
It also decided to ask the federal authorities to finance installation of metal detectors in all St. Petersburg courts, to finance the city's bailiff service and to give bailiffs more authority.
 "Bailiffs should have the legal right to inspect visitors to courtrooms," council chairman Yury Kozlov said Monday.
 The Judges Council gathered after a former policeman Andrei Lapin last week detonated a hand grenade in the Primorsky district court after a judge sentenced Lapin and his co-defendants to up to six years in jail. One court staffer was killed and 11 others were injured.
 "It was, of course, a blow for the city judge service," Kozlov said in a telephone interview. "However, we've been warning about the lack of security in St. Petersburg courts for a long time." 
 Six months ago at the Sixth Congress of Russian Judges the country's judges spoke about the problem, but no action followed, he said.
 All court have bailiffs, who provide security in courts, but they are not enough, he added.
 The city has 440 civil and military judges. For every two judges there should be one bailiff. However, in St. Petersburg there are only 70 bailiffs in total. Their monthly wage is about $95.
 Kozlov said the explosion at the Primorsky district court was possible because bailiffs have no right to search visitors, including the three defendants, who had been at large having promised not to leave St. Petersburg and came to court by themselves.
 Apparently, Lapin had wanted to hurt the judge and it was only the actions of Alexander Shkel, who paid with his life, that saved the judge.
 The three defendants, all former policemen, were charged under article 286 of the Criminal Code (exceeding authority). They were charged with causing a car accident and beating up a driver.
 Nobody searched them before they entered the courtroom. They also sat not in a cage but next to other visitors.
 The city prosecution initiated a criminal case of harming the life of a person who works in the justice system.

TITLE: Global Energy Award Presented
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: St. Petersburg physicist and Nobel prize winner Zhores Alfyorov and German academic Klaus Riedle, who won this year's Global Energy Prize, received the award at Konstantinovsky Palace on Friday. 
 
"I'm overwhelmed by the great honor to receive the prize from a country whose power, energy, science and people I admire," Riedle said at the ceremony.
 "I want to work so that this award helps to promote efforts to make energy safe and reliable," he said.
 Alfyorov said developments in energy and science are important for the whole world, and particularly for the Russian economy.
 "The Russian economy should develop not at the expense of selling its natural resources, but through the development of information technologies," he said.
 Alfyorov was awarded for "fundamental research and significant practical contribution to the creation of semiconductor converters of the energy applied in the solar and electric power industry."
 Riedle, who works for Siemens, was awarded for "development and creation of powerful high-temperature gas turbines for steam-gas power installations."
 The award, established in 2002, was an initiative of Alfyorov and is intended as Russia's answer to the Nobel prizes. It is given for "leading discoveries, developments and inventions in energy and energetics." This year, it is worth about $1 million, which will be divided equally by the winners.
 A total of 152 Russian specialists and 372 specialists from abroad had the right to nominate candidates. Nominations included scientists from the United States, Germany, Japan, Spain, Ukraine, France, Spain, Australia, Britain, China, Italy, Switzerland, Canada and India.
 Eighty-nine works were judged, from which a shortlist of six was formed and judged by an expert commission.
 Sergei Mironov, speaker of the Federation Council, said at the ceremony that the award is one of Russia's inputs into the world energy movement.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: KALININGRAD (SPT) - Poland is to install unique equipment to detect the heartbeats of illegal migrants on the border of the Kaliningrad region.
 The device can detect the heartbeat of a person hidden in a vehicle and will be installed at the Russian-Polish border crossing at Bezledy-Bagrationovsk in line with EU requirements, Interfax reported Friday.
 Similar devices will be installed at the 10 largest border crossings of eastern Poland.
 Last year Polish boarder guards stopped 121 attempts to illegally cross the border from the Kaliningrad region. Illegal migration became much more frequent through Poland after it joined the EU, the report said. 
 
 
<font size="-2"><b>Greenpeace Protests
 </b></font>
n ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Greenpeace has demanded that St. Petersburg city government decree giving Gazprom a 90 percent discount on compensation it must pay for ecological damage for construction of objects of engineer and energy infrastructure be annulled, Interfax reported Friday.
 The ecologists say the decree violates a city law protecting green areas.
 
 
<font size="-2"><b>National Bestseller
 </b></font>
n MOSCOW/ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - &quot;Venus' Hair,&quot; a novel by Mikhail Shishkin has won the National Bestseller award, Interfax reported Saturday.
 Shishkin, who has been living in Switzerland for the last 10 years, said the award became &quot;a nice surprise&quot; for him.
 The award is valued at $4,000.
 
 
<font size="-2"><b>Students' Bodies Found
 </b></font>
n ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The body of a fourth navy student was found in the Gulf of Finland near Peterhof on Monday. The bodies of two other students were found on Friday, and another was found Sunday. The body of one more navy student is still missing, Interfax reported Monday.
 The five navy students went missing after the boat they were in capsized in the Gulf of Finland on June 7. The body of one officer was found soon afterward. One officer and one student were saved by fishermen.
 A preliminary investigation has shown the reason for the tragedy was that the two officers, who took six students to sea, were slightly drunk.
 
 
<font size="-2"><b>Corruption Fight
 </b></font>
n ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The city prosecutor's office is not satisfied with the results of the fight with corruption, said deputy of the city prosecutor Vladimir Vladimirov, Regnum reported.
 Vladimirov said only a third of actions planned for fighting corruption in 2004 were completed.
 This year the prosecution initiated 14 criminal cases on corruption, and two criminal cases against heads of municipal councils. Vladimirov said most of those cases were initiated not thanks to the work of regional prosecutors or police, but due to citizens' applications.
 
 
<font size="-2"><b>Church for Siege Dead
 </b></font>
n ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Artists and musicians are backing the completion of a memorial church to the defenders of St. Petersburg, then known as Leningrad, who went missing in action during the World War II siege.
 The church is under construction near the Ligovo metro station, where the front line was during the siege.

TITLE: Journalist Sentenced to Five Years in Prison
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - A Smolensk court in has sentenced a journalist to more than five years in prison after he was convicted of defaming three regional officials by accusing them of masterminding the killing of his boss five years ago.
 
Judge Irina Malinovskaya of the Smolensk magistrates court on June 6 sentenced Nikolai Goshko to five years and one month in prison for accusing regional officials on the air of organizing the killing of Sergei Novikov, head of the independent Smolensk station Radio Vesna.
 Novikov was shot in the stairwell of his apartment building on July 26, 2000, by an unidentified assailant. A day later, Goshko put the blame on Alexander Prokhorov, at the time governor of the Smolensk region; his deputy governor, Yury Balbyshkin; and former regional prosecutor Viktor Zabolotsky, all of whom subsequently pressed defamation charges against Goshko.
 The day he was killed, Novikov had announced on a regional television program that he had evidence of corruption on the part of Balbyshkin. 
 Since Novikov's killing, both Balbyshkin and Prokhorov have been convicted of corruption. 
 Whatever the merits of the defamation case, Goshko's unusually harsh sentence has drawn fire from media watchdog organizations, which say they see evidence of a politically motivated crackdown on press freedom. 
 Defamation involving accusations of violent crimes is punishable by a maximum of three years in prison, but Goshko was convicted on fraud charges in 1996 and received a one-year suspended sentence and a five-year probation period. Because he was charged with defamation before his probation had ended, Malinovskaya sentenced Goshko to 61 months in prison, a spokesman for the Smolensk regional prosecutor's office told Interfax.
 The 1996 fraud charges were business-related, says Goshko's wife, Yekaterina Chalova.
 She said Novikov had warned her husband shortly before his death that journalists from the radio station might become targets of politically motivated killings because of their criticism of the local government.
 &quot;How can this be defamation if he was simply telling listeners what Novikov had told him a few days before his death,&quot; Chalova, spokeswoman for the administration in the Moscow region town of Odintsovo, said in a telephone interview Friday. 
 Goshko was being held in a detention center in the Smolensk region and planned to appeal, Chalova said. 
 A spokesman for the Smolensk regional prosecutor's office told Interfax on Thursday that prosecutors had asked that Goshko receive a one-year suspended sentence.
 Oleg Panfilov, head of the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations, called the harsh sentence a sign of the increasing influence of bureaucrats. 
 &quot;Whatever prosecutors requested had little to do with it,&quot; Panfilov said. &quot;This was a case of an official calling the judge and dictating the sentence.&quot;
 The Glasnost Defense Foundation, a media watchdog, has sent a letter to Sergei Shurygin, head of the Leninsky District Court, asking for a clarification of the harsh sentence. &quot;The sentence looks rather strange, considering the nature of the two different cases and articles in the Russian Criminal Code,&quot; the foundation said in the letter.
 The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists was less reserved in a statement posted on its web site Wednesday. &quot;We're outraged that Nikolai Goshko is in jail, while those who murdered Sergei Novikov are free,&quot; CPJ executive director Ann Cooper said in the statement. &quot;We believe that the court should overturn Goshko's conviction, parliament should repeal Russia's antiquated criminal defamation law, and authorities should prosecute Sergei Novikov's killers.&quot;
 In September, Prokhorov was convicted by the Leninsky District Court of abuse of power in connection with a road construction project. He was sentenced to three years in prison but was promptly amnestied. The criminal case had been opened on May 18, 2000.


TITLE: Adoptions Site Opened
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Responding to calls for child adoption procedures to be made more transparent, the Education and Science Ministry has created a new Internet site to provide information about laws and regulations governing adoption, and is offering a database of all orphans eligible for adoption in Russia.
 
Starting this month, those interested in adopting a child can visit the site, www.usynovite.ru, to find out which documents are required by law to qualify for an adoption, and can also browse through photographs of thousands of orphans from across the country.
 The site includes information on around 260,000 children living in orphanages across Russia, said Ivan Yantsukevich, an adviser to the ministry's child legal and social protection department.
 Visitors to the site will be able to enter the age, gender and other details of a child they wish to adopt and view photographs of children who match the request. 
 &quot;We hope the site will become a guide for people wanting to adopt children in the country, but we also plan to keep all those involved in adoptions updated in case of any news about adoption procedures,&quot; Yantsukevich said by telephone Friday.
 &quot;In other words, we want to be able to release accurate, firsthand information to avoid controversy and speculation,&quot; he said.
 International adoptions have recently come under fire in Russia amid calls by some senior officials to sharply restrict adoptions following the death of an adopted boy in the United States.
 The site has a full list of foreign adoption agencies officially accredited with the Education and Science Ministry.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Ogonyok Rights Bought
 </b>

ROSTOV-ON-DON (SPT)- The St. Petersburg-based holding Telekominvest said Friday that it had bought the rights to publish Ogonyok magazine from Ova-Press, Kommersant reported. 
 Ova-Press said that it was planning to create a publishing house around Ogonyok. Former Ogonyok editor Viktor Loshak has been asked to head the new project, the paper said. 
 
 
<b>Duma Deputy Drowns
 </b>

ROSTOV-ON-DON (AP) - Vladimir Litvinov, a United Russia State Duma deputy, has died after falling into the Don River, but officials said Saturday that there was no sign of foul play. 
 Litvinov's body was found Friday in the river near his country home 20 kilometers north of Rostov-on-Don, said Alexei Polyansky, a spokesman for the regional police.
 Litvinov was dressed in a sports suit and shoes when he fell into the river, Polyansky said. Experts believed that the lawmaker drowned after suffering a heart attack. 
 
 
<b>Tax Bill for Activists
 </b>

NIZHNY NOVGOROD (AP) - Tax authorities on Thursday accused a prominent Western-funded human rights organization of evading taxes, sparking accusations of a campaign against a persistent critic of the government. 
 Tax authorities in Nizhny Novgorod ordered the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society to pay over 1 million rubles ($35,000) in back taxes and fines in a tax document obtained by The Associated Press. 
 Tax officials argued that the funding the organization had received from the Washington-based National Endowment for Democracy and the European Union in the years 2002 and 2004 was the group's profit and therefore should have been taxed. 
 But the group condemned the back tax demand as a politically-motivated campaign to close down a rights body that opposes the authorities.
 
 
<b>Trotsky Ice Pick Found
 </b>

LONDON (SPT) - One of the most notorious murder weapons in modern history, the ice pick that was used by Stalinist agent Ramon Mercador to kill socialist revolutionary Leon Trotsky, has been found 65 years after it was stolen from the Mexican police, Britain's The Guardian newspaper reported Thursday. 
 The daughter of a former secret service agent claimed she has the pick, which is stained with Trotsky's blood. 
 
 
<b>Ship Docks With ISS
 </b>

MOSCOW (AP) - A Russian cargo ship successfully docked with the international space station early Sunday in a manually controlled maneuver after a communications problem switched off the autopilot system, Russian Mission Control said. 
 Soyuz crew capsules and Progress cargo ships have been the only link to the space station since the U.S. shuttle fleet was grounded after the Columbia shuttle burned up as it returned to Earth in February 2003. 
 
 
<b>Siberian Tigers 'Stable'
 </b>

NEW YORK (NYT) - A survey by almost 1,000 fieldworkers has determined that tigers appear to be holding their own in Siberia. The Wildlife Conservation Society said the workers, who traveled by foot, ski, snowmobile and car to track the tigers' footprints in the snow, estimated that the region now had 334 to 417 adults and 97 to 112 cubs. 
 The numbers are up somewhat from the last winter survey, in 1996, but coordinators attributed the increase to efforts to cover more of the animals' range.

TITLE: Prosecutors Accuse Chechens of Killing Klebnikov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Prosecutor General's Office announced Thursday that it had wrapped up the investigation of the killing of American journalist Paul Klebnikov and that a suspected Chechen rebel financier, the subject of a scathing book by Klebnikov, had ordered the slaying.
 
Investigators have established that Khozh-Akhmed Nukhayev, whom Klebnikov interviewed extensively for his 2003 book &quot;Conversations With a Barbarian,&quot; was responsible for ordering the killing, which was carried out by members of a Chechen criminal group, Prosecutor General's Office spokesman Vasily Lushchenko said Thursday.
 Klebnikov, who was the editor of Forbes' Russian edition, was shot outside his office on July 9 of last year in an apparent contract hit. He was 41.
 Two suspects, Kazbek Dukuzov and Musa Vakhayev, are already in custody, while Nukhayev and two others, Magomed Dukuzov and Magomed Edilsultanov, remain at large, Lushchenko said. All five have been charged in the murder.
 Nukhayev is believed to have hired the other suspects, who belong to a Chechen crime group founded in Moscow in 2002 and specializing in extortion and contract murders, to kill Klebnikov as revenge for the book, Lushchenko said.
 &quot;Conversations With a Barbarian,&quot; published only in Russian, was based on 20 hours of interviews with Nukhayev and criticized the violent way of life in rural Chechen Muslim communities. It also cited Nukhayev as saying that the LogoVAZ car dealership controlled by Boris Berezovsky sent oil money to Chechen rebels. Nukhayev is wanted in Russia on terrorism charges and was in hiding in Baku, Azerbaijan, until late 2002. His current whereabouts are unknown.
 Klebnikov's brother Michael said he had not seen the evidence implicating Nukhayev and stressed the importance of presumption of innocence.
 &quot;Everybody deserves their day in court,&quot; Michael Klebnikov said by telephone from New York on Thursday. He said his brother had given no indication that Nukhayev had reacted negatively to the book shortly after it was published. &quot;But what kind of reaction there was later, I'm not privy to,&quot; he said.
 Michael Klebnikov said his family had been in constant contact with Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov and the investigators handling the case, but that he had learned from the media that the investigation had been completed.
 &quot;It's been a very difficult year,&quot; he said. &quot;There have been so many rumors and so much speculation. We're happy to hear that the investigation will be completed successfully, but it's important that the case be rock solid.
 &quot;There have been 11 journalists killed in Russia in the last five years, and not one case has been successfully prosecuted. If this is going to be the first, it's doubly important that the case is rock solid.&quot;
 The investigation into the murder has been marked by bizarre and embarrassing announcements from law enforcement authorities. 
 The arrest in September of two Chechens initially linked to the Klebnikov case spiraled into a publicity nightmare for Moscow police officials.
 Kazbek Elmurzayev and Aslan Sagayev were arrested Sept. 29 in Moscow after police received a tip that they were holding Dagestani businessman Akhmed-Pasha Aliyev hostage.
 City police chief Vladimir Pronin said investigators believed that one of three pistols found in the apartment was used in Klebnikov's killing.
 The Prosecutor General's Office immediately lambasted Pronin for releasing details of the arrests, and several days later the police chief denied having made such a statement. Ballistics tests on the three guns showed that none of them had been used in Klebnikov's killing.
 Oleg Panfilov, head of the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations, said Thursday he seriously doubted that Nukhayev was behind the slaying, and described the so-called &quot;Chechen trail&quot; as a politically convenient version.
 &quot;If Chechens killed everybody who wrote negative books about them, Moscow would be covered in bodies,&quot; Panfilov said. 
 Russian authorities have advanced the Chechen link because of pressure from the United States to make progress in the investigation as well as pressure from Europe to resolve the Chechen conflict, Panfilov said.
 &quot;It is advantageous for the government to paint Chechnya as a terrorist haven and Chechens in general as criminals,&quot; he said.
 Political analyst and columnist Yulia Latynina, however, said the first thing she thought when she read Klebnikov's book was that it would spell his demise. 
 &quot;I could imagine the reaction [Nukhayev] would have after he brought this journalist into his home, fed him and introduced him to his relatives saying, 'He is going to write a great book about me.' Even if Nukhayev himself wasn't insulted, his relatives might have been,&quot; Latynina said.
 She said Klebnikov did not stick to Western journalistic standards in the book - providing extremely critical commentary on Nukhayev's statements - and that &quot;if he had done the same thing with any Western businessman, the businessman would have won a court order to ban the book from being released.
 &quot;But Chechen justice is carried out with a Kalashnikov,&quot; Latynina said.
 Klebnikov had a reputation for making powerful enemies as an investigative reporter in Russia, beginning with an article in Forbes in 1996 on Berezovsky, who at the time was a Kremlin insider. The article called Berezovsky a &quot;powerful gangland boss&quot; and accused him of ordering the 1995 murder of television journalist Vladislav Listyev. Berezovsky said the article was a &quot;series of lies&quot; and successfully sued the magazine in Britain.
 Klebnikov, however, persisted and followed up the article with a book titled &quot;Godfather of the Kremlin: Boris Berezovsky and the Looting of Russia.&quot;
 In May 2004, Forbes' Russian edition published a list of the country's 100 richest people, some of whom might have been angered by the exposure. When Klebnikov was killed two months later, some suggested the list might offer a clue to his death, but it seemed that theory has never been taken terribly seriously.
 A woman, who answered the telephone Thursday afternoon at the Forbes office in Moscow, said the magazine was not commenting on the announcement.
 Forbes editor Maxim Kashulinsky told Ekho Moskvy earlier Thursday, however, that the magazine had no reason to doubt investigators' conclusions.
 &quot;We didn't conduct our own investigation, and from the very beginning we trusted employees from the Prosecutor General's Office and the police that were working on the case,&quot; Kashulinsky told the radio station. &quot;Now the prosecutor's office says it has solved the crime completely. It is rather hard for me to comment. People's guilt must be established by a court, but I have no doubts about the investigators' professionalism.&quot;
 There was no mention of the charges on Nukhayev's web site, www.noukhaev.com, and an e-mail addressed to him requesting a comment and sent to the site's administrator went unanswered Thursday.
 


TITLE: Constitutional Court Mulls Gubernatorial Election Case
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Constitutional Court on Thursday announced it would look into a challenge to the abolition of direct gubernatorial elections.
 
It made the decision last week in response to a complaint by Vladimir Grishkevich, a geologist and former liberal politician in the Tyumen region, and may hand down a ruling as soon as October, a court spokeswoman said.
 In January, a Kremlin-backed law replaced direct gubernatorial elections with a system where the president nominates governors for appointment by regional legislatures. 
 The Union of Right Forces, or SPS, and the Communist Party have been making legal efforts to rescind the law, but the Constitutional Court has not yet considered their cases.
 Grishkevich brought his case in February after the Tyumen regional legislature reappointed Governor Sergei Sobyanin, said a copy of his complaint that he provided to The Moscow Times. 
 Grishkevich asked the Tyumen Regional Court to void the reappointment on the grounds that it violated his right to participate directly in elections at all levels of government, as stated in Article 32 of the Constitution. The Tyumen court referred the case to the Constitutional Court, which Grishkevich then asked to declare the law unconstitutional.
 &quot;I put a lot of time and effort into establishing democratic society in Russia in my time,&quot; Grishkevich, a former member of the Democratic Russia party and SPS, said by telephone from Tyumen, where he is a geology professor at a natural resources research center. &quot;The process that I am witnessing now makes me feel very, very disappointed. I feel bound to correct it.&quot;
 Alexander Yurin, director of the Institute for Elections Systems Development, said Grishkevich's argument had legal merit. &quot;Common sense suggests that a person must have the right to choose,&quot; he said. &quot;In the current situation, it's the presidential administration that chooses.&quot;
 Oleg Kovalyov, a senior United Russia State Duma deputy, said his party believed that the law was constitutional.
 &quot;Regional deputies have the right to vote for the president's candidate, and deputies are directly elected by the people,&quot; he said.
 Former SPS leader Boris Nadezhdin said the party had tried to challenge the law in regional courts without success, and would now seek a ruling from the Constitutional Court in a complaint to be filed later this month. He said he hoped the court would combine the complaints from SPS and Grishkevich into one case.
 Nadezhdin said he doubted that Grishkevich had filed his complaint at the behest of the Kremlin. &quot;I strongly doubt it. Grishkevich is an old democrat and has a long record of fighting for human rights in Tyumen,&quot; he said.
 Nikolai Petrov, an analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center, agreed that Grishkevich was unlikely to be working together with Kremlin officials. &quot;It would be too complicated a scenario for them,&quot; he said.
 The Communists have tried to reverse the law through a referendum that would ask people, among other issues, to state whether they want to elect governors directly, but the Central Elections Commission said the question was unconstitutional. The party is appealing the decision in the Supreme Court.
 Sergei Mitrokhin, deputy leader of the Yabloko party, said he doubted the court would reverse a law backed by the Kremlin. &quot;The Constitutional Court will decide that the law, the way it is now, is absolutely fine. This is a decision taken by the president and no one would dare to criticize it and say that is against the Constitution,&quot; he said.
 Petrov agreed. &quot;The Kremlin does not like to lose face,&quot; he said.

TITLE: Beslan Blast
 'Started Fight'
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - Members of the State Duma commission investigating the Beslan tragedy said Thursday that a preliminary draft of the report indicated that an accidental explosion, not a planned storming of the school by government troops, set off the ensuing bloody firefight.
 
Duma Deputy Arkady Baskayev, a member of the commission, told Gazeta.ru on Thursday that an accidental explosion inside the school where terrorists were holding hostages set off the firefight that led to the death of 330 people, more than half of them children.
 &quot;We have the general view that the explosion itself inside the school was an accident,&quot; Baskayev told the web site. &quot;Reports in the media that there was some sniper that opened fire are complete nonsense.&quot;
 Apparently the explosion was a result of a poorly affixed explosive device in the school, Baskayev told Gazeta.ru.
 Baskayev added that the political demands of the terrorists were less than concrete. 
 &quot;There were demands to stop the war, to remove forces from Chechnya,&quot; Baskayev was cited as saying. &quot;They were not formulated in writing, there were no concrete deadlines.&quot;
 Yury Savelev, another Duma deputy on the commission, added that the Federal Security Service was ignoring half of the inquiry's requests for information, Gazeta.ru reported.
 &quot;They answer some of our questions, but some they don't,&quot; Savelev was quoted as saying. &quot;You get the impression that they're not being completely upfront.&quot;
 The State Duma expects to receive the commission's final report no later than October, First Deputy Duma Speaker Lyubov Sliska said Thursday, Interfax reported.

TITLE: Berezovsky Announces a Shake Up at His Russian Papers
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Boris Berezovsky last week announced a change of general director and editor at Kommersant newspaper and his intention to sell Nezavisimaya Gazeta.
 
Kommersant general director Andrei Vasilyev will move to Kiev as editor of the newspaper's startup Ukraine edition, Berezovsky said by telephone from London. Editor Alexander Stukalin will also be replaced, he said.
 Berezovsky first made the announcements regarding Kommersant during a video linkup with the newspaper's staff on Tuesday. Their replacements - to be introduced &quot;in the next few weeks&quot; - would aim to strengthen Kommersant's business reporting in competition with its main rival, business daily Vedomosti, he said.
 &quot;I like Kommersant very much. But we have begun to lose our niche on the market,&quot; he said by telephone from London on Tuesday. &quot;I am especially worried about losing our positions in the business market. In fact, many people prefer Vedomosti for business news.&quot;
 During the linkup, Berezovsky said Kommersant had to provide more news analysis, Radio Liberty reported on its Russian web site. Speaking about replacements for Vasilyev and Stukalin, Berezovsky said, &quot;Well-known people will head Kommersant.&quot;
 He ruled out bringing back former Kommersant editors Ksenia Ponomaryova and Raf Shakirov to take charge of the newspaper, Radio Liberty said.
 Anna Kachkayeva, a media analyst with Radio Liberty, said Berezovsky had told her earlier that the new general director would be someone who had previously worked at the Kommersant publishing house. One option might be Vladislav Borodulin, editor of the online news agency Gazeta.ru.
 Kachkayeva said she thought Berezovsky would like Kommersant to run more &quot;sharp commentaries.&quot;
 &quot;I think it will have commentaries of the kind that are plentiful on the Internet but are not so often seen in the print media, of the kind Gazeta.ru has,&quot; Kachkayeva said. 
 She said she doubted Berezovsky would try to make the newspaper more of a political tool because that could cost it a portion of its audience.
 Konstantin Isakov, head of the Mediamark consultancy, said any competition would be a good sign for the media market. &quot;Thank God that publishers and owners are beginning to take an interest in the commercial component of media projects, and not only their political component.&quot;
 Igor Yakovenko, general secretary of the Russian Union of Journalists, said Vasilyev had skillfully managed the newspaper as a business, Interfax reported.
 Berezovsky also said he was negotiating to sell Nezavisimaya Gazeta because of the need to concentrate on Kommersant's Russian and Ukrainian editions.


TITLE: Gazprom Picks Arctic Parners
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: Norwegian energy groups Statoil and Norsk Hydro agreed on Monday to work with gas giant Gazprom in charting petroleum resources in Russia's far north, the firms said. 
 
The deal, which includes development of petroleum technology for the region, could help the Norwegian companies in their bid to join in developing Russia's huge Arctic Shtokman gas field, though no partnership for that field was signed. 
 &quot;The three signatories want to use the agreement to establish closer cooperation on mapping petroleum resources in the far north,&quot; Statoil said in a statement. 
 &quot;They also give weight to identifying key environmental considerations as well as facilitating the development of technological solutions for petroleum operations in the region,&quot; Norsk Hydro said in an identical statement. 
 Gazprom, Norsk Hydro and Statoil will set up a joint committee to carry the cooperation forward, they said. 
 The deal was struck after the governments of Russia and Norway signed a new energy cooperation deal during a visit to Moscow by Norway's Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik and Oil and Energy Minister Thorhild Widvey. 
 &quot;We have good prospects in the field of oil and gas,&quot; President Vladimir Putin told Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik at the Kremlin. &quot;I just got the plans for your sea pipeline yesterday,&quot; he added, without elaborating. 
 Norsk Hydro and Statoil are vying with western rivals to join Gazprom in developing the Shtokman gas field in the Barents Sea. Gazprom has earlier said it aims to choose Western partners for the field this year. 
 &quot;We know the quality, experience and potential of your oil and gas companies,&quot; Putin said. 
 &quot;If we can merge this with the potential of our reserves, our interests in Europe, it could have a very big impact on our countries and for the European continent as a whole.&quot; 
 With resources estimated at 3.2 trillion cubic meters of gas, Shtokman is one of the world's biggest gas fields. Gazprom has said it aims to develop it for liquefied natural gas for deliveries to the U.S. market by around 2010-2012. 
 &quot;I completely agree with you, Mr. President, when you say we have a huge opportunity to strengthen our cooperation, especially in the north and particularly in the energy sector,&quot; Bondevik told Putin. 
 Statoil and Hydro, Norway's biggest and second biggest oil and gas producers, have worked to pry open the door to Shtokman by touting offshore technology deployed in the big Snoehvit and Ormen Lange gas developments off Norway. 
 Statoil has suggested that Gazprom could take a stake in Snoehvit in Norway's sector of the Barents Sea and Norsk Hydro has wooed the Russian group with a stake in Ormen Lange off western Norway to boost their Shtokman chances. 
 Earlier on Monday, Bondevik said that his country would work to encourage democratic development in Russia, RIA-Novosti reported.
 <i>(Reuters, AP) </i>

TITLE: Ultra Star Steers Course For Market Leadership
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Mobile retail chain Ultra will invest $25 million into a massive store expansion program by 2006, the company said Monday.
 
Ultra Star, which owns the mobile retail brand, said the number of Ultra mobile salons will sore from 140 to 300 by the end of this year, and 800 by the end of 2006. Analysts see the figures as doubtful, saying such expansions are rarely fully carried out as planned.
 &quot;By the end of the year we'll come to Nizhny Novgorod, Chelyabinsk, Perm, Omsk, Krasnodar and Volgograd. We are eager to gain 15 percent to 20 percent of the market in each region,&quot; said Dmitry Karmanov, marketing director of Ultra.
 Karmanov said the company will not revert to franchise operations so as to keep a greater control on service quality.
 &quot;We will steadily move into regions attractive by the market environment: mobile operators coverage, population, the rate of profits, and market competition,&quot; Karmanov said.
 The turnover of Ultra Star telecom business will reach $400 million in 2005, exceeding the results of last year by 77.7 percent, Interfax reported.
 Analysts see Ultra's expansion as important for its national presence, since the chain has so far been too heavily concentrated on its St. Petersburg base. Despite occupying 10 percent of the St. Petersburg market, Ultra accounts for only 2.2 percent of the Russian mobile retail far behind leaders Euroset and Svyaznoi, said Eldar Murtazin, leading expert at Mobile Research Group.
 &quot;Every retailer announces the regional expansion and chain broadening. If we summon up all declared figures, it will exceed consumer demand by 20 times,&quot; Murtazin said.
 At present, Euroset has 1,700 retail outlets in Russia and Svyaznoi - 617, according to the companies' statistics.
 &quot;Opening additional outlets doesn't expand the market share automatically. The company should strive not for store quantity but to have profitable outlets,&quot; said Anna Sverdlova, head of Svyaznoi's press service. &quot;And good locations in regions are already occupied,&quot; Sverdlova said.
 Murtazin agrees, saying Ultra's expansion is a pricey catch-up exercise, where investments per saloon will be higher than those made by rivals so as to promote less favorable shop positions.

TITLE: Hopes Rest on Rail Chief to Speed Up Reform
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The appointment of Vladimir Yakunin, a close associate of President Vladimir Putin, as president of Russian Railways Co. should shake up the railroad industry and help speed up lagging reform, industry players and analysts said Thursday. 
 
Yakunin, formerly the first vice president of Russian Railways Co., or RZD, was appointed late Wednesday by Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov to head the state-run monopoly, replacing long-time railways employee Gennady Fadeyev.
 &quot;Fadeyev had undisputable authority in the rail sector but Yakunin's advantage is his political lobbying capability due to his closeness to the president,&quot; said Igor Nikolayev, an analyst with the FBK consultancy, which advises companies from various industry sectors, including RZD. &quot;That will allow him to make tough decisions.&quot;
 &quot;We need a breakthrough. ... Yakunin may be the man who can put his foot down and say what has to be done,&quot; said Mikhail Sverdlov, deputy general director of Eurosib.
 Yakunin is a longtime associate of Putin and Fradkov, Kommersant reported. Before coming to the transportation sector in 2000 as first deputy transportation minister, Yakunin had in 1977 joined the state committee for foreign economic ties, which was often used as the cover for KGB foreign intelligence agents, the daily said. In 1991, he started a private company to attract foreign investment, working in an office that was located across from St. Petersburg's foreign relations department, where Putin was chairman.
 The management reshuffle, which catapulted Yakunin to RZD's top post, comes in the midst of a structural reform at the company. The reform began in 2003 with the establishment of RZD as a stock-holding company, and it aims to attract much-needed investment into the industry's aging infrastructure.
 Under the reform plan, RZD, which hauls 1.3 billion passengers per year and has market capitalization of $50 billion, will invest $1.9 trillion until 2010, upgrading the rolling stock and developing new rail routes. The restructuring strategy also foresees divestment of the monopoly's various businesses into separate companies. 
 However, the process has been slow so far, mainly due to the lack of relevant legislation that would allow separate RZD units to operate as fully fledged business entities. The establishment of an independent passenger unit of RZD has also stalled because the government has failed to agree on subsidies for railroad passenger operations.
 &quot;I expect the reform will speed up,&quot; said Sergei Loparev, vice president of the Russian Freight Forwarders Association. &quot;The restructuring has slowed down over the past 18 months. None of the basic legislation came out, no single RZD subsidiary has been set up in reality - there are only talks.&quot;
 Although Yakunin, unlike Fadeyev, did not cut his teeth in the railroad industry, he still managed to integrate and &quot;is not treated as a stranger,&quot; FBK's Nikolayev said. 
 &quot;He already knows the system from within and was in charge of the working group which drafted its strategic development program until 2010,&quot; he added.

TITLE: IFC to Issue $1M in Microloans
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The International Finance Corporation, the World Bank's private lending unit, signed its first deal to support microloans in Russia on Friday.
 
The $1 million loan to the Russian Women's Microfinance Network is intended to support hundreds of microloans - on average $1,500 each - to entrepreneurs without the collateral to qualify for traditional bank loans.
 &quot;For us this is a very interesting project targeting segments of the population that are not being served,&quot; said Alireza Zavar, head of financial markets for Central and Eastern Europe at the IFC. &quot;The amount that you provide is small, but the impact is great.&quot;
 Although there are more than 1,200 banks in Russia, small and medium-sized enterprises often find it difficult to obtain affordable loans. And even as banks increasingly reach out to entrepreneurs in the regions, it is still not very lucrative to target entrepreneurs in small towns and villages.
 According to the Russian Microfinance Center, 80 percent of the country's 6 million small businesses are in need of microcredits ranging from $300 to $10,000. Total demand for loans is between $5 billion and $7 billion, with a supply of only $1 billion, the center said. 
 The Women's Microfinance Network, which in the past relied exclusively on grants for its funding, has given 37,000 loans - totaling $44 million - to some 6,000 entrepreneurs since 1999. 
 Now, having received the IFC loan, the network is becoming a bona fide business. The annual interest rate on the loan will be between 3 percent and 5 percent, Zavar said. 
 The network focuses on small businesses in central Russia, with 65 percent of its clients being women, who generally have less access to conventional bank loans. As the network grew, it boosted the average loan from $300 to $1,500, and it has almost no bad debt, said Diana Medman, the organization's founder and chairwoman. 
 Medman chalked up the network's success to the fact that women are reluctant to take out loans - and when they do, they make sure they pay them back.
 Analysts welcomed the IFC deal, saying it was in line with a current global trend for nonprofit organizations to ramp up operations and become profitable businesses.
 &quot;Banks are aware of competition and should upgrade their financial products,&quot; said Aldo Moauro, director of Microfinanza Rating, a Milan-based agency that rates microfinancial institutions around the world. 
 &quot;There is no reason for [the network] not to be successful if [it] occupies a specific niche and is run well,&quot; said Andrew Keely, a banking analyst with Renaissance Capital.

TITLE: Partners Choose a Beautiful Way to Run a Business
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: They are wealthy, in-vogue and very busy. Yelena Ustinova and Natalia Smirnova say their business provides them with an outlet for creativity and self-expression and they aim to turn their chic beauty salon into an 800-square meter relaxation center.
 
&quot;This is a business that brings satisfaction,&quot; Ustinova said, who also manages several other business projects that are &quot;just for the money.&quot;
 Smirnova and Ustinova opened up their salon &quot;On Liteiny&quot; in the center of St. Petersburg a year ago. They have a fifty-fifty partnership in the business and manage all of its operations - from HR to PR, marketing and internal accounting.
 &quot;We have a very thorough understanding of how this business machine should operate, and everything is noted down to the last kopek,&quot; Smirnova said. Among her managerial achievements, she boasts having developed a concept for a computer system to suit the salon's accounting needs perfectly.
 Despite a lack of professional conservatism often associated with businesswomen in the West, Smirnova and Ustinova are ambitious and business-savvy. They say the salon generates not only money, but also energy and inspiration.
 The partnership began in the late '90s after a chance meeting developed into a friendship.
 Smirnova, who aspired to be an actress, dropped out of the city's theater institute in the '70s, eventually to work as a hairdresser at beauty salon &quot;Astoria,&quot; located in the same-name hotel.
 It was the most exclusive salon in the city and Smirnova had the chance to perform her skills before many a showbusiness star, to name but Claudia Schiffer and Nina Ricci. Smirnova received several offers to work abroad, yet here she declined, due to her husband's illness.
 Instead, she stayed at the salon as a master for many years, eventually reaching the position of supervisor.
 Ustinova, who was already involved with several business projects at the time, had been a frequent customer of the &quot;Astoria&quot; salon. In fact, she liked the place and its relaxed atmosphere so much, she came to spend most of her free time there. &quot;I lived at the place - being there was like therapy from all the day's worries,&quot; Ustinova said.
 When the hotel's salon closed in 1999, the friendship that developed between the women carried on into a business partnership
 &quot;The management decided to change the hotel's strategy and focus on its main activities - hospitality services. At that time Yelena was already looking to get involved in the beauty business and for me it [also] became a feasible option,&quot; Smirnova said.
 Smirnova and Ustinova formed a limited liability company called Laura and opened up a beauty salon at a banya club. Ustinova, for whom the beauty industry was less familiar, &quot;learned everything on the go,&quot; Smirnova said.
 Smirnova managed the services and promoted the salon to the former clientele of Astoria, while Ustinova took responsibility for the financial arrangements. A few years later, the partners began to look for a new space.
 &quot;The location wasn't that great, and the status of being a beauty salon in a banya club was less than what we wanted,&quot; Smirnova said. 
 During their search the partners came across a space on the Liteiny, a venue steeped in over 45 years of beauty-salon history.
 &quot;This was the location of the largest beauty salon in St. Petersburg during the Communist era,&quot; said Smirnova, who interned at the place in the '70s. &quot;There were wooden stalls, a fountain at the entrance, a spiral staircase, mirrors everywhere,&quot; she said.
 Being a hairdresser was one of the most lucrative positions in the Soviet Union. A good haircut could be part of a barter deal, in which frequent clients of the salon would pay for the service with hard-to-find clothes and delicacies.
 However, by the late '90s, the formerly vibrant space was deserted. Smoirnova and Ustinova said they felt that revitalizing the old venue fitted well into their business vision.
 &quot;There are over 860 square meters of space here, and we have only used 150 meters of it so far,&quot; said Ustinova. The partners plan to invest about $5 million next year to restore the front-entrance staircase and furnish more of the salon space.
 They say the salon, which is the forth most-expensive beauty parlor in the city, is aimed at business-class clientele. However, their clients insist that people from all walks of life visit.
 &quot;It's a place with a warm, relaxed atmosphere, and Natasha [Smirnova's] reputation helps it beat the competition, even in a city where beauty salons are on every corner,&quot; said Tatiana Ridnik, a housewife who stopped by at the salon on a tip from a friend.
 Smirnova and Ustinova say almost all female clients find out about the salon by word-of-mouth, while men usually just walk in from the street.
 Atypically for a working relationship, the two say they never fight over managerial decisions.
 &quot;We are diametrically opposite people, however we have a common understanding of the basis of personal and business relationships ... and life principles,&quot; Ustinova said.
 The busy days at work have taken their toll on the personal life. Neither of the two is married or has any such plans for the near future, blaming a lack of suitable candidates in the city.
 &quot;Russian men haven't adopted to the changing environment in the country as quickly as women have. They are old-fashioned, they still expect us to stay at home and cook,&quot; Ustinova said.
 Smirnova agrees. &quot;Maybe in a decade or so they will be able to tolerate a businesswoman in their personal life,&quot; she said.
 As far as business relationships go, however, the partners say they prefer dealing with men. &quot;We can then use our charm to get a favorable deal. You couldn't do that with a woman,&quot; and a playful smile lifts on both faces.

TITLE: Foreign Property-Hunting Picks Up in Pace, Gains
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Though a market that has only gained notice in the last two years, realtors say demand for foreign real estate has skyrocketed. In 2004, Russians spent over $7.5 billion on buying property abroad, according to realtor estimates.
 
With the Western European real estate seen as predictable and annually increasing in price on average by 10 percent to 15 percent, market insiders predict another bounty outflow of Russian capital this year.
 In addition, interest is expected to increase in property at exotic destinations, such as Thailand and Goa, where riskier conditions offer very impressive returns on investment.
 &quot;The demand for foreign growth over several years has been constant and smooth,&quot; said Natalia Ivanova, executive director of Estate Tour Consult Ltd. &quot;The decision [of where to buy foreign property] depends on the client's purpose - whether they want to buy a holiday house or diversify assets.&quot;
 &quot;For the former they would choose Finland, Cyprus or Spain. That's the market for upper-middle class clients. Upper class buyers prefer Italy and France where prices are 20 percent to 30 percent higher,&quot; she said.
 To make business investments, Russians usually look to England, South-East Asia, South Korea, Hong Kong and China, often buying hotels and restaurants, Ivanova said.
 
 <strong>
HOME VS. AWAY
 </strong>Less than a third of property buyers are interested in commercial real estate.
 
Nikolai Kazansky, senior consultant at Colliers International in St. Petersburg, says that this segment of the foreign property market cannot promise as good a return on investments as commercial property projects in Russia.
 What it can guarantee, as opposed to the domestic market, is stability, Kazansky said, which suites conservative investors.
 &quot;One of the main reasons for buying property abroad is not profit, but savings. In 2004 returns on investment in Russia were bigger. And besides, investors rely on their ties with authorities here,&quot; Kazansky said.
 In Germany, real estate prices annually rise 3 percent. Even mixed investment in residential and commercial real estate gives 7 percent to 12 percent profit, reports Moscow-based legal firm The Law Office of Danis Miller on its web site.
 Olga Yegorova, managing partner of Overseas Realty, says despite the lower returns, foreign commercial property still finds its client.
 &quot;Commercial real estate in Moscow is extraordinary profitable. But the costs of entering the market are also enormous. The market is overcrowded and unsteady. That induce investors to seek for alternatives,&quot; Yegorova said.
 
 <strong>
SUNSHINE DRIVE
 </strong>Avenue Property, and investment <br> and real estate company, reports that 15 percent of Russians buy property in Spain, including Canary Islands; Cyprus claims second place and Bulgaria third.
 
As well as the climate, the sunshine coasts present a strong growth potential due to the influx of tourists and those dreaming of a retirement home by the beach.
 Analysts predict property prices in Cyprus to hike by up to 25 percent this year. French and Spanish coasts could enjoy a more moderate rise of about 10 percent to 15 percent in 2005.
 Since the Turkish authorities allowed Russian residents to own property in the country in 2003, the low price of housing and rate of tax has attracted many a buyer. And the value of Turkish property is only likely to strengthen once the country joins the European Union. Market analysts quote a price increase anywhere between 30 percent and 50 percent.
 Another candidate for EU membership by 2007 has come to be Bulgaria. A knock-on effect on property values will be at least on par with Turkey, but as yet, Bulgaria remains one of the cheapest countries in terms of real estate in Europe.
 &quot;New EU members combine a low cost of market entrance with vast opportunities,&quot; Yegorova said. &quot;Investors seek an appropriate ratio of risk and profit. So far the most popular countries are Croatia, Montenegro and Bulgaria.&quot;
 Yegorova added that in Croatia real estate prices have already increased anywhere between 20 percent and 50 percent in the last year.
 
 <strong>
KEEPING IT IN THE FAMILY
 </strong>Price is not always the defining factor for Russian picking property abroad, realtors say. About 10 percent of the buyers pick out property for their close family or relatives: children studying abroad, elderly parents in need of medical treatment.
 
In such cases, many choose the United States and modern European capitals, preferring comfortable apartments near educational and medical centers. As a temporary residence, the popular choice falls on France, Italy, Spain and Switzerland.
 Part of the attractiveness of this foreign property comes from having access to cheap loans. Cyprus and Spain offer mortgage deals with 3 percent to 5 percent interest. Furthermore, in Croatia, Montenegro, Spain, Cyprus and France property ownership facilitates the getting of a visa or a registration certificate.
 A promising market for seasonal cottages, especially for those living in the northwest region of Russia, is Finland. Considering that a house in the suburbs of St. Petersburg can cost as much as $1 million, Estate Tour's Ivanova says plumbing for a Finnish cottage makes more sense.
 &quot;Finnish cottages cost about 300,000 euros ($). And you can get a solid house with a living space of more than 80 square meters, a couple of bedrooms and a sauna,&quot; she said.
 Finnish apartments, on the other hand, tend to be picked by elder people and newly married couples, Ivanova said. A one-room flat costs about 30,000 euros ($). A three-flat apartment in Helsinki would run up to 700,000 euros ($).
 For a good-value deal, Imatra, Kovala and Espoo regions offer similar sized flats for five times less, Estate Tour Consult reports.
 
 <strong>
GOA THIS WAY
 </strong>Developments in some more &quot;exotic&quot; countries have stimulated buyers to look outside the traditional markets of Europe or the U.S.
 
&quot;This year Goa authorities let non-residents own real estate and land. The region became very popular and prices increased two to three times,&quot; Kazansky said.
 Russian tourist and real estate agencies already operate at several Thailand destinations, namely at the beach resort Pattaia, the island Koh Samui and the country's capital, Bangkok.
 &quot;Demand from Russians has grown dramatically. For 100,000 to 200,000 euros you buy a flat or a small one-storied house in Europe. On Koh Samui, that's the cost of a house with a vast adjacent territory, 2-3 bedrooms, a swimming pool and a garden,&quot; said Yelena Kocheshkova, director of informational portal ThaiProperty.ru.
 &quot;Friendly legislation attracts Russian buyers unwilling to declare their profits. Besides, Thailand is closer to Russia than Australia, Maldives or Fiji,&quot; Kocheshkova said.
 Land prices in Thailand have picked up at an annual rate of 30 percent to 35 percent, she said and several industry experts forecast a 100 percent increase in land prices by 2008, compared to the current level. At the moment, the cost of a square meter ranges between $30 and $150.

TITLE: Academic: U.S. Had Its Yukos
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Western audiences should not be shocked by the Russian state's dismantling of Yukos, nor by the personal vendetta driven against the oil major's CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky, since the case has clear historical precedents in the U.S., an academic said.
 
Comparing the early stages of capitalism in the U.S. with modern Russia, sociology professor at the Higher School of Economics, Vadim Volkov, said Khodorkovsky's rise to business success then disaster has a direct American parallel in the form of U.S. tycoon John Rockerfeller.
 &quot;Yukos had become a threat for the state, as it had developed big potential for political influence and working against state sovereignty,&quot; Volkov said Wednesday at a lecture organized by the Saint Petersburg Business Association.
 At the end of the 19th century, the U.S. went through an era of growth of the railway network and the expansion of oil business. At the time, individuals could seize an opportunity to accumulate large sums of money in a brief period of time - a wealth that also brought with it strong political influence.
 In part, operating illegally due to extensive bribery, Rockefeller started an oil production business. Building up an empire, the tycoon next gained control over oil distribution through the railways. Thus, by dictating market conditions, he drove many competitors into insolvency. In 1867, Rockefeller amassed 83 percent market share of the oil sector.
 As reason for Rockefeller's success, Volkov named vaguely formulated laws, or even the total absence of laws, and a weak court system, which lacked resources to enforce the rules. The government had no own administration and was dependent on the big companies.
 Like the U.S. back then, Volkov said that the &quot;state's budget is too small to control trade completely.&quot; In addition, as in America of the 19th century, one party dominates the political agenda: it was the Republicans in the U.S., United Russia here. The political landscape makes for a poorly developed federalism, Volkov said.
 &quot;A mere principle of controlling large firms is useless, until the state establishes facts,&quot; Volkov said, quoting Rockefeller's memoirs.
 Finally, as social anger over the oil-made oligarchs mounted, U.S. president Roosevelt gathered just such 'facts,' succeeding in splitting up Rockefeller's imperia into three independent companies. Using the then-existing (but still vague) laws, he also actively helped competitors of Rockefeller in acquiring a larger market share, Volkov said.
 The professor painted a threatening picture of Yukos' growing power until 2003.
 &quot;Had foreign enterprises acquired a majority stake in Yukos, it would have instantly become unreachable to the [Russian] state,&quot; Volkov said. What's more, had the planned merger between Sibneft and Yukos gone ahead, the professor speculated, it would have only worsened the conflict of interests between the state and the oil company. &quot;Yukos' independence from the state would have been absolute,&quot; he said.
 Particularly dangerous to the Russian state was an emerging popularity that Khodorkovsky gained amoung the people. When he, in addition to the above, began blocking tax reforms, &quot;he got widespread opposition throughout different parties,&quot; Volkov said. &quot;He clearly broke the 'business-society-contract' established in 2000.&quot; The informal contract was an attempt to bind enterprises to certain rules of behavior.
 Volkov emphasized that in the U.S. of the late 19th century and in Russia today the conflict between big business and the state has a political side, that involves issues of democracy and freedom. 
 In both cases, Volkov said the state acted to prevent dominant companies from gaining political control. And, from a mere economic point of view, in both cases a certain overall efficiency and financial loss were the result of the battle.
 Where Russia differed from the American model, was that &quot;in the US the driving force behind opposition action was the population,&quot; whereas in Russia this came in the form of &quot;certain political groupings like the 'silovikis',&quot; Volkov said.
 The American state was, after all, not as brazen in its approach to the problem, Volkov said. &quot;Property rights were largely respected and the state never considered nationalizing the company,&quot; he said.
 Finally, in the 19th century, there was almost no international context, which could have been a stage for the power struggle. The Yukos case on the other hand lead to severe damage of the Russian government's reputation.

TITLE: Shakespeare and Co. Shared the Fate of Yukos
TEXT: Yukos was not the only business to be destroyed by Russia's legal system and corrupt bureaucrats. In 1996, after three years of research, planning and renovation, my Russian partner and I opened Shakespeare and Co. Bookstore in Moscow. 
 
At that time, Moscow didn't have an English language bookstore that specialized in American books. We opened on April Fool's Day, snubbing our noses at the naysayers, who said we were fools to risk our money in an emerging economy. &quot;You'll be run out by the mafia. No one has money for imported American books, employees will steal, and bureaucrats will extort bribes until you have to close,&quot; they warned. Of all the dire warnings, only the last one was true.
 Mafia elements were never a problem. Our krysha, our &quot;roof&quot; as protection is referred to in Russia, was a middle-aged Moscow bank director who loved Kurt Vonnegut. While purchasing books one day, he handed me several of his business cards and said, &quot;If you have any problems with the local protection mafia, give them one of these and ask them to call me.&quot; During the next few weeks, we gave out three cards.
 From that time on, no one from the criminal elements bothered us.
 Our staff proved to be an asset, not a liability. The multilingual Russian college students we employed were paid a dollar an hour, a good salary at that time. Instead of stealing from us, they would bring in cookies for the customers. 
 Since we'd renovated the rat- and roach-infested basement that was next to my partner's existing book businesses, the rent was low. Our electricity was not metered. Charges were based on our space, 65 square meters, not on how much electricity we used. And the Yeltsin-era bureaucrats, such as the local policeman and the building inspector, only bothered us for $25 to $50 per month in bribes. 
 Then things changed. We survived a court battle with our landlord. We survived the financial crisis of 1998, when thousands of foreigners and numerous Western businesses left Moscow. Shakespeare and Co. struggled and survived that crisis by buying and selling used books.
 But we didn't survive the election of President Vladimir Putin. Within a month of his inauguration in 2000, new, slickly dressed city officials claimed our sign did not conform to proper standards, our wiring was a fire hazard and our paperwork was incomplete. Fifty-dollar fines escalated to $1,500. 
 In the midst of this economic turmoil, my partner published Vladimir Sorokin's controversial novel, &quot;Blue Lard,&quot; which featured a homosexual scene between two Russian leaders. Sorokin and my partner, charged with pornography, were fined $3,000. During the trial, the bookstore and my partner's adjoining publishing company were raided several times. Sorokin's books were confiscated. My partner advised me not to come to Moscow, for fear I'd be detained. Our book suppliers were not being paid for shipments. With no new books, our customers left. Finally, my partner merged his publishing company with a much larger company that could give him a krysha from the censors and bureaucrats. A young Russian woman was hired as a caretaker manager of Shakespeare and Co.
 Our sign still hangs outside. But our store, like Yukos, is only a ghost of what it once was. Fortunately, we weren't big enough to share Mikhail Khodorkovsky's fate. 
 Financially, I broke even. And as we say in California, the psychic rewards far outweighed the monetary gains: valuable experience, many new friends and the pride of having owned a thriving literary bookstore.
 But I do have advice for anyone contemplating opening a business in Russia: Until Russia changes its legal system and stems the tide of bribes and corruption, only invest what you can afford to lose.
 
 <i>
Mary Duncan lives in La Jolla, California, and Paris, where she is within walking distance of the original Shakespeare and Co. Bookstore. </i>

TITLE: Few Hitches in Getting Unhitched
TEXT: First, the charmingly unidiomatic declarations of love, the cautious congratulations from friends and family, the delight at every little reminder that you and your new Russian spouse come not only from different countries, but also from different worlds. 
 
And if the delight gives way to a desire never to share a breakfast table again - as it does for two-thirds of Russian-foreign couples, according to Rossiiskaya Gazeta - there may be some consolation in learning that the slate can be swept clean for about the price of three long-stemmed red roses. 
 For a no-fault divorce between a childless multinational couple in Russia, the two need only prepare a joint statement declaring their intention to divorce and present it to the registry office, or ZAGS, where they were first married or where the Russian spouse resides. The registry office will then issue an annulment.
 &quot;If both parties agree and there are no children involved, it's really that easy,&quot; said Yekaterina Kalashnikova, a Russian lawyer who specializes in family and divorce law.
 Michele Berdy, a Moscow-based translator and interpreter, was married to a Russian man. In 1996, she and her then-husband went to the ZAGS nearest his Moscow residence to file for a divorce.
 &quot;It wasn't an onerous process at all,&quot; she said. &quot;We signed something saying we had no material claims against each other, and a month later we came back and picked up the certificates.
 &quot;The woman did look at us like we were nuts because we were relatively cheerful about the whole thing.&quot;
 If the couple has a child under the age of 18, a court appearance is required, Kalashnikova said. But again, barring property or custody disputes, the process tends to be quick and painless. The court will set a hearing date one to two months from the date of application, and a divorce will be granted during the hearing. The presence of lawyers is not required, and the court fee is a mere 200 rubles ($7).
 As far as the division of property goes, Kalashnikova said, &quot;The basic rule is that all the items obtained during the marriage can be split 50-50.&quot; Property each party owned before the marriage remains separate.
 As with divorces anywhere in the world, disputes often arise precisely over this issue, and the greater the amount of money involved, the more bitter the dispute tends to be. In January 2004, during the highly publicized divorce between American millionaire Scott Nicol and Russian former golf star Maya Kucherkova, a Russian court froze the assets of a Russian Nestle subsidiary from which Nicol had netted $52 million.
 One way to avoid such disputes, said Vladimir Lissniak, an attorney with the Pericles American Business and Legal Education Project, is a prenuptial agreement. 
 &quot;It is a good idea approved by years of experience in Western countries,&quot; Lissniak said. &quot;[It is] new for Russia, but it is already in use by new families.&quot;
 Kalashnikova said that in her experience, prenuptial agreements were &quot;quite frequent&quot; in marriages between Russians and foreigners. &quot;They're especially common when one of the parties is a businessperson&quot; who wants to make sure that issues such as spousal and child alimony do not become contested in the event of a divorce, she said.
 In the absence of such an agreement, the Family Code recommends the provision of one-fourth of a parent's monthly income for a single child, one-third for two children and half for three or more. Courts can change this amount at their discretion.
 Custody and visitation disputes are &quot;quite a complicated issue,&quot; Kalashnikova said, especially when a Russian mother has custody and the father is living abroad. In such cases, &quot;Russian courts are normally on the side of the mom,&quot; she said.
 
 <i>
Stephen Boykewich is a staff writer at The Moscow Times. </i>

TITLE: A Road Map for Reform
TEXT: The battle for political power is once again heating up in Russia. The old oligarchs who got their property through shady privatizations are fighting the new oligarchs, the siloviki who came to power under President Vladimir Putin.
 
The old oligarchs replaced politics with intrigues and gerrymandering, spreading corruption to every branch of the government and eventually bringing Putin to power. They are now pretending to be &quot;democrats.&quot; The new oligarchs are pursuing precisely the same policies, but to the benefit of different individuals. They call themselves the state. Both groups have their professional liberals - whether politicians hired for a princely sum by the old oligarchs or appointed to highly visible posts by the new oligarchs.
 Neither group has come up with socially significant goals for Russia's development. They have no concept of its place in the world or of the values that would encourage Russia to discover its identity at last. Thus, it is time to return to the subject of economic and political reform and come up with a real plan of action.
 Reform has become a catchword in Russian political life over the last 20 years. But change does not equal reform. Reform is a conscious and targeted transformation of society according to a particular plan. Reform requires a clear vision of the final goal.
 Even if change is conscious, it still is not necessarily reform. To be reform, change must lead to the modernization of society by encouraging its complexity and the pursuit of certain positive, time-honored ideals. Otherwise, what happened under Hitler or Pol Pot could also be called reform.
 Based on this definition, there are no reforms in Russia today.
 But what should the goal of reform be? The way things stand, the country's lack of a clear and consistent notion of the future is being compensated for by abstract slogans of &quot;greatness&quot; and by an amorphous centrism. We have to define what values to cultivate in Russia, a country with a contradictory past and a contradictory present. We need to know what position we want to occupy in the world.
 For Russia, there are only two possible paths. We can become part of the core of the world capitalist economy -the European path - or we can look for a spot on the periphery. There is no third, special Russian way. Understandably, some fear the European path will mean a loss of sovereignty. Yet, the only alternative is the sidelines and other limits on sovereignty, limits that would be informal but significant. 
 Certain basic human and civic values separate the core countries from the periphery: property rights, personal liberty and notions of social justice. Modernization without a human face will unavoidably land us among the poor and disenfranchised nations and will lead to precisely the opposite of modernization.
 Thus, the first step toward real modernization and effective reform is adopting human rights and individual liberty as our basic values. We need to respect a person's right to property while simultaneously striving for social justice. We need to set the institution of rights above notions of political expediency and the subjective understanding of certain powerful individuals. The concept of a state based on civil rights and liberties and social justice should become a compass on the road map to Russian reform.
 First, we need to address the question of power. The current authorities in Russia, meaning both the president and the entire system of state power, are the product of a decade and a half of major political upheaval. These years saw the repeated disruption of political continuity. The authorities frequently lied and shirked their responsibilities. This naturally affected the government's legitimacy in the eyes of the public. While this never took the form of direct and open contention, Russians have become cynical and skeptical about every move state institutions make.
 There is one huge and almost insurmountable obstacle to reforming this system. For reformers to have a chance at success, the people would have to have significantly more faith in state institutions, the authority of the law and government decisions than they do today. The state needs the additional legitimacy that comes from allowing a wider range of social and political groups access to power. In return, these new participants would pledge to uphold the constitutional order and respect the way the system functions. 
 In addition, the government should adopt a set of laws as a compromise that would limit the political influence of big business. Oligarchs could be kept at bay by increasing the transparency of economically important decision-making and by establishing clear, unambiguous ground rules for overturning government decisions that reflect the interests of particular groups or individuals and that did not follow the proper legislative channels. 
 Second, we need to address the issue of property and the concentration of assets that resulted from the privatization of Soviet state property. Today, the legitimacy of this property is in doubt, and this prevents big business from participating actively in modernizing reforms. There is no clear-cut way to legitimize privatization because the goal of protecting property rights conflicts with the aim of social justice, a necessary part of gaining consensus and guaranteeing the success of reform. Russia needs several new laws to address this problem.
 The first set of laws should declare all privatization deals legitimate, except those that involved violent crimes, while instituting a new windfall tax to compensate society. The second set of laws should consist of functioning anti-monopoly laws and laws to limit capital concentration. The third set of laws would include legislation to guarantee that political donations and lobbying in the State Duma, government agencies and state media are transparent.
 Like power, the problem of property must be solved via compromise. This means guaranteeing the inalienable rights of law-abiding owners while creating rules for using assets that were attained as the result of bureaucratic privatizations and through other non-market procedures. These rules could take different forms, but they need to minimize distortions of owners' motivations in using their assets efficiently while simultaneously ensuring that assets are used in a way that conforms to society's goals.
 This same principle could be applied to property acquired in other ways besides privatization. Guarantees of rights to property attained in ways that did not violate criminal law but involved tax evasion could be granted in exchange for certain limits on this property's use, such as a temporary requirement that money be held in Russian banks, or post factum payment of income tax in return for an official amnesty of tax violations.
 Finally, recent events in Ukraine have led to talk of &quot;deprivatization.&quot; Even if Ukraine's review of privatization deals proves successful, it will not work in Russia. Yet Russia does need a law on deprivatization to reclaim state property privatized by illicit means.
 Third, we need to consider how to make legal arbitration into an independent institution. Just as a complicated sports match cannot work without a neutral referee, economic and political systems cannot function without neutral arbitrators. This role must be played by civil and arbitration courts that should only be influenced by the letter of the law.
 The Russian courts as they currently exist are the product of social conditions radically different from today's. They are staffed by people accustomed to paying more attention to political and economic interests than to the law. It would br wrong to ignore this while planning reform, yet it would be politically and technically impossible to fire every single judge and official. For this reason, we need to let bygones be bygones while firmly increasing professionals' responsibility for any future deviation from the law. This kind of amnesty would mean, for instance, avoiding punishment of judges for past, unjust verdicts. At the same time, we need to establish a way to review questionable verdicts: The numerous victims of these verdicts continue to languish behind bars or remain deprived of their rights.
 After these preliminary amnesties and laws, Russia will be ready for real reform, ready to become a modern, rights-based society.
 
 <i>
Grigory Yavlinsky is the head of the Yabloko party. This comment, which he contributed to The St. Petersburg Times, is the first in a two-part series on reform in Russia. </i>

TITLE: City Hall's Mistakes Are Spurred by Population's Torpor
TEXT: City Hall's housing committee is taking the risk of running tenders to service residential buildings. 
 
The building's residents can at any moment reject the company the committee has nominated, even if the company has invested in the building and not yet recouped its expenses. And investing in the building is the key to winning the tenders.
 The housing committee's reformers can be understood. The reform of housing services is not only urgently necessary, but is also a political task, formulated at the highest levels as the city authorities seek to attract more private firms that could service residential buildings. They are also trying to tackle a particularly tricky problem.
 To create normal market conditions, the first priority must be to have a consumer that creates mass and selective demands. However, the authorities are confronted with the pathological passivity of residents who complain about the poor quality work by state-run services, but show no readiness to behave in a market-like manner. Very few condominiums have been created and residents show no urgency in calling meetings of apartment owners to select a property manager. The market culture in the communal housing services market is still at an extremely low level - St. Petersburgers on the whole have not yet acknowledged that they should take responsibility for their own property. This is the main reason for the lack of development of the sector.
 Some say that the lethargy of the population is due largely to it being ignorant of the latest developments. However, a survey by the Agency for Social Information conducted at the end of November suggests otherwise. The poll showed that 70 percent of St. Petersburgers were more or less informed about the reform. Forty-eight percent of respondents said they approved the shift to market forces in the housing services sector and only 24 percent disapproved. A significant part of the city population recognized the need for changes and wanted them to go ahead, but did not fully understand what the results would be. Nevertheless, mass creation of condominiums has not occurred. Something has to be organized to start everything off. 
 But the reformers are trying to resolve the problem the wrong way around. First, they allocate a property manager to a residential block through a tender, and then they force the winners themselves to organize condominiums - in other words, they pass their responsibilities onto business. The words of Yunis Lukmanov, head of the housing committee, are well known: &quot;The committee will not work with private companies that take a house under management without forming a condominium.&quot; However, this bureaucrat de facto forces the companies to cut off the branch on which they are sitting (remember the condominium can reject the property manager). The companies perceive this as uncivilized administrative pressure; the organization of condominiums is not a core business of management and service organizations. To put it simply - it's not their job.
 I repeat - all these twisted actitivities by the authorities are down to the lack of will of the population to take responsibility for its own property. Of course, the bureaucrats could behave better, but it's clear that that is rather difficult. The party that bears responsibility is ourselves, ordinary St. Petersburgers. In the end, it is for our benefit that the bureaucrats are undertaking all these risky measures. After all, they could have enforced a system that Estonia operated: using law to force the creation of condominiums. If people did not take part, decisions were made without them. And there were no feeding troughs. 
 By the way, as a result of the lack of selective demand from market players, there is insufficient stimulus raise the quality of the services in any significant way and to lower their costs. For this reason, the players are unwilling to expand the services they offer because they don't believe that the demand will go up several times over as the reformers say. On the other hand, the current narrowness of the market that is occupied by the private sector makes them willing to do almost anything to retain their clients. It is no surprise that this leads to abuse and, as a consequence, conflicts.
 Marina Akimova, head of the Association of Property Managers and Condominiums, has witnessed several cases of property management companies - subsidiaries of construction companies - artificially created a front of being in debts with the state monopolies that supply water, gas, electricity and heating so that they will not hand over residential buildings to other companies. In other cases, the construction companies agree with residents that non-residential parts of buildings will remain the construction companies' property and can be used by their property manager to service the house. Akimova says &quot;this is a normal market practice.&quot; Property managers do not behave as if they have to win over residents, but rather as their conquerors. It's also true that the residents have only themselves to blame. 
 As comedian Mikhail Zhvanetsky says: &quot;All you have is yourself. And thank yourself for all that you have.&quot; 
 <i>
 Vladimir Gryaznevich is a political analyst with Expert Severo-Zapad magazine. His comment was first broadcast on Ekho Moskvy in St. Petersburg on Friday.</i>


TITLE: Inside Joke
TEXT: As we all know, President George W. Bush is the most morally upright individual ever to set foot in the White House: a sober, righteous man of God. Yet this very rectitude obscures the fact that he is also one of the great wits of our time, a subtle and sophisticated ironist who has turned the dull business of governance into a highly refined comedic art.
 
With Shavian brio, Bush sends up the bourgeois pretension that words have meanings and actions have consequences. His specialty is the ironic reversal, known by old-time vaudeville gagsters as the &quot;Orwell Twist.&quot; For example, you take a man who concocts justifications for torture, kidnapping and the exaltation of presidential authority beyond the reach of law - and you make him the chief law enforcement officer of the land! It might look easy, but try doing it with a straight face, the way Bush introduced his criminal accomplice Alberto Gonzales as the new Attorney General. It takes real talent to pull off that kind of deadpan.
 Or how about this gem? You steal hundreds of millions of dollars from the public treasury to secretly prepare for a war you've been planning for many years; you tell your closest ally months in advance that the invasion is on, come hell or high water; you unleash a massive bombing campaign against the target months before the war; you deceitfully manufacture and massage evidence to build a bogus case for launching an unprovoked act of aggression against an opponent who has already met all your demands - and then you tell the world that you only wanted peace! What yocks, eh? Not even Groucho Marx could match such comic subversion.
 The list - and the Twist - goes on and on: fostering a &quot;culture of life&quot; through capital punishment, gulag murders and &quot;extrajudicial killings&quot; by presidential fiat; spreading &quot;compassionate conservatism&quot; by gutting aid for the poor, the sick, the weak and the old; naming corporate polluters as environmental guardians; promoting &quot;democracy&quot; by coddling despots; &quot;fighting terrorism&quot; by spawning more terrorists - it's a comedy cornucopia!
 But Bush's satiric masterpiece, equal to &quot;Annie Hall,&quot; &quot;The Philadelphia Story&quot; or even &quot;Herbie Goes Bananas,&quot; might well be his appointment of nuclear war advocates to oversee - wait for it - arms control! Ain't that a hoot? Looney-fringe types who oppose arms treaties, want to build more nukes and use them &quot;pre-emptively,&quot; even in &quot;non-nuclear combat scenarios,&quot; are put in charge of all the pacts and programs to control and eliminate nuclear weapons! Thus &quot;arms control&quot; becomes &quot;Armageddon&quot; in the wacky jargon of Bush-speak. We haven't seen this kind of witty wordplay since the old &quot;Arbeit Macht Frei&quot; gag that the Bush Family's business partners pulled at Auschwitz back in the day.
 But we said Bush was subtle. Almost no one has noticed his June 1 appointment of Robert Joseph as the new undersecretary of state for arms control and international security affairs. Joseph takes the place of John Bolton, the warmongering blowhard and serial fabricator whom Bush has chosen to be the United States' walrus-moustachioed face to the world at the UN. (Yet another masterstroke of wit from the Maestro: Bolton is copiously on record as despising the UN.) Although Joseph is cut from grayer cloth - while still sporting plenty of nasal foliage, which is obviously a requirement for this baggy-pants role - he is probably even more dangerous than his tempestuous predecessor, as Tom Barry of the International Relations Center reports.
 Joseph has been a key player in the &quot;nuke 'em all and let God sort 'em out&quot; school of international diplomacy since his early minioning days in the diseased bowels of the Reagan administration. He came into his own after the Crawford clown-master seized power in 2000, serving as a &quot;special assistant&quot; to the president, in charge of destroying the ABM treaty, that 30-year bulwark against nuclear conflict. He was also instrumental in fashioning Bush's maniacal &quot;Nuclear Posture Review,&quot; which calls for the production of &quot;low-yield, precision-guided nuclear weapons&quot; that can actually be used in combat, or in &quot;pre-emptive&quot; strikes at, well, basically anybody the president decides might pose a vague threat against &quot;American interests&quot; somewhere down the line. 
 But increasing the risk of global nuclear annihilation isn't enough for jolly old Joseph; he also has a fondness for biological and chemical weapons. Along with nukes, they make up a Holy Trinity of WMD that &quot;have substantial utility&quot; in the &quot;international environment,&quot; he writes. And he doesn't just want user-friendly WMD to be &quot;a permanent feature&quot; of life on earth; he's keen on militarizing the heavens as well - pre-emptively and unilaterally, natch. And it goes without saying that he opposes any attempts to place limits on U.S. testing and deployment of mass-death weapons.
 That's &quot;arms control,&quot; Bush-style, for you: a perfect joke. Yet Joseph's merry pranks don't stop there; he was also responsible for pushing one of the many big lies - sorry, funny stories - in Bush's pre-invasion propaganda blitzkrieg: the pure hokum about Saddam's nonexistent search for African uranium to fuel his nonexistent nuclear program. As with so many others, Joseph's egregious intelligence &quot;failure&quot; has been rewarded with honors and promotion. Because of course it was no failure at all; it was a well-played pantomime, faithfully following the script of Bush's war-crimes comedy.
 Lurking behind all this cynical katzenjammer is the grinning skull of the Bush death-cult: a mad but all-too-plausible dream of conquest, loot and unlimited dominion. For this dream, the cultists have already murdered countless thousands and are gambling with the very life of the world itself. With these comedians, the joke is always on us.
 
 <i>
For annotational references, see Opinion at www.sptimesrussia.com </i>

TITLE: Hacker Had Access to 40M Credit Cards
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK - A computer hacker may have accessed more than 40 million credit card accounts in what could be the largest in a series of recent security breaches involving consumer data, officials said. 
 
MasterCard International Inc. announced Friday that the breach was traced to Atlanta-based CardSystems Solutions Inc., which processes credit card and other payments for banks and merchants. 
 All brands of credit cards could be affected.
 The compromised data did not include addresses or Social Security numbers, said MasterCard spokes-woman Sharon Gamsin. The data that may have been viewed - names, banks and account numbers - could be used to steal funds, but not identities.
 Gamsin said she did not know how the virus-like computer script that captured customer data got into CardSystems' network, which MasterCard said was infiltrated by an &quot;unauthorized individual.&quot; Neither company would elaborate.
 The FBI was investigating.
 MasterCard said 14 million of its customers may have been exposed to fraud. A spokeswoman for American Express said a small number of its cardholders were affected, but would not give an exact number. Discover Financial Services Inc. wouldn't say whether its customers were affected. Visa USA and a large issuer of cards, MBNA Corp., did not return calls for comment Friday.
 The incident was the latest in a series of security lapses affecting consumer information. The breach appears to be the largest yet involving financial data, said David Sobel, general counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
 &quot;The steady stream of these disclosures shows the pressing need for regulation of the industry both in terms of limitation in the amount of personal information that companies collect and also liability when these kinds of disclosures occur,&quot; he said.
 Under federal law, credit card holders are liable for no more than $50 of unauthorized charges, and many card issuers will even waive the $50.
 MasterCard announced the breach in a news release Friday, saying it was notifying its card-issuing banks of the problem.
 CardSystems then released its own statement, saying it first learned of a potential breach on May 22. The company said it was told by the FBI not to release any information to the public; its statement Friday had been vetted by the agency.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: CIA 'Knows' Hideout 
 </b>

NEW YORK - The director of the CIA says he has an "excellent idea" where Osama bin Laden is hiding, but that the United States' respect for sovereign nations makes it more difficult to capture the al-Qaida chief. 
 In an interview with Time for the magazine's June 27 issue, Goss said: "I have an excellent idea where he is. What's the next question?"
 Goss did not say where he thinks bin Laden is, nor did he specify what country or countries he was referring to when he spoke of foreign sanctuaries. 
 
 
<b>Soldier Kills Eight
 </b>

SEOUL (Reuters) - A bullied South Korean soldier on duty at the fortified Demilitarized Zone border with the North threw a grenade at sleeping comrades on Sunday then opened fire on them, killing eight, the Defense Ministry said. 
 The private, identified by his surname "Kim," fired 40 shots from his rifle after throwing the grenade at his guard post in Yonchon at the DMZ, about 60 kilometers north of the capital Seoul, a ministry spokesman said. Kim was arrested later.
 
 
<b>Refugee Numbers Fall
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GENEVA (Reuters) - The number of refugees worldwide fell in 2004 for the fourth year running to 9.2 million, the lowest figure for 25 years, the United Nations said Friday.
 But the number of internally displaced people, or refugees who have not crossed a border, asylum-seekers, stateless people and others "of concern" to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, rose by more than 2 million in the same period.
 That took the number of people being helped by the refugee agency to 19.2 million, compared to 17 million in 2003.
 The drop in refugees largely reflected the continuing high number of voluntary returns.
 
 
<b>Koizumi in Seoul
 </b>

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi arrived in Seoul on Monday for a meeting with South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun to try to patch up ties frayed by disputes over their countries' bitter history. 
 Seoul is angry at what it sees as Tokyo's failure to face up to its militarism during World War II, symbolized by Koizumi's annual visits to a Shinto shrine for Japanese war dead. 
 But prospects of a dramatic turnaround in relations appeared slim as Koizumi has shown little sign of accepting South Korea's request that he stop visiting Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine where some convicted war criminals are honored along with other Japanese war dead. 
 
 
<b>Winfrey Top Celebrity
 </b>

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Talk show queen Oprah Winfrey reigns supreme among celebrities, according to Forbes magazine's power rankings of the top 100 celebrities released on Thursday. 
 Winfrey moved up from No. 3 in 2004 to supplant "Passion of the Christ" director Mel Gibson at the top of the list. Golf star Tiger Woods held on to his runner-up position and Gibson slid into third place. 
 The Forbes power rankings give the most weight to a celebrity's earnings over the past 12 months but also factor in popularity standards including Internet presence, press clippings, magazine cover stories and mentions on TV and radio, Forbes said. 
 Rounding out the top 10 were basketball star Shaquille O'Neal in fifth place, followed by film director/producer Steven Spielberg, actor Johnny Depp, pop music stars Madonna and Elton John and actor Tom Cruise.

TITLE: Campbell Fends Off Woods
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PINEHURST, North Carolina - Michael Campbell answered every challenge Tiger Woods threw his way Sunday until a U.S. Open full of surprises got the biggest one of all. Woods blinked first. 
 
Ten years after being touted as a rising star, Campbell finally delivered a major championship no one expected with clutch par saves and a 20-foot birdie putt on the 17th hole that proved to be the knockout punch.
 The only drama at the end was whether Campbell would beat Pinehurst No. 2. He missed a 3-foot par putt on the final hole for a 1-under 69 to finish the tournament at even par.
 It was good enough for a two-shot victory over Woods, who charged along the back nine until missing an 8-foot par putt on the 16th hole, then three-putting from 25 feet on the par-3 17th, the same hole that doomed his chances at Pinehurst six years ago.
 Campbell raised his arms when the final putt fell and looked to the sky, stunned by a crowning moment in a career that looked so promising in the British Open at St. Andrews 10 years ago.
 The 36-year-old New Zealander tugged his cap down over his face and then dabbed at his eyes. After hugs with his caddie and playing partner Olin Browne, Campbell thrust his fist in the air and threw his ball into the crowd.
 &quot;I worked really hard for this, ups and downs from my whole career,&quot; Campbell said. &quot;But it's worth the work. It's just amazing.&quot;
 Campbell, who finished at even-par 280, became the first Kiwi to win a major championship since Bob Charles in the 1963 British Open. 
 Woods stayed behind the 18th green and watched Campbell finish, gently rubbing a clenched fist over his lips as he stared back toward the 17th green, wondering how another U.S. Open at Pinehurst got away from him.
 &quot;Unfortunately, it's frustrating,&quot; Woods said after a 69, one only four rounds under par on the final day. &quot;If I putt just normal, I'm looking pretty good.&quot; Woods finished at 2-over 282, only the second time he has finished second in a major.
 Sergio Garcia (70), Tim Clark (70) and Mark Hensby (74) tied for third at 5-over 285.

TITLE: Horry Puts Pistons Ahead
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: AUBURN HILLS, Michigan - Big Shot Bob did it again. Robert Horry, the veteran player whose clutch postseason 3-pointers have defined his career, knocked down a wide-open 3-pointer with 5.8 seconds remaining in overtime Sunday night to give the San Antonio Spurs a 96-95 victory over the Detroit Pistons in Game 5 of the NBA Finals. 
 
The Spurs took a 3-2 lead in the best-of-seven series, bouncing back from a pair of lopsided losses to defeat the defending champs in their own building and send the series back to San Antonio needing just one more victory for their third title in seven years.
 Horry inbounded from the left sideline near midcourt with 9.4 seconds left, finding Manu Ginobili in the corner. Detroit's defenders collapsed on Ginobili and left Horry wide open for the return pass.
 Bad idea, as so many of Horry's opponents have learned in the past.
 &quot;Manu cut to the basket and Rasheed bit,&quot; Horry said. &quot;I've been shooting it pretty good so I just let it fly.&quot;
 Game 6 will be Tuesday night, and Game 7, if necessary, on Thursday.

TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: Mexico Beats Brazil
 </b>

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) - Mexico upset Brazil 1-0 Sunday in the Confederations Cup, outplaying the five-time World Cup champions with Jared Borgetti scoring the winner on a 59th-minute header.
 Mexico joined Germany and Argentina in the semifinals of this high-profile showcase, a two-week tuneup for next year's World Cup. In Sunday's other Group B game, Asian champion Japan beat European champion Greece 1-0. The semis are next weekend and the final will be played June 29.
 
 
<b>Schumacher Wins
 </b>

INDIANAPOLIS (Reuters) - World champion Michael Schumacher claimed a hollow win at the U.S. Grand Prix on Sunday after only six cars started because of a fiasco over tire safety. 
 Seven of the 10 teams pulled out after the warm-up lap. They had pleaded in vain for an extra chicane to slow down the cars because of concern over the durability of Michelin's tires.
 Boos rang out from the stands at the Brickyard track, which were packed with an estimated 120,000 spectators, during and after the race. It was Schumacher's first win of the season.
 
 
<b>Germany Wins Again
 </b>

BLACKBURN, England - Birgit Prinz scored a goal to help Germany win its fourth straight European Women's Championship, 3-1 over Norway on Sunday. 
 Anja Mittag put Germany ahead in the 21st minute. Three minutes later, Britta Carlson sent a perfect pass from near the halfway line to Renate Lingor, who scored to make it 2-0.
 Dagny Mellgren made it 2-1 in the 41st, shooting a well-placed shot past Silke Rottenberg. Prinz put the game out of reach in the 63rd with her third goal of the tournament.