SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1091 (57), Friday, July 29, 2005
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TITLE: GermansSee Shady City Link
AUTHOR: By Greg Walters
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — German prosecutors confirmed on Tuesday that they are investigating the privatization of Telekominvest, a St. Petersburg holding company that IT and Communications Minister Leonid Reiman helped set up more than a decade ago.
Reiman himself is not a subject of an ongoing money laundering investigation and will not face charges, a spokeswoman for the Frankfurt prosecutor’s office, Doris Moeller-Scheu, said. 
Investigators are examining Telekominvest only to determine whether assets transferred to Germany had a criminal origin, Moller-Scheu said. German prosecutors have limited jurisdiction outside Germany, she said.
The legitimacy of Telekominvest’s 1990s privatization is therefore a key point in the investigation — but only as a legal prerequisite for proving money laundering charges in Germany. “If it does not come from criminal acts, it was not money laundering,” she said. “That’s the point.”
The goal of the German probe is not to file charges relating to the privatization itself, she said. 
Telekominvest on Tuesday said there had been no wrongdoing in a series of share issuances in which private companies gained control of the company.
“There was a series of share emissions,” said Telekominvest spokesman Alexei Ionov. “The state companies did not take part. Therefore, their share dropped.”
“It was all done absolutely legally and absolutely officially,” he said.
The German investigation is focusing on seven individuals, five of whom are current or former employees of German banking giant Commerzbank, Moller-Scheu said.
Moeller-Scheu declined to give details on the other two individuals, but said that not all the people under investigation were German nationals. 
Reiman was a senior executive responsible for international relations at St. Petersburg Telephone, or PTS, a state-owned company that originally owned 50 percent of Telekominvest. 
Reiman was also one of the founders of Telekominvest, which became the holding company for a significant chunk of PTS assets. 
Lyudmila Putina, the president’s wife, worked for Telekominvest at the end of the 1990s, Vedomosti Daily reported on Thursday, quoting an anonymous source close to the company, confirming information originally printed in Frankfurter Rundshau this week.  
Putina started working for the company shortly after she moved with Putin to Moscow when he was appointed to a federal position.
“It would have been impossible to call the Moscow branch an office. It was more likely a place where communication specialists who came from St. Petersburg held their meetings,” Vedomosti cited the source as saying. 
“Lyudmila Putina was the only employee. She answered phone calls, organized meetings,” the source said, “There wasn’t any political background in her work. … It shouldn’t be assumed that Telekominvest and Putin are connected in any way.”
The Kremlin believes that journalists are mentioning Putin’s name in connection with Telekominvest to bring intrigue into the story. 
“It is not clear from the article [published in Frankfurter Rundshau] in what way Lyudmila Putina and her brief employment at Telekominvest are related to the problems in the communication business,” Vedomosti quoted an anonymous source from the presidential administration as saying. 
Commerzbank said that from 1996 to 2001 it held shares in Telekominvest via a Luxembourg-based company.
Commerzbank was one target in a series of raids that German and Swiss investigators staged in Frankfurt, as well as Zurich and Zug in Switzerland. 
Alexander Parshukov, a spokesman for the IT and Communications Ministry, condemned the investigations and Western media coverage of them.
“This is a program targeted against Russia. There is no proof,” he said. “I suspect this is an ordered attack. ... A lot of people took part in the creation of the company. Why did they decide to pin it all on Reiman, just because he is a minister now?”
Eurokapital, an investment management company owned by a close associate of Reiman, Danish lawyer Jeffrey Galmond, was targeted in the recent raids in Frankfurt. 
Galmond is the beneficiary owner of a majority stake in Telekominvest, and owns shares through a Luxembourg-based holding company called First National Holding, or FNH, which purchased a majority stake in Telekominvest in a series of deals starting in late 1995.
Galmond has said in court testimony that he asked Commerzbank in 1996 to act as a “nominee shareholder” for his interest in FNH. The bank held shares in FNH until 2001.
Without mentioning Telekominvest, German and Swiss authorities said on Monday that they were investigating Commerzbank employees in connection with possible money laundering and the privatization of an unspecified Russian company. 

Staff writers Catherine Belton and Vladimir Kovalev contributed to this report.

TITLE: Official Snipes At Industrial Zone Plan
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Leningrad Oblast vice-governor Grigory Dvas criticized the investment policy of St. Petersburg City Hall, saying at a briefing on Tuesday that some of the latest projects supported by the city government should be examined by law enforcement agencies because theydamage the local budget.
Dvas slammed City Hall’s initiative to develop an industrial area in the satellite town of Shushary earmarked for a new Toyota automobile factory that is scheduled to begin making cars in 2007.
“Recently, St. Petersburg’s [government] policy should, in my view, be scrutinized by the prosecutor’s office,” Dvas said at a briefing with the Interfax news agency on Tuesday. “It’s enough to listen to Mr. [Maxim] Sokolov, [head of the City Hall investment committee], who said that the city would invest $100 million in the development of infrastructure for the Toyota factory. From this factory the city would get an annual $3 million. What budgetary effectiveness can we discuss here?” 
“City Hall authorities should instead have bought shares with an annual interest of 12 percent. They would have got a much bigger profit in this case. It looks as if the city is competing for political advantage,” as opposed to developing a sound investment plan, Dvas said.
City Hall disagrees. It has said Toyota will not be the only production plant in the industrial zone in Shushary.
“It is true that the money invested in the development of the infrastructure on this territory is quite large, but this area is being developed not only for the Toyota plant to occupy 220 hectares of the industrial zone. There will be another 500 hectares for use by other projects,” Maxim Sokolov, head of the City Hall investment committee, said in an interview on Wednesday.
“It is not yet clear which projects may come to this area, though there are rumors that other car producers, not related to Toyota, would like to come to this industrial zone,” Sokolov said.
Dvas’ boss, Leningrad Oblast governor Valery Serdyukov, joined in the dispute at a meeting of the regional government on Thursday by saying that the remarks made by Dvas are incorrect and expressed hope that the vice-governor would offer an apology to St. Petersburg governor Valentina Matviyenko. 
According to representatives of the Japanese diplomatic mission, which is supporting the Toyota project, conditions for setting up industrial zones for foreign businesses are becoming similar in St. Petersburg to those in operation in Japan. 
Foreign companies coming to work in Japan are not usually offered beneficial tax conditions or additional support from the government but use infrastructure developed using government money, Takuo Kidokoro, Japan’s consul-general in St. Petersburg, said at a meeting with journalists last month.
“When a foreign company arrives in Japan it does not need to invest large amounts in infrastructure, buildings or land development. Such things already exist [for companies to use],” Kidokoro said.
Kidokoro named several setbacks that deterred Japanese companies from working in Russia, such as a poor postal service and prohibitive amounts of paperwork for company registration. A major worry, and a cause of incredulity from Japanese business, was how a government could claim back taxes against a company for a period as far back as five or more years, Kidokoro said, referring to the $75 million bill that cigarette maker Japan Tobacco International was hit with earlier this year.
Despite such points of contention, Kidokoro said that he believed Toyota’s decision to build its factory outside St. Petersburg was made on economic grounds, not political ones.

TITLE: Kids Readied for German-Russian Exchange
AUTHOR: By Angelina Borovikova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Closer German-Russian ties are bringing dividends to a group of St. Petersburg teenagers who are taking part in a new school exchange scheme.
In September, five St. Petersburg schoolgirls and three boys aged from 15 to 17 leave for Germany for an academic year of about 10 months. They will attend German schools and live with German families. 
The schoolchildren return to St. Petersburg in June 2006. Enrollment for next year’s program (2006-2007) will be held in December and January.
Candidates to join the program were selected at a two-day seminar in April where seven grants to study in Germany, which cover most expenses, were assigned. 
It was not simply a matter of getting excellent grades or knowing German. 
“The main criteria were having a talent for communicating with people and easily adjusting to new situations,” said Gulya Sultanova, the project’s coordinator.
Experts watched the candidates solving different problems in groups. Domineering behavior or not letting others speak their mind was considered a minus, as was excessive shyness. 
A native speaker of German was present at the candidates’ interviews to ask unexpected questions to test the children’s familiarity with the language. 
Candidates who made no response at all lost a point. 
“The organizers’ main task was to choose those children able to survive in a totally strange country for a year,” Sultanova said.
Lyuba Bushmakina, 16, one of those chosen to go to Germany said German was her third language after Russian and English and it was to some extent by chance that she joined the Russian-German exchange program. 
“It was to a large extent the activity of the project’s coordinator Gulya Sultanova that played the crucial role,” Bushmakina said.
Sultanova said Germany has special ties with St. Petersburg. 
“Many Russian people have relatives there,” she said. “As for German people, they like the city very much, so it’s a mutual interest. Germany has been popularized widely in Russia lately, and I would say it is the second-most popular country in St. Petersburg now. So lots of young people are interested.”
Sultanova did not say which she thought is St. Petersburg’s most popular foreign country.
Training to prepare the students for living in another country began earlier this month and continues all summer. Instruction touches on many aspects of living in Germany, starting with geography and ending with dealing with a host family. 
Three children are still uncertain about where they will go, as they have yet to be chosen by a host family which chooses their guest after studying candidates’ application forms. Most of those who have been chosen will go to Hamburg.
Anya Parasyuta, 16, who graduated from high school this year, said she has already seen her host family’s photos and is in the process of writing a letter to them. 
“There are four daughters in my host family. One of them will come to Russia on the same program, so I’m kind of substituting for her this year. However, my family is not the one to host her,” she said.
Abid Abdurakhmanov, who finished the 10th grade this year, said he hasn’t been chosen by a family yet. 
“I know German and would like to receive my higher education in Germany. I hope this trip helps me make it,” Abdurakhmanov said.
A family whose son or daughter goes to Germany under the program is under no obligation to host a German one.
The German schoolchildren will come to Russia in September. 
The organization is looking for families to host them at least for the first month. Families accommodate the project’s exchange students for free and provide them with food. The participants and the organizers bear all other expenses.
“[Not paying the hosts] is the only way to make sure the family is interested in the very idea of communicating with a person from another country,” the organization said in a press release. 
The organization ensures children’s security. The host family takes responsibility for what happens to the child under a contract with the organization. Similar contracts are signed with schools where children will study. But an organization representative oversees how everything goes during the whole year.
For the first two months in Russia, the German students will attend Russian language courses.
Only one family has agreed to host a German schoolgirl to date. “Most of the families who had displayed initial interest in the project later refused to take part in it due to financial or housing problems,” Sultanova said. 
Andrei Kryukov, an entrepreneur who agreed to host a German, said it was his wife, a language teacher, who persuaded him to take part in the project. 
“She has German roots and as a language teacher surely wants to improve her German,” he said. 
“I think it’s a risky undertaking to host a foreigner for a year. As for me, I hope that it will bring diversity to my life.” 
“We deliberately chose a person who doesn’t know Russian. My elder son is 12, he studies German and is looking forward to meeting the girl. There are three men in our family, I think my wife will enjoy having a girl living with us,” Kryukov said. 
“We were not seeking an extremely well-off person, so that she wouldn’t be shocked coming to Russia,” he said. 
“Our girl’s hobbies are bicycle riding, music and architecture, not yachting, as some of the candidates mentioned in their resumes. We wanted to be able to provide her with everything she might need.”
The scheme is run by the German-Russian Exchange organization and the American Field Service.
The American Field Service is the largest association of organizations dealing with international exchanges of schoolchildren, and represents 52 countries around the world. It provides year-long and semester-long programs for over 10,000 participants annually.
AFS started operating in Russia in 1989, when an indefinite agreement on the exchange of schoolchildren was signed between the Soviet education committee and AFS Intercultural Programs. In 1992, the charitable foundation Intercultura was created to work in Russia as a partner of AFS Intercultural Programs.
The most popular countries with St. Petersburg schoolchildren are Germany, the U.S. and Italy, said Olga Duganova, director of programs at AFS Intercultura in Moscow. 
“On average five children go to Germany with AFS Intercultura annually, compared to three or four to the U.S. and two or three to Italy, but figures are different every year. Apparently, Germany’s the most popular because AFS Intercultura provides grants for studying there,” she said.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Smuggler Sentenced
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Latvian sailor Pavels Dolgovs has been sentenced to five years in prison by Vasileostrovsky federal court for smuggling several kilograms of cocaine into the city from Ecuador, Interfax reported.
The 25-year-old sailor of the Latvian Shipping Company smuggled about 5 kilograms of cocaine on board the Maltese boat “Sculptore Tomskie” while in Ecuador in 2004. Upon arrival in St. Petersburg in December of 2004, Dolgovs was detained with his illegal load when leaving the sea terminal.

Battle Reenactments
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The 10th historic battle reenactment festival opened in Vyborg on Thursday, Interfax reported.
Participants from amateur reenactment clubs from over fifty Russian towns as well as Latvia and Belarus are in town until July 31 to take part in the reconstruction of a knights battle, a siege and the storming of Vyborg castle, concerts of Medieval music and a series of tournaments between cavalry knights and archers.
Following the festival’s strict charter, all costumes, armory and gear have to be handmade and perfectly match their historical period. The organizers stress that the only difference between the festival’s armory and the original historical weapons is that for safety reasons the weapons must be blunted. 

Typhoid Cases Up
ST. PETERSBURG  (SPT) — Three men died from typhoid during the last six months in St. Petersburg, Interfax said Thursday.
All three men were aged from 33 to 37 and were said to be homeless.
City epidemiologists are alarmed at the increase in typhoid cases. In the last seven months 28 typhoid cases have been registered compared to only eight cases registered last year.

Suvorov To Bulgaria
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A bronze monument to the great Russian commander Alexander Suvorov was due be sent from St. Petersburg to Bulgaria on Friday, Interfax said.
The monument is to be unveiled in the city of Varna in September as part of a St. Petersburg festival in Varna.
Bulgarians revere the 18th century Russian general, whose troops twice took the Turkish fortress on the right bank of the Dunai river.

TITLE: Historic Italian Ship Docks for Navy Day
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Italian sailing ship “Amerigo Vespucci,” one of the most beautiful boats of its kind in the world, is in town until Monday to welcome visitors and take part in Sunday’s naval parade, part of Russia’s Navy Day celebrations.
The elegant, stately, three-mast full rigger is moored on the English embankment, close to the Lieutenant Schmidt Bridge. A symbol of Italian naval traditions, the ship is named after the famous Florentine sailor, explorer and cartographer. 
“Amerigo Vespucci,”  built in 1930 as a replica of an 18th-century vessel, is making its fourth visit to St. Petersburg. However, the boat last traveled to the city over thirty years ago.  After the end of World War II, the ship became Italy’s only sailing ship serving as a training vessel for first year students of the prestigious Italian Naval Academy in Livorno.
Built at the former Royal Shipyard in Castellamare di Stabia, “Amerigo Vespucci” traveled extensively before World War II but wasn’t in use during the war. During its history, the vessel has completed over 60 sea voyages to ports in the U.S., Brazil, Argentina, Central America and Europe. In 2002-2003 the ship sailed around the globe.
The ship’s usual crew doesn’t exceed 300 people but this swells to 450 in the summer months when the vessel takes aboard naval cadets for training journeys. 
True to its being a replica of an 18th-century boat, “Amerigo Vespucci” boasts rig and sheets made solely from traditional materials like canvas and hemp ropes, with the exception of the mooring lines, which have to be synthetic due to international requirements.

TITLE: Peterhof Reveals Plans To Become New ‘Science Town’
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The St. Petersburg satellite town of Peterhof, known for its park full of fantastic fountains, could soon be known for a new kind of park now that it has been given the status of  “scientific town” by the federal government. The move aims to promote investment in scientific research centers located in the town and to create  a number of science parks.
Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov signed a decree to that effect on Saturday, making Peterhof  the seventh Russian town with the designation, after Obninsk, Dubna, Korolyov, Michurinsk, Reutov and Koltsovo, Fontanka.ru reported.
Peterhof authorities had lobbied for the recognition for the last four years. Despite its being known as the town where Peter the Great’s summer palace and lavish gardens are located, Peterhof is also home to 12 scientific and research institutes such as the Central Scientific Institute of the Defense Ministry, a center for laser physics within St. Petersburg State University, the Makarov Navy Academy, and others.
The range of projects planned for the future scientific town is very wide, and includes ecological research, developments in information and telecommunications technologies and electronics, as well as advanced arms and military equipment.
Peterhof’s palace museums also give scientists the opportunity to conduct research on restoration and preservation techniques.
Plans for Peterhof’s development include the creation of a science park and creation of opportunities for innovation.
Vladimir Troyan, head of scientific work at the St. Petersburg State University, said three centers united in a technology park will be opened in Peterhof. One of them will be the center of information technologies, which will also be called on to solve the problem of Russia’s brain drain, Fontanka.ru reported.
Troyan said about half of all Silicon Valley programmers come from Russia. The special attention paid by the government to towns such as Peterhof aims to create incentives and opportunities for young scientists to stay in Russia.
A second center will conduct research into nanotechnology, while a third will develop bio technologies.

TITLE: Forbes Publishes Celebrity Rich List
AUTHOR: By Anna Smolchenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Teenage tennis diva Maria Sharapova is Russia’s richest star, earning $18.2 million in the past year, according to a new ranking by Forbes Russia to be published Thursday.
In its first ranking of Russian celebrities, the magazine found that the country’s top athletes, entertainers and models collectively earned $116 million over the past year.
In comparison with the Forbes list of the top 100 U.S. celebrities, that’s just a drop in the bucket — American film director George Lucas alone took home more than twice as much — $290 million.
Russia’s best-paid pop singer, Alla Pugachyova, made $3.1 million, just one-sixteenth of Madonna’s $50 million earnings.
“Russian stars are cheap,” Kirill Vishnepolsky, deputy editor of Forbes Russia, said in a statement. “Russia barely has 50 stars whose annual income equals or exceeds $1 million.”
What’s more, the list’s three richest stars don’t even live in Russia — Sharapova is a resident of the United States; boxer Konstantin Tszyu, who made $8 million, calls Australia home; and tennis star Marat Safin, earning $4.7 million, lives in Monaco.
Athletes and pop singers dominate the Russian list, with only one movie star making the list.
Russia’s most famous clown, Vyacheslav Polunin, was the country’s fourth-best-paid celebrity, making $4.2 million and ranking just above Mariinsky Theater director Valery Gergiev, who earned $3.5 million.
However, Forbes acknowledged that money isn’t everything, and made a separate “power ranking” based not only on income, but media coverage and public recognition.
Sharapova also topped the composite ranking, followed by pop singer Filipp Kirkorov, Pugachyova, teen pop idols Zveri, Tszyu, Safin, rock group Umaturman and singer Zemfira.
Forbes said it determined the celebrities’ incomes from publicly available sources, estimates by independent analysts and data supplied by the celebrities themselves.
But at least one of the celebrities on the list seemed taken aback by her ranking.
Thriller writer Darya Dontsova, who has churned out more than 50 paperbacks over the last 5 years, said she was surprised to hear she earned $2.1 million in the past year.
“It would be nice if it were true,” she told Vedomosti business daily.

TITLE: Putin Discusses Terror Threat
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: President Vladimir Putin told senior Interior Ministry officials on Wednesday that they must act to prevent terrorism, saying recent attacks in Russia and abroad underscored the persistence of terror threats worldwide. 
Putin also emphasized Russia’s role in the fight against international terror, equating continuing violence by militants in Chechnya and Dagestan with recent attacks in Britain, Iraq, Turkey, Israel and Egypt. 
The attacks “show that terrorism remains one of the main threats in the world,” Putin said. 
“Russia will carry out an important part of the joint work in the fight against terror,” he said. “Your actions in this area must have a preemptive, preventive character.” His comments included no details about what kind of preventive actions authorities should take. 
Putin also said that more than 130 militants had been “neutralized” — meaning killed — in the North Caucasus in the first half of the year.

TITLE: Inflation Preys On the Minds of Most Russians
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — More Russians are worried about inflation than any other issue, including terrorism and crime, according to a poll released on Thursday.
The survey of 1,500 adults conducted in June found that 51 percent of respondents were “concerned” about the country’s double-digit inflation — more than were worried about poverty and low pay (44%) or unemployment (34%). 
The findings come at a time when the government is struggling to rein in rising consumer prices. Earlier this week, the government raised its inflation forecast for the year to 10 to 11 percent — and even that is an optimistic target, experts say.
Prices surged by 11.7 percent last year. Russia has never seen single-digit inflation in its post-Soviet history. 
“The older the respondents, the more likely they are to pick [inflation],” ROMIR Monitoring, the polling agency that conducted the survey, said in a statement.
Two thirds of retirees complained about rising prices, compared to just a third of younger respondents in the 18 to 24 age range, the survey said.
For the older generation, inflation has increased in relevance in recent months, after the government decided earlier this year to replace some social benefits with cash. 
Incensed by the change, thousands of retirees took to the streets of Moscow and several other large cities in the strongest showing of public discontent in five years.
At 33 percent, drug addiction was the fourth-largest concern for respondents. 
And over a quarter of respondents said they were concerned with growth in crime.
One in every five respondents complained of “weak government” and one in six picked terrorism.

TITLE: Societe Generale Considering Purchase of DeltaCredit Bank
AUTHOR: By Alex Fak
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — French banking giant Societe Generale is set to take over DeltaCredit, Russia’s largest private mortgage lender, an anonymous source familiar with the situation said Tuesday.
The deal between France’s No. 3 lender and DeltaCredit is valued at “between 90 [million] and 100 million dollars” and is to be signed by Aug. 15, the source said. The source spoke on condition of anonymity because the deal has not been signed. 
Both DeltaCredit and the French bank declined to confirm the deal.
Igor Kuzin, CEO of the Russian lender, said in an e-mail message that “there is currently no deal regarding the sale of DeltaCredit.” Mireille Mourtada, the SocGen spokeswoman in Paris, said the bank had no comment “for the moment.” 
Yekaterina Pantelyushina, director of corporate communications at Delta Private Equity Partners, the owner of DeltaCredit, would only say that several large foreign lenders were interested in the bank but none of the suitors had been picked yet. She declined to provide the names of the banks.
Vedomosti reported on Wednesday that the deal with SocGen involved the International Finance Corporation, the World Bank’s private investment arm, taking a minority stake in DeltaCredit before the French bank is to buy the rest.
DeltaCredit was established in 2001 and currently has 4,000 mortgage loans on its books, amounting to $175 million, Pantelyushina said.
Foreign banks are lining up to tap into Russia’s underdeveloped but fast-growing mortgage market. The United States’ Citibank, Austria’s Raiffeisenbank and France’s BNP Paribas already run home-credit operations in the country.
In the first three months of the year, 269 credit institutions loaned a total of 4.7 billion rubles ($164 million) in mortgages, according to Central Bank figures. In the same period, the total mortgage debt grew by 9 percent to reach 19.5 billion rubles ($680 million).

TITLE: Insurer Seeks Merger
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Yekaterinburg based Euro-Asian Insurance company (EACK) is considering a merger with St. Petersburg insurer Russky Mir, Interfax reported Wednesday, citing Vladimir Ostrovsky, head of the insurance industry inspection board in the Ural region.
Ostrovsky said EACK’s license has been suspended because of improper financial policy and abuse of liabilities, leading the Yekaterinburg firm to seek mergers with several insurers, including Russky Mir.
When contacted on Wednesday, Russky Mir strongly denied any merger plans with EACK, saying it would only consider the acquisition of a financially stable insurer with notable market presence.
Ostrovsky said that EACK will have their license revoked should the company fail to prove financial improvements through convincing documentation.
The warning has left EACK desperate to renew their license using “any means” available, including “working in partnership with others companies,” Veronika Lamberova, marketing director of EACK, told Interfax this week.
Lamberova could not be reached for comment on Wednesday or Thursday.
Industry experts said a merger between the two companies could be a good solution.
“The acquisition of EACK by Russky Mir would be a rational step because it would enables EACK to keep its insurance portfolio and serve its clients under the Russky Mir license,” said Ivan Smirnov, Senior Associate at DLA Piper in St. Petersburg.
“Another solution would be to hand over part of its insurance portfolio to Russky Mir, if the latter has the necessary licenses and financial resourses to carry liabilities,” Smirnov said, adding that it would nonetheless be a time-consuming, high-cost option.
Russky Mir denied any partnership possibility or plans to buy EACK. While several former EACK employees had transferred to Russky Mir recently, this would not evolve into an issue concerning the whole company, a representative of the St. Petersburg insurer said Wednesday in a telephone interview.
“Information about the merger has circulated in the Urals for a month. We issued an official statement denying it. Perhaps we could make one more statement especially for Ostrovsky,” said Yevgeny Gurevich, marketing director at Russky Mir.
Gurevich said that a merger would be impossible because of the different sizes of the two companies and EACK’s serious legal problems.
Russky Mir has 110 branches operating in 62 regions, providing 59 types of insurance. EACK operates only in three regions, with slightly more than 20 types of services on offer.
“License suspension is a usual procedure for the Russian market. The federal insurance inspection revokes and renews the licenses of several firms every week,” Smirnov said.

TITLE: Oblast to Hike Taxes On Slot Machines by 400%
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The regional authorities will increase the gambling tax on slot machines by up to 400 percent from October, Interfax reported Wednesday. Industry players warn the move will halter a rapidly developing industry.
“By September, a draft of the law will be put before the Legislative Assembly and from the last quarter of this year the law will be in effect,” Interfax quoted Grigory Dvas, vice-governor of the Leningrad Oblast, as saying.
In contrast to the threefold to fourfold tax increase for slot machines, Dvas said that the tax levied on gambling tables will actually decrease. 
The major players on the gambling market include Stek, Agro, which owns SET and Progressive gambling halls, Vulkan, and Profit, the owner of the Jack-Pot brand. Delovoi Peterburg daily reported that there are 5,200 slot machines and 62 gambling tables registered in the Oblast, without stating a clear source.
The gambling tax is one of three taxes paid directly to the local budget, which makes it a more immediate target for tax hikes, experts said.
“The arcade business grows faster than casino,” said Alexei Sluchayev, executive director of St. Petersburg’s gambling industry association. Sluchayev said that at the moment the tax on slot arcades in the Leningrad Oblast stands at 3,500 rubles ($122) per machine.
The Oblast’s move mirrors a similar tax rise instigated by the St. Petersburg authorities last fall. Taxes on slot machines, tables and totalizators jumped to 7,500 rubles, turning the city into one of the most expensive regions for the gaming industry.
A tougher tax policy will hamper the growth of the gambling industry, Sluchayev said. The effect of the tax changes in the city have meant that a number of promising entertainment center projects have already closed, taking jobs and tax revenues with them, he said.
“Just like in any other market, there are law-abiding entrepreneurs and shady businesses that evade taxes. A tax increase always and everywhere leads to an expansion of the second kind of companies,” Sluchayev said.
Alexander Pomortsev, marketing and public relations director for Stek, a slot machine producer, said the situation in St. Petersburg may transfer to the Oblast.
“Rumors about tax increases appear from time to time, but are not always true. Still, the taxes in St. Petersburg were increased to the maximum last year. So I don’t exclude the possibility of it repeating in the Oblast,” he said.

TITLE: Pearl Picks 5 For Design
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The design for the Baltic Pearl complex, a $1.5 billion residential district project that will span 180 hectares, will be chosen from a tender by the end of September, the project’s investors said this week.
“We’ve already conducted considerable planning. The project has been approved by the city authorities, but we are not as yet satisfied with the results,” said Bao Jiming, president of Shanghai Overseas Investment Company, the financier and constructor behind the Baltic Pearl.
Over six months, five companies have been picked from a list of 40 applicants to participate in the design of the project. Which of the five will get the nod will be decided by a jury formed of city government representatives, Chinese and Russian urban planning and construction experts.
On the shortlist of five are the English consortium of OMA projects firm and Ove Arup & Partners Ltd., Belgium’s Xaveer De Geyter Architecten, the American HOK planning group, Swedish projector SWECO FFNS and a Russian consortium of Zemtsov, Kondiain and Partners architectural bureau and Studio-44 architectural studio.
Shanghai investors said the impact of each of the designer’s projects will be reviewed by fall. The Chinese side refused to provide any details on the tender, saying the payments to the firms will correspond to international standards.
Maxim Sokolov, chairman of the committee on city planning and architecture, told Interfax news agency that a large company would agree on such tenders if royalties would exceed $100,000.
In a rare move, the Baltic Pearl may also be arranged as a compilation of several ideas. Wu Zhiqiang, dean of the Architectural and Urban Planning school of Tongji University in China, said that the tender could have between one and five winners, since the size and complexity of the Baltic Pearl development required a more innovative approach.
The final design must suit not only the city’s cultural and architectural style, but also seek to improve the quality of living standards, Zhiqiang said. 
“As St. Petersburg architects we welcome this project. Lots of new districts were built around the city. That’s the first example of a complex project with huge financing,” said Yury Zemtsov, head of Zemtsov, Kondiain and Partners.

TITLE: Clinic Launches $1M Unit
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Tightening its focus on the premium class market for medical services, the American Medical Clinic has opened this week a $1 million intensive care unit.
The four-bed facility, equipped with the latest in hi-tech apparatus, promises to be the largest such unit among the city’s private hospitals, completing the most expensive part of this year’s $2.5 million transformation at the clinic, sponsored by owners Adamant holding.
“Foreign visitors tend to turn to a clinic when they are in critical situations,” Yefim Danilevich, general director of the American Medical Clinic, said.
 “We’d like to position ourselves more concretely as a clinic that can deal with heavy, difficult situations, catering to tourists, ex-pats, and well-off Russian clients,” he said.
In addition to a closed circuit TV system and specialized air-conditioning to minimize the risk of infection, the clinic has installed a TV in each of the four individualized rooms.
Sergei Anufriyev, deputy director of the Finnish-Russian clinic Scandinavia, sees the development as “positive” for all St. Petersburg private hospitals and an important step showing that “private clinics are becoming investment-worthy.”
“Investors always looked at breweries or real estate, etc. Now medicine is showing it can attract the investors and that is good for the market and for clients,” Anufriyev said.
“The American Medical Clinic deals well with extreme cases, which often happen to tourists,” he said. “So I am sure that their beds will always be full. Unfortunately.”

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: COMCON Hits No. 1
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — COMCON has become the largest Russian research company in terms of capacity, the firm said Tuesday in a statement.
The increase in size comes as COMCON completes the construction of the country’s largest Center for Advanced Technology and Innovation, which  will double their production volumes, the statement said. The 150-telephone line center in Moscow includes a separate room for online research and several focus-group studios.
In the last three years, the market research industry has grown at the pace of the country’s consumer market — 30 percent a year. Experts estimate the total marketing industry budget to be about $110 million a year.
The building of the center will allow COMCON to promote a dynamic expansion of its workload for the next two to three years, the company said. In 2004 COMCON completed more that 700 projects.

Happyland Sales Boost
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Happyland Corporation, the leading producer of low-alcohol and non-alcoholic beverages in Russia, increased sales by 22 percent in the first half of this year, compared to the same period last year, the company said Tuesday.
With a sales volume of 5.8 million decaliters, the company retained a 28 percent share of the country’s low-alcohol market.
The highest growth was in drinks brewed on license, with the best results coming from energy drinks Jaguar (112 percent boost in sales) and Red Devil (44 percent sales increase).
Drinks on license from the U.K.’s IBB cocktail maker (Trance, Red Devil, Jaguar and Manchester) make up a third of Happyland’s total sales.
Happyland forecasts a 25 percent sales growth in the second half of 2005, compared with 2004 figures.

Alcan Plans $30M Plant
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Canadian aluminum and packaging producer Alcan Inc. plans to build a $30 million packaging factory on the territory of the city’s non-residential zone Krasnoselskaya, city officials said, Interfax reported.
The company is currently performing research on the site that will produce cigarette packaging aimed at  likely tobacco manufacturing clients Phillip Morris and British American Tobacco.
The production launch date has been set as 2006, and about 120 jobs will be created.

IT Park Gets Date
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A hi-tech park combining 5,000 IT workers, to be formed on the base of the St. Petersburg Polytechnic university, could be built by 2009, Sergei Romanov, head of the university’s strategic planning, said Wednesday, Interfax reported.
Several parts of the hi-tech complex are already in place, Romanov said, but the six hectare area allotted for the construction will need new buildings such as a business incubator, science-orientated manufacturing facilities, and relaxation zones for IT staff.
“According to world standards, the hi-tech park should be about 10 minutes to 15 minutes walk from the university. We hope to attract specialists and the best students from our university to the hi-tech park — in all about 5,000 people,” Romanov said, Interfax reported.
The city authorities will run a tender to pick the IT park’s final architectural and structural design from November this year. Winners are expected to be announced by February 2006.
The park’s planning committee will meet this Friday to discuss more details.

TITLE: Their Own Version of Justice
AUTHOR: By Georgy Bovt
TEXT: There was a shootout last week near a village called Maliye Vishery, not far from the city of Novgorod. News agencies reported that local police had exchanged fire with a group of thugs who had taken the entire village hostage.
It all started innocently enough. A businessman from St. Petersburg drove down to relax in the countryside. The paucity and poor quality of roads in Russia makes it nearly impossible to drive straight to a destination out in the country as you could in even the remotest corner of the United States, for example. So the businessman parked his Audi on one bank of a river, hired a ferryman to take him across since there was no bridge over the river, and on the far bank he finally immersed himself in the wonders of nature.
When the businessman returned to his car, however, he found that one of the locals had taken a nail to it, badly scratching the paint. The peace and harmony achieved during his time in the woods immediately drained away, and the furious businessman set off to find out who had vandalized his car.
It goes without saying that his suspicions immediately fell upon the residents of the nearby village — the poor ferryman mentioned above and his neighbors. This is a normal occurrence in the central part of European Russia. An outsider comes to town, and driving a fancy car to boot, while the locals, as they’ll tell you, are wallowing in dirt and drink. He’s lucky they only damaged his car. They could just as well have smashed his face in out of drunkenness, boredom, poverty and because they have nothing better to do.
No one owned up to the crime, so the businessman drove back to St. Petersburg for some muscle. He returned with reinforcements and firearms, including a Saiga hunting rifle. No details of what the gunmen did to the hostages have been made public, but we do know that the incident ended well: The thugs were arrested, the hostages were freed, and all of them remained among the living.
Does this story have a happy ending? Not in my book. I’m left with a nagging question: Did the police track down and bring to justice the person who scratched the Audi? After all, this misdemeanor was what set off the businessman from St. Petersburg in the first place.
Don’t bother trying to find out the answer to this question. It’s obvious. The answer is no. The police in Russia almost never pay attention to minor crimes like this. Things like hooliganism, panhandling and fighting — unless it results in serious injury — simply don’t register, as if they weren’t serious enough crimes to merit the heroic efforts of our law enforcement professionals. Petty theft is beneath their notice. So is the epidemic of dacha burglaries that has swept the country, forcing many unfortunate homeowners to organize neighborhood watches and private patrols. Some out of desperation have resorted to lynching the thieves. In one well-known case, gardeners near Nizhny Novgorod stuck some burglars in homemade cages and subjected them to corporal punishment. The gardeners were later tried, but the burglars were not — they were seen as the victims in the case.
The police simply turn a blind eye to these and many other “minor” violations of the law. Senior law enforcement officials usually attempt to explain away this do-nothing attitude as the result of personnel shortages and the low wages paid to police officers, while insisting that they are working hard to improve the performance of their officers. Nothing ever comes of all this training, of course. The police simply carry on as before.
Whatever you call them, businessmen or thugs, the gunmen from St. Petersburg understood how the police work. They knew that if they had gone to the local police station in Maliye Vishery and asked them to find out who had taken a nail to the Audi, the police would have told them to get lost, as if to say: “Who the hell do you think you are, with your fancy foreign car, coming in here and wasting our time with this crap. Take a hike and let us do our job.”
In this sense, the criminal behavior of the St. Petersburg businessman was the product of the criminal ineffectiveness and inaction of the police. How would the police in an EU country or the United States react if someone came to the station and reported, for example, that his car had been keyed? They wouldn’t exactly be thrilled, but they’d almost certainly get over it and conduct some kind of investigation. And in a place as small as Maliye Vishery, the odds are that they’d crack the case.
This is why people in Europe and the United States go to the police first when something like this happens. The thought of taking the law into their own hands occurs only in extreme situations, or in the movies.
When I was studying in New York 15 years ago, there were a lot of areas even in Manhattan that were best avoided after dark. The area around 42nd Street, for example, was filled with sex shops and drug dens and all sorts of unsavory characters. Then Mayor Rudolph Giuliani declared a “zero tolerance” policy with regard to all anti-social behavior, even the most petty. The police were instructed to respond to any violation, and they did. As a result, the number of serious crimes committed in the city, such as murder and burglary, also began to go down. Giuliani’s “zero tolerance” policy drastically improved the atmosphere on 42nd Street and throughout the city.
Unfortunately, the atmosphere in the village of Maliye Vishery is bad and it’s not getting any better. The level of “tolerance” for anti-social behavior among the police, the local authorities and even the residents is so high — compared to New York — that what would be considered a crime, or at least a minor violation, in other countries is just the way things go in Maliye Vishery.
And if that’s the case, why should we be surprised when someone else decides that it’s perfectly acceptable to take hostages at gunpoint as an “act of justice”?

Georgy Bovt is editor of Profil.

TITLE: Putin Should Settle Doubts About His Past Conduct
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalev
TEXT: The Russian president Vladimir Putin is immune to everything. While others are ending up in jail charged with dubious tax violations or blamed for misappropriations of state property allegedly committed in the past, Putin and his subordinates are doing fine no matter what is said about the president’s past conduct. Take the time, for instance, when he worked in St. Petersburg’s City Hall as the head of the committee for international affairs and was responsible for business cooperation between St. Petersburg and its international partners.
The long story about Putin’s alleged involvement in shady deals with the non-ferrous metals industry in St. Petersburg at the beginning of the 1990s, revealed to the public by city parliament lawmakers Marina Salye and Yury Gladkov, has been totally forgotten and remains unexplained. The fact that the parliamentary investigation launched by the two deputies almost led to Putin’s resignation from the city government does not matter now. The time that has elapsed since, more than 10 years, is apparently longer than the federal authorities’ memories.
Handwriting, though, doesn’t burn.
According to the archives of the daily Novaya Gazeta, which quote materials from the parliamentary investigation, a range of intermediary companies engaged in the export of non-ferrous metals from St. Petersburg at the beginning of the 1990s got up to $34 million in kick backs in deals officially approved by Putin, who was responsible for issuing licenses for international business cooperation at that time. The companies promised to provide St. Petersburg with food supplies that have never arrived in the city, according to the materials from the investigation.
On the one hand, it would seem that the amount of money mentioned in the parliamentary investigation is hardly enough to start making reservations for a cell in Matrosskaya Tishina jail, taking into account that the conviction that put Mikhail Khodorkovsky there concerned missing billions, not millions. Perhaps the deal over the non-ferrous metals, if it ever led to a conviction, would only merit a cut-price cell, or perhaps the corner of a cell, for those who are allegedly involved.
But on the other hand the president himself has declared in 2000 that he would follow the principles of “a dictatorship of the law,” so why wouldn’t he have told the public what was going on, to be fair?
He should have clarified all these deals quite a while ago, including the business with the company SPAG that was mentioned by German authorities in relation to cases of money laundering and in which Putin allegedly worked as a consultant, as well as the most recent development over details of the privatization of Telekominvest that popped up in the media on Tuesday this week. 
According to Frankfurter Rundschau, the names of Putin’s wife Lyudmila, as well as the Russian communications minister Leonid Reiman, are mentioned in connection with shady deals over the communications company with the involvement of Commerzbank. The bank is currently under scrutiny by German law enforcement agencies investigating the case of money laundering.
When one of the most powerful opponents of the Russian president is sitting in jail and another, former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov, is on his way to court, Putin’s silence about questionable deals in which he was involved creates a serious credibility gap between the Russian population and the international community on one side and the Kremlin on the other.
The Russian population has gotten used to the fact that power is corrupting, so the recent news on the deal over Telekominvest will not add anything new to the general picture. 
But the persecution of businesses and politicians opposing the Kremlin starts looking pretty awkward when it’s clear that the leader himself leaves a shady trail. Even more so from the point of view of Russia’s partners in the West, which now have even more questions about the priorities of the Russian prosecution system than might have otherwise been asked at international summits.

TITLE: Northern treasures
AUTHOR: By Andrei Vorobei
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: In medieval Russia, two forms of social organization flourished — cities, where trade and political power were concentrated, and monasteries, the era’s most important cultural centers. 
In Russia, one tourist trail that links such ancient religious and civic centers is near Moscow, the much-hyped “Golden Ring.” The well-worn route includes such famous and influential monasteries as the Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra as well as the cities of Vladimir, Rostov, Yaroslavl, Uglich, Suzdal — all of which were involved in the formation of the Russian state after the city of Kiev lost its influence. 
But at the same time, less-promoted but no-less-exciting sights linked with  this key period of Russian history can be found outside the magic circle of the Golden Ring and within reach of St. Petersburg. One of the regions rich with this heritage is around the city of Vologda, 600 kilometers to the east of St. Petersburg — a manageable distance  in Russian terms (an overnight train journey). 

Morning
After passing through the quite unpleasant industrial city of Cherepovets, the train arrives in the city of Vologda, which is the regional center. 
Vologda dates back to 1147 and is full of colorful wooden houses. As regional civic center it has its own Kremlin. The majestic St. Sofia Cathedral with the silver Orthodox “onion” cupola is one of its gems. At the same time, to be honest, the city of Vologda itself today is not in good shape and is probably best considered as a convenient departure point for other tourist destinations — such as Veliky Ustyug, said to be the home of Ded Moroz, the Russian counterpart of Santa Claus — or the open-air town-museums at Totma, Ustyuzhna and Belozersk. 
But, there are two sights that should be given top priority: the Ferapontov and Kirillo-Belozersky monasteries. The history of the monasteries is connected and begins with the two monks St. Kirill and St. Ferapont who traveled the long road from Moscow. 
St. Kirill founded the Kirillo-Belozersky monastery in 1397. A year later, St. Ferapont left St. Kirill to found his own cloister. Although the Kirillo-Belozersky monastery was much richer, well-known and influential in the past, time has altered the pecking order and now the Ferapontov monastery holds first place on the tourist’s itinerary. 
Around twelve o’clock
The Ferapontov monastery stands about 70 kilometers outside of Vologda, that is, less than one hour by bus. Fortunately, the route is gratifying to the eye, since both monasteries are located in the Russky Sever (“Russian North”) National Park. 
The bus ride is a good opportunity to immerse oneself in the stern and Romantic beauty of Russia’s northern natural environment. Soon, amid picturesque green hills, the white walls of the Ferapontov monastery come into view. 
Although the monastery hasn’t performed its traditional function since Soviet times (it’s just a museum now, although there are services on important religious holidays), it has nonetheless preserved the sacred aura of a genuinely spiritual place.
The Ferapontov monastery was built over several centuries. Beginning with the wooden buildings of Ferapont’s time, the first brick building at the monastery — the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin — was constructed by Rostov masters in about 1490. Now the ensemble consists of six brick buildings dating from the 15th to 17th centuries, including holy gates, churches, a treasury and refectory chambers, a bell tower, and a brick wall that surrounds it dating from the 19th and 20th centuries. 
The main point of interest is the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin, since Dionisy, an outstanding representative of the Moscow icon painting school and the leading Russian artist of the turn of the 16th century, worked here. According to a signature left by Dionisy himself on the Northern Door, he and his sons (Feodosi and Vladimir) painted the interior walls of the church from Aug. 6 to Sept. 8, 1502. The motif of the interior frescoes of the church, which cover 600 square meters, is quite traditional for Russian Orthodox churches of the 14th-16th centuries. Painted in soft colors, there are frescoes depicting the Christ Pantokrator, the Enthroned Virgin, Evangelists, the Last Judgment and other figures and scenes from the Old and New Testaments as well as key events from later Christian history, such as the Seven Universal Cathedrals accepted by the Orthodox Church. 
The mural, which is of exceptional artistic value, is the only authentic and completely preserved work by the famous master and is the only existing ensemble of frescoes from medieval Russia. In fact, Dionisy’s frescoes brought international recognition to the Ferapontov monastery, which was included by UNESCO on its World Heritage List in 2000. The UNESCO citation recognized that the wall paintings “are the highest expression of Russian mural art in the 15th-16th centuries.” 

Three hours later… 
Some 20 kilometers from the Ferapontov monastery is its slightly older sibling. The Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery stands on the banks of  Lake Siverskoye. As at Ferapontov, the first wooden churches here were replaced by stone ones at the end of the 15th century. Among the buildings of special interest are the first and the oldest Uspensky Cathedral (“of the Assumption”) built in 1497, the Church of the Archangel Gabriel with an attached bell-tower and a refectory. The reign of Moscow princes was a good time for the monastery which received large donations. In the present day, unfortunately, its multiple frescoes, rich library, and iconostases are spoken of only in the past tense. The monastery is now important mostly for its permanent museum displays, which features such interesting stuff as church utensils, books and an extensive collection of Russian icons, including some by the hand of Dionisy and his school. The exhibition expounds on such  notorious historical events as when the northern monasteries became a place of exile. 
In addition, the monastery is good example of Russian medieval religious and defensive stone architecture. Its historical function of Moscow’s outpost on the trading routes in the North is reflected in the enormous size of its fortified walls. Now semi-ruined, the Kirillo-Belozersky monastery nevertheless retains its greatness and beauty. 

For more information about the region and its sites see the excellent English-language version of the Vologda Oblast administration’s web site at www.vologda-oblast.ru

TITLE: Warhol on the way
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: More than 300 works by Andy Warhol, one of the 20th century’s most controversial artists, are to be exhibited in St. Petersburg in November in the largest show of works by the American artist to be held in this country.
Warhol’s art, which celebrates consumerism and pop-idols, will be shown first in Moscow’s Tretyakov Gallery from Sept. 13 through Nov. 13, and then in the Marble Palace of the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg in December. The Samara Art Museum and an art gallery in Belaya Kalitva — a small town 500 kilometers south of Moscow — will host the show in the spring of 2006.
The choice of the latter two unlikely locations is explained by the fact that the exhibition is funded by the Pittsburgh-based Alcoa Incorporated, the world’s leading producer of primary aluminium, which has metallurgical plants in Samara and Belaya Kalitva.
Curators will divide the exhibition in two equal parts called “Portrait” and “Still Life.”
The project will showcase Warhol’s art in all its diversity, from luminiscent portraits of celebrities and politicians to junk-container still lifes and sculptures, films and “Time Capsules” that incorporate memorabilia documenting everyday life such as photographs, newspaper clippings, greetings cards, books and records to provide a compelling insight into America’s culture. A series of politically charged works featuring notorious Soviet symbols, like the hammer and sickle, will also be presented.
The exhibition’s title — “Andy Warhol: The Artist of Modern Life” — refers to French poet Charles Baudelaire’s work, “The Painter of Modern Life” (1863).
Warhol’s works were first shown in Russia in 1978 as part of a wider exhbition of contemporary American art, alongside other artists. But it wasn’t until 22 years later that Warhol’s pop-icons — despised by the Soviet culture bosses — returned to Russia. In 2000, the State Hermitage Museum’s General Staff Building hosted a goundbreaking, 40-piece exhibition sponsored by the U.S. State Department. Its signature image was a giant 1986 self-portrait in red, while the most memorable and photographed item was Warhol’s famous handpainted BMW “Art Car.” 
Thomas Sokolowski, director of the Andy Warhol Museum, attended the opening at the Hermitage, and described the artist as “a true mirror of his time.”
“Andy Warhol is the consummate embodiment of the American Dream, an individual who, combining genius with sheer hard work, became the single most important cultural figure in the second half of the 20th century,” Sokolowski said.
Curators say the current project will completely outdo the 2000 show at theHermitage, which in a sense served as ouverture to what will be the full-length opera.
Andrew Warhola was born in Pittsburgh in August 1928 into a family of immigrants from an obscure settlement in Carpathian mountains, currently on the border between Romania and Slovakia.
His teenage hobby was making collages and scrap-art items from cut -out newspaper adverts and images of movie musical stars. 
Having worked as a commercial  illustrator, Warhol moved on to interweave consumer culture with classical art imagery. His art was born out of faceless trash and recyclable junk including soup cans, cigarette packs and Coca Cola bottles. 
The Guardian Weekend’s reviewer Jonathon Jones once pronounced Warhol’s art “a complete imaginative anthropology of the United States in the decades after the Second World War, to the extent that walking through [a Warhol show] is both chilling and overpoweringly sentimental.”
“Here are the everyday objects, the gods and the goddesses: soup cans and Coca-Cola bottles, Elvis and Marilyn, the atom bomb and the FBI’s Most Wanted Men, a fireman cradling a dying person and a suicide plummeting out of a window, Liza Minelli caught in the flashlight and the electric chair,” Jones wrote in his review of the exhibition at the Tate Modern in London in 2002. 
Quoting Colleen Russell Criste, director of external affairs at the Warhol, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that the Russian exhibition will raise funding for the Pittsburgh Warhol museum and the revenue would allow its employees to build bridges with Russian museum professionals.

TITLE: Chernov’s choice
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
TEXT: The Mike Flowers Pops will perform at Jet Set Beach, the summer-time open-air site run by the Jet Set Club on Saturday. The British novelty band made the charts in December 1995, with its unlikely, cocktail-bar version of the Oasis anthem “Wonderwall.”
“Over the years I had regularly enjoyed listening to the music of others, and now thought it only fair that I should ‘do my bit’ as regards the history of popular music,” wrote the white-suited, wig-wearing Flowers on his web site. 
“I thought I would start by preparing a number of arrangements of universally popular songs, and then recruit the appropriate musicians for a flexible expanded pop group.”
Since his first success with the Oasis cover, Flowers has covered songs by the Doors, David Bowie and the Velvet Underground, among others. Jet Set Beach is located on the beach of the Gulf of Finland in Komarovo. Tickets might be expensive, and it is unlikely to attract a rock concert crowd. Take an elektrichka from the Finland Station.
The Latin-inspired British band Organic Audio, complete with a VJ, will headline the Wind  Party at Letobar on Friday. The band formed by Cambridge hip-hop musician Andy Spence, known for his work as half of the Freakniks. He has used the moniker Organic Audio for his solo work since the late 1990s. 
Popular DJ bar Datscha will throw the second in its Datscha Goes Reeperbahn series of parties paying homage to Hamburg, the hometown of its founder Anna-Christin Albers. Launched last month with a set by DJs Ralf Best and Spu Matu, the “Hamburg” parties continue with Edwin Page, who will spin his mix of soul, funk, disco and electro. Page who owns two trendy bars, Barbarabar and 3 Zimmerwohnung Gatzenberg in Hamburg, will perform on Friday. Named for the famous Hamburg street, the parties are a “return to [the bar’s] roots,” since it was inspired by similar bars in the German city, according to Datscha’s news release.
Good local acts performing this week include Marksheider Kunst and Skafandr, both at Moloko, on Friday and Saturday, respectively.
Later in the summer, Light Music, the promoter behind the popular dance festival Stereoleto, will put on what it calls the “Last Stereo of Summer” headlined by Jay-Jay Johanson on Aug. 26. According to the promoter, the Swedish crooner will perform with a live band, not with a pair of computer operators as he did in St. Petersburg in 2003.
Despite what it says on her web site, Patti Smith will perform at Music Hall, the old Soviet venue that has seen concerts by Jimmy Somerville, Suzanne Vega and Marc Almond, the concert’s Russian promoter said. Smith will perform in St. Petersburg on Sept. 2 and at B2 club in Moscow on Sept. 3.
Meanwhile, the local band La Minor, which had to postpone its Western European tour due to a visa problem, has finally gone on tour. After skipping some German dates the accordion-driven urban-folk band performed in the Netherlands this week.

TITLE: Hooked on classics
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Ballet master Yury Grigorovich, the venerable legend of Soviet choreography, is bringing his young and highly nurtured Krasnodar-based troupe for an exhaustive two-week stint at the Mariinsky Theater. Kicking off Monday and running through Aug. 15, the tour features six productions, including Grigorovich’s renditions of “Le Corsaire,” “Swan Lake,” “Spartacus,” “Romeo and Juliet,” “Raymonda” and “The Nutckacker.”
The Grigorovich Ballet was created in 1995, when the 78-year-old choreographer was forced to leave the Bolshoi Ballet where he had been artistic director for almost three decades beginning in 1964. He moved to Krasnodar on the invitation of prominent artist Leonard Gatov.
Since that time the choreographer has staged ten productions with a young troupe, including updated versions of his “Spartacus,” “Le Corsaire” and “Swan Lake.” Grigorovich built his company from scratch, starting from choreographing “Golden Age,” a suite for several dancers set to a piece by Shostakovich of the same name, in 1996.
“After that, I decided to form a company,” Grigorovich recalled at a news conference at the Mariinsky Theater on Wednesday. “It was assembled from dancers from across Russia, for instance, from Novosibirsk, Perm and Samara.”
The Grigorovich Ballet soon premiered the choreographer’s adaptation of the original Marius Petipa version of “Swan Lake,” which was enthusiastically welcomed by audiences.
The Grigorovich Ballet repertoire features a selection of the works he did during his time at the Bolshoi, and which gained him international fame: original interpretations of “The Nutcracker,” “Romeo and Juliet” and “Spartacus,” as well as new adaptations of classical masterpieces of the past, such as “Swan Lake,” “Don Quixote” and “La Bayadere.” 
“My version of ‘The Nutcracker,’ where I am also responsible for the synopsis, shows the evolution of a girl from a child into a young woman, falling in love, dreaming and discovering new feelings,” Grigorovich said. “The ballet explores this emotional transition.”
While “The Nutcracker” is entirely choreographed by Grigorovich, “Swan Lake” features elements of the original text. 
“The canonic version of ‘The Nutcracker’ didn’t survive, so there wasn’t  really anything to be used,” he explains. “When I do adaptations of classical pieces like that — rather than creating my own purely original work, like ‘The Legend of Love’ or ‘Spartacus’ — I aim at keeping the choreographic heart of the initial work. This means preserving the ‘Shadows’ in ‘La Bayadere’ and the swans in ‘Swan Lake’.”
In the spring of 2004, Grigorovich invited the glamorous Bolshoi Ballet  dancer Anastasia Volochkova, who is famous for easily drawing crowds of spectators while generating reams of contemptuous and scornful reviews, to be the company’s prima ballerina. The dancer, who is currently expecting a child, held the job and performed in Krasnodar until recently, and Grigorovich said he will welcome her back when she is in shape. “She is a very bright and gifted dancer, and I am looking forward to working with her again,” the ballet master said.
Volochkova’s contract with the Bolshoi was terminated this year in headline-grabbing circumstances but the dancer hadn’t been given any new roles for over two years prior to her dismissal.
Grigorovich speaks with frankness and grace about the years following his departure from the Bolshoi, where some of his works, such as “Spartacus,”  are still performed to full houses and taken on tour abroad. 
“Spartacus” premiered on April 9, 1968 at the Bolshoi Theater. “I feel enormously rewarded by the knowledge that this ballet has been running for so long,” Grigorovich smiles. “As they say, if the audiences aren’t willing to stay, there is no way to stop them.”
He feels no nostalgia for the company which gave over 90 international tours under his artistic leadership to global recognition. And there is very little time left in his hectic schedule to go to the Bolshoi as a member of the audience. Grigorovich is simply too busy with his young and developing troupe and with staging his works worldwide from London to Seoul.
“I have only been [to the Bolshoi] about five times over the ten years, so I don’t have a consistent and thorough idea of what the company is like these days,” Grigorovich said. “But I feel that the bent toward contemporary works and the changing proportion between classical and modern ballets are alarming trends as this tendency will soon lead to the degradation of the troupe’s integrity and its trademark style.”
Grigorovich believes the Bolshoi’s recent emphasis on the modern repertoire is excessive and regrettable. He is for a balanced coexistance of the old and the new.
“It is hard to imagine a drama theater without Shakespeare or Moliere, and in the art of ballet, where the repertoire is much more limited, the absence of the classics is much more damaging,” Grigorovich said. “It is just wrong to sacrifice the Russian national ballet tradition in order to copy what foreign companies have.”

TITLE: The Forsythe saga
AUTHOR: By Kevin Ng
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: LONDON — Still known overseas as the Kirov Ballet, the Mariinsky Ballet will close its two-week season at the Royal Opera House in London on Saturday with a performance of “La Bayadere” led by its top stars Ulyana Loptakina and Igor Zelensky. On Monday the Mariinsky Opera, which tours London less frequently than the Mariinsky Ballet, will open its one-week season with “Boris Godunov.”
Loptakina’s superlative performance of “Swan Lake” opened the Covent Garden season on a high note, while the first week of the Marriinsky Ballet’s London engagement ended with two performances last Sunday of a program of short works by William Forsythe. Now an almost monthly fixture in the troupe’s St. Petersburg repertoire, the Mariinsky’s program of one-act ballets by the 56-year-old American choreographer was presented to London audiences for the first time.
The Forsythe program included the Mariinsky’s newly acquired ballet “Approximate Sonata” (1996) which was premiered in this year’s Mariinsky Ballet Festival in St. Petersburg in March. It is a fascinating work consisting of five duets with some dialogue thrown in. Andrei Ivanov, usually cast as a jester figure, was brilliant as the lead dancer who appeared in the beginning and end of the ballet. 
Yevgenia Obraztsova, his partner in the first and fifth duet, was totally ravishing in her classical purity. In the second duet, the young corps de ballet dancer Yelena Vostrotina was most eye-catching; her stunning long limbs lent an amplitude to the choreography. The colorful casual costumes designed by Stephen Galloway enhanced the ballet.
Another 1996 Forsythe work “The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude,” which received the loudest applause last Sunday night, is Forsythe’s homage to George Balanchine, the greatest choreographer of the 20th century; its sunny and joyous choroegraphy evoke Balanchine’s masterpiece “Symphony in C.”  
Tatiana Tkachenko was particularly impressive among the three women, and danced with amazing control.  Andrian Fadeyev and Leonid Sarafanov, two of the Mariinsky’s most exciting male virtuosos, were dazzling in the demanding, speedy choreography. 
In the afternoon, Fadeyev’s role was competently danced by the the 20-year-old coryphee dancer Vladimir Shklyarov, who is surely another male star in the making. What a pity that Shklyarov was not featured more prominently in London.
The program opened with the 1985 work “Steptext,” set for a ballerina and three men, apparently intended by Forsythe to re-examine the tradition of the duet and the role of the ballerina. It is the least satisfying work in the program. The gimmickry — house lights being turned on and off unexpectedly, and the abrupt stopping of the taped music of Bach’s Chaconne — was rather offputting. However, Diana Vishnyova and Daria Pavlenko were equally splendid in the two casts. Igor Kolb was trim and incisive in his rapid solo.
The closing work, “In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated,” is Forsythe’s most famous ballet and is danced by a number of companies worldwide including London’s own Royal Ballet. 
This ballet has a split focus instead of a central focus, with more than one dance happening simultaneously. For instance, a duet can take place at the same time as a solo on another part of the stage. Dancers often face the back of the stage instead of the front. There is a constant tension and disequlibrium in this ballet, enhanced by Thom Willems’ music.
Forsythe’s choreography fits the Mariinsky Ballet’s supreme classical style perfectly. This Forsythe program marks another triumph for the Mariinsky Ballet on the London stage.

TITLE: My beautiful launderette
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Cafe Stirka 400, a combination bar and launderette, which is pretty unusual for this city, is actually an art project. 
It is a small, cozy place to have a coffee or a beer and/or wash your laundry in one of its three washing machines, but its Berlin-based owner Anke Nowottne presented it as her graduation project — it earned her a degree at the Zurich School of Art and Design last year.
“It’s a conceptual work,” said Nowottne, who studied photography in St. Petersburg, Germany and Switzerland, about Stirka.
“I didn’t want to do any pictures but to put together an everyday picture of life and defend it in front of my professors in Switzerland.
“It was a gesture — not to do an exhibition in Zurich but to open Stirka in St. Petersburg. My partner Alexei Lukyanov went to Zurich as a manager of Stirka to support me and presented the project in Russian with me translating — it was more like a performance. And people there didn’t fully understand, whether we made it up or just thought it up, whether it exists in reality or not.” 
Nowottne, who works as a designer and photographer, took part in an exhibition, “Homo Photos. Self-Portraits of Photographers,” at the Museum of City Sculpture in March and April. From September she will be teaching at the University of Applied Sciences in Dortmund, Germany. She also designed Stirka’s logo and postcards.
Stifled for funds, Nowottne brought the furniture in her van from Switzerland, and built the metal-leg tables herself with help from neighboring plumbers. 
The three “semi-professional” washing machines and two dryers were delivered by sea. 
“I persuaded one company and they brought it here by boat for free,” said Nowottne, admitting she still had to pay substantial costs at the Russian border. 
The idea occurred to Nowottne when she studied at St. Petersburg’s Mukhina Academy of Art and Design in the early 2000s.
“There are such places in Germany, they are called Waschsalon, and there are many, many machines there. You drop a coin, wash your things and then go home; it’s very convenient, especially for students,” she said.
“I missed such a place then, because I didn’t have very many things and it was impossible to bring things to the [Russian] laundry and then wait for a week. At the same time I wasn’t used to washing with my own hands.”
Indeed, most of Stirka’s clientele are foreign students, although all kinds of young people, from Russian students to rock musicians and DJs drop by for a drink, to meet friends and to attend an occasional music or art event. 
Arty pop band Pep-See played an unplugged “secret” gig there in winter, while, earlier this month, Alexei Nikonov of punk band Posledniye Tanki v Parizhe recited his poems and performed a few songs backed by Sergei Yefimov, better known as Doctor, a singer with the local alt-rock band Vragi and Stirka’s bartender and occasional DJ.
According to the message that Nikonov left in Stirka’s guestbook, reciting poems at the place, “while laundry is being washed,” reminded him of the late “dirty realist” American author Charles Bukowski. 
Stirka’s regulars even include a babushka who lives in a building across the street and comes to do her washing frequently.
Robert Plant’s drummer Clive Deamer who stayed at upscale hotel Astoria when the ex-Led Zeppelin singer came to perform his one-off Russian concert in April dropped by Stirka to wash some of his belongings for unknown reasons.
“I don’t know how he heard about us. He left a message in the guestbook asking us to bring his stuff to his suite at  the Astoria because he was in a hurry. But when he was told that we don’t have such a service, he came back himself the next day,” said Nowottne, adding that Deamer gave a few tickets to Plant’s show to Stirka’s staff.
Bartender Yefimov is also responsible for Stirka’s music events, but prefers not to distribute news about the upcoming events too broadly because of the place’s small size.
“I’d advertise them after they have taken place rather than in advance,” he said by phone this week, but added that some information is posted on Stirka’s web site and a few friendly sites,” he said.
Yefimov said his choice of acts is based on the spirit of the place, rather than personal taste.
“When I think about somebody, I think whether this person is good for this place and whether he or she is able to create an event,” he said.
With Moloko club’s posters on the wall and a clientele that looks like the public of the popular underground rock club that aims primarily at students, Stirka has been described as a “younger sister of Moloko,” according to Yefimov.
DJs perform at Stirka one or twice a week, said Nowottne. 
“We then bring dryers from the back room and DJs put their turntables on them,” she said. “But dryers are not as heavy as washing machines.”
Opened in October 2004, Stirka is conveniently located in the city center, right in the middle of the underground-bar route from Tsinik to Datscha, but the location also has its limitations. Since the place is subrented, the running costs are high, and the electricity supply is not powerful enough for more washing machines.
Nowottne said she had to go through serious bureaucratic difficulties, especially because local officials had difficulty categorizing the place.
“It was crazy, I don’t remember how many months we were working with it and how many times we were close to quitting and getting out of it altogether,” she said.
“Actually we had to deal with two departments, a laundry department and a cafe department. In the event our official status is as a ‘laundry with a food-selling department.’”
She said the difficulty  in obtaining a liquor license, which is needed to sell drinks stronger than beer, is also the result of Stirka’s unusual status.
Nowottne said the staff does not try too hard to create and maintain Stirka’s nice and quiet atmosphere and have no serious security to conduct “face control,” as many other places do.
“We haven’t had problems as yet, and I am glad because I am not a big fan of such measures,” she said.
“Probably they are necessary at some places, but we cope without them. It has been normal, sane people that have come from the very start.
“Maybe it’s because we don’t sell strong drinks, so it might change, I don’t know. So far no problems.”
Stirka’s fastest professional washing machine (the silver one) does its job in 35 minutes while it takes about 55 minutes for the other two.
The use of one machine costs 100 rubles, which also includes a cup of coffee or tea. Bochkaryov beer on tap costs 50 rubles for a 0.5 liter glass. Chess sets and cards are available for you while you wait.
Stirka is open daily from 9 a.m. until 11 p.m. during weekdays, and from 10 a.m. until 1 a.m. or later on weekends.

Cafe Stirka 40 0, 26 Kazanskaya Ulitsa. 
M. Nevsky Prospekt/Sennaya Ploshchad. 
Tel.: 314 5371. www.40gradusov.ru

TITLE: Beastly pleasures
AUTHOR: By Olga Kapralova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Zver
5 Aleksandrovsky Park. Tel. 232 2062
Open from noon.
Live music Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays from 8 p.m. and on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from 5 p.m.
Menu in Russian and English. Major credit cards accepted.
Dinner for two with wine 1,650 rubles ($58)

Do you hunger for real Russian cuisine? If so, then a visit to Zver restaurant ( “Beast”) should satisfy your appetite. Opened in March 2005 where Tarkan restaurant was formerly located in the center of Aleksandrovsky Park, Zver has already gained a following. 
Its unusual interior will no one indifferent, especially members of Green Peace. Commonplace wooden walls are decorated with the skins of various animals, including those of bears and wolves, antlers, and even the snout of a pig. You’ll need a few minutes to get used to the paw with claws hanging low overhead.
Zver’s 100-seat summer terrace is, in contrast, very romantic — it is colorful, with junipers in tubs, and is very beautifully illuminated on summer  evenings. We decided not to spend our  evening inside. There are also two closed 10 seat-pergolas on the terrace and it is a very good choice for a small party on a hot summer day.
If it had been colder, we certainly would have sat down inside, by the open fire, and ordered mulled wine. 
The waitress did not keep us waiting. The variety of the dishes with flowery descriptions forced us to think about our order seriously. 
There is an unusually extensive choice of game dishes including wild bear, rabbit, elk, goose, venison, chicken, duck, pork, veal, mutton, partridges and so on.
For starters we chose duckling breast smoked on tea leaves (268 rubles, $9.40) and smoked venison with nectarines (245 rubles, $8.60).
Soups are priced from 150 rubles ($5.30) to 200 rubles ($7). We tried a partridge broth (155 rubles, $5.40). The drinks and soup were brought very quickly, which made us hesitate: do they really prepare it for each diner or do the make it in advance? The broth was fragrant, while the Kindzmarauly Georgian wine (100 rubles, $3.50 per 100 milliliters) cheered us up. The good mood was buoyed by live music. The musicians’ repertoire included popular Russian music, famous Western songs (“I Just Called to Say I Love You”) and emotional Latin melodies.
The duckling breast, pickled with honey and lemon, and served with pepper and orange marmalade was the best of the starters. It is very juicy and the garnish is original. The smoked venison was a little salty; this dish is ideal as a snack with beer.
We tried the lamb and roasted elk, cooked in a spicy sauce with prunes and vegetables (368 rubles, $13). Served in a traditional Russian pot, the game was very fragrant, and meat soft. Please note, game meals are rather rich, and you need to ask for garnish separately.
People around us came and went by car, motorcycle and bike. Someone started to dance. It certainly didn’t feel as though we were in the center of the city. Zver is a green oasis people can escape to have a rest after a wearisome working day. Guests here drink beer, eat meat and enjoy themselves. The waiters were prompt, spoke English, always smiled and answered all our questions.
For a dessert we ordered an apple strudel (98 rubles, $3.40) and a pear pie with a blackberry sauce (79 rubles, $2.80). We waited for the dessert longer time than for main course, but in the end it was worth it. 
The flavorful apple strudel with raisins and nuts, served with a ball of home-made ice-cream and strawberry sauce was so excellent that we decided to come here again just for this dish. 
Zver offers a business lunch (120 rubles, $4.20) for the lucky people from the nearby offices and there is a special offer for children: lunch for 69 rubles, $2.40 (broth, blinchik and tea). When the children finish their meals, they receive a special present — right now it is a soap bubble set. The offer is available from 1 p.m. until 4 p.m. every day and is very convenient for parents as the restaurant is located very near a children’s park and the city zoo. It is possible the restaurant’s name was inspired by just this.

TITLE: London Police Make 20th Bombing Arrest
AUTHOR: By Ed Johnson
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON — Anti-terrorist officers arrested nine men in raids early Thursday in connection with the botched July 21 attacks on London’s transit system, bringing to 20 the number of people police have in custody, including one of the alleged bombers. 
Scotland Yard police headquarters said the nine men were arrested under the Terrorism Act at two properties in the neighborhood of Tooting, in south London. 
The arrests follow a significant breakthrough on Wednesday, when authorities in the central England city of Birmingham arrested one of the four men suspected of carrying out the failed attacks — Yasin Hassan Omar, 24. He was being held at a top-security police station in London. 
The three other bombers suspected of carrying out last week’s attacks were still on the run, police said. 
Peter Clarke, the head of London’s police anti-terrorist unit, called Omar’s arrest “an important development in the investigation.” But he warned that the three remaining bombers still presented a danger. 
Security was tight at many subway stations in central London Thursday — the three-week anniversary of the July 7 attacks on three subway trains and a bus that killed 56 people, including the four suicide bombers. Thursday was also the one-week anniversary of the failed July 21 attacks. 
Residents in Tooting said police arrested three Turkish men from a fast food restaurant selling halal burgers. Halal meat is that of a herbivore slaughtered in a humane way — as Islam requires. 
Raja Kumar, who runs a 24-hour convenience store next to the restaurant, said dozens of officers raided the property at 4:30 a.m. 
“Police said to us, ‘Stay inside,’ and then they took away three people from the shop, a man aged about 45 called Ali who has been living there for two years and two younger men aged about 28 and 26,” he said. 
Six other men were arrested from a property in nearby Garratt Terrace, a street opposite the Tooting Broadway subway station. 
Omar, a Somali citizen with British residency, was arrested in a dramatic raid by dozens of anti-terrorist police and bomb disposal experts, some in heavy body armor. 
Interrogations of Omar may be key in determining whether last week’s failed attacks are linked to the July 7 bombings. Omar is suspected of trying to blow up the Warren Street subway station last Thursday. 
Kati Stewart, 31, a health care worker who lives across the street from Omar in the Small Heath neighborhood of Birmingham, said she’d seen four men coming and going frequently over the past two weeks. “They would come at 2 a.m., and then when you looked in the morning, the car had gone,” she said. 
But Omar, a refugee from Somalia who came to Britain in 1992, generally attracted little attention in the diverse neighborhood, where residents of many ethnic backgrounds and faiths — Indian, Pakistani and Irish; Christian, Hindu and Muslim — say they live together peacefully. 
ABC News, meanwhile, reported that British authorities investigating the July 7 attack had found 12 bombs and four improvised detonators in the trunk of the car of one of the suspected suicide bombers 35 miles outside of London five days after the deadly explosions. 
The network broadcast photos of the findings, including a glass bottle apparently packed with explosives and covered in nails that could be used as shrapnel, and said they provided important clues about who was behind the attacks. 
Other raids were carried out Wednesday in south London’s Stockwell district, where officers arrested three women on suspicion of “harboring offenders,” and on two more London homes, where no arrests were made but forensic tests were conducted, police said. 
A second July 21 suspect has been named as Muktar Said Ibrahim, 27, also known as Muktar Mohammed Said. He came to Britain in 1990 from Eritrea, his family said. 
He was granted residency in 1992 and British citizenship in September 2004, the Home Office said. Said was part of a gang that carried out a series of muggings in the mid-1990s but qualified for early release in 1998, the British news agency Press Association reported. When he left prison, Said had a beard, had adopted Islamic dress and was very devout, Press Association said.
Police are also looking into whether Said attended the Finsbury Park or Brixton mosques in London, once considered magnets for radical Islamic clerics, and whether he met shoe-bomber Richard Reid, who is serving a life sentence in a U.S. prison after a failed attempt in 2001 to blow up an airplane, the news agency said.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Oil Platform Fire Kills
BOMBAY, India (AP) — Ten people were confirmed dead with several still missing Thursday from a massive fire on an oil platform in India’s biggest oil field. Ships and helicopters rescued more than 350 survivors.
The fire on the platform 100 miles off the financial hub of Bombay was brought under control late Wednesday after a dramatic midsea rescue.
The government said it would take a month to recover most of the lost oil production. The platform normally produces 110,000 barrels of crude a day,  owned by Oil and Natural Gas Corp.
The cause of the fire had not yet been determined.

Bush Upsets Scouts
FORT A.P. HILL, Virginia (Washington Post) — To add to the four Scout leader deaths on the opening day of the Boy Scouts’ National Jamboree, further misfortunes hit the organization as 300 people were treated for heat-related conditions after a long wait for U.S. President George Bush did not end in the president’s appearance.
Tens of thousands of Boy Scouts learned Wednesday that President Bush had delayed his visit because of severe storms. The announcement came after the Scouts had waited for more than two hours in the blazing sun in their dress uniforms, and was met with loud boos.

TITLE: Sosa Hits 587th Homer, But Sparks Texas Rangers
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: Sammy Sosa has spent more time trotting to home plate than sliding into it. The Texas Rangers capitalized on his lack of practice — and were sparked by it. 
On the night Sosa took sole possession of fifth place on the career list with his 587th home run, his spikes-first slide was what the Rangers were talking about after they rallied to beat the Baltimore Orioles 11-8 in 11 innings on Wednesday night. 
Gary Matthews threw out Sosa at the plate to keep the score tied in the 10th, then hit his second homer of the game, a three-run shot in the 11th. Sosa slid into catcher Rod Barajas with his right leg up in the air, causing both benches to empty before order was quickly restored. 
“The play at the plate definitely fired us up,” Texas first baseman Mark Teixeira said. “I’m not sure it was the difference in the game, because anytime you’re in extra innings anything can happen. But it got us fired up.”
Sosa’s 587th career homer helped the Orioles build a 5-0 lead and broke a tie for fifth place on the career list with Frank Robinson. But he didn’t feel like talking about that, or his slide, after the game. 
“I’m not in the mood today,” he said. 
In other American League games, it was: Kansas City 6, the Chicago White Sox 5 in 13 innings; Oakland 5, Cleveland 4 in 10 innings; Boston 4, Tampa Bay 1; Minnesota 7, the New York Yankees 3; Toronto 3, the Los Angeles Angels 2 in 10 innings; and Seattle 9, Detroit 3. 
After struggling for most of his first season in Baltimore, Sosa has begun to hit home runs at a more familiar pace. He has three in four games and is batting .302 (13-for-43) with four homers and nine RBIs in 11 games. He has 13 homers and is batting .233 for the season. 
But while Sosa has been improving, Baltimore continues to struggle. The Orioles have dropped nine of 11 and have fallen into a tie for third in the AL East, 4 1/2 games behind Boston. 
Baltimore stranded 16 and was 4-for-15 with runners in scoring position. 
“We had chances to win the game numerous times,” Orioles manager Lee Mazzilli said. 
The final one was on Sosa’s slide, and the Rangers turned the momentum — and their anger over the play — into the go-ahead rally in their next at-bat. 
“Rod has a pretty ugly bruise on his right arm,” Rangers manager Buck Showalter said. “That was a great throw by Gary and a bad slide. That play at the plate got us juiced back up. It was a gutsy play by Rod, and I think we responded to the play real well.” 
Matthews’ homer came off Jorge Julio (3-3) after Richard Hidalgo reached on a walk and Mark DeRosa singled. 
Francisco Cordero (2-1), who blew a two-run lead in the ninth, pitched two innings. James Baldwin worked the 11th for his first save since 2003.

Royals 6, White Sox 5, 13 innings
At Kansas City, Mike Sweeney homered twice and drove in five runs, and Emil Brown hit a run-scoring single off Luis Vizcaino (4-5) in the 13th inning as the host Royals overcame a five-run deficit. 
White Sox starter Jon Garland, trying to become the first 16-game winner in the majors, left in the eighth with a 5-2 lead but his bullpen couldn’t hold it, partly because of sloppy fielding. 
The Royals, who won two of three in the series, got seven shutout innings from their bullpen. Shawn Camp (1-2), promoted Monday from Triple-A, got the win after pitching a perfect 13th.

Twins 7, Yankees 3
At New York, Johan Santana allowed seven hits in seven innings, and Minnesota ended a 10-game regular-season losing streak at Yankee Stadium. 
Santana (10-5) struck out five and walked two. Joe Nathan got four outs for his 28th save. 
Justin Morneau gave Minnesota the lead against Al Leiter (1-2) — who pitched five innings — with an RBI double in the third. Torii Hunter’s RBI single and Shannon Stewart’s two-run double made it 4-0 in seventh.

Athletics 5, Indians 4, 10 innings
At Oakland, Marco Scutaro singled to drive in the winning run in the 10th and the host Athletics won for the eighth time in nine games and improved to 8-2 in extra innings. 
Mark Ellis hit a two-out single in the 10th, and Jay Payton followed with a double off David Riske (2-3), who then gave up Scutaro’s single. Rookie Huston Street (4-1) pitched two innings for the victory. 
Aaron Boone hit a two-run homer, and Scott Elarton pitched seven strong innings, but the Indians couldn’t hold a two-run lead. Boone and Grady Sizemore each had three hits for Cleveland.

Red Sox 4, Devil Rays 1
At St. Petersburg, Florida, Tim Wakefield (9-9) scattered six hits over 7 1-3 innings, and Curt Schilling earned his third save in four opportunities by getting the final out of a nervous ninth inning. 
Red Sox starter Matt Clement was released from the hospital Wednesday after being hit in the head with a line drive during Tuesday night’s 10-9 victory over Tampa Bay in 10 innings. He rejoined his teammates at Tropicana Field less than 24 hours after being struck. 
Seth McClung (1-6) took the loss.

Blue Jays 3, Angels 2, 10 innings
At Toronto, Brendan Donnelly’s wild pitch with the bases loaded and one out in the bottom of the 10th inning gave the Blue Jays the victory. 
Russ Adams led off with a single off Donnelly (6-3) and Frank Catalanotto laid down a sacrifice bunt. Donnelly intentionally walked Vernon Wells to face rookie Aaron Hill, who ended an 0-for-18 slump with an infield single to third before the decisive wild pitch. 
Toronto’s Miguel Batista (5-3) pitched two innings, and the Blue Jays handed the Angels their third straight defeat.

Mariners 9, Tigers 3
At Seattle, Jamie Moyer (9-3) worked eight innings for his 201st career win and Richie Sexson homered twice to lead the host Mariners. 
The Mariners raced to a 6-0 lead in the second inning against Mike Maroth (8-11). He gave up six runs — three earned — in 1 2-3 innings. 
Detroit’s Magglio Ordonez singled leading off the fourth, extending his career-high hitting streak to 20 games.

TITLE: Sports Watch
TEXT: Too Much Money?
LONDON (AFP) — Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho claims figuring out what to do with Roman Abramovich’s pile of money makes his the hardest job in football.
Since last summer, Mourinho has spent over $150 million pounds, but he moaned: “Buying players for Chelsea is the hardest job in the Premier League. 
“We want big players from good teams and they don’t want to sell. They ask for crazy money, it’s very difficult.” 
No other club in the game can match Russian oil billionaire Abramovich’s financial clout. But Mourinho said: “You think it’s easy buying a goalkeeper or a central defender or a midfielder?”

Beckham Complains
MADRID (Reuters) — David Beckham has joined in criticism of Real Madrid’s promotional tour of the United States and Asia, saying it has hampered preparations for next season. 
“There have been some difficult days,” the England captain told the Real Madrid web site on Thursday. “Physically, it hasn’t been good for the players although it has been important. 
“The games have been very tough because we haven’t been able to train hard and we are still short of fitness. You finish the games very tired and it takes longer than normal to recover, but that is to be expected,” Beckham said. 

ICC Leaves Lords 
LONDON (Reuters) — The International Cricket Council (ICC) will cut its ties with Lord’s on Friday after 96 years at the venue to start operating from new premises in Dubai on Aug. 1. 
ICC president Ehsan Mani thanked the Marylebone Cricket Club, which owns Lord’s, for its support since 1909, adding: “As the ICC prepares to enter the next exciting phase of its development it does so physically far removed from the shores of England, but forever spiritually at home at Lord’s.” 
The ICC, however, will return to Lord’s for its annual conference in June and July 2006. 

New Isinbayeva Record
STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) — Yelena Isinbayeva broke the women’s Olympic Stadium pole vault record Tuesday with a leap of 4.79 meters to win a diamond at the DN Galan athletics meet.
The Olympic champion cleared 5 meters in London four days earlier for her 17th world record — indoors and out. 
“It was difficult for me because after the world record in London I felt very tired in my head and in most of my muscles,” Isinbayeva said. 
Olympic champion Justin Gatlin overcame a slow start to win the men’s 100, marred by two false starts and the disqualification of Portugal’s Francis Obikwelu, in 10.15 seconds.

TITLE: Sochi Enters the Race For the 2014 Olympics
AUTHOR: By Kevin O’Flynn and David Nowak
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Less than a month after Moscow failed in its attempt to host the 2012 Summer Olympics, the Russian Olympic Committee on Tuesday threw its weight behind Sochi’s equally long-shot bid for the 2014 Winter Games.The Black Sea resort’s current Soviet-era skiing infrastructure will face stiff opposition from South Korea’s Pyeongchang, which was runner-up to Vancouver in the race for the 2010 Winter Games; Austria’s Salzburg; and Jaca of Spain. Also in the race, for the first time, will be Almaty, the former capital of Kazakhstan, and the Georgian mountain resort of Bakuriani.
Making the case for Sochi two days ahead of the International Olympic Committee’s Thursday deadline for bids, Russian Olympic Committee president Leonid Tyagachyov was resolutely upbeat at a news conference.
“Our task is to move forward together, and if we do this, we will win. We are all united; one vision, one goal: we will win,” said Tyagachyov, a former trainer of Russian Olympic skiers.
If successful, President Vladimir Putin’s favorite summer, and sometime winter, resort, could be transformed in an ambitious attempt to win the Winter Olympics in the city’s third attempt.
Earlier this month, Moscow was the first of the five finalists to be knocked out of the voting by IOC members, with London eventually winning the right to host the 2012 Summer Games. With its 15 votes, Moscow had Russia’s best post-Soviet showing in the race for the Olympics.
St. Petersburg failed to make the top-five shortlist for the 2004 Summer Games, while Sochi did not come close in its attempts to host the 1998 and 2002 Winter Games.
Sochi, Almaty and Bakuriani may struggle to match Pyeongchang, Salzburg and Jaca, which already boast infrastructure that would outpace Sochi in a sled, let alone a ski race.
For anyone who has ridden on the jangly, rudimentary ski lifts that characterize Sochi’s local ski resorts, it may be hard to imagine the city as an Olympic venue.
But whether Sochi wins the Games or not, ambitious plans by government and big business are afoot to transform the city’s sports facilities.
The centerpiece of Sochi’s bid will be Krasnaya Polyana, a ski resort on the Roza Khutor plateau, 70 kilometers from Sochi and officially the snowiest place in Russia. A sparkling new resort, funded by the Interros group, will be built there by 2007, Interros head Vladimir Potanin said at Tuesday’s ROC board meeting.
Canadian mountain resort designer Ecosign, which is currently working on the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver and has experience in two other Olympics, has designed the resort.
Interros, which initially froze its plans last year after failing to get guarantees from the local and federal government on improvements in infrastructure, in December 2004 gave the go-ahead for the resort to be built.
The resort is to be finished by 2007, provided environmental permission is granted to work in the area, which is part of the Sochi national park.
Potanin said in an April interview with Sovietsky Sport newspaper that the bid seemed to make good sense after he realized that the resort would be able to host all of the Olympic alpine skiing competitions on one slope, something never seen before at the Winter Games.
Apart from building a new ski slope, most of the other Olympic venues will also have to be built anew.
Gazprom is currently building its own ski resort near Krasnaya Polyana, and a number of other companies have invested in the city in recent years.
Sochi’s deputy mayor, Alexander Udalov, said after Tuesday’s news conference that up to $3 billion in investments would be needed to stage the Games.
“Take a couple [billion dollars] from the stabilization fund,” Udalov said, smiling. “Nobody will notice.”
The fund is currently $21.6 billion, although Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin has shown no signs so far of wanting to fund sporting events.
Although sounding optimistic, Russian Olympic officials still retained a degree of reality about Sochi’s chances.
“Who knows?” said Vitaly Smirnov, a former ROC president and a member of the IOC, when asked about Sochi’s chances.
Smirnov said that African and Asian IOC members, whose countries either send no teams or very small teams to the Winter Games, are freer in how they vote than for the Summer Games.
“The Winter Games are very difficult to predict,” he said.
Sochi will spend close on $160,000 on developing and promoting its candidacy, ROC officials said.
Sochi’s bid may be affected by its relatively close location to the unstable North Caucasus region, and its proximity to Georgia’s separatist Abkhazia region.
Chechnya is 475 kilometers away from Sochi, and the border with Abkhazia is just 35 kilometers down the road.
But Udalov said he had no worries about the security situation. “London is far away,” he said, referring to the terrorist attacks that killed at least 52 people on July 7, the day after the British capital was awarded the right to host the 2012 Games.
“There has never been a terrorist incident in Sochi,” he said. “The president’s residence is there. There is a lot of security.”
Still, there is a long way to go for Sochi’s bid.
As Potanin said when describing his first visit to the slopes of Roza Khutor to Sovietsky Sport in April, “You unknowingly try to find ropeways on the slopes. Then you realize you are not in the Alps, but in Sochi, where nothing has been built yet.”