SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1099 (65), Friday, August 26, 2005
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TITLE: Police Say Tourists Cared For
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: St. Petersburg police this week rejected a request to assist in establishing and staffing several central police stations to help foreigners, saying that that would be “pointless.” 
The request was made by the Northwest branch of the Russian Tourism Industry Union, or RST. 
The union and others have been calling on police higher-ups to take more action against a spate of crimes by organized criminals and low-ranking police officers against foreigners, which is tainting the city’s image.
To add insult to injury, foreign crime victims struggle to find police stations, complain that officers don’t speak any languages other than Russian, and that the law enforcement officers are reluctant to record their crimes. Many foreigners are only in the city for a short visit and if robbed have to devote much of their time afterward to the pursuit of official documents.
In a letter to the RST signed by Sergei Umnov, acting head of criminal investigations task force of the city police, the police said they are confident that enough resources are already available to tackle the problem.
“According to the existing norms, a statement of any crime is to be accepted by any police station nearest to the victim, without regard to the location of the actual crime,” the letter says. “Immediately after processing the statement, the station informs the special city police task force investigating crimes against foreigners. This task force has a staff of translators who know 14 foreign languages; they can be sent to a station promptly, should the need arise.”
But city tour operators said the reality is rather different.
Valery Fridman, general director of travel agency Mir, said that although in theory, any police station can accept a statement from a victim, officers are often too overloaded to be able to deal with one. They direct victims to the station nearest to the crime scene. Even then, the chances are bleak that any staff member will speak any language other than Russian, he said.
The Tourist Information Center at 14 Sadovaya Ulitsa, which assists foreigners to register crimes, operates only during business hours.
Nadezhda Petrova, head of the center’s information service, said the flow of foreign crime victims to the center is uneven.
“It isn’t predictable,” she said Thursday. “On certain days we are contacted by several foreigners, while there could also be a few days in a row when we get no reports about crime.”
The city’s visa registration office, said 200,099 foreign tourists registered in St. Petersburg between Jan. 1 and June 31. In that time, city police recorded 198 crimes against them.
Tatyana Demeneva, spokeswoman for the Northwest branch of RST, said that according to official police statistics the 500 to 600 crimes registered against foreigners every year all get solved. But these optimistic-looking figures are misleading because the police don’t record many crimes, she said.
 Florian Seitz, spokesman for the German Consulate General in St. Petersburg, said that the number of complaints of crime the consulate receives fluctuates in line with the number of tourists in the city. “The numbers in August have decreased but not due to lower crime rates, but because there are fewer tourists,” he said.
Most German tourists visited in May, June and July, when the consulate received five to 10 calls a day from German tourists who had been robbed. This month about three calls a week have been received, Seitz said.
Fridman said his company always uses its own translators and drivers to increase the chance of crimes being registered. This service is provided at no extra charge to clients.
“The sole translator on duty each day for the police can’t possibly service all the calls,” he said. “If they accept a request and go to the spot, it would take half a day, and the other requests would be delayed or dropped.”
Small agencies cannot offer translators to help, while individual tourists are at a loss as to where to go.
Maria Chernobrovkina, executive director of the St. Petersburg Chapter of American Chamber of Commerce, said the major problem with the existing system is that there are no easily accessible, well signposted and fast operating police stations where officers are trained to deal with foreigners.
“The tourists are forced to go round asking for advice and directions, and all the signs around are in Cyrillic,” Chernobrovkina said Thursday in a telephone interview. “The Tourist Information Center is insufficiently promoted, and despite its central location.”
For independent travelers who speak no Russian, because they can rely only on their own resources, it is especially difficult to find police who can understand and be able to provide help, she added.
This month the chapter posted safety advice for foreigners on its web site.
Thefts and robberies against foreigners are registered daily in St. Petersburg, with numbers peaking in the summer months, when the city is flooded with tourists.
A British citizen contacted the police Wednesday after being robbed on a train from Moscow to St. Petersburg, Interfax reported. The foreigner, who works as a tour guide, said the thieves stole his passport, 3,000 euros in cash, credit cards and his mobile telephone. News agencies this week reported a portable stereo system was stolen from the car of a vice-consul of Finland.

TITLE: Beslan Children Testify
AUTHOR: By Yana Voitova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: VLADIKAVKAZ — A 10-year-old boy described how a female terrorist threatened to kill children hiding cell phones, and a teenage boy recalled through tears how he urinated into a bottle so younger children could drink.
The children testified Thursday at the trial of Nurpasha Kulayev, the only surviving suspect who participated in the seizure of the Beslan school on Sept. 1-3 last year. At least 331 hostages, half of them children, were killed.
Kulayev went on trial in May, and the first children took the stand Tuesday. Court was in recess Wednesday.
Tearful Beslan parents and neighbors packed the courtroom Thursday, listening to the children’s simple but sincere accounts of the most vicious terrorist attack in Russia’s modern history.
“One of the female terrorists searched us for mobile phones. She told us that if she found a phone on someone, that person would be killed and three more people near him or her would be killed too,” Azamat Tebiyev, 10, wearing a green-and-white striped shirt, said as he calmly recounted the ordeal.
Malik Kalchakeyev, 14, speaking slowly and with great detail, then told of how the schoolchildren and their parents were herded into the school’s gym, how the attackers stopped providing water and how they taunted the exhausted hostages, often forcing them to stand and sit quickly in the hot, crowded gym.
“On the second day, we were all very thirsty. Women told us, the boys, to pee into plastic bottles so that the children could then drink our pee,” the boy said, bursting into tears. “I peed into a bottle, and small children — even babies — drank it.”
“Listen, Kulayev, listen,” Judge Tamerlan Aguzarov angrily ordered the defendant, who showed no emotion as he sat in a steel cage with bulletproof glass behind the testifying children.
As the boy tried to stop sobbing, the courtroom spectators, mostly women wearing black clothes and black headscarves, swore at Kulayev. “Give this terrorist to us! We will tear the bastard apart!” the women shouted.
Journalists, who were not allowed in the courtroom, watched Thursday’s proceeding via closed-circuit television in another room of the courthouse.
After several minutes, the boy stopped crying and recounted how he ran out of the smoldering school after two explosions occurred in the gym. As he spoke, he kept his eyes fixed on Kulayev.
“Do you want to ask him a question?” the judge asked. The boy shook his head and walked away from the witness stand.
Alan Kochiyev, 13, told how the attackers shot a hostage in the gym. He also recalled how they forced a boy sitting next to him to stand up and threatened to shoot him if the hostages did not keep quiet.
Tamerlan Toguzov, 13, said that after a female suicide bomber died in a blast on the first day, he and his mother, a doctor, removed medicine from her bloodied bags. He said his mother, Larisa Mamitova, treated hostages and wounded attackers and twice was sent out to hand over notes demanding that federal troops be withdrawn from Chechnya and that President Vladimir Putin resign.
The boy said he found a bottle of vodka in one of the bomber’s bags and sipped it with other children because they had nothing else to drink.
“On Sept. 1, they give a bucket of water to one boy and told him to only give it to the children,” said Irina Dzagoyeva, a 17-year-old girl dressed in black and with her black hair pulled back in a ponytail. “They said that if any adult drank the water, they would shoot the boy.”
Dzagoyeva also said one gunman told her that the hostage-taking would last a week.
Keeping her face tense in an attempt to suppress tears, she went on, telling how attackers forced her sister to clean blood from the floor after killing a hostage.
“When they collected our purses, they said, ‘We don’t need any of your money. It is for the likes of you people who are ready to let anyone go anywhere for 50 rubles,’” she said.
Many Beslan residents believe that the attackers bribed their way across the border from Ingushetia, where they spent several days in a forest making last-minute preparations for the attack, to North Ossetia. Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, who has said he planned and ordered the Beslan raid, claimed after his  hostage-taking raid on a Budyonnovsk hospital in 1995 that only a lack of cash had prevented him and his fighters from going through police checkpoints to reach Moscow.
On Thursday, Kulayev, seemingly unmoved by the children’s accounts, re-told his version of how the first explosion occurred in the gym on Sept. 3. The explosion and a resulting fire prompted federal commandos and vigilantes to storm the school. Dozens of the 1,200 hostages died in the fire.
Kulayev said a federal sniper shot a hostage-taker who was pressing a detonator with his foot, forcing the bomb to explode.
The judge adjourned the trial until Sept. 13, after commemorations for the anniversary of the attack are over.

Staff writer Nabi Abdullaev contributed to this report from Moscow.

TITLE: City Charter Court Suspends Its Activities
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: St. Petersburg’s Charter Court, the last legislative body independent of City Hall, has suspended its activities because three of its seven judges have filed resignation letters, local media reported Wednesday.
Judges Olga Gerasina, Natalya Gutsan and Alexei Liverovsky tendered their resignations on Aug. 8, the reports said.
“I have explained the reasons for my resignation in the letter and have nothing to add,” Liverovsky said Wednesday in a telephone interview. “I won’t say anything else because it’s hard for me to talk at the moment. I’m ill.” 
While the judges are not willing to talk about their resignation, political insiders suspect they resigned because of ongoing and fundamental conflicts between the court and City Hall.
The court’s task is to see that the City Charter, a sort of local constitution, is observed. It has been the epicenter of a conflict between the Legislative Assembly and City Hall after lawmakers passed it in January 1998. Among other things, the charter declares that the Legislative Assembly is a full-time parliament, forbids lawmakers from conducting business while holding office and limits the governor’s right to rule by decree.
City Hall declined Thursday to make any comment over the dispute with the Charter Court.
“In my view a pact has been made between judges Gutsan and Liverovsky and Governor Valentina Matviyenko,” Boris Vishnevsky, a member of Yabloko faction at the Legislative Assembly, said Wednesday in a telephone interview. “They agreed that the two judges would resign so that the Charter Court’s work would be blocked until September, when the new appointments are to be made to the court.”
 “In exchange, the governor promised to back their candidacies in the new court,” he said.
“It’s a shame that both people, whom I respect have done such a thing,” Vishnevsky added. “Officially, they have been ill since mid July, but that hasn’t stopped them from showing up in public or even visiting other cities.”
The Charter Court’s conflict with City Hall culminated in March when its judges ruled out that Matviyenko had appointed her administration in 2003 without observing the City Charter, and that her regime was therefore illegal. 
“That City Hall is trying to take control of the court, and I have no doubts that it is, just goes to show that the conditions we live in are identical to those that existed in the Soviet Union,” Yury Vdovin, co-head of the city branch of human rights organization Citizen’s Watch, said Thursday in a telephone interview.
“Matviyenko has put the legislative arm of government under her feet and she now is trying to do the same with the judicial system,” he added. “Until recently the Charter Court was the only branch of the government that could constrain City Hall and now it will cease to exist,” he said.
The court had been scheduled to meet Thursday, when the legality of City Hall’s decree to rid public transport stops of small traders was to be considered. Because there were insufficient judges available, no hearing was held.
“City Hall is afraid that we would hear the traders’ case and would issue some ruling,” Interfax cited Charter Court judge Lydumila Kuleshova, as saying Thursday.
Charter Court chairman Nikolai Kropachev was reported as saying the hearing did not take place because Liverovsky and Gutsan are ill, but have not submitted official papers to prove their illness.
On Wednesday evening, representatives of the court denied that resignation letters had been submitted.
“[We] have found out about this … from the papers and electronic media, but no resignation letters, if they exist at all, have been received,” Interfax cited an anonymous source at the court as saying Wednesday.
This month those judges opposing City Hall sent a letter to City Prosecutor Sergei Zaitsev calling on him to intervene over a request Matviyenko sent to the Legislative Assembly that would remove the legal status of five City court judges on the grounds that their terms of service had run out.
The presidential representative office to the Northwest federal district said the federal government would not interfere in the disputes.
“If the presidential branch of government were to get involved in such questions, the state built on the grounds of the rule of law would cease to exist,” Ilya Klebanov, the presidential representative to the Northwest region, said Thursday.
The Kremlin is monitoring the situation and is ready to advise either side, “but no more than that,” Klebanov’s press service quoted him as saying.

TITLE: Konstantinov’s Agency to Get Rights to Publish MK v Pitere
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: St. Petersburg’s Agency of Journalistic Investigations is to the get the rights to publish the MK v Pitere weekly, Interfax reported Thursday quoting Andrei Konstantinov, head of the agency.
The weekly tabloid paper is named after the initials of the capital’s Moskovsky Komsomolets, one of the nation’s largest circulation publications. MK v Pitere means Moskovsky Komsomolets in St. Petersburg. MK v Pitere has a circulation of 25,000. 
The agreement to hand over rights from Art-Profit to the agency, which was prepared during this month, was to be signed Thursday, Konstantinov said.
“For this reason we sent my deputy Andrei Potapenko to Moscow,” said Konstantinov, the head of the Journalists’ Union in the city and the author of the popular “Banditsky Petersburg.” “He will be the main person to oversee this direction.” 
“We have got an offer from [Art-Profit general director Oleg] Smetanin and we got interested in this,” Interfax quoted him as saying. “Then the Muscovites confirmed that we matched their expectations . However the agreement was not signed immediately, because we needed time to think it over and to take the final decision.” 
MK v Piter’s editorial policy would not change immediately, Konstantinov said, but suggested he suggested some changes could take place in the future.
“It is likely that in the first month there won’t be any changes,” he said. “We will carefully observe the way the work is going, study and estimate the situation. After this we would take a decision if we have to change anything in the paper’s work.”
An unnamed source at the agency said that the paper might change its style, but its concept will not change.
“We will publish an ordinary city paper,” the source said.
The Agency for Journalistic Investigations already publishes another weekly newspaper Tainy Sovetnik, or Secret Adviser, which concentrates on crime news and runs the rather successful web project Fontanka.ru.

TITLE: Putin Picks Loyalists For Public Chamber
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin’s picks for the Public Chamber, originally proclaimed as a civil society watchdog, so far include Kremlin-friendly figures such as theater director Alexander Kalyagin, Ekspert magazine editor Valery Fadeyev and champion gymnast Alina Kabayeva.
But some well-known human rights activists said they would not participate in the chamber, regardless of whether they received an invitation.
According to law, Putin must name 42 out of the chamber’s 126 members, who then select another 42 members from national nongovernmental and nonprofit organizations. These two groups will then choose the final 42 members from regional NGOs.
The Kremlin-sponsored law describes the chamber as a body for citizens to exercise oversight over the federal government and parliament, but many NGOs and rights advocates have cast doubt on whether the chamber could be independent.
Valery Fadeyev, editor of Ekspert magazine, confirmed by telephone Wednesday that he had been invited to become a member. Fadeyev also heads the Institute of Public Planning, which co-wrote the chamber law with the Kremlin. “I view the Public Chamber as potentially a very serious institution for the development of democracy in Russia. How effective it turns out to be depends on who will be there,” he said.
Kalyagin, head of the Et Cetera Theater company and the national Theater Union, received his invitation recently, his spokeswoman Tatyana Nikolskaya said. She said Kalyagin did not want to comment before being nominated.
Champion gymnast Kabayeva, a member of the United Russia party’s supreme council, was asked to join the chamber, her coach Irina Viner said. She said Kabayeva was unavailable for comment.
Yelena Zelinskaya, vice president of the Media Union, a pro-Kremlin group, said she also received an invitation. “I’m excited to participate,” she said, declining to comment further before being officially nominated.
Igor Yakovenko, general secretary of the Russian Union of Journalists, said the chamber’s intended purpose was to create the appearance of oversight, not the reality. He said he had not received an invitation and would not join were he to receive one. “It’s simply a shame to join the chamber as it is,” he said.
Human rights activist Lyudmila Alexeyeva said she was also critical of the chamber and had not been invited to join, Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported Wednesday.
Under the law, the chamber can issue recommendations to the government and parliament on key issues of domestic policy, pass judgment on bills, request investigations into what it considers breaches of the law and request information from government agencies. The government is not required to accept any of the chamber’s recommendations.
Kalyagin and Kabayeva were among 50 public figures who signed an open letter in June protesting criticism of the judicial system over the trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Nikolai Petrov, an analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center, said the letter might have been the Kremlin’s litmus test for the candidates to be considered for the chamber.

TITLE: Police Seek Street Killers
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Police were still looking Thursday for the occupants of a car who beat two students with a baseball bat, leading to the death of one of the students.
 They were also investigating how a teenager who had been sniffing petrol was set alight, but had no comment on progress when asked to comment.
Anton Sobolyov, was killed Monday evening after he apparently angered two men in a Hyundai car without numberplates. 
The Hyundai had driven on to the sidewalk to escape a traffic jam caused by a collision on Ulitsa Ziny Portnovoi in the city’s Kirov district. 
Congestion was high because a trolleybus had set passengers down before the bus stop, leaving dozens of people between the road and the sidewalk, web site www.fontanka.ru reported.
The cause of the attack has not been clarified, but the cause of the anger may have been that Sobolyov and a companion did not get out of the way, the report suggested.
The driver and a passenger got out of the car and attacked the two pedestrians. 
Sobolyov was beaten with a baseball bat and died, although medics did not rule out that the cause of death could be something other than the beating, such as heart failure. 
The web site also reported Monday that a 13-year-old drug addict was in serious condition in the hospital with burns to his face, neck and chest.
The teenager was with a group of other addicts on Ulitsa Marata on Aug. 19 when he inhaled petrol. 
At that moment another youth lit a match and the boy caught fire, the report said.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Heineken’s Price Known
MOSCOW (Reuters) — Dutch brewer Heineken paid $560 million for Ivan Taranov brewery, Interfax news agency quoted Vladimir Tebelyov, general director of PIT holding, which owns Ivan Taranov, as saying Thursday. 
Under the terms of the deal, Heineken bought Ivan Taranov’s three breweries in Kaliningrad, Novotroitsk and Khagarovsk. 
Tebelyov was quoted as saying one of the key reasons for Heineken buying the breweries was their location. Russia’s 11 time zones and unreliable transport makes it difficult for breweries to sell their drink across the country. 
“The concern widens the geography of its sales, gets a good brand portfolio and raises its market share to 15 percent by buying regional assets,” Tebelyov said.

Refinery in Chechnya
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — State oil-fim Rosneft will build a refinery in Chechnya, which hasn’t processed oil since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Interfax reported, citing Chechen Prime Minister Sergei Abramov.
The plant will be able to refine as much as 3 million metric tons of crude a year, the news service cited Abramov as saying  Thursday. That’s the equivalent of about 60,000 barrels a day.
Rosneft, through its Chechen unit Grozneftegaz, is in charge of developing the region’s oil and gas industry, the news service said. Rosneft plans to increase production in the region this year to about 2.2 million tons of oil and 530 million cubic meters of gas from last year’s 2 million tons and 510 million cubic meters, Interfax said.

Sibir Registers Win
LONDON (Bloomberg) — A London court on Thursday lifted an order blocking Sibir Energy owner Shalva Tchigirinski from selling any of his stake in the company.
Sibir investor Harley Street Capital Ltd. won an injunction against any sale of the shares in April after bringing a claim against the management of the London-based oil producer. Justice Peter Smith struck out the lawsuit at the High Court, calling it “an abuse of the process.”
The dispute centers on the dilution of Sibir’s stake in an oilfield venture with billionaire Roman Abramovich’s Sibneft. Sibir, which is currently suing Sibneft and Abramovich in a British Virgin Islands court to try and reclaim its interest in the venture, had argued that the Harley Street proceedings were a “nuisance action” without any merit.

VimpelCom Net Soars
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) —VimpelCom said profit rose 76 percent in the second quarter as it added customers.
VimpelCom said net income rose to $770 million, or $3.11 per American depositary receipt in the period, from $91 million, or $2.24, a year earlier. Sales rose 59 percent to $770 million, from $491 million in the second quarter of 2004, the company said Thursday in a statement.

Nickel Gets $300M
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Norilsk Nickel got a $300 million three-year loan from Societe Generale, Norilsk spokesman Victor Borodin said.
The three-year revolving credit has an interest margin of 0.75 percentage points more than the London interbank offered rate, Boridin said.
The money will be used for “general corporate purposes” and guaranteed by export revenue, he added.
Norilsk is Russia’s biggest mining company.

TITLE: Exported Energy To Fund New Utilities
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Russia will use profits from exported energy to upgrade its own aging power utilities network.
Dmitry Mashkovstev, head of cable operator Baltenergo, said Thursday that money from exporting electricity to Finland via a planned underwater transmission cable may be invested in the construction of a 1.5-billion euro ($1.8 billion) power generating unit for Leningrad Oblast’s nuclear power station LAES.
This week the Energy and Industry Ministry unveiled details of a project to build an undersea electric cable between the Oblast and Mussalo Peninsular in Finland. Preliminary construction could start as soon as next year with 2008 set as the deadline by which the cable will be completed and in operation.
“The main purpose of this project is to attract foreign investment for the construction and upgrading of Russia’s energy facilities,” Mashkovstev said. Under the proposed scheme, large budget spending or an increase in tariffs to pay for the modernization could be avoided, he said.
Baltenergo hopes in 15 years of exporting via the underwater cable to  raise enough resources to finance local energy projects, of which a new power generating unit at LAES is one, Mashkovstev said. Nonetheless, he added, ways in which the profit could be used will be decided by Baltenergo’s shareholder Rosenergoatom.
A tender to choose the general contractor for the cable will be carried out by the end of the year. Several subcontractors, both Russian and foreign, have already been picked, Mashkovstev said.
The project consists of three parts — a 150-kilometer high-voltage transmission cable and two coastal collector stations. The cost of the cable is estimated at 90 million euros ($110.8 million) while the total project investment will be 300 million euros ($370 million), Mashkovstev said. The return of investments is expected in eight or nine years.
The head of Baltenergo declined to name possible investors, but said that several foreign firms and financial institutions could be involved.
Dmitry Skryabin, an energy analyst at Aton brokerage in Moscow, believes that Finnish energy importers will be the most interested to invest.
Other industry experts suggest that the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which often finances major energy projects in Easter Europe and Russia, could easily be involved in this project.
An energy expert, who asked not to be identified, said that other European national banks would also be likely lenders, although they are unlikely to be named as banks try to project an eco-friendly image in contrast to their involvement with nuclear power projects.
The companies interested in financing such works would be either power utilities — Finland’s Fortum, Sweden’s Vattenfall, and Germany’s E.On — or companies producing power technology, such as Siemens, ABB, Mitsubishi, or General Electric, who can also deliver cable and equipment, the expert said.
Aton’s Skryabin agreed that the Northwest region was “very interesting for energy export possibilities,” but with a number of similar projects proposed in the Kola Peninsular, the Murmansk and Karelia regions, the competition for foreign investors is likely to be tough.
The vital point that could swing it for LAES would be the efficacy of the cable’s export volume and prices, he said.
“Northwest has surplus energy capacities that lie idle. In this project both sides could benefit: Russia will increase energy production and Finland will get cheaper energy,” Skryabin said.
What’s more the cable will allow several Russian power utilities to export to Europe, since “once the cable is connected to a general energy supply network, any power generating plant can become a supplier,” Mashkovstev said.
Skryabin suggested that Leningrad Oblast’s Kirishskaya thermal power station or city monopolist Lenenergo could be among the exports, beside LAES.
Meanwhile, Gianguido Piani, an independent expert on the power industry, noted that “the export of Russian nuclear power is interesting with reference to the Kyoto protocol. Greenhouse gas emissions are counted at the place where they are generated, not where the electricity is consumed.
“With power imports, even of nuclear-generated power, the high penalties for non-compliance with emissions limitations within the EU can be avoided, which may also contribute to the economic viability of the cable project,” Piani said.

TITLE: Yeliseyevsky Sold to Perfume Firm
AUTHOR: By Maria Levitov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Cosmetics and perfume retailer Arbat Prestige is set to buy St. Petersburg’s famed Yeliseyevsky store, Yury Shcherbakov, vice president of Yeliseyevsky owner Parnas-M, said Wednesday.
Parnas-M is in the final negotiation stages with Arbat Prestige for 940 square meters of Yeliseyevsky’s retail space on Nevsky Prospekt, Shcherbakov said.
Vladimir Nekrasov, general director of Arbat Prestige, declined to comment. 
Parnas-M, one of the country’s top 10 meat producers, is part of St. Petersburg-based Parnas holding, whose businesses range from the production of women’s undergarments to grain storage.
“We are restructuring the holding to focus on our core businesses,” Shcherbakov said, explaining the reasons behind the sale.
Many manufacturers ran their own retail operations in the 1990s, Shcherbakov said, as Parnas-M did at Yeliseyevsky. He could not recall when the company acquired the store.
Now, it is becoming unprofitable for the firm to run its own stores, “especially with having to [pay for the] upkeep of all that gold,” Shcherbakov said. 
Yeliseyevsky’s gilded interiors and opulent chandeliers are features that set apart both of its locations in the hearts of Moscow and St. Petersburg, operating since the beginning of the 20th century.
The Yeliseyevsky on Tverskaya Ulitsa in Moscow, managed separately from the St. Petersburg store, is currently controlled by casino mogul Yakov Yakubov, according to media reports.
“The Yeliseyevsky store is, without question, one-of-a-kind,” said Anna Savenko, commercial real estate expert at Jones Lang LaSalle.
Acquiring Yeliseyevsky would give Arbat Prestige access to Nevsky Prospekt, St. Petersburg’s main artery for shoppers and tourists, Savenko said. 
Arbat Prestige currently operates two stores in St. Petersburg and 17 in Moscow and the surrounding region.
Savenko pegged average real estate rates on Nevsky Prospekt at $10,000 per square meter. Shcherbakov declined to comment on Yeliseyevsky’s price.
With the amount of paperwork needed fir the sale, it may take up to three months to complete, Shcherbakov said.

TITLE: Torgovy Dvor to Convert Station Into Retail Complex
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: After investing about $38 million in two city commercial real estate projects, Torgovy Dvor construction firm said Wednesday it will convert part of Prospekt Bolshevikov metro station into a 7,000 square meter retail center.
Although such metro and retail combinations have been rare in St. Petersburg, experts saw the company’s plans as very practical for a city that hopes to modernize the “rather unattractive architecture” of its aging subway network.
Torgovy Dvor already operates two shopping center projects, an $18 million complex near Akademicheskaya metro, the first part of which was showcased this week, and a $20 million retail and entertainment center built near Prospekt Bolshevikov metro. Both centers occupy about 20,000 sq. m. and are expected to repay investments in four to eight years.
Eduard Chumarin, general director of Torgovy Dvor, said Wednesday the firm has ambitions to construct another, smaller commercial complex near Prospekt Bolshevikov, converting part of the metro station for the space. Negotiations with city authorities on the deal are in progress.
The authorities may not need a lot of convincing. Andrei Urtiyev, senior manager at Soyuzptrostroi building firm, said Torgovy Dvor’s plans touch on an “urgent question of reconstruction and technical upgrading of metro stations.”
He pointed to the collapse of the awning in the Sennaya metro, as one example of the current condition of stations.
Metro stations that have been combined with retail centers in the city include the Nevsky Prospekt station, which has a direct entrance into Gostiny Dvor mall, the Petrogradskaya station, and Ploschad of Alexander Nevsky station.
The financing for Torgovy Dvor’s retail center projects will largely come from the company’s shareholders, with between 20 percent and 30 percent of the costs to be made up from Ingosstrakh-Soyuz bank loans, said Andrei Suslin, financial director at Torgovy Dvor.
Torgovy Dvor’s turnover hit 865.8 million rubles ($30.4 million) in 2004, with 65.5 million rubles of that being pure profit.

LARGER TENANTS
In the process of attracting to its Prospekt Bolshevikov center such anchor tenants as Pyatyorochka, Kalinka, Computer Mir, and MESTO, Torgovy Dvor has changed its tenant strategy.
Suslin said the company now prefers larger retails, “splitting a retail center into spacious areas instead of small plots.”
Vladimir Borisov, general director of electronic supermarket Kalinka, praised the strategy as “a more effective form of merchandizing … more attractive to buyers.” 
Vladimir Solodov, marketing director of Computer Mir, said his firm’s shop at the Prospekt Bolshevikov center within a month outperformed the turnover figures it enjoyed at its former location, due to a larger trading area.
Commercial property analysts, however, doubt the universal effectiveness of a “large space” strategy.
“Large trading areas are justified only when shopping center concept and location correspond to it. In districts like Prospekt Prosveshcheniya it would only scare away middle-class customers,” said Igor Gorsky, general director of Kommercheskaya Nedvizhimost Becar.
“Tenants occupying small plots are more tuned in to customer buying habits and needs. Small tenants should complement the larger ones,” Gorsky said.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: ‘Fake’ Rice Seized
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — More than 63 tons of contraband rice has been seized by the authorities in the Leningrad Oblast, the press service of the department for economic protection said Thursday, Interfax reported.
The seized rice worth 1 million rubles ($35,700) was found in a secret Oblast warehouse, the agency said. 
The rice was judged to be of low quality and in poor conditions. It was packed in bags under the premium-class Nekstra brand, and intended for sale in the Northwest region, the news agency said.

Westcall Goes Parallel
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Westcall internet and telephony provider has become the first telco firm in Russia to offer clients the same telephone numbers in Moscow and St. Petersburg, the company said Wednesday in a statement.
Westcall signed a contract with Petersburg Transit Telecom (PTT), a telephone network provider, for undisclosed amount that arms the telephony operator with 1,000 new numbers, a figure that could increase should the offer meet with demand.
Clients will be able to use the same number for their businesses in Moscow and St. Petersburg, apart from the city code. PTT expects to sell 50,000 parallel numbers by the end of this year, the company said.
Experts see this as a way for PTT to increase their business in Moscow, which in contrast to their large St. Petersburg network, counts as only one area base. 
PTT works with 35 telco service providers. Westcal is an alternative telephony operator that has 10,000 corporate clients, the statement said.

TITLE: Small Nations Use Resources Better
AUTHOR: By Alexei Bayer
TEXT: To foreigners visiting Russia for the first time, I usually recommend making a stopover in Amsterdam. Holland, I explain to them, was Peter the Great’s model for modern Russia. True, the attempt to turn his subjects into the Dutch was one of the emperor’s least successful undertakings. Except for the garbled tricolor, which he adopted for his Navy and which eventually became Russia’s national flag, the two countries couldn’t be more different. But contrasts can be enlightening.
The Dutch are fond of saying that while God created the Earth, the Dutch created Holland — by winning land painstakingly from the sea. Holland is small, tidy and rational. To save money, the thrifty Dutch sometimes separate two-ply paper napkins. 
And then there is Russia: enormous, slovenly, abundant in every kind of resource — natural as well as human — and mind-bogglingly wasteful. Take away all its raw materials, territory, the educational attainment of its people and its level of technological development, Russia would probably wind up on par with the world’s poorest nation —even worse off than Nigeria or Congo. 
The Soviet economy was especially spendthrift. Someone once described it as a vicious circle: mining iron ore and coal to make machines to mine more iron ore and coal. Add to this the systematic state-sponsored imprisonment, execution, harassment and exile of millions of highly educated, talented and productive people, and you get a clear picture of what a missed opportunity the 20th century in Russia really was.
The Soviet Union finally collapsed under the weight of its own inefficiency, but profligate habits plague the new Russia, as well. We are now witnessing another determined effort to waste a good opportunity. While the country has been enjoying a fabulous windfall from record oil prices, the Putin government has been systematically dismantling the economic and political underpinnings that have made this unprecedented run of prosperity possible. 
Small wonder Russians have been so susceptible to conspiracy theories and so quick to blame sinister forces bent on destroying them. Actually, you almost need a supernatural explanation to figure out how such a rich country has contrived to stay so poor.
It is ironic that the problem Russia has succumbed to in the post-Soviet era —heavy dependence on commodity exports and decimation of the industrial base — is known as the Dutch disease. But the Dutch, after staying dependent on natural gas exports in the early 1970s long enough to give the disease its name, have been completely cured and now once more enjoy a flourishing, resilient, diversified economy.
If it is any consolation, profligacy seems to be a trait shared by all big empires. Take the United States, for example. It started out as a relatively small country — also partly descended from the Dutch — and for a very long time it remained a tightfisted, straight-laced nation. Pre-World War II bank facades across America preserve chiseled praise to thrift and quotes from Ben Franklin encouraging citizens to save their pennies.
But since becoming a great power, the United States, too, has succumbed to wasteful habits. Of course, Americans exploit their resources very efficiently — at least, they manage to pump oil out of the ground without creating those huge aboveground lakes of crude oil that exist in Russia’s oil-producing regions. Nevertheless, all that efficiency goes by the wayside because it is put to the service of nonstop, wasteful consumption. Americans seem oblivious of the old adage that the path to happiness lies in taming one’s desires, not in trying to satisfy them. They drive Hummers, devour far more calories than they need and save far less than people in other rich nations. America runs trade deficits measuring $800 billion per year and borrows more to keep its shopping spree going.
China and India, which are currently billed as the great powers of the future, are likely to be equally wasteful. Their great resource is their people. With over 1 billion inhabitants each, these two countries account for nearly 40 percent of the world’s population. Their societies understandably find it hard to create a tidy, rational and meaningful existence for each and every one of their huddled masses.
Incidentally, for much of its history, the Russian Empire was also known for its boundless human resources, which it readily deployed in wars and large-scale social experiments with callous disregard for losses. But that was before the policies of its rulers and the tragic cataclysms of the 20th century created a full-fledged demographic crisis.
While large, resource-rich nations have dominated the world over the past half-century, it is an aberration of history rather than a rule. Indeed, Europe gave rise to the world’s most successful civilization even though it was the smallest, coldest and the least hospitable of all the inhabited continents. 
Moreover, within Europe, dominant states were rarely the largest or the richest in resources. Rome, Venice and England come to mind — and, of course, the Netherlands. All built far-flung empires and defeated much bigger rivals not by exploiting their abundant resources — which they didn’t possess — but by skillfully managing what little there was at hand. 
On the other hand, nations that suddenly came into possession of enormous wealth — such as Spain after the discovery of America — tended to squander it promptly and to suffer a terminal decline.
Russia’s demographic crisis is living proof of what environmentalists have long been warning about: namely, that poor management and wasteful exploitation leads to the depletion of even very plentiful supplies. According to the World Wildlife Fund, the world is currently using about 20 percent per year more natural resources than the planet can replenish on its own. By the middle of the 21st century, when the world’s population increases by another 50 percent, we will be consuming twice as much as the planet can supply. To use just one example, when China matches the per capita oil consumption of the United States, it will single-handedly use up the entire 80 million barrels per day that the world currently produces.
The world of tomorrow, it seems, calls for parsimony and the wise husbanding of dwindling resources. Western Europe is waking up to this reality a lot sooner than the rest of the world. The northern European landscape has been transformed over the past decade by futuristic windmills producing electricity by harnessing wind power. Hundreds of thousands of Europeans commute to work by bicycle, using safe, ubiquitous bike paths. Little of this can be found in the United States — to say nothing of Russia.
Over the past two decades, some American conservatives have been writing damning books about their Western European allies, deriding the Old World as a spent force. Recently, some European commentators have shaken off euro-malaise and have started to defend Europe’s way of life. In fact, in an overcrowded, resource-stretched world, Europe’s concern with wise management may yet win the day over open-ended consumption — unless, of course, the world’s wastrel empires succeed in mismanaging us all off the face of the earth.

Alexei Bayer is a regular contributor to Vedomosti. He contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times.

TITLE: Misuse of Official Cars Ignored in Russia, Punished Elsewhere
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalev
TEXT: A passion for cars, especially for luxury ones, is a widespread phenomenon with top officials. Millions of dollars from the state budget are spent every year providing officials with new vehicles equipped with accessories that make their lives more comfortable and better.
And they are not the only ones to benefit; their relatives and friends can take the cars, bought at taxpayers’ expense, and go wherever they want while the official is busy or if the official chooses to give them a lift.
In Russia such practices do not cause a public outcry.
In neighboring Estonia last week a huge scandal broke when the local press revealed that Robert Antropov, head of the Estonian police, used a duty BMW luxury car to take his relatives out of town. The official reaction was rapid: the chief policeman of the country was asked to resign and when he did, his resignation was accepted.
“The car was available to the security police and was used [by me] and I was permitted to use it,” the local media cited Antropov as saying. “When using it, I fulfilled all the rules and paid all the expenses linked to the [use] of the vehicle.” 
His protestations fell on deaf ears. The chief policeman’s use of a car bought at taxpayers’ expense for his private purposes was the key to his downfall.
Conversations with friends in Estonia about this case gave me an understanding of how advanced Estonian society is in its treatment of the rights and responsibilities of those in power.
“I’m not sorry for him,” an Estonian friend said to his wife while listening to the news on the radio, “The poor policeman with a salary of up to 70,000 euros ($85,700) a year couldn’t find money to buy a good car to get his relatives to the dacha? Is that a joke or something? He shouldn’t be there if he uses a car that was bought for taxes we all paid.”
Reflecting on how a similar case would be treated in Russia, I had a feeling of envy. The way this story became public and developed — through open and free media, the way the local people treat such behavior by the police with hatred to dishonesty — are atypical for contemporary Russian society. 
Our politicians keep saying this country has to find its own pathway to develop into a normal state. 
The result of this search is now quite obvious: while the people who live about 200 kilometers west of St. Petersburg believe that authorities are hired to serve the needs of the population, on this side of the Narva river most officials do not really care about corruption and waste, believing that this is the way things should be.
Russians would be surprised to read about the Estonian policeman. Estonia’s way of dealing with abuses of the state property has no place in the minds of the people brought up by the Kremlin.
“Yeah, this Estonia is an interesting country,” wrote an anonymous reader on a commentary page of a web site Delfi.ee under an article about the policeman 
“They are firing him for giving a lift to his parents. Here in Russia, top officials of the police and traffic police build cottages for themselves, greedy ones have several foreign cars, steal money and, although their official salaries are only $300, the state awards them medals,” the commentary continued. 
“As for giving a lift to somebody in a duty car, this is normal,” the comment concluded.
This reaction is a sign of progress. Some Russians, maybe only 10 percent of them, see the problem in its true colors, which is a sign that all might not be lost for this country yet.
Ten percent is a very low figure, but it is better than nothing.

TITLE: Power to the people
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: In the 1970s, poet and singer Patti Smith helped to reinvent rock music, alongside such New York new wave/punk peers as Television, Talking Heads, Blondie and the Ramones, who played at the now legendary music club CBGB’s. Her 1975 album “Horses,” with John Cale as producer and a cover photo by Robert Mapplethorpe, has been listed among rock’s best ever albums.
In the 2000s, 30 years after “Horses,” Smith still cares about remaining creative and relevant. Now on a European tour, she released an acclaimed album, “Trampin’,” last year and was guest curator (after David Bowie, John Peel and Morrissey) of the Meltdown festival on London’s South Bank in June featuring special programs dedicated to Jimi Hendrix, Bertolt Brecht and William Blake as well as a performance of “Horses” in its entirety featuring Television’s Tom Verlaine who guest-appeared as a guitarist on the original album. The concert will be featured as the second CD on “Horses Horses,” the album’s 30th anniversary special edition, due out in November.
In her upcoming concert in St. Petersburg, Smith will be backed by guitarist Lenny Kaye with whom she has performed since 1971, her long-time drummer Jay Dee Daugherty, who played on “Horses,” bass player Tony Shanahan and her daughter, Jesse Smith, on keyboards. Smith spoke to The St. Petersburg Times by telephone from an Amsterdam hotel last week.
Q: You are known for not playing the same concert twice. Do you use set lists? 
A: Well, we make our set list when we get there. Some of it is improvised, and some we decide. Sometimes I get songs on stage, I just decide to do them. Sometimes I’ll ask the people in line, “What would you like to hear?,” because the concert is for the people, so I like to do songs they want to hear, and also I like to improvise, so that we’re all living in a moment. You know, it’s rock and roll, and it’s poetry, and some of it is political, and it should be very present. 
Q: Will “Trampin’,” your most recent album, be featured in the concert? 
A: We’ll play some of it, but I think when I come to a place where I’ve never been, I try to play songs from all different albums. This is my first time in Russia, so I don’t think just playing the latest album is the right thing to do. It’s also the 30th anniversary of “Horses,” so we will be doing a lot of songs from “Horses” as well. 
Q: Listening to “Trampin’” was a surprise because you don’t usually expect that someone’s ninth album will be so good.
A: I think it’s important since I am getting older that I stay strong, and healthy, and I don’t want to do weak albums, because one does rock and roll records hopefully to inspire people, and there were important things on that record that I wanted to sing about. 
One is that my mother died, so I was thinking of her. Another really important issue is I was very against the Bush administration striking Iraq. I thought that it was a terrible, terrible thing, and so the record reflects my anger and sorrow about that. The song “Radio Baghdad” expresses sympathy with mothers in Iraq, who had bombs falling on their city. Even the title “Trampin’” really refers to all of the peace marches, you know, all the walks, all the tramping we went on. So a lot of that album reflects that energy.
Q: “Trampin’” is an old spiritual.
A: Yes, it is; but I chose [the song] for two reasons. One, it make me think of my mother and, two, because, you know, when you’re walking on long peace marches, you’re trying to do a good thing. Your destination is good, but it’s a very hard road, you know. It was just in my mind, just the word “tramping” means a long walk. “Trampin’” means, in the song, in the spiritual, that a person takes a long walk to Heaven. You know, it’s a long, long, weary walk. 
Q: However, the album often sounds very positive. 
A: Oh yeah, it’s an absolutely positive record, and I’m a positive person. I mean my mother died but also my mother loved me, I love my mother, I learned from her, I feel her spirit, I have a daughter, now I’m a mother, so that carries on on the record. Of course, when you’re a parent you must be positive, because you must feel that there are good things for your children. And also I like life, you know, I’m an artist, and every day something new and interesting happens. 
For instance, I always wanted to go to Russia and I’ve never had the money or the opportunity to go. Now I’m going to be visiting Russia and singing there, I’ll be able to see the Hermitage and see the architecture and meet people. You know, it’s another reason to be positive. This great thing has happened. Because I came from a very poor family, and when I was young, there wasn’t really any possibility that a person from where I grew up would ever go to Russia. But I’m going, and so life is good.
Q: On “Trampin’” you have songs that reflect your pacifist views. 
A: Well, I think my position is of course I’m anti-war. I’m against all wars. I think that war should never be necessary. That we should be able engage indialogue and communication, but I’m certainly against preemptive strikes. I mean I think Americans striking Iraq was illegal and immoral. I think it’s not different, you know, for me, I thought the Soviet Union going into Poland and Czechoslovakia was wrong. And I think that right now what we’re doing in Iraq is worse than that. You know, I mean we criticize other countries and then we do that. It’s a very bad thing what we did. So “Radio Baghdad” reflects that.
Q: Do you follow Russian politics? 
A: You have your own problems, right? Well, I think that’s another reason why I’m interested to come. You know, it would be nice if some of the press came together and talked about these things.
Our cultural voice is potentially very strong. In my country, in the ’70s, music helped to get us out of Vietnam and unite the people. People listened to the same music, and they marched and they were against the Vietnam [war], and eventually they helped to end it. The people can make change, but they have to unite, they have to do it. Hard, isn’t it? (Laughs)
Q: Very few Russian bands question the authorities. They mostly try to create a little world for themselves and live in it. 
A: Yes, yes, yes, you are right and that’s the same problem everywhere. Because that’s what happens to people in rock and roll. I don’t know about your country, but in my country it’s a big loss of courage. They’ve either lost their courage, or they are so concerned with, like, fame, and money, and lifestyle, that they’re afraid to speak out or they don’t care. And I think what you said is very important, it made me think, they’re creating the world not for the people who listen to their music but a little world for themselves. And I think it’s important to reach out. It’s a very interesting subject. Artists have a responsibility to their art. They have to do their work. But sometimes they have to speak out.
Pablo Picasso was very self-involved, he did millions of paintings, he painted for himself or he painted for money or whatever, but also when it was important he used his ability to speak out against the war. He painted “Guernica,” which one painting was almost enough to create a whole movement. That painting is still strong today, they still look at it as an example of the horrors of war, so I think it’s important that artists don’t only create for themselves or create for the sake of art, but use their voice to motivate the people or to fight the system or to just exercise their freedom of speech. 
Q: Despite musical innovations and technology you still sound very consistent. 
A: We’re an old-fashioned rock band, that’s for sure. We improvize and do a certain type of music that might be a little more like jazz-oriented but we are, I think, a classic rock band. That’s what I like, that’s what I know. In some ways, we are very simple but hopefully our ideas are more complicated. The music is strong but certainly not electronic, and it’s not disco-oriented, or it’s not like hip-hop or heavy bass-oriented, you know, we have reggae influences, jazz influences. Because we’re a ’70s band, and I think even though we live in the present, we still reflect a ’70s view of rock and roll.
Q: In the 1970s your music was nothing short of revolutionary. 
A: That’s still true, I think. Well, I don’t feel like what we do as old-fashioned, because, as you said, it’s my ninth album but it’s strong. My band is always challenging themselves, we don’t try to capture the past, we just have a certain style. We are not like musical geniuses or anything. We’re a rock band. But we also are very poetry- and somewhat politically oriented. But also we like to have fun, you know. The kind of band that we are is very interactive with the people. We are not like a real loud band that just plays to the people with no communication. I’ll always believe that rock and roll is people’s art. And people decide how rock and roll should evolve. 
Our approach is very simple. We don’t have any loops or tapes. We don’t have a light show, we don’t have special effects, we’re very simple but we have a lot of experience and we care. I’m not like Broadway, you know, I’m not like theater. We’re coming to communicate.
Q: The New York City music scene of the 1970s associated with CBGB’s was unique. How did it happen?
A: Television and my band started playing at CBGB’s in 1974. So CBGB’s was nothing. It was just a totally empty, dirty little bar in a very bad part of New York, and nobody went there. This is important to remember: no place in New York City for an experimental rock band to play. Because the scene was, like, disco, folk, the stadium bands, there was not one place to play for bands like us. And Television found CBGB’s and started playing there. And almost nobody came. 
And then my little band started to play there with Television, and by the end of 1974 it started to become packed.  And it was really Television and our band that were the first bands to play there, and by ’77 CBGB’s got very strong. And, then of course, the Ramones started playing, and Blondie, and Talking Heads and all these people. But it was really Television that was the first band and my band was the second. 
CBGB’s was not extraordinary, it’s just a dirty little club. The sound system is bad. It was bad then, it’s still bad. But what made it unique was that some people wanted to do something.
CBGB’s is a state of mind. It can be done anywhere.
And that’s why I always tell people: What we did in the ‘70s, yes, it was great for us, but what is going to be greater is what you do.  That’s the real message of CBGB’s. That’s what my band is trying to do. We’re trying to tell the people, “Look, you know, there’s nothing happening, make something happen.” We’re going to make something happen. And that’s the idea, to inspire people to do it themselves. And when I would tour in the ’70s, in Europe, or wherever, I would say, “Forget about my band, make your own band. Forget about CBGB’s, make your own CBGB’s.” Do your own club, your own little club. Because you can do it. I didn’t know anything when I started to play rock and roll. I couldn’t play an instrument, I couldn’t sing very good. I just had some ideas. Go out there and do it. Rock and roll belongs to the people. And people are what make scenes. Not clothes, not a cool hair style, or a good car, it’s people, interesting, exited people.
Q: One of the nights of this year’s Meltdown festival that you curated was “Songs of Experience” dedicated to Jimi Hendrix. Why do you feel he is now relevant?
A: Because from my perspective he was the greatest of our so-called rock stars. He had everything. He was a great songwriter, he was one of the greatest performers, he was a great guitar player, he had just an image so strong and beautiful, and he had wide knowledge of all kinds of music. 
He was interested in poetry and he was also very political. Unfortunately he didn’t live long enough to keep exploring it. I would say that Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan for me, and John Lennon maybe, were three of the most important voices ever.
Q: You had also a night dedicated to Bertolt Brecht. 
A: Brecht is also relevant because he merged theater and poetry and activism. Anti-war, he was for the people, so what we wanted to do at Meltdown was to choose people that were both artists and activists. Like [18th century English visionary] William Blake who was an artist, a poet but also he wrote very political poems and he was very concerned with child labor and the treatment of children and women.  A lot of my choices were to choose artists who were doing what we are trying to do, because the Meltdown was merging politics, poetry, film, music, choreography, rock and roll, jazz. We tried to do all of these things at one festival so that it reminded people of all the ways that we communicate with one another.
Q: Do you listen to other people’s music? Many artists don’t. 
A: I listen to some. I’m not familiar with all new bands and things like that. I do listen to the other people, but I also listen to a lot of classical music and I like opera. I really love Maria Callas, Wagner and Beethoven, the great Russian composers,  John Coltrane, so the music I listen to is not just rock music. And in terms of what’s happening in music today the people that I most support are unknown people, the people that I think about are young, unknown bands who try to say something and are trying to make change or to explore themselves and their ideas. I’m very fond and feel supportive of people I don’t even know.
Q: Do you have any particular Russian influences ? 
A: Of course, when I was young, I read Mayakovsky, he was a big influence on me. I read of course all the great Russian writers. Russian literature is great. It’s a whole complex world to study. That’s one of the reasons that I’m very excited about coming to Russia is to see the Hermitage and to see art and the classical architecture too. Many great Kandinskys to see.
I just want to see the streets, see what the people are, to feel the atmosphere. All of the history that happened in the country. It’s such amazing history. 
But I think that my biggest influence when I was young probably was reading Mayakovsky. When I was a very young girl, Mayakovsky and Bob Dylan were what I loved. 
[Mayakovsky] is very accessible to a young person, not only his work but his image and his whole story is, of course, romantic to young people. But the great Russian literature has not really been surpassed. 
You know, I just can’t even imagine how I will feel to be there. I’m just an American coming to Russia. I really hated the whole idea of the Cold War when I was younger, which I thought was totally stupid. It didn’t even feel it had anything to do with the American people or the Russian people. It really felt like that our governments like to perpetuate the idea of enemies. Because that’s how they can build up military supplies, you know, it helps the economy and it’s good for greedy people, and this whole idea of us having a whole people like the enemy, it’s ridiculous. 
You know, now our government is trying to do it [again], we have a new enemy now — it’s terrorism. The governments love to have an enemy. I’m just glad we’re allowed to come in to your country, not only to visit but to get a chance to play music and share ideas, because I wanted to come in the ’70s, but it was impossible. 
So now I can come and even though I’m older, I promise you that we will have a strong energy, because we’re not a nostalgia band, we are not “Oh, that ‘70s band” getting old and fat, and lumbering through our songs. We, I promise you, are a strong band and we will do our best to be very present, and communicate in a present way and not in some nostalgic way.

Patti Smith performs at Music Hall on Sept. 2. www.pattismith.net

TITLE: Chernov’s choice
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Sweden’s Jay-Jay Johanson headlines a party called the “Last Stereo of The Summer” on Friday, promoted by the team behind the popular Stereoleto festival.
Two years ago Johanson performed at Stereoleto with a duo of (very loud) Macintosh laptop operators, but now he will appear with a live band and a new set based on his upcoming “Rush” album, local promoters said.
Due out next month, “Rush” is reported to be a more sentimental, less depressing album than Johanson’s previous work. 
Johanson was born in 1969 in Sweden and grew up in the small city of Skara. According to his official biography, his jazz-enthusiast father put speakers in his crib to play him music by music legends such as Chet Baker and Scott Walker.
“I have always adored Chet Baker. And in my teenage years I liked David Sylvian,” he wrote in email interview with The St. Petersburg Times in 2003.
“But Kraftwerk and Daft Punk have been far more influential ... My dad is a jazz addict and my mum likes Elvis, my older sister ABBA, and my older brother likes the glam thing.” Johanson also cited Felix Da Housecat, Radiohead, Aphex Twin, Missy Elliott and Boy George as his favorite artists.
Johanson will perform at an unlikely venue, the Mercury Trade and Entertainment Complex (see gigs for location details). Entrance to this sponsored event is by invitation, which were available for free from certain outlets, but this week promoters said they had run out of them. 
More concerts have been confirmed for September. Joe Cocker performs on Palace Square on Sept. 15, while Asian Dub Foundation headlines an Afisha magazine party at Manezh Kadetskogo Korpusa on Sept. 17. Promoters said the London-based band would come in its full, nine-member lineup, not as a scaled-down “sound system” that performed in St. Petersburg  two years ago. The band willl be supported by American act XLover, whose April debut CD, “Pleasure & Romance,” was described by Vice magazine as belonging to a category of “nasty little synthy albums informed by Moroder, New Order, porn and narcotics.”
It has also been announced that the reformed Van Der Graaf Generator will come to the city in October. The British prog rock legends will perform either on Oct. 23 or 24 at a venue yet to be determined. 
Sadly, Robert Moog, the inventor of the Moog synthesiser, died on Aug. 21. He was 71. The instrument he created in 1964 has been essential to the sound of rock and pop music for decades. 
Meanwhile, BBC Radio 1 announced a John Peel Day — a  day of gigs on the anniversary of the late British visionary radio  DJ’s last show on Oct. 13. 
“The day will be a celebration of John’s life and massive contribution to music and broadcasting with as many venues as possible staging gigs across the U.K. under the banner of Peel Day,” the BBC website said. Peel died on Oct. 25, 2004.

TITLE: Like a bridge over troubled water
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Baltic Sea Festival, which finished in Stockholm last weekend, lived up to its name — literally: some of its diverse classical concerts were performed on the waves of the Baltic Sea itself.
Begun in August 2003 as a joint effort between Finnish-born conductor and music director of Los-Angeles Philharmonic Esa-Pekka Salonen, the Mariinsky Theater’s artistic director Valery Gergiev and the director of Stockholm’s Berwaldhallen Michael Tyden, the festival has a wide reach both musically and geographically. 
Besides Gergiev and Salonen, the list of the festival’s top-flight participants included Danish violinist Nikolai Znaider and French pianist Helene Grimaud. Joining them were musicians from the Mariinsky Symphony Orchestra, the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, the Danish National Symphony Orchestra and the Estonian National Male Voice Choir.
This year’s event incorporated works by Nordic, Baltic and Russian composers: Sibelius, Rachmaninov, Mussorgsky, Grieg, Witold Lutoslawski, Hugo Alfven — as well as pieces by Mozart, Ravel, Debussy, Haydn and Beethoven — and featured two world premieres commissioned by the festival. One, Rolf Martinsson’s orchestral piece “Open Mind” was performed in three different countries during the festival. It premiered in Tallinn, on Aug. 10 by the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Manfred Honeck. The orchestra played the work next on Aug. 11 at the Concert Hall in Ábo, Finland and then in Stockholm’s Berwaldhallen on Aug. 15. 
“The music is meant to highlight the openness of the composer, the free choice of expression and willingness to accept and explore new musical ideas, gestures and styles, and with a strong wish to communicate,” the composer said. “Harmonic structures, melodic lines and ideas of colorful instrumentation are fundamental to the composing of ‘Open Mind.’”
The festival juxtaposed works as diverse as Tchaikovsky’s “Serenade” and Arnold Schoenbergs “Friede auf Erden” and Arvo Part’s “Pokajanie” (The Repentance”) performed by Swedish, Russian, Estonian and Danish musicans, and performing venues spread across the Baltic region with concerts in Stockholm, Helsinki, Turku, Tallinn and Gdansk. The funding this year comes from governments of four countries on the Baltic coast — Sweden, Russia, Finland and Poland.
Several concerts were also held on board two luxurious liners with fitting musical names, Silja Symphony and Silja Serenade. The orchestra, assembled from musicians from the St. Petersburg, Helsinki and Swedish orchestras gave two performances under the baton of Gergiev, Salonen and Manfred Honeck on board the Silja Serenade ferry en route from Helsinki to Stockholm on Aug. 12.
Despite reservations about the risks of a little-rehearsed joint concert and the acoustic limitations of the Atlantis Dance Hall at the far end of the boat, the musicians delivered an inspired performance which gained in confidence as the concert progressed.
“Rhythmic problems are familiar to every conductor but when you lose the ground under your feet, it is a rather challenging and exciting new experience,” joked Honeck.
“These joint concerts were truly symbolic, and it meant a lot to everyone,” Salonen said, recalling the performance.
The development of the Baltic Sea Festival into a versatile multi-location international event has been rapid. Its founders now say their brainchild has reached its ideal size and the task facing them is now to balance the input of the growing numbers of new participants.
The Russian presence at the festival was enthralling. The concert at Stockholm’s Berwaldhallen on Aug. 14, featuring Rachmaninov’s “The Isle of the Dead,” Borodin’s Symphony No. 2 (“Bogatyrskaya”) and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5, was a particular success.
The string section sent shivers up the audience’s spine as the orchestra moved through ominous rippling chords during a mesmerizing rendition of “The Isle of the Dead.” This powerful symphonic poem, in which Romanticism fuses with solemnity and restraint, is rarely performed.
The orchestra produced magnificent nuanced half-tones as it navigated through gloomy waters, creating an ethereal bridge connecting human souls with the grim underworld. 
A captivating performance of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 — a triumphant, high-spirited work, which the composer himself once branded “repellent” — was a revelation that earned the musicians a prolonged standing ovation.
Tchaikovsky isn’t often considered a serious composer outside Russia yet recordings of the symphony with Gergiev conducting the Vienna Philharmonic were instantly swept off the shelves of the hall’s CD shop just minutes after the performance.
“My opinion of Tchaikovsly’s fifth wasn’t very high but Gergiev made me love it,” commented a member of the audience, stuffing the newly purchased recording of the piece into her bag.
The Mariinsky’s recent take on Mussorgsky’s original 1869 version of “Boris Godunov,” an opera that Gergiev describes as “expressing Russian national spirit in a shocking way” and “showing a bottomless, chaotic yet immensely rich country,” won an enthusiastic reception in Stockholm. 
Remarkably enough, Georgy Tsypin’s sets showing monstrous seaweed growing through onion domes — apparently a symbol of the Russian state rotting from within — has unwillingly created a chilling parallel with the festival’s environmental bent, hinting at the horrors of mutation caused by the excessive pollution in the Baltic Sea.
The green agenda is apparently much more of an issue for Gergiev than for the Russian government, which shut down its Environmental Ministry in 2000, and handed its responsibilities over to the freshly created Natural Resources Ministry with a resultant blatant conflict of interest since the new body has to handle both the exploitation and protection of the environment.
“I am convinced that for future generations the fate of the Baltic Sea will be more important than, say, the prevailing trend in performing Beethoven’s symphonies,” Gergiev said at the news conference in Stockholm.
Last year’s festival appearance by the Mariinsky was the company’s first visit to Sweden. This year, the concert in Gdansk marked the Mariinsky’s first performance in Poland. 
But for the Russian musicians the festival is not about more lucrative foreign tours, Baltic expansion notwithstanding. 
“If it were up to me, I would have taken a breather these four or five days and had a holiday,” Gergiev said. “We are traveling to the festival because the issue behind it, the environment, is crucially important for all of us.”
International effort is all the more important to rescue the Baltic Sea, now that environmentalists admit their current strategy may have outlived itself.
“Many ecologists say they feel like they have come to the end of the road, and all existing tools have been used,” said Lars Kristoferson, secretary-general of the Swedish branch of the World Wildlife Foundation. “We need to develop a new strategy and look for new tools, otherwise all our efforts will have been wasted.”
Gergiev said it is high time to stop dividing countries into donors and recipients.
“We need to divide responsibilities and share financial burdens equally,” he said. “I don’t believe in confrontation between big and small countries, I believe in cooperation, goodwill and equal partnerships. The human factor, not the money, is the real issue. And at this festival, we are all here not to confront but to embrace.”
The festival also expanded the type of music included. Following Salonen’s promise, the Berwaldhallen, home to the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, turned into an alternative music venue during the last three days of the festival, from Aug. 17 to Aug. 19. “Club Berwald” hosted three nights of rock and pop concerts by  Swedish, Estonian and Lithuanian bands.
“The universal language of music has no political restrictions, and can easily reach people across language barriers,” Salonen said in a speech in Helsinki this month, when receiving environmental prize from Finland’s board of WWF. “I believe that a festival of this size can spark a shared desire to improve the deteriorating Baltic Sea environment.”

TITLE: As the novelty of “Big Brother” and “Dom-2” wears off...
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Back in 2001, Grigory Lyubomirov directed Russia’s first reality show, “Behind Glass” (Za Steklom). Now he plans a new series that he calls “the next step in the development of reality television.” The show, called “Rublyovka,” will portray ordinary members of the public mingling with the residents of Moscow’s millionaire strip, Rublyovskoye Shosse.
The series, due to air on NTV in October, will feature celebrities playing themselves in cameo roles, Lyubomirov said Tuesday. He named viola player Yury Bashmet as a possible guest. Participants will live on Rublyovka and episodes will be filmed with a supporting cast of genuine locals.
A recent bestselling novel by a Rublyovka resident, Oksana Robski’s “Casual,” whetted the public’s appetite for insights into the lives of Russia’s nouveaux riches, and Lyubomirov — who was also behind the satirical puppet show “Kukly” — is in a better position than most to deliver the goods, since he lives on Rublyovka himself.
The show moves away from the concept of isolating participants from the outside world, which was used in “Behind Glass,” the director said. He compared his idea to an experimental series made by Daniel Myrick, the director of “The Blair Witch Project.” Myrick’s mini-series, titled “The Strand,” was filmed in documentary style in Venice Beach, California, using locals and actors, and it used the slogan “Where everyone’s a character.”
“Viewers should get the impression that it’s all true,” Lyubomirov stated. The episodes will be based on real events that have taken place on Rubylovka, he continued. For example, Bashmet was once the victim of mobile phone fraudsters, and the series might recreate that episode, he said.
“There are real people and there are actors; there are real situations and there are staged situations,” the director said. “It’s a kind of cross between a drama series and a reality show.”
He said that he had read Oksana Robski’s novel “Casual” and wanted her to take part as a guest celebrity. The author is now preparing to co-host a daytime talk show on NTV called “For You,” which was scheduled to start on Tuesday. Robski said that she hadn’t yet heard of the “Rublyovka” show but attributed the idea to the success of her book.
“Just look at what a fashion I’ve created for Rublyovka,” she said, laughing. After writing a second book that became a bestseller, Robski is now working on a third novel. This one will be “about Cinderella,” she said, and it will come out this fall.
The writer categorically ruled out taking part in a reality show set on Rublyovka. “I definitely won’t take part. That’s 100 percent.”
Lyubomirov has been called “the father of Big Brother” ever since his reality show “Behind Glass” pioneered the concept in Russia on the now-defunct channel TV6. Contestants lived in an apartment next to the Rossia hotel, and members of the public lined up to view them through one-way mirror walls.
Since then, Russian channels have experimented with various reality shows. Channel One scored hits with the borrowed formats “Fame Academy” and “Survivor,” remade as “Star Factory” and “The Last Hero,” respectively, and Rossia acquired the rights to Britain’s “Pop Idol,” calling the show “People’s Artist.” In May, TNT launched the Russian version of “Big Brother,” a format that originated in the Netherlands and set the standard for numerous reality shows worldwide.
Homemade formats have been successful too, notably TNT’s “Dom-2,” a show in which contestants must pair off in order to win a house. The rights for a Spanish-language version of the long-running daily show have been sold to Sony Pictures, and Portugal’s Fremantle Productions also plans to make a Portuguese version.
Of Russia’s television channels, TNT packs the most reality shows into its schedule. Alongside “Big Brother” and “Dom-2,” the channel offered two other reality shows this summer: “Hunger,” a series in which contestants must try to earn money for food in a foreign city, and “The Candidate,” a remake of the NBC hit “The Apprentice.”
TNT general producer Dmitry Troitsky said that his channel had even more reality projects in the pipeline. A remake of Britain’s “Wife Swap” is due to be shown next year, as is a Russian version of the U.S. show “He’s a Lady,” in which male contestants dress and behave like women.
“Reality shows come in different formats and genres, and we are doing all of these,” Troitsky said. “We see what the youth audience wants, and therefore we need to offer variety.” He said he hadn’t heard of NTV’s “Rublyovka,” but he called its focus on social differences an interesting theme.
The channel’s most recent acquisition, “The Candidate,” was launched in July. Its first three episodes earned ratings of about 10 percent of viewers, Troitsky said. “We realized that it was a very risky project that might not attract an audience, but luckily we were mistaken.”
The show, whose original U.S. version featured billionaire Donald Trump, focuses on the search for the most promising manager from a pool of eager candidates. In the Russian version, the Trump role has gone to Arkady Novikov, the successful Moscow entrepreneur who founded the Yolki-Palki chain and numerous upscale restaurants. It is Novikov who utters the famous catchphrase “Vy uvoleny,” or “You’re fired,” in each episode.
While searching for a presenter, the channel approached several oligarchs, but they weren’t keen to share their business tips with a wider audience, Troitsky said. “The good thing about Arkady Novikov is that he’s absolutely transparent.”
The producer admitted that the Russian version of “Big Brother,” which wrapped up its first series last week, had achieved less than astronomical ratings. He put this down to the familiarity of the concept.
“You can’t impress anyone with a show that observes people in an isolated space,” he said. “In that sense, the concept wasn’t exciting enough for viewers.” Still, he said that TNT would make a second series of the show.
The director of “Rublyovka” also said that the original type of reality show had become passe. “Four years have gone by since the premiere of ‘Behind Glass,’ and this format keeps on going in different shows,” he commented. “I wouldn’t want to do such a traditional reality show.”
Instead, the director has grandiose plans for his latest project. He said that he hoped “Rublyovka” would be a modern version of “La Comedie Humaine,” the classic series of novels by 19th-century author Honore de Balzac that gave a sweeping overview of France at the time. The show’s star will be Rublyovka itself, he said, calling the elite suburb “a tangle of passions.”
While the initial plan is for 40 episodes that will run from Oct. 17 to the end of the year, Lyubomirov spoke of his hopes that “Rublyovka” could repeat the long-running success of a popular British soap opera. “I want us to last as long as EastEnders.”

TITLE: Death Toll Rises As Floods Hit Europe
AUTHOR: By Pilar Wolfsteller
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LUCERNE, Switzerland — Helicopters ferried food to an Alpine resort Thursday and plucked people from roofs in the capital Berne as flood-ravaged Switzerland braced itself for more rain. 
In Romania, one of the countries worst hit by the downpours that lashed parts of central Europe earlier this week, the death toll from flooding rose by six, to 31 Thursday, with another three people missing, including a 4-year-old girl. 
The torrential rains forced lakes and rivers to burst their banks from Berne to Bucharest, cutting roads, power and communications to hundreds of communities and causing damage estimated at well over $1 billion in Switzerland alone. 
In Berne, helicopters lifted residents from the roofs and balconies of their homes in the oldest part of town where they were trapped by the waters. Officials fear centuries-old buildings could be swept away. 
In Lucerne sandbags protected shops and homes and residents watched anxiously as the river Reuss rushed perilously close beneath the city’s covered 14th-century wooden bridge — a national landmark. 
“Right now the water level is falling, but we just do not know what is going to happen next,” civil protection official Rene Bieri said. 
Forecasters said the weather could get worse with a further 20-30 millimetres of rain expected later in the week over Switzerland. 
Driftwood has been swept into lakes and rivers and now threatens to smash bridges and other installations, rescue officials said. 
The Swiss army was using Puma helicopters to supply the scenic mountain resort of Engelberg, which has been cut off since Monday by rain which also sent part of the railway line plunging down a ravine. 
One of 700 tourists evacuated by air Wednesday from the village told Swiss television they had been without hot food, clean water and electricity. 
Not all tourists were unhappy. “It was like a carnival here last night, with everybody crowding the streets,” said Australian Ray Condon as he squeezed along a wooden walkway in Lucerne. “Everybody was out taking pictures.” 
But the Swiss authorities have warned sightseers to stay away from the floodwaters, worried about a sudden rise in river levels or more flash floods. 
In southern Germany, a 28-year-old man drowned when he ventured out with two friends in a dinghy which capsized on the River Mangfall near the town of Feldkirchen-Westerham. 
He was the first person to die in Germany in the floods, which have turned regions of Bavaria into disaster zones. The other two men were rescued in the incident late Wednesday. 
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, interrupting his campaign schedule for parliamentary elections in three weeks, was visiting regions hit by the floods Thursday. 
Bavarian authorities said the crisis had eased in several areas but the situation remained critical along parts of the River Danube. 
In Romania, the latest deaths were from the Transylvanian region of Harghita. “I lost everything,” a young villager told Realitatea TV station. “I saw floodwaters carry away a big bus parked near my home.” 
Floods across the country have killed 67 so far this year. The government estimates the damage as worth 1.5 billion euros ($1.8 billion). 
Eight people have died and thousands were evacuated from their homes in Switzerland and Austria, where the toll rose to four Thursday when searchers found the body of an 81-year-old man missing since his car tumbled into a swollen river. 
Austrian crews were using heavy equipment to clear away tons of mud, gravel and rocks dumped inside hundreds of homes, hotels and businesses in mountain valleys in Vorarlberg and neighbouring Tyrol province.

TITLE: Shiite Cry For Unity
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGHDAD — Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr on Thursday called for an end to the armed clashes between his followers and supporters of a rival Shiite group, saying Muslims should not be fighting one another.
“I call upon all the believers to save the blood of the Muslims and to return to their homes,’’ al-Sadr told reporters in his home in the holy Shiite city of Najaf.
The clashes broke out Wednesday when al-Sadr’s offices in Najaf were attacked and torched by rival groups. The fighting, which quickly spread to other urban centers in south-central Iraq, pointed to the deep rifts within the Shiite community, 60 percent of the population, which won most seats in parliament during the Jan. 30 election, which Sunnis boycotted.
“I will not forget this attack on the office… but Iraq is passing through a critical and difficult period that requires unity,’’ al-Sadr said.
He also called on Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the rival Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, to condemn “what his followers have done.’’
“I urge the believers not to attack innocent civilians and not to fall for American plots that aim to divide us. We are passing through a critical period and a political process,’’ he said, referring to stalled talks over the country’s new constitution.

TITLE: Gaza Handover Ends in West Bank Conflict
AUTHOR: By Howard Goller
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: JERUSALEM — Violence erupted in Jerusalem and the West Bank on Wednesday just as Israeli and Palestinian leaders said plans were taking shape for a peaceful handover of the Gaza Strip next month.
In the West Bank, Israeli troops killed four Palestinians, one of them Islamic Jihad leader Ribhi Amara, in a late-night undercover raid on Tulkarm refugee camp, witnesses said.
In Jerusalem, a Palestinian stabbed to death an ultra-Orthodox Jew and wounded another, ending a long period of relative calm in the walled Old City, police said.
The attacks were the first since Israel on Tuesday finished removing the last of 15,000 settlers and their supporters from 21 enclaves in Gaza and 4 in the West Bank.
The pullout, during which Palestinian militants largely held their fire, is part of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to “disengage” from conflict with the Palestinians.
Some 1.4 million Palestinians live in the Gaza Strip and 2.4 million in the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem, areas captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.
Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz said Israeli military forces were expected to leave Gaza in mid-September, completing a withdrawal from the territory after 38 years of occupation.
All that remained was to complete the demolitions of some 1,700 homes, dismantle army bases and pull out troops from Gaza.
“I don’t think we will complete the disengagement process before the middle of September, (but) perhaps we will complete it a few days ahead of time,” Mofaz said on Army Radio.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian coordinating the Israeli pullout said the sides had made progress on a sticking point — Israel’s handover of a Gaza-Egypt border crossing to Palestinian control.
The official, cabinet minister Mohammed Dahlan, said the world understood the Palestinian desire for Gaza not to become a prison, adding: “And I expect a breakthrough in this regard.”
Israeli forces entered Tulkarm and surrounded a house planning to arrest 5 men suspected in suicide bombings in Tel Aviv in February and Netanya in July, a military source said.
When the soldiers arrived, a gunbattle ensued. Witnesses said four people, including Amara, were killed.
“The intention was to come to arrest them. All were wanted and all were armed,” the source said. The Islamic Jihad group, bent on destroying Israel, vowed to avenge the killings.
In Jerusalem, a Palestinian stabbed to death an ultra-Orthodox Jew and wounded another in an Arab market near the busy Jaffa Gate of the Old City, home to Arabs and Jews. A paramedic told Reuters that both victims were American citizens although Israel Radio said the dead man was British.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Georgian Gets Earache
TBILISI, Georgia (AP) — Villagers in Georgia beat up an electric company employee and bit one of his ears off after he threatened to shut their power off for nonpayment, police in the former Soviet republic said Tuesday.
The attack occurred Monday in Kvemo Arkvani, about 90 kilometers southeast of Tbilisi, when regional utility worker Elshad Tagimov told some residents he was going to turn off their electricity because they were late in paying their bills, regional police officer Temur Maisuradze said. He gave no further details of the incident.
The small, former Soviet republic is plagued by frequent power outages, and non-payment is a constant problem for its utilities. The Tbilisi electric company recently cut off supplies to 300 state bodies because of debts accumulated in previous years.

Saddam Sacks Lawyers
BAGHDAD (AP) — Saddam Hussein has fired his legal defense team except for an Iraqi attorney who is the only person authorized to represent him, a court said Wednesday.
A statement by the Iraqi Special Tribunal said Saddam was questioned Monday about news reports that he had fired all his lawyers except for Iraqi attorney Khalil al-Dulaimi.
“Mr. Saddam confirmed that he canceled all the power of attorneys and fired them,’’ the statement said. “At present, his only authorized defense counsel is Mr. Khalil.’’
Judge Raid Juhi asked Saddam whether he wanted any international lawyers, counselors or advisers to assist in his defense and Saddam said no, the statement added.

Turkmen Lip-Synch Ban 
ASHGABAT, Turkmenistan (AP) — He has outlawed opera and ballet and railed against long hair and gold teeth, but now the authoritarian president of Turkmenistan is determined to wipe out another perceived scourge: lip synching.
President Saparmurat Niyazov has ordered a ban on lip synching performances across the tightly controlled Central Asian nation, citing “a negative effect on the development of singing and musical art,” the president’s office said Tuesday.
Under Niyazov’s order, lip synching is now prohibited at all cultural events, concerts, on television – and at private celebrations such as weddings.
Niyazov has led the former Soviet republic for 20 years, creating a personality cult around himself and issuing decrees regulating behavior in all aspects of life.

Taiwan Nun Too Proper
TAIPEI (Reuters) — Taiwan has withdrawn an anti-AIDS campaign ad featuring a smiling nun holding a condom after it sparked an outcry from Roman Catholics, local media said Wednesday. 
The poster, which shows the nun holding the condom with both hands and saying “Although I don’t need one, even I know,” had been removed from all condom machines in Taipei hospitals, subway stations and elsewhere.
“As a nun, I can’t agree with their way of expressing things,” a church spokeswoman said Wednesday. “This is a serious insult.”
Nuns take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience and the Vatican considers all forms of contraception a sin.

TITLE: Resurgent Chicago Dominate Minnesota
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota — After squandering a sparkling performance by Freddy Garcia the night before, the Chicago White Sox weren’t about to waste a fine outing by Mark Buehrle. 
Buehrle scattered six hits over eight innings, Carl Everett homered and drove in four runs and the White Sox beat Minnesota 6-4 on Wednesday to snap a four-game losing streak to the Twins. 
Benefiting from four double plays, Buehrle (14-6) gave up one run and struck out six without allowing a walk to end a personal five-game losing streak against Minnesota — which beat Garcia 1-0 on one hit on Tuesday. 
“That was vintage Mark — strikes, groundballs, double plays. He didn’t walk a batter,” said former Twins catcher A.J. Pierzynski, who had three hits. “That’s why he’s one of the best there is. When he’s on, he can beat anybody.” 
Everett had three hits, the first five batters in the lineup went 11-for-22 and Chicago won for only the second time in 10 games. 
Matthew LeCroy homered and drove in two runs for Minnesota, which watched starter Joe Mays (6-9) struggle again and threaten his place in the rotation. 
“We won, and that’s all that matters,” said Buehrle, who faced the minimum through five innings. “It was nice to get my confidence back up.”
Once Buehrle left, the Twins staged a serious rally — getting a two-run homer from Nick Punto off Cliff Politte to pull within 6-3 in the ninth. Joe Mauer greeted Damaso Marte with a single, and Dustin Hermanson gave up an RBI double to LeCroy before getting the last two outs for his 31st save. 
“We’ve been reading stories about us choking all year,” Hermanson said. “It’s nothing new. I just hope the guys aren’t reading the paper.” 
LeCroy spoiled Buehrle’s shutout bid with a two-out homer in the seventh, but the Twins dropped to 10 1/2 games behind the White Sox in the AL Central. Second-place Cleveland also lost, falling eight games back. Minnesota is three games behind in the wild-card race, trailing three teams. 
“I’m not doing my job,” Mays said. “They’ve got to do what’s in the best interest of the team. You’ve just got to swallow your pride.”
While the rest of Minnesota’s starting pitchers have surged in the second half, Mays has stumbled — going 1-6 with a 7.48 ERA after posting marks of 5-3 and 4.13 before the All-Star break. He gave up nine hits and five runs in 4 2-3 innings, walking one and hitting one without a strikeout. 
Mays had elbow problems throughout 2002 and 2003 before opting for reconstructive surgery that kept him off the mound for nearly 18 months until this spring. That could be a reason why his maximum velocity is to down to about 88 mph, reducing the effectiveness of his best pitch, a sinker. 
With top prospects Scott Baker and Francisco Liriano thriving at Triple-A Rochester, a change sounded almost imminent. Manager Ron Gardenhire, however, has a shortage of healthy players and isn’t sure how a move would work before teams are allowed to expand their rosters on Sept. 1. 
“If you can figure out a way to get a pitcher up here ... you’re a little bit smarter than I am right now,” Gardenhire said. “We’re really stuck here.” 
After Tadahito Iguchi walked in the first, Everett followed with an upper-deck shot to right field — his 19th homer of the season — to put the White Sox up 2-0. Boosted by nifty plays in the field that shortstop Jason Bartlett and second baseman Punto turned into groundouts, Mays settled down until Timo Perez started the disastrous fifth with a bunt single. 
Everett raised his RBI total to 72 with a two-run double, and Jermaine Dye finished Mays with an RBI double that made it 5-0. Upon taking Mays out, Gardenhire told him to cover his ears as they braced for boos from the crowd of 32,687. 
“They’re hootin’ because they want to see good performances,” Gardenhire said. “But you can’t take it personally.”
A morose Mays was beyond caring about that.

TITLE: Astafjevs Recants Bribery Claims
AUTHOR: By Kevin O’Flynn
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Latvia captain Vitalijs Astafjevs confirmed and then withdrew his accusations that players and team officials were offered bribes to throw last week’s World Cup qualifier against Russia.
Astafjevs blamed the scandal on a reporter from Sporta Avize, Itar-Tass reported Wednesday. The Latvian newspaper quoted Astafjevs as saying money was offered by the Russians.
“[The journalist] asked me whether I had heard anything about rumored attempts by Russian officials to bribe the Latvian team,” Itar-Tass quoted Astafjevs as saying. 
“I replied I had heard such rumors. But I uttered not one word more,” he said.
Astafjevs’ statement came after a day of criticism and pressure from both Latvian and Russian football officials, who staunchly denied the accusations.
“What Astafjevs said is on the edge of reason,” said the president of the Russian Football Union, Vitaly Mutko, in an interview with Sovietsky Sport published Wednesday, weaving a threatening metaphor: “The player takes part in the Russian well, he takes water from there and now he goes and spits in the well. ... Well, now Astafjevs will have to drink from the well.”
Sovietsky Sport showed that Astafjevs’ change of heart only came late on Tuesday. When originally reached by a Sovietsky Sport reporter during the day, Astafjevs did not renege on his accusations.
“I confirm that those were my words. So I will not say anything more,” he said.
Only hours later,  when the paper rang him again he had changed his mind.
Askols Uldrikis, the journalist who interviewed Astafjevs, said Wednesday that the player had backtracked because of the huge publicity and opprobrium heaped on him since the publication of the interview. 
Uldrikis again said that the interview, which was taped and published in question-and-answer form, was correct and that he did not ask the question that Astafjevs now says he asked.
“He realized that he was in a very difficult situation. Now, only he says this and nobody else [supports him],” Uldrikis said by telephone. “We didn’t expect such an uproar over that.”
In an Internet survey run on Sovietsky Sport’s web site, when asked what the Russian Football Union should do about the affair, 56 percent of respondents voted that it should attempt to disqualify Astafjevs for a long period.

TITLE: European Soccer Money Scams Raise Concerns
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MONACO — European soccer’s governing body is increasingly concerned that criminals may be using football to launder money either by buying into clubs or gambling on match results. 
Chief executive Lars-Christer Olsson said on Thursday that UEFA was increasing its efforts to establish the source of the money pouring into the game and to stop European matches being fixed by Asian betting syndicates. 
“The whole idea of vast amounts of money coming into football presents us with an alarming situation, one that, because of modern technology like the internet, can cross borders and one that can be very difficult to legislate against. 
“There is the possibility that criminal gangs are trying to use soccer as a gigantic money-laundering machine and we have to stop this,” Olsson told reporters. 
UEFA has asked the European Union to look into the sources of the money entering European football and UEFA’s top officials have met with MPs from the European parliament who work as the “Friends of Football” group. 
“Because of the Champions League the popularity of football has grown significantly, especially in Asia where in China, Japan and even places like Nepal it is enormously popular,” UEFA president Lennart Johansson said. 
“I have spoken to FIFA president Sepp Blatter about my concerns that drug money and money from other gangsters is coming into football, that bribes are being offered to players and referees and that matches are being used by betting syndicates. 
“We recently had a case in Finland involving a club that had just been taken over. We have to be very vigilant but we, as a football authority, only have a limited amount of power. 
“It is up to national governments and authorities and the European Union to look at this situation too.” 
Olsson said UEFA is working closely with betting organisations to detect any unusual gambling patterns as soon as possible. 
“Once this has been established, we notify the match delegate who will take whatever action is necessary. This is how we knew of something irregular in Finland recently.” 
The case in Finland involved Allianssi Vantaa, last season’s runners-up, who lost a league match 8-0 to champions Haka Valkeakoski on July 7. 
UEFA and Betfair, an English company, also detected irregular betting on last season’s UEFA Cup match between Dinamo Tbilisi and Panionios. Tblisi led 2-0 at halftime only for Panionios to win the match 5-2. 
“For the illegal gamblers and the money launderers, it is a good way to make their money clean,” Olsson said.