SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1101 (67), Friday, September 2, 2005
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TITLE: Grief, Anger in Air as Beslan Mourns Dead
AUTHOR: By Francesca Mereu
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: BESLAN, North Ossetia — With the air thick with grief and anger, thousands of people gathered at Beslan’s School No. 1 on Thursday to commemorate the 331 hostages, half of them children, who died in last year’s attack.
Mourners passed through two metal detectors at the entrance to the schoolyard, and police officers searched them for weapons, a grim irony that angered some victims’ families.
“My daughter and her two children were in this damn school,” screamed Zoya Gadiyeva, who was holding portraits of her daughter and 6-year-old granddaughter, both of whom died. 
“I want to know the truth. Where should we go to find out the truth? The police were unable to protect our children, but today they are even checking the bag of an old woman,” she said.
Police closed adjacent streets to traffic and meticulously checked the documents of people in the vicinity of the school.
Inside the schoolyard, the bereaved, many carrying candles, flowers and stuffed animals, lined up to enter the burnt-out school gym, where more than 300 of the some 1,000 hostages died.
Bells tolled at 8:30 a.m., the time the school opened last year, and the haunting strains of Mozart’s “Requiem” then filled the air.
In the gym, women wearing black were weeping and screaming, and a kneeling man cried out, “Why, why did they do this to us?”
One woman stroked a photograph of her teenage granddaughters, Alla and Inna Smirnova. “Here are my beautiful girls,” she cried. “When you entered this school, you were so pretty!”
Flowers and lit candles covered the gym floor and windowsills, and portraits of the dead were hung on what remained of the walls. Pictures of the men, most of whom were shot on the first day of the attack, Sept. 1, were tacked to one wall, while the opposite wall was covered with pictures of smiling teenagers. Pictures of young children filled an entire corner of the gym. A clear Plexiglas roof stretched overhead.
Black marble slabs with water trickling down them stood at the sides of the gym door, symbolizing the tears shed by the victims’ loved ones.
A wing of the school was plastered with red and white banners. Children from all over the world had signed the red banners, while the white banners carried the names of the Beslan children who had died. The banners were brought to Beslan by the Children as Peacemakers Association, which was founded by U.S. citizen Patricia Montadon, said Zhana Tebeyeva, the association’s Beslan coordinator.
Representatives from the Red Cross walked around the grounds, comforting the grief-stricken and handing out sedatives.
Gadiyeva said her 38-year-old son died of heart attack just five months after the attack because he could not handle the stress. 
“Why didn’t you do anything to protect them?” she berated the police. 
“I will cry everyday until I reach you over there,” she said, turning to the pictures of her daughter and granddaughter.
Nearby, an old woman in black sang a song in Ossetian. “You all died and still the authorities are hiding the truth from us,” the woman sang, according to a translator. “Tell me, my dears, where should we go for the truth?”
A policeman told her to be quiet, and she retorted in Russian: “You haven’t lost anyone. You should have protected my children, but you failed, and now you are trying to shut me up?”
A group of screaming women tried to stop the principal of School No.1, Lidia Tsaliyeva, from entering the school. One woman ran up and tried to hit her on the head, connecting only lightly before police carried her away.
Some men then approached her. “How dare she come here today,” one man yelled.
“She is responsible for the death of our children. She betrayed us,” screamed Batras Tsalago as she tried to get near Tsaliyeva.
Police officers quickly surrounded Tsaliyeva and escorted her away.
Tsalago, who lost his brother Timur, and many other residents believe that Tsaliyeva had somehow cooperated with the terrorists. She denies the accusations.
Across the country, people on Thursday came together to mourn the Beslan tragedy. All Russian Orthodox churches held memorial services, and Patriarch Alexy II led the service in Moscow’s Donskoi Monestary, Interfax reported.
President Vladimir Putin, visiting Kuban State Agriculture University as it and other schools opened for the school year, asked for a moment of silence.
“The Sept. 1 celebration in our country is always associated with a celebratory atmosphere, but I think you can understand me,” Putin said. “One year after the horrible tragedy in Beslan, millions of people … remember it.”
Dmitry Kozak, Putin’s envoy to the Southern Federal District, was at School No. 1 in Beslan on Thursday, as was North Ossetia President Mamsurov Taimuraz. Both men mingled and spoke with mourners, who began leaving the school grounds at about 11 a.m.
Alyona Tskayeva — the 6-month-old girl who stirred many hearts when she was photographed being carried out of the school by a police officer on the second day of the seizure — was also at the school with her grandmother and grandfather. She is now 1 1/2 years old.
“She doesn’t remember anything about the seizure. She hardly remembers her mother. Sometimes she takes her picture and says ‘Fatima,’” said her grandmother, Klara Gasinova.
Alyona’s mother, Fatima, and her 9-year-old sister, Kristina, died. The mother had stayed behind to be with her older daughter. 

Staff writer Carl Schreck contributed to this report from Moscow.

TITLE: Ordeal Of Hostages Lingers On
AUTHOR: By Francesca Mereu
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: BESLAN, North Ossetia — Former child hostages are wetting their beds at night. Some are overeating to cope with painful memories. Many are obsessed with water.
The Ossetian spirit of joy and hospitality in this small town of 30,000 has turned into fear and anger a year after the school seizure — fear of another attack and anger that half of the town received cash and other gifts while the rest got nothing.
Alan Yesiyev, 11, and his 12-year-old brother, Vladimir, live on Pervomayskaya Ulitsa, where families in every other house were directly affected by the Sept. 1-3 hostage-taking at School No. 1.
“I still dream about those men,” Alan said, staring into space as if to separate himself from what he had witnessed. “When they lifted up a child and said, ‘Everyone shut up, otherwise I’ll kill him,’ the boy fainted from fear. I wanted to cry, but I had to swallow my tears because I didn’t want that child to be killed.” 
He never smiled during a 40-minute interview. His older brother sat on the edge of a sofa, nervously moving his hands and not saying a word.
“Before being taken hostage, the boys were so cheerful,” said their father, Boris Yesiyev. “They would play in the garden from morning to night. They would run up and down our street for hours.
“Now our house is so quiet. They barely talk, and they are afraid of going out to the garden in the evening. The sound of a firecracker is enough to make them tremble with fear.”
Alan still travels to Moscow every few months to be treated for burn injuries, which once covered 45 percent of his body. He was burned in the huge fire set off by explosions in the school’s gym, where about 1,000 adults and children were held hostage. A total of 331 hostages died, more than half of them children.
The blasts left Marianna Kokayeva, 10, with permanent hearing loss. To this day, she rarely speaks and is constantly scared, said her mother, Lali Dzubayeva. 
“She’s still so afraid that she wets the bed when she has bad dreams at night. She was so thirsty in that school that now she’s obsessed with water. She cannot go to bed, if she doesn’t have two full glasses of water on the nightstand,” Dzukayeva said.
Lilia Dyambekova, a social worker with the Red Cross who is teaching photography to former child hostages to help them cope, said many cannot fall asleep unless a bottle of water is standing nearby.
Water is the main subject of many photographs taken by the children she has worked with. 
“They want to take pictures of water. It seems to help them to overcome their fear of being thirsty again,” said Dyambekova, whose two teenage sons survived the school seizure.
The attackers refused to provide drinking water, and older children urinated in bottles so that younger children could drink.
In addition to water, many have developed fixations with food. Eleven-year-old Georgy Farniyev — who captured the world’s attention when he was seen crouched on the gym floor with his hands behind his head in a video shot by an attacker — has gained about 10 kilograms over the past year, even though he enjoys riding the four sports bikes that he has received as gifts.
Vladimir Dryukov, 12, has also put on about 10 kilograms. His father was shot dead by the terrorists, while his mother survived with minor injuries. 
“I cannot tell him to stop eating after all the pain he went through,” said his grandmother, Nadezhda Melnik. “I’m sure that in a few years he will be as fit as he used to be.”
The boy’s father was 29.
“I will never forget what I saw inside that school,” Vladimir said. “I still remember how I lost my father. The last time I saw him, he was being taken away by the terrorists. And then I saw his shirt covering one of the dead men who were piled in the corridor.”
Melnik said the boy only smiled for the first time in March, when he was invited by a charity to visit Ireland. Now he is speaking again and playing “Grand Theft Auto” on a new computer, but he suffers headaches that prevent him from sleeping at night, she said.
Parents said they were suffering along with their children. “I usually wake up in the middle of the night, and I cannot breathe. My heart seems to be jumping inside my chest,” said Sergei Oziyev, 34, who lost his wife, Marina, 29, and 9-year-old son, Vadim. His other son, Andrei, 8, survived with leg injuries and a splinter in his eye. Andrei has gained about 20 kilograms over the past year.
“I smile when I have people around, but when I’m alone I feel a lump inside my chest and I have to swallow hard to be able to breath,” said Oziyev, who was not in the gym, as he tended his wife’s and son’s graves at the Beslan cemetery this week. 
The graves are in a new Belsan section that more than doubled the size of the cemetery. All the tombstones are built of expensive red granite, which was provided by the authorities.
The attack has deeply split the town.
“The children who were at School No. 1 have a lot of toys, while the others have nothing,” said Yelena Rubayeva, a psychologist with the Red Cross. “For adults, the situation is similar. Those who got compensation were able to renovate their apartments or buy new cars, things that those who were not at the school cannot afford.”
Aslan, a taxi driver who only gave his first name, complained that the inflow of money was unfair and had triggered a jump in property prices.
“We cannot buy anything in this town after that. Everything is getting more and more expensive because half the town was given money,” he said.
Residents who feel left out have even dubbed the cars purchased with compensation money mashiny terakta, or terrorist-attack cars.
Vladimir Shavlokhov, who lives in front of School No. 1 and watched the tragedy unfold from his window, said the money did not make up for what he and others had lost. “We have lost our relatives, and people envy us. I’d rather give back all the money I got to see my wife and my grandson alive,” he said. “Yes, we have money now, but what’s the use if you cannot share it with loved ones?”
Rubayeva said many parents are considering divorce, while children have become aggressive and difficult to live with, she said.
Rubayeva said that while many women had sought psychological assistance, men had instead turned to alcohol or quit their jobs. Cultural values discourage men from showing their emotions, and even boys are taught not to cry, she said.
Many children said they dreaded returning to school next Monday, when Beslan schools will open late because authorities are worried about another possible terrorist attack.
“The memories remain too fresh after one year, and people — both children and adults — don’t want to start the school year on Sept. 5. They want it to start two to three days later,” Dyambekova said.

TITLE: Environmentalists Protest at Loss of Greenery
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: St. Petersburg’s green areas have shrunk by almost 30 percent over the last five years, say local environmentalists who this week staged protests outside City Hall.
Greenpeace activitists on Tuesday dressed up as trees and wore slogans imploring authorities not to kill them on their chests.
Most destruction of parks, gardens and lawns in St. Petersburg is due to rampant in-fill construction, which city authorities say is “a forced measure.”
Dmitry Artamonov, head of the city headquarters of Greenpeace, said all the ecologists are asking is that officials enforce the law.
The federal law on green areas, passed in 2003, says that if a company or any organization destroys a green zone to build within the city limits, they must plant trees in other areas to compensate for the loss.
In-fill construction in St. Petersburg appears to be occurring without any such compensation and many disputes over it are proceeding through the courts, Artamonov said Wednesday in a telephone interview.
Under the law, in each residential quarter, there are supposed to be 6 square meters of green areas for each resident. This norm is violated in several districts of St. Petersburg, and especially in central districts, where vacant plots of land are more valuable and less available, he said.
“As a result of in-fill construction in zones with already fully established infrastructure, not only are the locals deprived of leisure areas, children’s lawns and places to walk domestic animals,” Artamonov said. “With more private transport entering the areas, the air is full of exhaust fumes.”
Mikhail Amosov, head of the Yabloko faction at the city’s Legislative Assembly, said the key problem is that not all parks, gardens and lawns are registered as such. For bureaucratic reasons, some of the spots are recorded as wasteland and vacant plots of land in official documents.
“After the war, the locals often planted trees on waste land on their own initiative but those spots weren’t then registered as parks and gardens and still appear as vacant land on paper,” Amosov said Wednesday in a telepone interview. “Naturally, it is easy for a construction company to seize waste land.”
This bureaucratic trick relieves construction companies of any legal responsibility to plant trees elsewhere. 
Now the assembly’s commission on City Planning and Maintenance, which Amosov heads, is preparing a list of areas, which are to be reclassified from vacant land to green land and thus be protected from becoming a construction site.
At the same time, the quality of existing green areas is deteriorating owing to poor care, said Andrei Radonezhsky, an expert with the Environmental Monitoring Center of the St. Petersburg Society of Naturalists. “Everybody remembers seeing street cleaners collecting old leaves together with paper waste and used beer cans,” he said. “Removing the leaves is a big mistake because it deprives trees of nutrition and they dry out very quickly.”
“We can no longer tolerate the fair and righteous anger of our citizens concerning in-fill construction,” Governor Valentina Matvienko said in a televised speech in February last year. But things have not improved since.
The city’s general plan had stipulated that all such works would be stopped by the end of 2005. However, owing to slow progress the practice will have to continue for another two or three years, Lev Kaplan, director of the St. Petersburg Union of Construction Companies, said at a round table in Rosbalt news agency in spring.
Last month, the federal political council of the Russian environmental party Green Russia issued a statement warning against the multiple dangers of in-fill construction.
The document, accepted on Aug. 2 in Moscow, stresses that in-fill construction damages both the environment and people’s quality of life.
Green Russia puts the blame directly on the local authorities. The environmental party argues that in-fill construction must be banned in principle on a transparent legal basis.
 The environmentalists also accused prosecutors’ offices of “routinely ignoring the problem” and “covering the violations.”

TITLE: Beslan Citizens File for Asylum
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BESLAN — Hundreds of Beslan residents have signed a petition requesting political asylum abroad in a public rebuke of the government they blame for mishandling last year’s school hostage crisis. 
“We, the parents and relatives of the victims of the terrorist act of Sept. 3 at School No. 1 in Beslan, have lost all hope for a just investigation of the reasons and the guilty parties in our tragedy, and we do not wish to live anymore in this country, where a human life means nothing,” said the petition, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press on Thursday. 
Many families of the victims of the September 2004 hostage-taking blame the authorities for allowing a group of heavily armed attackers to seize the school and accuse them of bungling the rescue operation and conducting a cover-up rather than an objective investigation. 
The petition, which requests refuge “in any country where human rights are respected,” appeared to bear the signatures of more than 500 people. 
Susanna Dudiyeva, head of the ad hoc Beslan Mothers’ Committee representing the victims’ relatives, said the entire group signed the petition, which she called “another variation of protest.” 
The committee released the petition a day before their scheduled meeting in Moscow with President Vladimir Putin, where they have said they would air their grievances.

TITLE: Security in Mind As School Year Begins
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A year after the Beslan hostage tragedy, the festive atmosphere of Sept. 1 in St. Petersburg schools — like virtually all other schools across Russia — has become tightly linked with security concerns.
The city police announced heightened security measures for the day, when 32,000 city children entered their first grade at school.
More than 1,000 patrolmen were allocated to monitor street safety, and their routes were specifically tailored to stay as close to schools as possible.
And city schools, both public and private, are installing their own security systems, in addition to putting guards on the gates at practically every local school.
When the city government isn’t able to help, local companies and even political parties provide funding for security systems.
Sindbad Travel agency funded the installation of a security system in Peterschule, a private high school that emphasizes German language and culture. All pupils and staff have been issued International Students and Teachers Identity Cards — ISIC/ITIC, which serve as ID to enter and leave the school.
Vera Koromyslova, director of studies at Peterschule, said that after the school asked parents about the possibility of installing the system, the vast majority of them supported the idea.
“Of course, we are a small school, and a private school, and we are all used to feeling at home here,” Koromyslova said. “Naturally, we will all sense this limitation of liberty, although it is insignificant. But when you think about safety, you are willing to put up with a more complicated entry.”
Rashid Velemeyev, director of Sindbad Travel, said the threat of terrorist attacks served as impetus to develop a special security program based on the use of ISIC/ITIC. These international cards also provide significant discounts for airline tickets and free entrance to museums worldwide.
“Our company, as a socially responsible organization, has developed this program targeting local schools and universities,” Velemeyev said. 
Most schools, however, can’t rely on sponsorship.
According to a recent poll conducted by the Russian Research Center for Public Opinion, 34 percent of parents in Russia have to pay to have a security program or security guards at their children’s schools.
Police dog handlers checked all city schools before Knowledge Day.
At a news conference this week, Grigory Balykhin, head of the Federal Education Ministry, said that by 2010 all schools in Russia will be equipped with video monitoring systems and alarm buttons. The program requires 14 billion rubles ($492 million) in funding, he said.

TITLE: Singer Patti Smith Slams George Bush
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: U.S. singer and musician Patti Smith attacked business and President George W. Bush at a press event in St. Petersburg on Thursday, where she received an excited response from the local journalists and fans.
“The world right now is really f***ed up,” she said addressing the 100-strong crowd that gathered at the “505” record shop on Bolshaya Konyushennaya Ulitsa.
“The world right now is being run by a**holes like George Bush and pharmaceutical companies, these greedy people who don’t care about the environment, who don’t really understand the poor, who don’t understand other cultures. We are the underground and we have to get strong, because the world is being run by business.”
Smith performs at the Music Hall on Friday.
Boldly, Smith turned the press conference into something less formal; she never took her seat or used a microphone, standing up, speaking loud. She also took an acoustic guitar and gave an emotional performance of “In My Blakean Year” from the 2004 album “Trampin’,” her most recent.
“People Have the Power,” proclaimed Smith, 58, during a brief link-up with Radio ROKS, a local station. She wore a CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) badge and a small pin representing Commandeur of the Order of Arts and Letters, France’s highest cultural decoration, that she received from the French Ministry of Culture in July.
According to Smith, who helped to change rock music as a punk singer and poet in the 1970s, major record companies are doomed to die out. 
“They have been greedy and they will crumble, and I think that the independent industry is the only thing that will live,” Smith said.
“Now with today’s technology, young people don’t even need record companies. They can gather some money, make their own CDs, they can share them, they can download them. To me that’s fine,” Smith added.
“Rock and roll is not a business, it’s a voice that we can use politically, artistically, poetically. ... And hopefully new young people will infuse new blood into that idea. That’s what my band was trying to do,” Smith said.

TITLE: Khodorkovsky Will Run
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Mikhail Khodorkovsky said Wednesday that he would run for the State Duma in a Moscow by-election expected to be held in December.
Ivan Starikov, a senior member of the liberal Union of Right Forces party, or SPS, said he and several politically diverse politicians on Wednesday created an initiative group to back Khodorkovsky’s bid.
Khodorkovsky, the jailed billionaire who is appealing convictions on fraud and tax evasion, first expressed his interest in mounting a bid last month. Since then, he has received invitations to run for the Tomsk city legislature, the Novosibirk regional legislature and as Ulyanovsk mayor.
But Khodorkovsky said he had decided in favor of the State Duma.
“I have to run in Moscow in order to have my words really heard in Russia and the world,” he said in a statement.
Khodorkovsky intends to run for a seat in Moscow’s single-mandate Universitetsky district that was vacated by liberal Deputy Mikhail Zadornov when he accepted the post as head of Vneshtorgbank’s retail branch in June. The district, which is home to many students and university professors and rich Muscovites, has a record of supporting liberals in elections.

TITLE: Former Estonian Archbishop Dies in City
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Jaan Kiivit, a former archbishop of the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church for more than a decade, died Wednesday at age 65, church officials said. 
Kiivit died during a visit to St. Petersburg possibly from heart failure, said Kiit Salumae, Kiivit’s friend and an assessor in the Estonian church. 
Kiivit stepped down as Estonian Lutheran archbishop in February after serving in the post since 1994. He has since held the title of archbishop emeritus. 
“He took over the church in a time of great change for this country and helped dictate how the church would operate in a free Estonia,” Salumae said. 
Kiivit, whose father, Jaan Kiivit Sr., also served as archbishop of the church from 1949-67, was ordained in 1966 and served as pastor of the Holy Ghost Church in Tallinn, Estonia’s capital, until he was elected archbishop in 1994. 
From 1978-94, Kiivit lectured in practical theology at the Theological Institute and served at times as its curator and rector. 
He translated theological and religious books and articles from Greek, German and Finnish, and a collection of his sermons, “Truth Makes Free,” was published in 2000. 
Kiivit is survived by his wife, Sirje, three daughters and four grandchildren.

TITLE: Stranded Russians Rescued in U.S.
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Seventeen Russian university students who had been stranded on a rooftop in hurricane-flooded New Orleans have been rescued, the Foreign Ministry said Thursday. 
The students were among countless people who became trapped as floodwaters poured into the below-sea-level city on Tuesday in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. No details of the rescue operation were immediately available. 
Media reports on Wednesday had said the number of stranded Russian students was about 30, and it was not immediately clear if others remained stranded. 
“All the Russians feel fine, although they are tired,” ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin said on Channel One television. The ministry said the students were being taken to an army base. 
Also Thursday, Russian Orthodox Church leader Patriarch Alexy II sent a telegram of condolence to U.S. President George W. Bush, saying “May God give you fortitude, endurance and help in overcoming the difficult consequences of the disaster.”

TITLE: Reiman Goes to Court Against Kompromat.ru
AUTHOR: By Catherine Belton
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Prosecutors in St. Petersburg have opened a criminal case alleging that the muckraking Kompromat.ru web site published an article that slandered IT and Communications Minister Leonid Reiman.
The article claimed that Reiman took a $1 million fee in 1992 when he was the deputy director of a major St. Petersburg telecoms company for “greasing the wheels” to help British businessman Anthony Georgiou establish a mobile phone company.
A spokesman for Reiman’s ministry denied the allegations, adding the investigation into the site began at the ministry’s request.
“The prosecutor replied to us saying they found that the article contained information that was false,” said spokesman Alexander Parshukov.
The kompromat.ru article, published in early July, retold some of the allegations already made in a Carribbean court by Georgiou, who said he was a former business partner of Reiman’s. 
Georgiou claimed in a court affidavit lodged in a British Virgin Islands court last year that Reiman abused his public position to gain interests in the mobile phone industry. 
Georgiou’s testimony was given as part of a sprawling legal battle being fought in courts in Switzerland and the British Virgin Islands between Alfa Group and IPOC, a Bermuda-based fund, which Jeffrey Galmond, a Reiman business associate, says he owns. 
The two sides are fighting over the rights to a 25.1 percent stake in MegaFon, the country’s No. 3 mobile phone provider, which is partly owned by IPOC. The Bermuda fund holds a 31 percent stake in MegaFon via Telekominvest, the holding company that Reiman helped found.
The court battle has ensnared Reiman in a mass of allegations he abused his position to build up holdings in the telecoms industry, charges he denies. 
Reiman’s ministry has claimed that Mikhail Fridman’s Alfa has launched a PR war of false accusations against Reiman in order to win the MegaFon case. The ministry has said it is considering suing several publications that have reported on the trials.
In the July article, Kompromat.ru also published a letter from Georgiou to Reiman that was presented to the British Virgin Islands court as part of Georgiou’s affidavit. The letter, signed by both Georgiou and Reiman, confirmed payment of the $1.04 million fee into Reiman’s account at Credit Suisse First Boston.
But even though Georgiou’s claims have been published before by other media outlets, the Kompromat.ru article did not cite Georgiou’s affidavit as a source, leaving it open to attack. The site rarely publishes its own material and mainly acts as a collection point for the most scandalous stories on corruption from other newspapers.
“The site presented this information as fact. It was making concrete conclusions on the basis of unconfirmed information,” Parshukov said. “The trial in the British Virgin Islands has not ended. There has been no verdict or charges. The judge is still looking into this.”
“Not every document presented in court is genuine,” he said, referring to the letter confirming the fee.
An aide to St. Petersburg prosecutor Artyom Bakonin said an initial probe had found that the material presented in the Kompromat.ru article gave grounds for a criminal investigation. The case has now been handed to the city’s police for further investigation, he said.
Sergei Gorshkov, the owner of Kompromat.ru, could not be reached for comment. Vedomosti on Wednesday cited him as saying he had yet to receive official notice of the case, which he said was groundless. Georgiou could not be reached for comment.
The prosecutors’ case is yet another in a growing spate of criminal investigations launched at the request of state officials as relations between the authorities and independent media become increasingly tense, media analysts said. 
“Now the main line of attack against journalists is not physical, it’s court cases,” said Oleg Panfilov, director of the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations.

TITLE: UNDP Snared in Fraud Probe
AUTHOR: By Anna Smolchenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — An internal UN investigation has uncovered a case of long-running fraud in the Moscow office of the United Nations Development Program that may have cost the organization $1.2 million.
UNDP auditors believe a group of staff members stole funds by forging contracts, tender documents, invoices and payment orders over a four-year period, the UNDP said earlier this week.
“The investigation is ongoing, but a preliminary accounting suggests that about $1.2 million in UNDP project funds was stolen between 2000 and 2004,” said a UNDP spokesman. “The culprits are believed to be a group of staff members who worked in the office’s operations division. All the suspects were local staff who left the UNDP before the theft was discovered.”
Stefan Vassilev, the head of the UNDP’s Russia office since 2003, has been suspended from his duties until the probe is complete. Bulgarian-born Vassilev has been questioned as a witness in the investigation, said a UN source familiar with the situation. 
About 40 people work in the UNDP’s Moscow office, six in the operations division, which deals with financial issues. Since opening in 1997, the office has channeled more than $56 million into projects promoting democracy, poverty reduction and economic development.
Nobody has been fired as a result of the investigation, said Victoria Zotikova, UNDP spokeswoman in Russia.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Economy Storms Thru
MOSCOW (Reuters) — The economy has weathered a tough first half, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said Wednesday, stressing that the government must keep saving windfall oil revenues to combat inflation. 
Although record crude prices have allowed Russia to amass a great deal of money in the stabilization fund, as well as repay $15 billion in debts to the Paris Club ahead of schedule, the real economy’s performance has been less than sparkling. 
Retail prices rose by 8 percent in the first half, after 6.1 percent a year earlier, while according to the Economic Development and Trade Ministry, economic growth from January to June fell to 5.6 percent from 7.6 percent in the same period of 2004. 
“The remedies for this are well-known: guard the stabilization fund religiously and don’t strengthen the ruble,” Kudrin told a Cabinet meeting. 

RNK to Spend $25M
LONDON (Bloomberg) — RNK Capital LLC, a manager of environmental investments, said it would invest $25 million to help fund projects in developing nations that produce emission certificates.
New York-based RNK will help fund projects that can generate certified emission reductions, or CERs, during the five years through 2012, the firm said in an e-mail.
The certificates are created under the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement to cut greenhouse gasses.
Demand from Europe is driving up the price of credits. CERs are generated  Five billion euros ($6.2 billion) of emission rights may trade globally this year, according to Point Carbon, a research firm in Oslo.

Inflation Rate Falls
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia’s inflation rate fell this summer to the lowest level in the past years, Interfax reported, citing Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin.
“For the first time, inflation was at zero level in the past several days,” Kudrin told Rossyiskaya Gazeta newspaper in an interview, the news service reported. The rate will be “slightly” higher than planned this year, he said.
The government will be able to meet its inflation target of between 7 percent and 8.5 percent next year, Kudrin said.

TITLE: Finnish Uniform Maker Plans 3 Oblast Workshops
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: One of Finland’s largest uniform producers, Image Wear Oy, has considerably raised its presence on Russia’s fast-growing work-clothes market. The company’s St. Petersburg subsidiary, Image Wear, acquired last month three clothes workshops in the Leningrad Oblast, the firm said Tuesday.
The Finnish producer bought workshops in Selivanovo and Syasstroi from a local firm for an undisclosed sum. In addition, Image Wear plans to open another workshop in Volkhov this fall.
Managing director of Image Wear Oy, Pekka Nikkanen, said that Russian sales accounted for about 3 million euros ($3.7 million), a little under 10 percent of the company’s total international sales last year.
The company will employ 90 new staff in the oblast factories, bringing the total number of Image Wear’s St. Petersburg staff to 130.
“Russia is a good location for Finnish companies. It is not so far from Finland and the [production] prices are lower there,” Nikkanen said.
Alongside the expansion, Image Wear will transfer from renting facilities to property ownership, which commercial director of Image Wear in St. Petersburg, Alexander Trager, said should lift revenues by 20 percent. 
“We intend to increase the production volume, to simplify product transfer within the company, and speed up all the processes to offer a shorter production time,” Trager said.
The company mainly operates on the St. Petersburg and Moscow markets. Trager added that some of the production will go on export to Finland, Germany, Switzerland and Sweden, declining to name specific production figures.
Igor Ivanov, marketing director of Fap, the Russian distributor of French uniform brand MUTEXIL, said the acquisitions by the Finns were unlikely to affect the domestic market.
“In St. Petersburg local companies dominate,” he said, though he confirmed that the market could expand due to growing demand.
Marina Kotlyarova, spokeswoman for Vostok-Service, an association of textile and light industry firms, said the Russian market for special and work clothes annually grows by about 10 percent to 15 percent, although industry profits are strongly connected with the country’s general economic situation.
“The arrival of a large foreign uniform producer won’t ruin the market. We’ll see it as healthy competition. The newcomer will occupy his niche, which is likely to be the upper-middle segment,” Kotlyarova said.
Earlier last month, Image Wear announced the opening of a new clothes workshop with 100 staff in Narva, Estonia. Together with the firm’s Finnish and Russian operation, the company will number 700 staff.
Image Wear has representative offices in Estonia, Latvia, Russia and Switzerland. It has 19 shops in Finland, two in Estonia and one in St. Petersburg.

TITLE: BSH Puts Trust in Local Market
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Europe’s largest household appliances producer BSH Bosch und Siemens Hausgerate looks set to flood the Russian market with its own brand refrigerators as soon as from 2007.
With little serious competition on the market, analysts said the manufacturer’s main concern will be finding local components suppliers for BSH’s $62 million venture in St. Petersburg, which started its construction this week.
The German company said it plans to produce annually 500,000 household fridges and freezers under the Bosch and Siemens trademarks in three basic and three luxury-class models.
Robert Kugler, BSH manager, said at a press briefing that a special stake will be made on “introducing special bottom-freezers, that are very popular on the Russian market.” Together with imports of the company products, BSH hope to sell 3 millions refrigerators a year, Kugler said.
Alexander Bragin, deputy managing partner for consumer industrial products at Deloitte, said that BSH will face few competitors having plants in Russia.
“Only Merloni with its Lipetsk plant and Turkish Arcelik come to my mind. Other foreign household appliances producers hold to import schemes,” Bragin said.
So far, BSH has said it will focus its efforts solely on refrigerators, although speculations have mounted that the company may step into rivalry with Swedish maker Electrolux by expanding into local assembly of washing machines.
Kruger admitted that the plant’s location within the Noidorf industrial area could transform into a techno-park where other types of household appliances would be manufactured.
BSH’s refrigerator plant will occupy just 30,000 square meters of the 250,000 sq. m. alloted to the company in the industrial area, 20 kilometers west of St. Petersburg. A logistics center for local and imported goods will occupy a further 10,000 sq.m. space.
Maria Nenakhova, PR manager for BSH in Russia, said that the company would not be interested in local production of small household appliances. More likely the company would consider washing machines, she said. Kugler added that local assembly of dishwashers and fitted household appliances may be especially advantageous, because of those segments’ underdevelopment.
BSH holds seven percent of Russia’s washing machine market, Kugler said. The company plans to conquer the same market share for refrigerators in St. Petersburg, he said.
The company’s future has already received strong personal backing from City Governor Valentina Matviyenko. Attending the laying of the foundation ceremony on Tuesday, she recalled that BSH was the fifth foreign firm to start building an assembly plant in the city this year, and promised to take this project under her personal control.
What the governor may not be able to help with is the lack of local suppliers of components for BHS’s household appliances.
 “We would like to use local suppliers. However, at the beginning 60 percent to 70 percent of parts will be imported,” Kugler said. Locally produced electronics and compressors “don’t meet ecological requirements yet,” he said.
Alexei Yazykov, an anylist with ATON brockerage, saw BHS’s problem as part of a larger issue in the country right now.
“The same rule as in the automotive industry works here. It’s cheaper to import parts instead of assembled products,” Yazykov said. “BSH have declared a serious production volume that will allow economies of scale and a reduction on transportation and customs expenses.”
Yazykov agreed that at the moment local suppliers don’t play a crucial role, but said this may change soon. “Smaller suppliers will follow the large producers,” he said.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Vena Goes Pear-Shaped
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — City-based Vena forecasts 20 percent brand sales growth this year after the launch of new pear-flavored beverage, the company said in a statement on Thursday.
On license from Finnish producer Sinebrychoff Oy, Vena launched a new flavor for a the Golden Cap low-alcohol cocktail, which has been available since 1999 with an apple taste. The drink will be distributed in half-liter cans and 1.33 liter glass bottles, the statement said.
According to Business Analitika research, Golden Cap holds five percent of the city market in terms of sales.

Sibir Claim Settled
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Sibir Energy, a U.K. oil company operating in Russia, said the Moscow Oil Refinery paid a $67 million tax bill to the Russian government, settling the claim.
“The refinery has successfully resolved this outstanding issue,” Sibir Energy said Thursday in a statement.

TITLE: Falling Ratings Reflect Failing Trust
AUTHOR: By Boris Kagarlitsky
TEXT: With the curtain falling on summer and the political season at hand, the news and analysis web site Forum.msk.ru last week posted the curious results of an opinion poll. The poll revealed a catastrophic decline in the approval ratings of the political parties that are currently represented in the State Duma. Strangely enough, if we are to believe this poll, no party is gaining from the falling popularity of others. People appear to be losing confidence in all the Duma parties at once.
Naturally, information posted on a website should ideally be double-checked. This seems doubly important in this case as the unidentified authors of the Forum article reviewing the poll results did not make reference to any of Russia’s respected pollsters. Instead, data were cited that had been gathered by “one of the Russian secret service organizations, which have become so numerous of late.”
It makes sense to take the results seriously, if only because the trend that the anonymous and mysterious poll revealed is far from unique. In the majority of European countries, something very similar appears to be happening. Confidence in political parties is falling, in part because voters do not perceive any differences among their platforms.
The authors of the Forum article said they believed that the approval ratings of politicians currently in power are falling particularly rapidly in the regions. Despite this increasing distrust of the authorities, voters do not seem to be very happy with the opposition politicians in the parliament either. All the parties in the Duma “are perceived as clearly incapable of solving [voters’] problems in cooperation with those who hold the monopoly on power.” For this reason, as United Russia’s rating plummets, those of the opposition parties follow suit and fall even faster.
United Russia has discredited itself thanks to unpopular laws passed by the Duma. The party is regularly mocked by the press, and the intellectual weakness of its members is often apparent. Nonetheless, around 20 percent of those polled supported the party. At the same time, Gennady Zyuganov’s Communist Party is supported by no more than 5 percent of voters. In May, a series of polls revealed that the Communists had the votes of about 7 percent of the electorate, though the party itself insisted that this figure should be closer to 20 percent. The national referendum the party announced and fought the Central Elections Commission to hold has yet to yield any substantial results. This is not all that surprising. The hustle and bustle surrounding the referendum was thought up to help the party avoid having to deal with current issues. This way, the party did not have to hold any strikes, marches or demonstrations. All party activists had to do was go around gathering signatures and bide their time. The party, its leaders apparently thought, would conduct the referendum, and after its results were tallied, the oppressive regime would disappear on its own.
True, another poll published in May portrayed the situation slightly differently, with 9 percent of voters supporting the Communists. However, even this figure is significantly less than the percentage the party enjoyed before the December 2003 Duma elections, which proved devastating to the Communists.
All the other parties have the support of a scant 2 percent to 3 percent of the population. And if you add up the support for all parties currently in the Duma, you wind up with 40 percent at most, even with the more generous estimate of Communist Party support.
In estimating the decline in popularity of right of center and liberal parties, the authors of the Forum article for some reason referred to a “seasonal decline.” Apparently, all the supporters of the Union of Right Forces are on vacation somewhere abroad, and therefore could not participate in the polls. Yet it is not impossible to find Communist Party voters relaxing in the Crimea, Turkey or Cyprus, where, some say, Communist Party sponsors have built some lovely villas for themselves. 
However, this is not the most important aspect of all these figures. All the polls are similar, in that nationalist and patriotic parties such as Rodina are not gaining from their liberal opponents’ loss of popularity. Quite the opposite: The two sides, like Siamese twins, are sinking together.
It’s not surprising in this situation that the groups that once fought each other tooth and nail are now merrily planning to join forces. All sorts of various and sundry bizarre coalitions are springing up across the country. Some of them have formed to promote former Yukos head Mikhail Khodorkovsky as a candidate running for a wide range of different offices.
Like a drowning man clutching at straws, politicians who are losing electoral support are trying to find their salvation in a former oligarch who is currently sitting behind bars. Alas, these alliances do not inspire much optimism.
And this gamble does not bode well for Khodorkovsky either. Not only will he be unable to drag anyone out of the waves, but he is very likely to go under himself.
The groups, movements and parties that we have inherited from the 1990s are slowly dying out as they gradually lose public support. Yet there are no new political forces stepping in to take their place. There are only artificially cultivated political projects cooked up by the specialists in the presidential administration like United Russia or Rodina. Actually, these specialists did a pretty good job thinking up and creating these parties, as the results of the most recent elections testify. It’s a shame that the only real public needs they reflected were the career advancement of the bureaucrats who were involved in them. For this very reason, their success was short-lived. 
Inevitably, the political vacuum that is forming in Russia must be filled sooner or later by some force: either by a movement operating outside the parliament or by some new group fighting the system from within.

Boris Kagarlitsky is director of the Institute for Globalization Studies.

TITLE: A Farewell to My Homeland That Has Not Met Expectations
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalev
TEXT: I want to use today’s column to say thank you to all its readers over the five years since I started writing it, taking over from Brian Whitmore, who is today the Boston Globe’s journalist in Prague.
When this column is published on Friday I will be slowly approaching the German coastline on a ferry on my way to Vienna. 
I will leave St. Petersburg behind in my memories and am looking forward to starting a new life, which I believe, will be bright and interesting, as it has been in the northern capital for all these years.
This column was always a source for exchange of opinions, which was reflected in the letters from its readers. Many of you agreed with what I wrote, many worried about me and many hated my point of view.
The last letters have been insisting that I hate Russians.
This is far from true. It is however, hateful, that, according to the latest statistics, more than 50 percent of Russians believe this country should restrict the rights of foreigners staying or living in Russia.
Maybe I should hate these people, but I don’t; I feel sorry for them. I believe that they are mistaken and are victims of the propaganda of fake patriotism promoted by the Kremlin over the last five years.
I believe that these people would change their minds if they were involved in open discussions on the matter. The question is why the government doesn’t want the public to get involved in such discussions.
This attitude toward society may have dire consequences that, in the long run ,could affect hundreds of millions of people, not only in Russia, but also in countries nearby.
Opponents of the Kremlin, who are demonstrating their resistance to its policies, are already prone to being physically attacked by supporters of the idea of Russia’s superiority. On Monday, activists of the National Bolshevik Party, or NBP, were beaten up with baseball bats by a group of people identified as members of the pro-Kremlin Nashi movement. 
The leadership of Nashi has denied being involved, but NBP representatives say they saw the attackers wearing Nashi T-shirts and have snapshots of them to prove it.
“This challenge cannot go unanswered. These are the first attacks in a civil war and we will have to choose which side we are on,” Newru.com quoted NBP leader Eduard Limonov as saying Tuesday.
I don’t trust Nashi or the NBP, but the precedent is very revealing. Taking into account the latest actions of different radical movements supporting the idea of ethnic Russians’ superiority plus the call for a civil war made by Limonov, the future of this country looks to be brown and red.
I hope I am wrong and that maybe at some point the government will understand that these trends could lead the country to disaster within the next five to 10 years.
In 1993, when I started working as a journalist, I said to a close friend, that my aim was to be a part of the process of building a new country, which I imagined as a free and prosperous nation, friendly to its neighbors and respected abroad.
Twelve years later, it’s clear that very little of my expectations have come true. The country has developed, but in some really weird way, with people getting richer in their pockets, while their minds lag disappointingly behind. 
I am leaving Russia rather disappointed, but in any case I don’t think I wasted my time during these years. There is always hope for the better and it will stay with me.
And thank you again for the interest and attention.

TITLE: 10,000 miles to Tokyo*
AUTHOR: By Yuriy Humber
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: TOKYO — I’ve always had a lot of sympathy for Japanese TV presenters. With most programs in Japan related to food, if not food-centered, day in and day out hosts face the challenge of sampling every food known to man and dog.
Each time, there is only one word that a TV host utters after partaking in gourmand’s hell: oishii! (“delicious!”).
In desperate hunts for variation, some presenters even start preparing a nasal build-up to the word with a rising “ng” sound, which together with a “oishii” will catapult into the camera the second food has connected with the taste buds.
I’m back in Japan, a year after leaving it, just like a sequel to a Hollywood blockbuster. What is the first thing I see? A pornographic close-up of chopsticks sliding between lips on an airport TV set.
I make bets with myself as to what the as-yet-unidentified mouth is chewing on. It’s summer, and with much of Japanese food season-specific, it will not be, say, warm stews (nabemono) or boiled vegetables or tofu (oden). It might be Chinese noodle soup (ramen), which despite being quite a cheap dish enjoys cult popularity.
It could also be cold buckwheat noodles (soba), lightly fried seafood and vegetables (tempura), or even…Jeez… It’s Caesar salad. And, you guessed it, it’s “oishii.”
It’s time to head to Shinjuku, downtown Tokyo (although it could be Ginza, Shibuya, and a host of other consumerist nirvanas within the Yamamoto circle subway line). As I stand on the platform, sipping on a hot can of sencha green tea ($1.10 from a can machine), the salad still haunts me.
No matter how much you think you have “worked out” Japan, taken account of all its traditions, its language and behavior — which are grounded on safety, the expected, the hierarchical — you will be constantly surprised. The Japanese themselves seem never to tire of responding to the world with bikkurishita (“I’m surprised”), which is invariably heard everywhere.
A few meters across the platform a man in his forties practices his golf swing with an umbrella. All of a sudden, an electronic symphony explodes in his pocket, “Ode to Joy,” and the man’s fingers rush to free his mobile phone.
It must be some superior from the company, since the man keeps bowing rhythmically as he talks, no matter that the person on the other end cannot see the polite gesture. What the boss can hear, however, is keigo Japanese, the formal language. The meanings of the man’s words are quite simple, yet all the verbs are swapped for their lengthy keigo counterparts, and all the nouns beautified with honorifics.
When Emperor Hirohito died in 1989, most young Japanese could not understand the newspapers or the TV, because the language used by the media was the most formal of keigo, one very rarely used and only for the imperial family.
With the hum of an approaching train, the golf-enthusiast ends the conversation with a super-wide smile, reaches for a tissue from inside his Louis Vuitton male handbag, and dabs around his forehead, blinking as he does. It could be the humidity.
Careful lines filter into the train. Dusk settles as the express slices through one neon metropolis after another. Between Narita airport and downtown Tokyo (about 60 to 80 minutes travel) there are almost no green areas or water-logged rice paddies that are typical of Japanese countryside. Instead a fiery cityscape decorates the night as if it’s Christmas.
The express train glitters like a new toy, too clean to believe in. Meanwhile a girlish voice over the loudspeaker explains where the telephones, the baby-changing rooms, and the showers are located.

SUPER SIZE ME
I’m at my third sumo tournament in three years, naturally as a spectator. Three Japanese friends, all sumo-virgins, follow, excitedly gazing around the Ryogoku Kokugikan (the main sumo stadium, near Ryogoku subway).
Nearly half the spectators at the stadium are foreigners, and of the Japanese, most are middle-aged or older. Although legend has it that the origin of the Japanese race depended on the outcome of a sumo match between the gods, young Japanese prefer to idolize kickboxing and American-wrestling hybrids such as K-1, Pride, and Japanese Pro-Wrestling.
We arrive sometime after 3 p.m., after the beginner and semi-professional sumo bouts have finished, so now it’s time for the big boys, sumo’s premier league (the makuuchi division). Men wider than cars enter the ring in only a thong-like mawashi, slap their bellies, their bottoms too; throw salt across the ring, stomp in front of each other, kneel menacingly for four, long minutes.
There’s a moment of tension, both wrestlers sit low, lean forward, glare. Two bodies slam into each other, pushing arms out to burrow under the opponent’s waste, grip the mawashi, heave, lift, spin, rotate. The two are locked in a hold by the rope border. Suddenly, one wrestler twists neatly and pushes. The moment he does, the opponent steps back and lets him fall bulkily out of the ring. Duration: 25 seconds.
“He’s Russian, that wrestler,” my friend nods. As chance would have it, he was the one who lost. Since all sumo wrestlers have to adopt a Japanese name (as well as wear a kimono and their hair in a top-knot every day) the Russian is called Roho. At the very top echelon of the sumo world there is also a Georgian and a Bulgarian wrestler.

GET RELIGION
Inside a shrine, one of the priests is giving a tour to another group of middle-aged Japanese and pensioners. The smooth drone of the priest follows an exact pattern, first teaching the visitors about the shrine’s history, then the correct prayer manner (two bows, two claps, one bow), before enlightening everyone about the different charms that can be purchased, in which colors, for how much, and at which counter.
Whether fixated on the detailed sales talk, or naturally keen to protect themselves from life’s ailments, the tour group darts for the charms stall.
The air in Nikko, a former capital and religious center, two hours west of Tokyo, is mountain fresh, except for a tinge of muskiness from the wet soil. Aside from a deep-red pagoda, Nikko’s main shrine, the Toshogu, hidden among forest and rocks, blends in with local colors.
“It’s a beautiful temple,” I murmur. “They picked a nice spot for shogun Ieyasu’s tomb, eh? I think I could lie here forever myself.”
“No,” my friend replies, and for a second I am startled. “This is not a temple, it is a shrine. Buddhism has temples, the Shinto religion has shrines.”
The crucial difference rests in that pagan Shintoism is used for marriage ceremonies, whereas Japanese Buddhism caters for funerals. I point out that this shrine also hosts a tomb. Well… My friend’s head leans to the side. He contemplates the contradiction.
“But, anyway, the two religions are totally mixed-up. Sometimes, we are not even sure which traditions originate from which religion,” he says, scratching the side of his nose. “I only went to temples or shrines for school trips.”

HOME TRUTHS
My friend Masahiko’s mother, a housewife since her marriage at 25, draws back a thin paper screen around the Japanese-style tatami (straw mat) room, and comes through to the carpeted lounge area. She sports a walnut brown kimono, with a golden obi (a thick belt), and white socks which have a separate bit for the big toe. She is heading into town to shop. It’s the spring sales season.
“Do you have plans for today?” she asks, quickly scooping up puffy grains from the rice cooker. She clenches them in her hand, then sculpts the mass into a triangle, adds a sour plum to it, then wraps it in a leaf of dried seaweed.
“I think Masahiko planned for us to drive to Mount Fuji.” 
“Ah, Fuji-san,” a gladness washes over her otherwise focused face. She’s laying some small pickles by the rice triangles and stuffing pink shreds of ginger all inside an o-bento lunchbox.
“Have you ever been?”
“No, I have not been,” and she smiles broadly. “But, on a clear day you can see the tip of it from the Tokyo suburbs.”
As she flitters about the kitchen, tidying, an abstract desire to ask something grips me. Unexpectedly to myself, I finally say:
“So, how’s Tokyo recently?”
The mother pauses but when her answer arrives it is as clean and obvious as a sword slicing through paper.
“Of course, it is the economy. Economic depression,” the mother says, lays her hands on the lunchbox lid and snaps it into place.

TITLE: Chernov’s choice
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
TEXT: Patti Smith, who performed in Helsinki on Wednesday, arrived in the city to meet local journalists and fans at a record shop on Thursday afternoon.
Playing an accoustic guitar, Smith performed “In My Blakean Year” from “Trampin’,” her most recent album. 
“Our approach is very simple,” said Smith in a recent interview with The St. Petersburg Times “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. Every night we care just the same.”
Smith explained her approach to performing. 
“We don’t get bored, we don’t just do the same thing every night. Every night is different. We play different songs, we have a different set list, and we sort of go by the feel of the room and the people and the city.”
Smith said the same dynamics will apply at her St. Petersburg gig. 
“We draw inspiration from the moment. I mean I’m not going to come into St. Petersburg, you know, and say ‘Oh, this is the show I do, here it is.’ It’s like, ‘Here I am, let’s see what happens here.’ Because we’re all going to make the night. I won’t make the night, people won’t make the night, the sound system, all of us, we all make the night together. We’re people that are coming to communicate.”
The punk legend also explained the influence of the Great American Folk Tradition, primarily Bob Dylan, on her work.
“Bob Dylan was a big influence on me,” she said. “Actually we do some Bob Dylan songs, and I bet we will do at least one. I think we have certain aspects of the early Bob Dylan in the ways that we approach things but I think I’m probably more a rock and roll performer than Bob Dylan. I’m more of a ’70s artist. I have a different approach. It’s somewhere in the middle there. 
“I think that our band like a lot of different kinds of music and it finds its way. We have a lot of strong reggae and Rastafarian influence in some of our music. And also rhythm and blues, and a little bit of jazz. So our band has a lot of different  influences.” 
For Russian rock, Smith herself was an influence. Akvarium’s 1983 underground hit “Rock and Roll Is Dead” borrowed from Smith’s 1978 song “Ghost Dance,” while “Radio Africa,” the title of the album that song was on, sounds as if it was inspired by Smith’s 1976 album “Radio Ethiopia.”
Smith performs at the Music Hall on Friday.
Technically speaking, performing at the Music Hall (a funny old theater that was used to stage operettas and musicals under the Soviets and has not been very busy lately) might be a challenge for a rock and roll band. 
In the past 10 years the venue has not seen more than three shows by Western artists. These were scaled-down, “budget” concerts by Jimmy Somerville, Marc Almond and Suzanne Vega who — unlike Smith — each had most of their music pre-recorded.

TITLE: New voices
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Fourth International Yelena Obraztsova Competition for Young Opera Singers — a prestigious biannual vocal contest that once drew attention to the stellar talents of bass Ildar Abdrazakov and tenor Daniil Shtoda — is running at the Shostakovich Philharmonic Grand Hall through Sept. 13.
The event’s international jury is presided over by the acclaimed Russian diva herself and features Italian pianist Marcello Abbado, Spanish tenor Giacomo Aragall, Romanian soprano Ileana Cotrubas, Italian tenor Carlo Bergonzi, Spanish mezzo-soprano Teresa Berganza, German producer Renate Kupfer, and Lenore Rosenberg, director of the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
A winner of all four of the prestigious international contests she participated in, Obraztsova (who performed with Placido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti, Jose Carreras and Mirella Freni, and under the batons of Ricardo Muti, Claudio Abbado and Herbert von Karajan) established a competition of her own to showcase new operatic talent in September 1999.
“My competition will be an objective one, or I will die in the attempt,” Obraztsova said at the time. Although the diva’s glittering career during the ‘60s and ‘70s is mainly associated with the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, the contest takes place in St. Petersburg, where Obraztsova was born 66 years ago.
This  year’s competition programme is among the most challenging and demanding in its history: in the first round the participants choose from either Tchaikovsky’s romances or German lieder, while in the second round the singers perform either a romance by Rachmaninov or a French composer plus a belcanto aria and an aria from a 20th century opera. Those who advance to the third round will have to sing an aria from a 19th century opera by a European composer and an aria from a 19th century opera by a Russian composer. 
All compositions have to be performed in the original language and learned by heart, which makes it particularly hard on the young singers from outside of Russia: an aria from a 19th century Russian opera is hardly likely to be a young and aspiring European musician’s obvious choice to rehearse unless they are preparing specifically for a contest in Russia.
But Russian coaches argue that it is just as hard for a foreign singer to learn Russian romances, as it is for a Russian performer to rehearse German lieder.
International participation has been sporadic: the first competition in 1999 drew 176 participants from 25 countries, while the third event in 2003 attracted 148 singers from just 11 nations. This year’s competition is the biggest to date and will feature 225 contestants from 25 countries, including places as far apart and culturally diverse as Australia, Norway, Italy, Brazil and China.
Obraztsova makes a special point of inviting agents to the competition to foster a swift start to winners’ careers. 
“This has been international practice for years — for instance, at the Montserrat Caballe contest,” Obraztsova said in 1999. “In doing my competition, I would like it not just to reveal new talents, but to help in promoting them. Introduction to the best Western managers and directors of renowned companies could be a great help in this way.” 
The participants must be aged between 18 to 30, a change from the first event when singers up to the age of 35 could enter. This reflects Obraztsova’s view of the contest as a venue to discover young talent rather than a game for quite established singers to make comfy entrances and earn some easy cash. 

All performances of the Fourth International Yelena Obraztsova Competition for Young Singers are held at the Shostakovich Philharmonic Chamber Hall. 

Public admission is free to all performances during the 1st and 2nd round but entrance to the 3rd round performances and Gala Concerts is by ticket only. 
The third round takes place Sept. 12,  while the final gala concert, featuring the winners and laureates of the contest, is held Sept. 13. See listings for details. www.obraztsova.org

TITLE: The Russian Paganini
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: An emigre Russian violinist is reviving rarely-performed works by an undeservedly forgotten 18th-century Russian composer and  violinist, who has been referred to as the “Russian Paganini.”
This week, the Hermitage Music Academy relased a CD by Anastasia Khitruk playing works by Ivan Khandoshkin. The disc features three rarely-performed sonatas and the first-ever recording of several duets.
The name of Ivan Khandoshkin is obscure not only to foreign audiences but also to the Russian public. The Russian Paganini remains in oblivion. Names that typically come to mind when people are asked about 18th century music in Russia, are more likely to be Dmitry Bortnyansky and Maxim Berezovsky, whose music is performed by local choirs and orchestras with some regularity.
Some Russian ensembles, including, for instance, Musica Antiqua Russica, feature Khandoshkin in their repertoire but the performances are sporadic and the remaining impression is too limited to provide a consistent picture.
Not only has most of Khandoshkin’s musical legacy not survived, very little is known about the life and background of the musician, while the available material on the subject sometimes tells contradicting stories.
Born in 1746, in St. Petersburg, Ivan revealed his musical talent at a very early age. He entered the royal court orchestra at 13, and four years later at just 17 he became one of the leading musical tutors at the Russian Academy of Arts. 
Today, a young and talented Russian-born violinist is the driving force behind the plan to bring some of Khandoshkin’s music back to the local stage. The Hermitage is the most symbolic and appropriate place for Khandoshkin’s return: the virtouso was known to be one of Tsar Peter III favourite chamber musicians.
After the death of Peter, who was a great admirer of musical theater and the arts, his wife Catherine the Great gave Khandoshkin a place at the court theater after 1762. The circumstances surrounding his dismissal nearly two decades later, remain obscure. Khandoshkin died in March 1804 in St. Petersburg, in poverty, of a heart attack.
Khandoshkin is reported to have produced over 100 works for solo violin, mainly arrangements of Russian folk songs, but almost no scores have survived until the present day.
Khitruk’s interest in Khandoshkin was sparked by sheer accident. The musician came across the score of one of Khandoshkin’s sonatas while waiting for a friend and whiling away the time by perusing old scores.
“The work — it was Khandoshkin’s First Sonata — caught my attention, and I thought the work seemed most interesting and challenging in its complexity of harmonies,” she said. The violinist soon rehearsed the sonata and performed it.
Audiences gave the work a very warm welcome, which inspired the violinist to begin serious archive digging and a profound study of Khandoshkin. After a year’s investigation, she came up with three sonatas and several sets of duets. After one of her performances, Khitruk was approached by Sergei Yevtushenko, director of the Hermitage Music Academy and asked to record a CD. 
“This musician was well ahead of his time,” Khitruk said of Khandoshkin, comparing the Russian virtuoso with 18th century Italian composer and violinist Pietro Antonio Locatelli, whose works are believed to have influenced and to have been precursors to Niccolo Paganini in the following century.
“Too many people still believe the Soviet myth that the history of Russian music starts with Mikhail Glinka in the 19th century,” she said. Khitruk’s new recording will certainly help the effort to break that stereotype.

“Ivan Khandoshkin: Virtuoso Music at the Court of Catherine the Great” by Anastasia Khitruk is released on Hermitage Music Collections and is available at the Hermitage Museum shop.   www.hermitagemuseum.org/shop

TITLE: Comeback tour
AUTHOR: By Matt Brown
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Starting Thursday, visitors to washingtonpost.com have been able to follow an extraordinary online project: “The Russian Chronicles — Ten Years Later.” 
Freelance writer Lisa Dickey is traveling the length of Russia from Vladivostok to St. Petersburg and posting daily web logs, or blogs, to the newspaper site in a reprise of a journey she undertook in 1995.
“This was before the whole world was online,” said Dickey in St. Petersburg this week before flying to Vladivostok. Back then, Dickey said, online journalism was in its infancy and the project was as much a technical event as a literary one. 
The original “Russian Chronicles” was the idea of photographer Gary Matoso who described it as “an experiment in interactive photojournalism created especially for the World Wide Web” long before the word blog was coined.
At the time Dickey was working for The St. Petersburg Times — then known as The St. Petersburg Press.
“I was working as a copy editor at ‘the Press’ when Gary contacted us and posted details about the project on the bulletin board, looking for writers to help him with this photo-essay idea.”
Dickey and Matoso got together to plan the innovative project in April 1995. The idea was to mix a travel diary with photographic and written portraits of people met on the journey to discover how ordinary Russians lived.
Departing Vladivostok on Sept. 11 1995 and arriving in St. Petersburg on Nov. 24, Dickey and Matoso pioneered the blogging format and technology with the aid of sponsors including manufacturers of a then newly invented digital camera.
“At that time I’d never heard of a digital camera. They weren’t commercially available,” Dickey said.
“I thought [Matoso] was going to be hauling all this [print photography] equipment across Russia,” an idea that Dickey says would have been “crazy.”
On the original website, still available at www.russianchronicles.com, Matoso explained the technique the pair used to broadcast their journey in close to real time. 
“Lisa and I recorded our digital impressions of Russia using a laptop computer and the new KODAK 420 DCS high resolution digital camera,” Matoso wrote. 
Dickey remembers the camera, which was a prototype worth $18,000, as something of a “monster.” A similar model was on sale on eBay this week for $9.95.
“Every few days,” Matoso wrote, “digital photographs, essays, and new reports were relayed from our laptops via SprintMail’s global network to [web production company] FocalPoint f/8 back in San Francisco.”
Images and text were edited into what now seem like crude web pages that were posted online each week of the original journey.
“It was a real challenge” Dickey said. “Sometimes it took 8 hours to upload a picture and 500 words of text. No one else had done it.” 
The first “Russian Chronicles” prompted a positive response from readers who were able to email Dickey and leave comments on the site’s mail box. Many responded to the innovative format and predicted it represented the future of journalism.
Dickey, who is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, with a B.A. in Russian Language and Literature, returned to the U.S. in 1996 to embark on a career as a freelance writer, editor and literary consultant. She has not spent more than a few weeks in Russia since and was keen to revisit the “Russian Chronicles” idea 10 years on to see how things have changed in the country.
“I used to work at washingtonpost.com and when I proposed the ‘10-years-later’ idea they were very interested,” Dickey said. Her original collaborator was unavailable so Dickey recruited travel photographer David Hillegas. Technological developments should make producing the blog in 2005 easier than it was in 1995.
“We have satellite communications company I-LINX behind us,” Dickey said. This means that Dickey and Hillegas will be able to post updates quickly and from a greater range of places. “We could even upload, for example, from a boat on Lake Baikal,” Dickey said.
A key objective of the new project is to track down the people profiled 10 years ago and see where life has taken them.
These included a Moscow rapper, the fiancee of a soldier killed in Chechnya in Kazan and a gay man in Novosibirsk. 
However, Dickey has not kept in touch with any of the dozens of people she interviewed on the route which takes in the cities of Khabarovsk, Birobidzhan, Chita, Ulan Ude, Irkutsk, Novosibirsk, Chelyabinsk, Kazan and Moscow before ending in St. Petersburg.
“I haven’t kept in touch with any of them, although I have done a bit of calling ahead,” Dickey said. “The farmer I interviewed in Ulan Ude shouldn’t have gone anywhere but possibly some of the younger people have moved.”
In the original blog, Dickey interviewed Buyanto Tsydypov, a Buryat who privately owned and operated a farm in a departure from the collective, state-held farms common to the Buryat Autonomous Republic in Siberia and most of Russia.
“I am like the ‘gentleman farmers’ in English books,” Dickey quotes Tsydypov as saying.
The writer says she is not worried about the possibility of not finding people like Tsydypov to update their stories.
“We picked people who illustrated a larger point about society,” Dickey said. “We have secondary ideas about how we can cover the same issues 10 years later if we don’t meet exactly the same people.”
Like the original blog, Dickey wants the new “Russian Chronicles” to present Russians in their own words for readers, particularly in the U.S., to get to know about their lives and thoughts.
“In the States, the news we get about Russia is only about the big, catastrophic events, submarines sinking, schools attacked, oligarchs in prison or the economy,” Dickey said. “We don’t get any sort of information about ‘what it is really like’ to live on the ground in Russia in 2005.”
Dickey said the blog format allows a personal and informative approach that offers an impressionistic alternative to traditional media.
“It is my intention to say ‘Here’s what we saw,’” leaving the reader to pass judgment, Dickey said. 
“That’s why we had a section [on the first ‘Russian Chronicles’ site] called ‘In Their Own Words.’ The intention is to repeat that. I’m not a Russia expert at all. It’s not pontificating, not editorializing, that’s not what this project is all about. You can read that sort of article anywhere.”
Dickey said because this is her first extended trip to Russia since the original project it will allow her to make meaningful comparisons with Russia a decade ago.
Ten years ago this week, The St. Petersburg Times reported on the slaying of a Nigerian nightclub owner, a furor over a terrorism warning from the U.S. consulate to tourists, and Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin’s promise of land reform.
But what has really changed? Before embarking on her journey, Dickey was cautious about drawing conclusions.
“I don’t want to scoop myself, but I will tell you one thing. I can’t believe how many sushi bars there are — I don’t think there were any in 1995.”

Lisa Dickey is posting the account of her journey, with photographs by David Hillegas, each weekday for the next 11 weeks before arriving back in St. Petersburg on Nov. 22. www.washingtonpost.com/russianchronicles

TITLE: Thousands Feared Dead in Katrina’s Wake
AUTHOR: By Adam Nossiter
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW ORLEANS — With thousands feared drowned in what could be America’s deadliest natural disaster in a century, New Orleans’ leaders all but surrendered the streets to floodwaters Wednesday and began turning out the lights on the ruined city — perhaps for months. 
Looting spiraled so out of control that Mayor Ray Nagin ordered virtually the entire police force to abandon search-and-rescue efforts and focus on the brazen packs of thieves who have turned increasingly hostile.
Nagin called for an all-out evacuation of the city’s remaining residents. Asked how many people died, he said: “Minimum, hundreds. Most likely, thousands.”
With most of the city under water, Army engineers struggled to plug New Orleans’ breached levees with giant sandbags and concrete barriers, and authorities drew up plans to clear out the tens of thousands of remaining people and practically abandon the below-sea-level city.
Nagin said there will be a “total evacuation of the city. We have to. The city will not be functional for two or three months.” And he said people would not be allowed back into their homes for at least a month or two.
If the mayor’s death-toll estimate holds true, it would make Katrina the worst natural disaster in the United States since at least the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, which were blamed for anywhere from about 500 to 6,000 deaths. Katrina would also be the nation’s deadliest hurricane since 1900, when a storm in Galveston, Texas, killed between 6,000 and 12,000 people.
A slow exodus from the Superdome began Wednesday as the first of nearly 25,000 refugees left the miserable surroundings of the football stadium and were transported in buses to the Astrodome in Houston, 350 miles away. Conditions in the Superdome had become horrendous: There was no air conditioning, the toilets were backed up, and the stench was so bad that medical workers wore masks as they walked around.
In Mississippi, bodies are starting to pile up at the morgue in hard-hit Harrison County. Forty corpses have been brought to the morgue already, and officials expect the death toll in the county to climb well above 100.
Tempers were beginning to flare in the aftermath of the storm. Police said a man fatally shot his sister in the head over a bag of ice in Hattiesburg, Miss.
President George W. Bush flew over New Orleans and parts of Mississippi’s hurricane-blasted coastline in Air Force One. Turning to his aides, he said: “It’s totally wiped out. ... It’s devastating, it’s got to be doubly devastating on the ground.”
“We’re dealing with one of the worst natural disasters in our nation’s history,” Bush said later in a televised address from the White House, which most victims could not see because power remains out to 1 million Gulf Coast residents.
The federal government dispatched helicopters, warships and elite SEAL water-rescue teams in one of the biggest relief operations in U.S. history, aimed at plucking residents from rooftops in the last of the “golden 72 hours” rescuers say is crucial to saving lives.
As fires burned from broken natural-gas mains, the skies above the city buzzed with National Guard and Coast Guard helicopters frantically dropping baskets to roofs where victims had been stranded since the storm roared in with a 145-mph fury Monday. Atop one apartment building, two children held up a giant sign scrawled with the words: “Help us!”
Looters used garbage cans and inflatable mattresses to float away with food, blue jeans, tennis shoes, TV sets — even guns. Outside one pharmacy, thieves commandeered a forklift and used it to push up the storm shutters and break through the glass. The driver of a nursing-home bus surrendered the vehicle to thugs after being threatened.
Police were asking residents to give up any firearms before they evacuated neighborhoods because officers desperately needed the firepower: Some officers who had been stranded on the roof of a hotel said they were shot at.
Police said their first priority remained saving lives, and mostly just stood by and watched the looting. But Nagin later said the looting had gotten so bad that stopping the thieves became the top priority for the police department.
“They are starting to get closer to heavily populated areas — hotels, hospitals, and we’re going to stop it right now,” Nagin said in a statement.
Hundreds of people wandered up and down shattered Interstate 10 — the only major freeway leading into New Orleans from the east — pushing shopping carts, laundry racks, anything they could find to carry their belongings. 
On some of the few roads that were still open, people waved at passing cars with empty water jugs, begging for relief. Hundreds of people appeared to have spent the night on a crippled highway. 
Nagin, whose pre-hurricane evacuation order got most of his city of a half a million out of harm’s way, estimated 50,000 to 100,000 people remained, and said that 14,000 to 15,000 a day could be evacuated in ensuing convoys.

TITLE: Iraqi Stampede Victims Buried
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGHDAD — Thousands of people in Baghdad and its surroundings flocked Thursday to the funerals of the nearly 1,000 Shiite pilgrims killed in a mass stampede during a religious procession. 
Iraq’s Ministry of Interior announced Thursday that a total of 953 people had died and 815 were injured in the crush on a bridge in north Baghdad. It was the single deadliest incident since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. On Wednesday, the government proclaimed a three-day period of mourning after the disaster, which appeared to have been sparked by a rumor that a suicide bomber was among the more than one million people gathering at a Shiite shrine in the capital. 
Most of the victims on Imams bridge were crushed in the midday stampede. Others plunged nine meters into the muddy Tigris river. Among the dead were mostly women and children, officials said. 
The tragedy occurred during the annual commemoration of the death in the year 799 of Imam Moussa ibn Jaafar al-Kadhim, one of the 12 principle Shiite saints. He is buried in a mosque in the nearby neighborhood of Kazimiyah. 
Since the 2003 ouster of Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, the Shiite political parties have encouraged huge turnouts at religious festivals to display the majority sect’s power in the new Iraq.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Giuliani Mulls Bid
SYDNEY, Australia (AP) — Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani told an international business forum Wednesday he would probably decide next year whether to run for the presidency of the United States. 
Giuliani, the two-term Republican mayor who became Time magazine’s Person of the Year for 2001 for his leadership following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, said it would be premature to decide now whether to run. 
Asked at the Forbes Global CEO Conference in Sydney when he would become U.S. president, Giuliani replied: “I don’t know whether I’m going to run yet, which is something I probably won’t decide until next year. 

China to Close Mines
BEIJING (Reuters) — China has ordered 7,000 unsafe coal mines, nearly a third of its about 24,000 coal mines, to halt production and improve safety in the world’s deadliest mining industry, state media said Wednesday.
The latest in a series of crackdowns, which have had little if any effect so far, came days after rescuers called off the search for scores of miners trapped for weeks in a flooded pit in southern China.
Chinese mines, many unlicensed, often ignore safety regulations to meet an insatiable demand for coal, which the country relies on for 70 percent of its huge energy consumption. Coal supplies are unlikely to be hit hard by the shut-down because most the pits involved are small.

Koizumi in the Lead
TOKYO (Reuters) — Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s Liberal Democratic Party has widened its lead over its main opposition rival ahead of a general election, with support nearly three times as strong, an opinion poll showed Thursday.
Koizumi called the Sept. 11 election after LDP rebels joined the opposition last month to vote down bills to privatize the postal system, a huge organization with $3 trillion in assets.
According to the poll conducted on Monday and Tuesday — the day campaigning began — 34 percent of respondents said they supported the LDP.

EU to Sanction Turkey 
BRUSSELS/NICOSIA (Reuters) — The European Union agreed Wednesday to issue a counterblast to Turkey’s refusal to recognize EU member Cyprus and Nicosia threatened to block the start of Ankara’s membership talks if it was not satisfied.
“Most member states agreed with the presidency that there was a need for a counter-declaration,” a spokesman for EU president Britain said after ambassadors of the bloc discussed Turkey’s unilateral statement on Monday.
Solidarity Hailed
GDANSK, Poland (Reuters) — Ukraine and Georgia, new democracies in the former Soviet Union, thanked Poland’s Solidarity on Wednesday for helping tear down the Iron Curtain and inspiring new revolutions that toppled authoritarian rulers.
They and thousands of Poles celebrated 25 years of Solidarity, a trade union whose mass demonstrations called first for fair pay and then grew into a movement that helped oust Poland’s communist government and break down the Berlin wall.
“For millions it [Solidarity] was a banner of independence,” said Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, who swept to power after last year’s “Orange Revolution” that overturned a rigged election.

Clark Upbeat on Tories
LONDON (Reuters) — Former chancellor Kenneth Clarke said Wednesday he was the man to lead the Conservatives back to power and denied that, at 65, he was too old for the job.
Clarke entered the Conservative leadership battle Tuesday night, vowing to end years of domination by Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Labour Party and tempering his enthusiasm for Europe in a bid to win support within his eurosceptic party.

TITLE: U.S. Men Struggle At The Open
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK — When the U.S. Open got under way, there were 18 American men in the draw. 
By the time Wednesday’s play was over, two-thirds were gone with fourth-seeded Andy Roddick’s loss the biggest upset in the Open so far. And of the six Americans left, only seventh-seeded Andre Agassi, an eight-time Grand Slam champion, is a household name. 
“It’s a shame,” Taylor Dent said Wednesday after beating Germany’s Lars Burgsmuller 6-3 3-6 6-1 6-4. “Obviously, all the hype with Andy coming in here, this was his tournament. Even though Federer’s the No. 1 seed, Andy was kind of the hot kid coming in here. 
“It’s a bummer for the tournament that he lost. But that’s men’s tennis. Unfortunately, it’s just so deep. Anybody can lose on any given day.” 
Gilles Muller, the only man from Luxembourg to play at the Open, ruined Roddick’s 23rd birthday with a 7-6 7-6 7-6 win on Tuesday night. 
A day later, the loss was still the talk of the tournament. And not just among the men. 
“It was tough. It was sad,” two-time champion Venus Williams said. “I’d like to see an American win this. He obviously had a great chance. But it happens. That’s sports. The best part is that he’ll have another chance very soon.”
Seeded 25th, Dent is now the only American remaining in the top half of the men’s draw. The other remaining U.S. hopefuls are James Blake, who won his second career title last weekend at New Haven, and Robby Ginepri, who won his second career title at Indianapolis last month. 
Veteran Vince Spadea and wild card Brian Baker also are still playing. Scoville Jenkins, another wild card, lost to French Open champ Rafael Nadal 6-4 7-5 6-4 late Wednesday. 
There’s more than national pride at stake for the Americans left at the Open. Agassi, now 35, announced Monday that he is not going to represent the United States in a critical Davis Cup playoff against Belgium later this month. The Americans must win if they want to keep a spot in the coveted 16-nation World Group next year. 
That means Davis Cup captain Patrick McEnroe has to find a second singles player to back Roddick in the playoff, which is  in Leuven, Belgium, on Sept. 23-25. He’ll be watching Dent, Blake, Ginepri, and maybe even Spadea. 
Dent, the son of former pros Phil Dent and Betty Ann Stuart, understands that the popularity of tennis in the United States is, to some extent, tied to the success of the homegrown players. 
Dent hopes his class of colleagues can eventually stir up interest for tennis the way that Agassi, Pete Sampras, Jim Courier and Michael Chang did. 
“You can’t tell me that if me, Andy, Robby, James, Mardy Fish, a whole bunch of American guys were in the top 10, that tennis wouldn’t be huge in America,” Dent said. “We are working so hard to get there.”

TITLE: Whirlwind Sharapova Advances
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: NEW YORK — Top seed Maria Sharapova overcame blustery winds on Wednesday to record a sweet second-round victory at the U.S. Open. 
The 18-year-old Russian rushed into the third round with a 6-1 6-0 win over Dally Randriantefy of Madagascar. 
“It’s a good thing I had that piece of chocolate cake last night otherwise I might have been blown off the court,” Sharapova said after the 49-minute match. 
The Russian, who became a worldwide sensation by winning last year’s Wimbledon singles crown, enjoyed a whirlwind week in New York ahead of the Open fortnight. 
She unveiled her baby blue and yellow tennis dress, launched a new watch and perfume and made U.S. TV appearances as part of a marketing push. 
“There are going to be times where, especially before a grand slam, you need to set back some time and do these things for the sponsors,” said Sharapova, citing an example of her hectic pre-tournament schedule. 
“I think in the morning I was doing the ‘Today Show,’ all being glamorous. Then I’m back on the court after three hours and I’m working hard,” she said about the practice regimen she follows for her tennis. “This is where I feel I really belong.” 

Defending champion Svetlana Kuznetsova of St. Petersburg made the kind of history that no one wants to make on the opening day of the U.S. Open. 
On Monday, Kuznetsova became the first women’s defending champion to fall in the first round of the tournament, losing to fellow Russian Ekaterina Bychkova 6-3, 6-2. 
“It’s better to [try] to defend than never to have won it,” Kuznetsova said. “I already won it, so I’m happy with that. I will have many chances just to play this game, and hope to play many more U.S. Opens and have chances to win it again.”
(AP)

TITLE: Owen Has No Regrets Leaving Real Madrid
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Michael Owen says his former England strike partner Alan Shearer played a major role in his decision to leave Real Madrid for Newcastle United. 
“Alan was a great help throughout and instrumental in my decision,” Owen was quoted as saying in a column on the Times newspaper’s website on Wednesday. 
“I had spoken to him many times over the past few weeks and he should work for the Newcastle tourist board when he finishes playing football. 
“He even offered to give up his number nine shirt but I have declined. Number 10 will do for me,” added Owen. 
The former Liverpool player, who has agreed to a four-year contract with the Tynesiders, said he did a lot of soul-searching before making up his mind to join Newcastle for a club record fee of more than $27.11 million. 
“Although there had been a lot of agonising, and a lot of telephone calls, it was an easy decision in the end,” said Owen, who had also been linked with a move back to Anfield. 
“People will point out that, only a week or so ago, I listed Newcastle as the last of my options but circumstances change very quickly, as I have discovered. 
“Given that I will be running out to play football in front of more than 50,000 of the country’s most passionate supporters next week, I am not about to cast around for sympathy. 
“I was uncertain a Liverpool bid would be accepted in time and I wanted to play for a club who really wanted me.” 
The 25-year-old former European Footballer of the Year has passed a medical and completed the move to Newcastle on Wednesday. 
Real Madrid used the funds from the sale of Owen to buy Spanish international defender Sergio Ramos out of his contract with Sevilla for 27 million euros in a last-minute transfer deal on Wednesday. 
The player’s brother deposited the money with the Spanish Professional Football League (LFP) just 10 minutes before the transfer deadline expired. 
“Real Madrid and the player Sergio Ramos deposited the buy-out clause after an assurance from Sevilla that this would not be seen as a hostile move,” Real Madrid said in a statement. 
Sevilla responded by saying: “Sevilla could do nothing to stop the defender leaving, but tried to put up resistance in the last few days and refused to negotiate a transfer because they did not want to lose him.” 
The highly rated 19-year-old, who will sign an eight-year contract with Real, is the sixth most expensive signing in the club’s history.

TITLE: Ovchinnikov Talks Tough Ahead of Crucial Qualifier
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Lokomotiv goalkeeper and Russian international Sergei Ovchinnikov says Liechtenstein does not stand a chance of causing an upset against his team in Saturday’s World Cup qualifier. 
“They don’t have a chance, not even one, of beating us,” Ovchinnikov told reporters at the national team’s training camp ahead of the European Group Three match in Moscow. 
“I don’t see how Liechtenstein could beat Russia, we can only beat ourselves,” added the 32-year-old. 
Liechtenstein, still regarded as soccer lightweights by many European nations, have made steady improvements over the past 12 months, holding Euro 2004 finalists Portugal to a 2-2 draw in a World Cup qualifier last October. Earlier this month, the tiny principality held Slovakia to a 0-0 draw while Russia could only manage a 2-1 victory in March. 
The Russians must win on Saturday, then beat group leaders Portugal next Wednesday to keep alive their fading hopes of reaching next year’s World Cup finals in Germany. Russia trails Portugal by five points and second-placed Slovakia by three, although they have a game in hand on the Slovaks. 

France is relying on the Zinedine  Zidane to see the team through the rest of its World Cup qualifiers with maximum points, coach Raymond Domenech said on Thursday. France cannot afford to drop a point in its four remaining qualifiers starting with the Faroe Islands in Lens on Saturday.