SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1113 (79), Friday, October 14, 2005
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TITLE: Multilingual Police Force On the Way
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: St. Petersburg tourist authorities plan by the summer of 2006 to have created a special police task force, which will consist of students recruited to help foreign visitors to the city.
“They will be students of St. Petersburg universities who know foreign languages.  We plan that they will work at the major sights around the city that are most popular among foreign tourists,” said Alexander Prokhorenko, head of the city’s Tourism and Foreign Affairs Committee, on Monday, Interfax said.
The students will be equipped with special uniforms and communications devices.  Foreign tourists will be able to turn to these volunteer policemen to report crimes or for general information.
The tourist police will patrol Nevsky Prospekt, major architectural sites, parks and the city’s embankments, Prokhorenko said.
For their work, the students will be paid 500 rubles ($17.50) for each shift.
Olga Volkova, spokeswoman for the Committee, said the students will undergo special training with the police, sociologists and psychologists.
“With the police they will learn what legal actions they can take, while psychologists will explain how they should behave with foreign tourists, in order to help them, rather than scare them,” Volkova said.
The Committee’s decision comes as the number of tourists visiting St. Petersburg continues to decline, with up to 19 percent fewer tourists traveling to the city this summer than last year. 
One of the root causes of this decline cited by tourism experts is crime in the city, and the city police’s inefficiency in helping foreigners that are victims of crime. 
Prokhorenko said another reason for the decrease in the numbers of incoming tourists is to be found in the rising prices for all basic services in St. Petersburg.
Sergei Korneyev, head of the Northwestern branch of the Russian Tourism Industry  Union (RST), said other problems include a lack of modern economy class hotels, publicity abroad, modern tourist buses, the high cost and complexity of visas, and the high cost of air tickets.

TITLE: Violence Erupts in Caucasus Capital
AUTHOR: By Fatima Tlisova
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NALCHIK, Southern Russia — Islamic militants launched a major attack on police and government buildings in a provincial capital in Russia’s volatile Caucasus region Thursday, turning the city into a war zone wracked by gunfire and explosions. At least 49 people, including 25 militants, were killed. 
Chechen rebels claimed responsibility for the offensive in Nalchik, the capital of the republic of Kabardino-Balkariya, which opened a new front in Russia’s decade-old war against Islamic rebels. 
President Vladimir Putin, beleaguered by attacks that have killed hundreds of civilians and underscored his failure to bring the turbulent Caucasus under control, ordered a total blockade of Nalchik to prevent militants from slipping out and ordered security forces to shoot any armed resisters. 
Twelve civilians, 12 police officers and 25 rebels were killed, said Fyodor Shcherbakov, a spokesman for presidential envoy Dmitry Kozak. He said the number was rising as bodies were being discovered. 
Deputy Interior Minister Alexander Chekalin told Putin that 50 militants had been killed and that 10 police officers had also died. Local officials said another three civilians were among the dead, and that 84 were wounded. 
Estimates of the number of militants involved ranged from 60 to 300, and Interfax quoted an aide to the president of Kabardino-Balkaria as saying late Thursday that 59 had been killed and 17 detained. 
The region has suffered a growing wave of violence apparently connected to Islamic extremists and the Chechen rebels’ fight against Russian forces, which has devastated Chechnya and destabilized the entire Russian Caucasus since the early 1990s. Originally a separatist movement, the rebel struggle has melded increasingly with Islamic extremism and spread far beyond Chechnya’s borders. 
Police and security forces have fought pitched battles with militants across the region, and the rebels have employed terrorist methods including suicide bombings and the seizure of more than 1,000 hostages last year in a school in the town of Beslan, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) southeast of Nalchik. 
The Kavkaz-Center Web site, seen as a voice for rebels loyal to Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, said it had received a short message claiming responsibility for Thursday’s attack on behalf of the Caucasus Front. It said the group is part of the Chechen rebel armed forces and includes Yarmuk, an alleged militant Islamic group based in Kabardino-Balkariya. 
The strategy of launching simultaneous attacks on police facilities was similar to last year’s siege in another Caucasus republic, Ingushetia, in which 92 people died and police armories were looted. Basayev claimed responsibility for those attacks and the Beslan raid. 
Deputy Prosecutor General Vladimir Kolesnikov said suspects detained during Thursday’s fighting said the offensive was carried out under orders from two wanted militants — one of them an active supporter of Basayev. 
But the Interfax news agency quoted armed forces chief of staff General Yuri Baluyevsky as saying he had no evidence Basayev was involved in the attack. Shcherbakov and another official said there was no evidence to support speculation Basayev had been killed. 
Chekalin said Thursday’s fighting began after police launched an operation to capture about 10 militants in a Nalchik suburb, and that the attacks were aimed at diverting police. All 10 suspected militants were killed, he said. 
As darkness fell, Chekalin said militants holed up in two rooms at a police station were holding hostages and battling security forces, and that three attackers were putting up resistance at a souvenir shop. Police and security forces were combing the rest of the blockaded city searching for militants who might be hiding or wounded, he said. 
An armored personnel carrier was shelling the police station. 
Gunmen attacked three police stations, the city’s airport and the regional headquarters of the Interior Ministry and Federal Security Service in the morning offensive, a police officer said on condition of anonymity. They also attacked the city’s military commissariat and raided a hunting store, apparently for weapons, the officer said. 
The attack at the airport was repelled, the facility was placed under military control and all flights were canceled, news reports said. 
The militants also attacked the regional headquarters of the Russian prison system, the Emergency Situation Ministry’s press office said. Interfax said a border guards’ office also came under attack. 
A teacher from School No. 5, who gave only his first name, Spartak, said children had been evacuated from the building, near a police station and an anti-terrorism office at the center of the attacks. Black smoke billowed from the building as panic-stricken parents searched for their children in the school yard.

TITLE: City Admits Recycling Scheme Is Garbage
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Local citizens using the new trash cans set up in the city, designed to allow recyclable materials to be separated, have been told that their efforts have largely been in vain. 
This year, several hundred containers for separate waste collection were installed around the city as an experiment initiated by Greenpeace with the support of the local administration. 
At a round table at the Agency For Business News this week, city authorities admitted St. Petersburg lacks the waste processing facilities needed to treat this refuse, and unless new plants are built, most of the waste will either be sent abroad or piled up and left to decompose at local storage sites.
The practice of collecting glass, paper, metal and organic waste separately is common in developed countries. In St. Petersburg, paper refuse and other recyclable materials are predominantly mixed up with organic materials, making it impossible to recycle. 
St. Petersburg produces at least 10 million cubic meters of garbage per year, said Oleg Sergeyev, a lawmaker at the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly.
Experts estimate that up to 60 percent of the garbage can be recycled, but the city doesn’t have the resources and equipment to do that.
“Our storage sites don’t deserve their name,” Sergeyev said. “Unlike in Europe, waste isn’t treated or even classified there, so these sites are nothing but banal scrap heaps.”
After the collapse of the Soviet system for dividing refuse materials such as waste paper or scrap metal at schools and other state organizations for deliver to factories, no other system has been developed to deal with it. The industry has had no investment and no competition.
St. Petersburg environmentalists estimate that local dumps occupy a total of 665 hectares in the city.
Dmitry Artamonov, head of the St. Petersburg branch of Greenpeace, said locals had reacted with enthusiasm to the introduction of the new containers.
“Many people still remember the Soviet practices, so for them it is a bit like getting back into a good habit,” Artamonov said. “And, of course, people feel better about themselves when they contribute to something useful — especially if it doesn’t involve too much effort.”
Last month Governor Valentina Matviyenko backed new plans for the separating of different wastes, with the new system slated to come online in 2006.
But critics say the city lacks not only the facilities but also the financial resources to fulfill its goals.
Alexei Smirnov, chief specialist of the City Maintenance Committee of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, said the draft of next year’s budget, which is currently being studied by the city parliament, allocates only 30 million rubles ($1 million) to the project which calls for a total of 145 million rubles.
Alexander Pron, general director of the Eco Resource consultancy said there is a lack of storage and treatment sites in St. Petersburg, leading to a boom in the illegal dumping of garbage around the city. Pron has said that the garbage sites have mushroomed on the outskirts, creating a toxic ring around the city.
Changes in the city’s waste since the creation of St. Petersburg’s recycling industry in the 1970s have also had an impact on the problem. “Ninety percent of the waste was organic back then [in the 1970s], and now it only accounts for thirty percent of the total,” said Alexander Agurenkov, a senior specialist of City Hall’s Housing Committee.
As a result of these changes, industry players say that using the existing treatment facilities is hardly worth the trouble. 
“With the low rates that we have, it’s simply not profitable to treat garbage,” Pron said.

TITLE: Rally Gathers 1 Million Public Workers, Students
AUTHOR: By Francesca Mereu
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — More than 1 million teachers, doctors and other state-paid workers took to the streets nationwide Wednesday to demand significantly higher salaries, and one nurse said she wished a government official would be admitted to her hospital to see firsthand the care afforded to patients.
Some 2,500 protesters gathered on Gorbaty Bridge near the White House at about 4 p.m., many waving the flags of trade unions, which organized the national rally. Hundreds of armed police officers with dogs kept a close watch on the gathering, and protesters had to go through metal detectors to reach the site of the rally.
“I would like someone from the government to stay in our hospital for just one day to see how people are treated,” said Irina, a nurse who gave only her first name and would say only that she worked in a hospital outside Moscow. “But they usually stay in private clinics and don’t see what we see every day.”
She said she earned 1,600 rubles ($56) per month.
Among the demonstrators were activists and politicians from the Rodina, Yabloko and Communist parties.
“We have to demand not only social benefits but a change in the political course, especially since we have the money,” Communist Party deputy head Ivan Melnikov told the crowd, referring to the oil riches that have boosted government revenues. 
“But we have no clever heads who can correctly and rightly divide the money,” he said.
Many of the protesters were students who, in addition to shouting out the names of their institutes, demanded that their stipends be raised to the level of the minimum wage, although few knew how much the minimum wage was. (It is 800 rubles per month.)
“[The stipend] my mother got in her time was enough to live on, but it is impossible to live in Moscow with what we get,” said Anna Marycheva, a student from Orenburg who studies at the Moscow Technical Institute. She receives 600 rubles per month.
Teachers also complained that they barely earned enough to feed themselves. Some held banners saying “Destroy education and you’ll lose the future” and “No change to the legal status of educational institutes.” 
“You need at least $1,000 per month to live in Moscow,” said Galina Yelovnikova, who teaches at the Schnittke Music Institute. 
Yelovnikova said she received 6,720 rubles but had to pay 1,200 rubles for the utilities alone.
Nina, a gynecologist from a clinic outside Moscow, said she had to work a double shift just to earn 5,000 rubles per month. She refused to give her last name for fear that the clinic would see it and perhaps fire her.
“We don’t only need better wages, but we also need to get more equipment. Hospitals are run down. The government should give money to at least improve our toilets,” Nina said.
In the Far East cities of Vladivostok and Khabarovsk, several thousand people rallied in central squares to demand a “decent life,” “a decent wage” and more respect for their work, according to news reports. Some held signs reading “Teachers — the Last Heroes?” NTV reported.
The average monthly wage for young teachers is a little over $50, while senior teachers receive about $110. Young doctors get about $70, while senior doctors receive $175. Surgeons are the best paid and receive about $410.
President Vladimir Putin has promised that an additional $4 billion will be spent on social programs over the next few years. A portion of that money is to go toward salaries and new medical equipment.

TITLE: Matviyenko Backs Film Festival
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Plans to turn Palace Square into the main venue of the new international Golden Angel film festival were approved by Governor Valentina Matvieyenko this week, but debate continues to heat up around the controversial project.
The idea of holding a major international film festival on the city’s central square towards the end of July 2006, is the brainchild of filmmaker Andrei Konchalovsky and producer Mark Rudinshtein, who proposed it in July. 
Rudinshtein, who founded the Kinotavr festival in Sochi, has promised that the festival will attract foreign audiences and world famous celebrities to the city.
Mikhail Piotrovsky, director of the State Hermitage Museum, which overlooks the square, has on several occasions spoken out against the plan. This week he again expressed his concerns, describing the plan as a farce.
In particular, Piotrovsky has objected to the setting up of red inflatable pavilions to host the festival’s main events. The pavilions, he believes, will be entirely out of place on the classical square.
The Square has become a popular venue for concerts, such as the performances by Paul McCartney in June 2004 and Joe Cocker. Following the McCartney concert, staff at the Hermitage complained that the windows had been rattling in their frames due to the volume, and the area around the stage had been turned into an open latrine due to a shortage of public toilets. 
Many in the city’s artistic community have echoed Piotrovsky’s concerns. In an open letter to Matviyenko, sent last month, the director Alexander Sokurov said that the use of Palace Square for entertainment events is an insult to St. Petersburg’s architectural legacy, and could damage the city’s reputation.
Approving the idea, Matviyenko stressed that “a number of historical squares in Europe are often used as host venues for mass cultural events of national and regional significance.” 
St. Petersburg actress Natalya Fisson of the internationally-acclaimed Comic Trust troupe, which caused a sensation at the Fringe festival in Edinburgh in 2001, said the festival’s organizers had failed to pitch a coherent concept for the event. 
“St. Petersburg is a notoriously conservative place, with a lot of hysteria surrounding every single attempt at a bold, artistic experiment,” Fisson said. 
“People really have to know why it should take place on the Palace Square, why there have to be inflatable pavilions, and why they have to be red.”
Russia’s Tourism Industry Union (RST) has welcomed the plans for the new festival. “We badly need events of international resonance to attract more visitors,” said Sergei Korneyev, head of RST’s Northwestern branch. “Venice has a carnival, Athens hosted the last Olympics and Helsinki was home to the last World Cup in Athletics. We need to employ a similar strategy.”
Debate over the use of the Square for such events can be traced back to a major accident in January 2001, when New Year’s Eve revelers managed to set alight the Chariots of Glory monument, which adorns the arch of the General Staff Building. The blaze, set off by a flare, destroyed 80 percent of the statue, originally commissioned to commemorate victory in the Napoleonic wars.

TITLE: Vandals Attack Jewish Cemetery, Restaurant
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: St. Petersburg’s Jewish community has been alarmed by an act of vandalism at the city’s Jewish cemetery, and a number of attacks on the local Jewish restaurant Shalom in the past week.
Unidentified vandals destroyed about 40 graves at the cemetery last Thursday night, said Mark Grubarg, a representative of the Jewish Community, a local organization uniting Jews in the city. 
On Monday, an unidentified group threw stones through the windows of the Shalom restaurant, in a repeat of an attack carried out against the same restaurant in early October.
Grubarg said he could not be sure if the damage caused at the cemetery was anti-Semitic in nature, or simply vandalism, as no anti-Semitic signs were left by the perpetrators. The cemetery was vandalized a year ago. The culprits were caught and identified as members of an extremist groups. 
“Acts of vandalism at different cemeteries, including Orthodox ones, have became more frequent now, and it indicates a general decrease in the population’s culture,” Grubarg said.  
He said that the Jewish community had appealed to police for help, and matter was being investigated. It is possible that the gravestones had been damaged by thieves collecting non-ferrous metals to be sold as scrap, he said. 
Grubarg said that there was also no direct link between the attacks on the restaurant and anti-Semitism. However, he said that the frequency of the attacks was a major cause of concern among the city’s Jewish community.

TITLE: Suspect Detained Over Killing of Foreign Student
AUTHOR: By Kevin O’Flynn
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — A suspect has been detained in an attack that killed an 18-year-old Peruvian student and seriously injured two others in Voronezh this week, the region’s prosecutor said Wednesday.
“There is one detainee,” Prosecutor Alexander Ponomaryov said, Interfax reported. “There are also a number of people who we are working with and checking their connection to the crime.” 
He did not provide further details about the suspect.
Enrique Arturo Angeles Hurtado, a first-year student at the Voronezh State Architecture and Civil Engineering University, died after 15 to 20 young men stabbed and beat him, a fellow Peruvian student and a Spanish student as they were walking near the Olimpik Sports Complex on the outskirts of Voronezh on Sunday evening.
The two other students have been moved out of intensive care but will remain in the hospital for at least more 10 days, Interfax reported. Both suffered serious head injuries in the attack.
Ponomaryov said there had been 45 crimes against foreigners in the region this year, or 0.3 percent of all crimes in the region. He said foreigners were the targets of so many attacks because there were a large number of them studying in Voronezh, not because of racist or xenophobic attitudes.

TITLE: Meatland Plans Nationwide Chain
AUTHOR: By Yevgenya Ivanova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: St. Petersburg-based Meatland Logistics & Distribution said Wednesday it will open a nationwide chain of meat logistics centers by 2010 as part of the company’s goal to become the country’s first federal multi-logistics operator.
Industry insiders said the move showed the emergence of a “legalized” meat market in Russia. That will lead to more systematic business relations between meat suppliers and supermarket chains.
Meatland launched Wednesday its first $12 million meat logistics center in Kupchino, the south of St. Petersburg. The center will serve as an intermediary between international and domestic meat suppliers and retailers.
Similar centers in all major Russian cities could follow, requiring investments running to millions of dollars, Meatland Logistics & Distribution’s general director, Dmitry Gordeyev,  said at the launch.
Gordeyev said the company is currently in negotiations with several investors who are interested in there being a nationwide chain of meat distribution centers.
“The [investors] come to us as they have only one question: They grew [the livestock], they’ve slaughtered it, but who will now deliver it to the consumer and sell it? We will find the points of contact with them here,” he said.
The company will start a more detailed dialog with investors from April 2006, when its financial reports are due to be finalized, said Vladislav Tarashchenko, Meatland’s strategic development director. The company predicts turnover of about $240 million in 2005 with a 30 percent growth in 2006.
The National Meat Association saw Meatland’s strategy as part of a development of a “civilized” meat trade in the region.
Veronica Maksimova, vice-president of the association, said Thursday that “such openings will optimize the turnover between meat suppliers and retail businesses such large supermarkets chains.”

TITLE: City to Set Pay Limit
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Forcing private firms to raise staff wages will be made the city’s top social and economic priority, the head of the committee for economic development, industrial policy and trade, said this week. Experts dismissed the idea as unworkable and economically unsound.
Vladimir Blank told a government meeting on Monday that “a law to increase the minimum wage to [be level] with the minimum monthly cost of living could be introduced in St. Petersburg” — a move which quickly gained backing from City Governor Valentina Matviyenko.
The lowest legal wage that can be paid out in Russia is set at just 800 rubles ($28) a month.
But at the end of 2004 the minimum monthly living cost was estimated at 2,690 rubles ($94) nationwide and 3,663 rubles ($128) in St. Petersburg, according to the Institute for Entrepreneur Problems, an independent consultancy.
Despite the discrepancy between the figures Matviyenko said the problem in establishing an adequate salary benchmark lay in the persistence of companies in paying “under the table” salaries.
“A number of companies in the city pay wages lower than the minimum cost of living. But, in fact, they pay additional money ‘in an envelope,’” Matviyenko said.
About 433,000 people in St. Petersburg officially earn less than the minimum cost of living, but about 90 percent of them conceal their real income. Unofficial wage schemes are most popular with retail, transport and finance companies, Interfax news agency reported.
Experts said the city legislative assembly could theoretically introduce a law to increase the minimum wage, but only if it used regional budget resources to cover the consequent rise in state employee salaries.
Tatiana Tulupova, legal expert with the Institute for Entrepreneurial Problems, doubted the city could help more companies legalize their wage schemes by establishing a higher minimum wage.
“The Labor Code regulates the minimum wage for full-time employment. There is no restriction for part-time employees and people combining several jobs,” Tulupova said.
Maria Andreyeva, head of tax practice at Pepeliaev, Goltsblat & Partners law firm, pointed out that it would be “practically impossible” to detect “under the table” pay-outs in a company’s documentation.
Even if it were possible, Andreyeva added, the penalties incurred would still be lower than the amount the company “saved” through not having paid income tax on a higher salary.
A law to regulate the minimum wage would in itself be economically unreasonable, said Irina Karelina, president of the Leontyevsky Centre for social and economic research. It would demand high budget expenses while regulating insignificant cash flows, she said.
Such a law would also lead to a growth in prices since companies will “include currently neglected taxes in the product price,” she said.
According to the Labor Code, the minimum wage cannot actually be lower than the minimum cost of living. The law, however, is far from realized in practice, Tulupova said.

TITLE: Russia Expects $9 Billion Net Outflow in ’05
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: Russia is expected to see a $9 billion net capital outflow in 2005 despite a recent flood of hot money into the country in apparent anticipation of ruble strengthening, Central Bank Governor Sergei Ignatyev said Thursday. 
“Recently we’ve noticed an inflow of short-term capital via the banking sector. It’s possible there is an expectation of a strengthening of the ruble’s nominal exchange rate,” Ignatyev told a news conference. 
Ignatyev said he was not revising his forecast of a $9 billion capital outflow for the whole year. Last year’s net outflow was $9.3 billion. “Quarterly indicators are very volatile. This is linked to many factors, including changing expectations in relation to the ruble’s exchange rate. This is a normal process,” he added. 
The central bank earlier reported that private capital inflows totaled $2.9 billion in the third quarter of 2005 after a $5.3 billion outflow in the second quarter and compared with a $7.1 billion outflow in the third quarter of 2004. 
He also said the introduction of a dual currency basket in February was having a dampening effect on ruble volatility. 
Ignatyev said that he did not expect increased government expenditure in next year’s budget to ignite inflation, which he forecast at no more than 11 percent in 2005 and no higher than 8.5 percent next year. 
“I think the tempo of inflation ... will not rise. The general trend towards a reduction [in inflation] will be maintained. It will be maintained this year and next year,” he said, adding that although the government could not exert any influence on oil prices it could try to rein in the resulting inflation. 
“We cannot influence oil prices, we can act against inflationary pressures, which appear in relation to the increase in oil prices,” he said.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: WSJ Shrinks Page Size
NEW YORK (NYT) — The Wall Street Journal, which is reducing its international editions to tabloid size later this month, announced yesterday that it was shrinking the width of its U.S. edition as part of a $100 million overhaul of the newspaper. The change is intended, in part, to save on the rising cost of paper.
The new domestic Journal, to appear in January 2007, will go from about 38.1 centimeters wide to about 30.4 centimeters wide and will remain about 57.7 centimeters long. It will be roughly the size of The Washington Post and USA Today, other daily newspapers that have reduced their widths. 

Arkhangelsk Blow Up
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) —Rosneft, a state-owned oil company, stopped work at its oil depot in the Arkhangelsk region in northern Russia after an explosion today killed two contract-workers.
The blast occurred at about 8:55 a.m. on Thursday at a tank farm near the Arkhangelsk port, spokesman Nikolai Manvelov said. The fire was extinguished by 10:30 a.m. Two subcontractors at the facility were killed, he said.

TITLE: Citizens Hardly Affected by Oil Wealth
AUTHOR: By Anna Smolchenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — The number of Russians living in poverty fell to under 13 million in 2002 from over 30 million in 1999, as the country’s poorest citizens benefited from the country’s oil-propelled economic growth, according to a new World Bank report released on Thursday.
Russia has not only lifted itself out of poverty but has “become a regional locomotive for many neighboring countries,” says the study, which looked at poverty in Eastern Europe and former Soviet Union.
“Growth has been a tide that lifted all boats,” said Mamta Murthi, a lead economist at the World Bank and one of the study’s authors.
The report warns, however, that a financial crisis similar to the 1998 financial meltdown “could lead to a doubling of absolute poverty counts in the space of a year.” 
The country’s health and education systems are in a state of serious neglect, the report says.
The study defines the poorest segment of Russian society as those living on $2.15 or less per day. That segment has fallen to 9 percent of the country’s 144 million population in 2002 from 21 percent of the population three years earlier, the report says.
The percentage of Russians eking out a living on $4.30 per day fell to 32 percent in 2002 from 38 percent in 1999.
The fact that wages and pensions are paid on a more regular basis has largely contributed to a decrease in inequality, fighting the widespread perception that only the rich benefited from Russia’s economic bounce-back, said Murthi.
Poverty reduction throughout the region has also been helped by factors including the end of the war in the Balkans and the inclusion of much of Eastern Europe in the European Union, the study says.
But “it’s not time to sit back and feel complacent,” Murthi said.
Across Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the World Bank estimates that more than 60 million still live on incomes of less than $2.15 per day. More than 150 million have only between $2.15 and $4.30 per day at their disposal.
The figures show that poverty appears to be declining in most of the countries covered in the study. In Georgia, Lithuania and Poland, however, poverty is on the rise, the report says.
A separate study by the State Council, which comprises regional leaders, estimates that only 32.1 percent of Russian children are healthy, RIA-Novosti reported.
Presented to President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, the study says that Russians live on average 12 years less than Americans, 8 years less than Poles and 5 years less than Chinese. Putin has said that fighting poverty is one of the priorities of his second term in office.
In terms of education, one of Russia’s problems is aging schoolteachers, as low salaries deter young people from entering the profession. In 2003, 41 percent of Russian students had teachers over the age of 50, a rise from 21 percent in 1995. The World Bank registered a decline in students’ performance in 2003 since the last study.

TITLE: Russian Tops Hungary’s Rich
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: BUDAPEST — Russian banker Megdet Rahimkulov is the richest person in Hungary, according to a report published Wednesday. 
Rahimkulov’s fortune was estimated at 83 billion forints ($398 million) in a publication on Hungary’s richest people launched by the daily newspaper Nepszabadsag. 
Rahimkulov, who has close business ties to Russia’s state-controlled gas monopoly Gazprom, is the majority owner of General Banking and Trust, or AEB, listed last year as Hungary’s 11th-largest commercial bank. 
Rahimkulov is in the process of buying Gazprom’s remaining 25.5 percent stake in AEB, which was once fully owned by the gas company. His other investments include broadcaster Antenna Hungaria, tile maker Zalakeramia and chemicals maker Borsodchem.
Sandor Csanyi, chairman and CEO of OTP, Hungary’s largest bank, was second richest, with 60 billion forints ($288 million). According to Nepszabadsag, there are no Hungarians among the 100 richest people in Eastern Europe.
(AP, Bloomberg)

TITLE: Shutting the Door on a Dead End
AUTHOR: By Ira Straus
TEXT: The reshuffled Ukrainian government is at risk of getting torn both ways internationally. Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko is more anxious than ever for validation of his Western course by an EU membership offer, but this is nowhere in sight. Moscow is abuzz with talk of a swing back its way: Ukrainian party leaders, Orange as well as Blue, are competing for the pro-Russian vote and vying for Kremlin approval; the new prime minister, Yuriy Yekhanurov, was born in Russia and is inclined to reconcile. As Ukraine maneuvers between these two parameters, it may revert to lurching between West and East.
What is overlooked in the tug of war between the two sides is that Ukraine could stabilize its orientation between Moscow and Brussels if it shifted its hopes of joining Western international alliances upward, to the Atlantic level, where it has a real chance of getting in. This is because the Atlantic framework is much larger than the European Union; potentially it could subsume Ukraine’s Eurasian ties as well as its European ties. And that is the one thing that could reconcile Ukraine’s two necessary orientations, rather than merely balance them off against each other. 
The one-sided pro-European dream is embodied in Oleh Rybachuk, Yushchenko’s chief of staff. He is reputed to have said Ukraine would join the EU in five to seven years’ time. It is reminiscent of what I heard in Ukraine in 1990, when an economist aligned with the independence movement told me Ukraine would join the European Community within five years. 
EU membership is a fantasy doomed to failure, today as in 1990. 
One might have thought the blows of the last year would have disabused Ukrainians of such expectations. The EU made clear repeatedly that it did not want Ukraine, no matter that Ukraine had just had a dramatic democratic revolution, or that polls showed Europeans overwhelmingly wanted Ukraine, and not Turkey, as a future member. This month, acting on old commitments, the EU began membership negotiations with Turkey that are to last a decade and keep any further applicants out in the cold. 
Despite this, the Ukrainian leadership has continued its appeals, with a pathos that increasingly risks looking ridiculous. As long as EU membership is conceived as the goal of alignment with the West, the Yushchenko administration sees no alternative. This sets Ukraine up for another letdown by the West, similar to the one that led a decade ago to the two-faced regime of former President Leonid Kuchma.
If Yushchenko is wise, he will lead the democratic camp away from its EU chimera and nudge it toward a more sustainable pro-Western policy, building on the trans-Atlantic dimension of European civilization. This means transferring Ukraine’s primary hopes from the “Little Europe” of the EU to the “Greater Europe” of NATO and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. 
Getting into the OECD entails a dual goal for Ukraine — not just joining, but making more of the institution. Ukraine needs to achieve membership on non-utopian terms — that is, reforms sufficient to meet baseline OECD standards. Yet, Ukraine also needs to support and encourage Western efforts at upgrading the OECD so it can supply the basic things previously hoped for from the EU. The target should be an intermediate level of integration — more than the OECD provides now, but less than the EU. This would be a more realistic solution for Ukraine than EU membership, which would require mutual integration beyond the two sides’. There has been a lot of Western think tank discussion of deepening U.S.-EU relations into a common economic space. If done by signing a convention open to all OECD members and candidates, this could solve the problem for Ukraine as well as for some other countries, such as Turkey.
Ukraine’s intimate interdependence with Russia gives it two further interests in OECD membership: getting Russia into the OECD as well on similarly fair terms, and forming an OECD subcommittee of former Soviet states to foster maintenance and renewal of their mutual economic links. Only in the OECD, with its Western leadership, could this renewal of regional links be carried out without fear of renewed Russian domination. 
As a NATO member state, Ukraine must have a similar dual goal. Even former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko said in January that Ukraine and Russia should join NATO together and “can never be members of different, let alone hostile, military blocs” because that would tear Ukraine apart. Thus, Ukraine needs NATO membership on relevant, not utopian terms. This means it needs help in meeting the terms, with waivers and considerations no less than those enjoyed by other East European states. Yet, Ukraine also needs the door to be kept open to Russian membership on similarly fair terms, and, meanwhile, for Russia-NATO links to be upgraded so the alliance is not seen as setting Ukraine against Russia. This requires further adaptation of NATO to new, post-Cold War tasks in which Russia is not viewed as an enemy and of non-zero-sum solutions to the base in Sevastopol, such as a joint NATO-Russia base. This in turn entails supporting Western efforts at reforming the alliance to manage the diversity of the new challenges, such as calls by the U.S. Senate and Pentagon for more flexible forms of NATO decision-making than consensus. And Ukraine will need a NATO subcommittee to sustain cooperation of its military industry with Russia’s and to foster arms trade within NATO. The alternative is unilateral adaptation to NATO arms, which would mean further erosion of the East European arms industry. 
As for the EU, Ukrainian leaders might do well to start thinking along these lines: They should say openly that they have put too much stock into EU accession and that Ukraine is not going to get in. The EU is drawing a hard line along its eastern borders. This line cannot be softened much by any external partnership, but only by adding a new layer of integration — one that is big enough to include the countries on both sides of that line. Luckily, the trans-Atlantic institutions are big enough for this; all the post-Soviet countries could join them without upsetting the balance. This is not the case in the EU, where the balance is stretched to the limit. The Economist recently showed that only creation of second-class EU membership, with reduced voting powers, could give Ukraine a chance of fitting in without upsetting the balance, but even this option is being excluded as bad PR. This leaves Ukraine no choice but to transfer its primary focus to the trans-Atlantic level. There a Greater Europe already exists in embryo. Ukraine needs to make more of it.
It would be good to hear something similar from Brussels. As things stand, Ukraine’s hopes are out to sea. The sooner Ukraine refocuses its aspirations on the trans-Atlantic level, where alone they can be anchored in this era, the safer it will be for all parties involved.

Ira Straus is U.S. coordinator of the Committee on Eastern Europe and Russia in NATO, an independent nongovernmental international association that advances consideration of NATO expansion and transformation. He contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times.

TITLE: The EU’s Iron Curtain
AUTHOR: By Alexei Pankin
TEXT: President Vladimir Putin hailed an agreement on visas reached at last week’s European Union-Russia summit as a step toward visa-free travel. The agreement will make it easier for certain categories of Russian citizens, including students, academics, journalists and businesspeople, to obtain visas to 11 of the EU’s 25 member countries.
On one hand, as a journalist I’m pleased that it will soon be easier for me to travel to Europe. On the other hand, I find it appalling that when it comes to the universally recognized right of freedom of movement, Russians are once more being divided into the haves and the have-nots.
The whole thing reminds me of the 1970s and 1980s, when Soviet citizens also had a difficult time traveling abroad. In those days, of course, the hard part was getting out of the country. Now, the trick is to get other countries to let you in. By signing the Helsinki Accord 30 years ago under pressure from the West, the Soviet regime recognized — at least on paper — the right of its citizens to travel freely abroad. In practice, however, this right was enjoyed by roughly the same categories of citizens who have now been promised a simplified visa application procedure by the EU.
In the early 1980s, my father served as Soviet ambassador to Sweden. For a long time, I refused to visit him because the procedure for obtaining permission to travel to “capitalist countries” was both lengthy and humiliating. Why should I have to endure endless interviews with Komsomol and party officials just to visit my parents?
Eventually, the restrictions on foreign travel were lifted, but before long I once more began to avoid taking trips to the West. It’s not enough that we have to stand in line for hours just to get into foreign consulates — the questions on the application forms pry much too deeply into our private lives. Why, for example, do I have to furnish foreign consulates with my salary details, not to mention bank statements, when that information is considered confidential even within my own company? 
In a way, the treatment of Russians by foreign governments is reminiscent of hostage-taking. It used to be that Russians vacationing in Croatia, for example, could travel to Venice for one day without a visa. Travelers left their passports at the border and were informed that the privilege of a visa-free day in Venice would remain in effect until such time as someone failed to return for his passport; that is, until someone decided to stay in Italy illegally.
The difficulties we face in obtaining visas are usually justified as a response to the large number of Russians living illegally abroad. Moskovskiye Novosti has reported that nearly half of the 150,000 to 200,000 Russians living in Britain are illegal aliens. 
But isn’t this another form of hostage-taking? After all, law-abiding citizens are being denied the presumption of innocence simply because a number of their compatriots have chosen to break the law. 
EU expansion has also restricted Russians’ freedom of movement. We now need visas to travel to countries we had visited freely our whole lives, including the former Soviet republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
Under Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union made possible the fall of the Berlin Wall. Boris Yeltsin’s Russia set loose the republics that had made up the Soviet Union. The Iron Curtain was gone. 
In its place the West has now erected a barbed-wire fence. And the question of which Russians enjoy special treatment is being made not by the KGB, but by democratic European governments. The only thing left is to hang portraits of Felix Dzerzhinsky in the consulates of EU member countries.

Alexei Pankin is opinion page editor at Izvestia.

TITLE: The German connection
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: BONN, Germany — Next year’s Beethoven Festival in Bonn will take Russia as its theme in a move that reflects growing German interest in Russia’s contribution to the world of classical music.
German opera theaters are including more Russian operas in their playbills, with daring contemporary Russian directors in mind, and more German conductors are considering ground-breaking programs juxtaposing Russian and German symphonic music.
The prestigious Beethoven Festival featured the music of the Czech regions Bohemia and Moravia in 2004, and France in 2005, putting the German composer in the context of a particular European region.
The idea for the festival’s regional focus was that of its current director Ilona Schmiel. The festival, which was first held on the occasion of the composer’s 75th birthday in 1845, has grown into an internationally established month-long affair running from mid-September to mid-October involving some of the world’s most acclaimed performers. 
“The festival strives to show Beethoven as a modern composer in terms of his bold innovative ideas, the challenging spirit of his music, and his cosmopolitan nature,” Schmiel said. “With the new concept, we explore international relations established by Ludwig van Beethoven during his lifetime as well as trace mutual influences between the composer and world’s greatest cultures he was connected to.”
Inspired and energetic, Schmiel is enthusiastic about positioning  Beethoven as a “brand” that can compete with, for example, Salzburg’s Mozart.
“I am convinced Beethoven is a better brand,” Schmiel said. “Operas are naturally a big advantage of Mozart’s repertoire — Beethoven only wrote one opera, ‘Fidelio,’ — but Beethoven’s  symphonic works are much bigger, more powerful and more emotional, and easier to understand than Mozart’s works.”
Schmiel estimated that as much as 40 percent of the music performed during next year’s festival will be Russian. 
The program will feature a concert performance of Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera “Mozart and Salieri,” set to Pushkin’s verse. The festival will also include a new work from prominent modern Moscow composer Vladimir Tarnopolsky. 
Schmeil said Russian pianist Mikhail Pletnyov with the Russian National Orchestra, and Vladimir Fedoseyev with the Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra, will be among participants of the forthcoming event.

Beethoven, then
The connection between Beethoven and Russia is strong.
The composer’s “Missa Solemnis” premiered in St. Petersburg at the Philharmonic in 1824 to triumphant acclaim. In Europe, the “Missa” was performed more than a month after its world premiere in Russia.
One of Beethoven’s aristocratic admirers, Prince Nicholas Galitzine wrote an enthusiastic letter to the composer in Vienna describing the high-spirited atmosphere of the Petersburg premiere. 
“The effect on the public cannot be described, and I have no fear of exaggerating when I say on my part that have  never heard anything so sublime,” Galitzine wrote.
Beethoven, who dedicated three of his quartets — the composer’s last chamber works created shortly before his death — to Galitzine, responded warmly to the praise. 
“It gives me great pleasure to acknowledge your interest in the creations born of my musical spirit,” reads Beethoven’s letter to the Russian prince. “Aware that you play the cello with great excellence, I shall attempt to satisfy your interest in this sphere.”
Beethoven’s three “Russian Quartets” commissioned by Count Andrei Razumovsky in 1806 and based on Russian folk tunes, were originally met with a cool critical reception, but eventually gained worldwide fame and recognition, being rated higher than all of the composer’s later quartets by French writer and musical critic Romain Rolland. 
“They cannot be compared to anything else written by Beethoven,” Rolland wrote. The Russian melodies used by Beethoven came from a collection assembled by folklorist Ivan Prach. With Beethoven’s Russian quartets performed abroad, Russian folk music received its first serious international exposure.
An array of Russian composers, including Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Modest Mussorgsky, Alexander Glazunov, Mikhail Balakirev and Dmitry Shostakovich produced numerous arrangements and adaptations of Beethoven’s music, as well as original works inspired by the great German maestro.
Experiments with Beethoven’s oeuvre in Russia continue until present day.

Modern experiments
Yury Krasavin’s controversial Beethoven fantasia, originally created as a film score, is a vivid example.
This avant-garde St. Petersburg composer fuses his original music with interpreted excerpts from Beethoven’s Fifth symphony,  First piano concerto, variations for Waldstein and Appassionata Sonatas and the piano piece “A Letter To Elise” to surreal effect.
Choreographer Yury Possokhov created an innovative and highly imaginative ballet based on Krasavin’s piece, “Magrittomania” (also inspired by the paintings of Belgian surrealist Rene Magritte) for the San Francisco Ballet in 2000. The company toured the West extensively with the production, which received mixed reviews and has been recently staged at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow.
While American critics praised both the composer and ballet master for a work combing tradition with experiment, the British press generally didn’t recommend the piece to Beethoven admirers, branding the resulting score discordant and  bizarre, while some of the Russian critics compared Krasavin to a pop artist who takes a classic image and renders it in flourescent colors.

Spiritual connection
Fedoseyev, whose orchestra has been invited to perform at the next Beethoven Festival, said in a recent interview with Moskovkiye Novosti that he shares the view of violinist Yehudi Menuhin when it comes to Beethoven: “Mozart’s music is in my pocket while Beethoven’s music is in heaven.”
For Fedoseyev, Beethoven’s is the music of fortitude, spirit, faith, and patience.
“The coat of arms used by Barclay de Tolly, a Kutuzov general, said: ‘Loyalty and Patience.’ So it is with Beethoven: loyalty and patience, aspiration to heaven and spirituality,” Fedoseyev said. “Beethoven lived a very difficult and terrible life, but his spirit was amazingly strong. And I would like people, many of whom also are far from living in paradise, to feel his spirit. Spirit is more important than sustenance.”
Russian music is blossoming in Germany, with Staatsoper Opera in Berlin unveiling a premiere of Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov,” the Bavarian Opera in Munich planning to put on Mussorgsky’s “Khovanshchina” and the Opera Theater in Bonn getting ready for Tchaikovsky’s “The Queen of Spades” — all this coming season.
Some of Germany’s leading companies are also turning to up-and-coming Russian directors. The productions of “Boris Godunov” and “Khovanshchina” will be helmed by the award-winning director Dmitry Chernyakov, whose spiritual rendition of Rimsky-Korsakov’s “The Tale of the Invisible City of Kitezh” at the Mariinsky Theater earned the company several prizes.
Many leading German conductors also nurture plans to put on special projects in Russia. 

Musical parallels
Ingo Metzmacher, general music director of the Hamburg State Opera and chief conductor of the Netherlands Opera, is a case in point.
The maestro’s idea is to juxtapose music by Shostakovich and Germany’s Karl Amadeus Hartmann — in particular Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony (also known as the Leningrad Symphony) and Hartmann’s First Symphony, which were both inspired by World War II. 
As Metzmacher points out, the two composers were contemporaries — Hartmann was born in 1905 and died in 1963, Shostakovich lived from 1906 to 1975 — and they both lived through times of political turmoil in their countries, surviving World War II and totalitarian regimes, and facing the same artistic challenges as independent-thinking musicians. They also thrived creating grand-scale symphonic works, where the theme of mourning goes hand in hand with ideas of resistance. 
“Of course, Shostakovich belongs to the Russian musical tradition and Hartmann emerged from the German musical tradition but the parallels are numerous,” Metzmacher said. “These have to be explored and exposed to audiences.” 
Metzmacher’s dream is to play the program in St. Petersburg, Shostakovich’s home town, where Hartmann’s name remains obscure and largely unheard of.
The maestro likens the structure of Hartmann’s symphonies to a Roman statue missing its arms and legs: the composer used only the two contrasting parts of the traditional four symphonic parts, Adagio and Scherzo, omitting the other two.
“The composer witnessed his native country lose its national identity and put the entire world on the edge of a global catastrophe,” he said. “This destructive spirit reveals itself in his approach to symphonic works. Traditional structure is destroyed and the mournful Adagio confronts the rebellious Scherzo.”
Metzmacher feels there is much in common between the two composers on the human level. 
“Each of them was a strong yet lonely person,” he said. “Their alienation, frustration and sorrow — and their will to carry on — are reflected in their music.”

The Beethoven Festival runs in Bonn from mid-September to mid-October, 2006. www.beethovenfest.de

TITLE: Pleasant peasants
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Think about Russian peasants and you can hardly help depressing images coming to mind. You are likely to envisage pale, skinny, emaciated men in shabby clothes, looking as if they have been carrying a heavy burden for a long time. Their lives are characterized by hard labor, injustice and hopelessness.
But a major new exhibition at the State Russian Museum, “The Peasant in Russian Art” creates an altogether different atmosphere. The show, which opened Thursday, strikes you with idyllic splashes of light and a festive, jolly spirit. 
Occupying three halls on the second floor of the museum’s Benois Wing, the exhibition juxtaposes 18th century icons with work of the 19th century, the avant-garde and Socialist Realism. Traveling through styles, the display features paintings by Alexei Venetsianov, Ilya Repin, Vladimir Makovsky, Grigory Myasoyedov, Ivan Kramskoi, Kazimir Malevich, Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, Pavel Filonov and Viktor Ivanov. 
At the entrance to the exhibition, visitors are confronted with Grigory Myasoyedov’s bright 1887 picture “Harvest Time,” which exudes vitality. Village folk of different ages move confidently through a sunlit field holding scythes.
It is not quite fair to say that 19th century poet Nikolai Nekrasov, whose verse describes the plight of the country’s peasants and is studied in every Russian school, is solely responsible for the gloomy stereotype. Any TV report from a Russian village shows a virtually unchanged picture of struggling and uncared-for people although they may not be using sickles.
“Sunburned hands and faces, threadbare coats upon their backs,
On bent shoulders knapsacks, crosses round the neck and bloodied feet, shod in hand-made bast,” Nekrasov wrote in his “Thoughts at a Vestibule” in 1858.
As if throwing a challenge to Nekrasov, happy girls soar into the air in Alexei Venetsianov’s panel “Peasant Girls on a Swing” dating from 1830-40.
This work has enthographic as well as artistic value as it describes the Russian folk game of see-sawing on a swinging board. In it, two girls rock both edges of a board placed across a well, while another one jumps in the middle sending the two in the air. The winner is naturally, the one who flies higher.
“Many of the paintings depict long-lost folk rites, ceremonies and rituals in such great detail that an enthographer can, for instance, tell a period and region of a costume,” said Yevgenia Petrova, the museum’s deputy director on science and research.
To strengthen the exhibition’s ethnographic element, its curators took the winning decision to incorporate a series of folk costumes and household items like rugs and jugs, into the show.
Viktor Ivanov’s 1945 painting “Family,” a fine example of Socialist Realism, portrays a group of relatives gathered around a simple wooden table for a modest meal. Looking out of the picture are tough and calm faces but without telltale signs of being worn out by suffering, grief, hunger or deprivation.
The museum’s director Vladimir Gusev denied the suggestion that the optimistic feel was intentional and lack of gloomy works deliberate, and explained the resulting effect by both shortage of space and coincidence.
The most modern items on display date from late 1970s, so the exhibition gives audience a new opportunity to see modern villages through the eyes of modern artists. But the reason for the absense of even more recent works can be explained by the museum’s lack of funding — state subsidies are barely enough to cover maintenance and security costs — but the curators say there is an aesthetic clue to that.
“Russian artists are losing interest in current rustic themes,” Petrova said. “Traditional bucolic landscapes may sell well in commercial galleries but the realities and hardships of living peasants apparently seem too alien to artists these days. Too bad for our collection.”

“The Peasant in Russian Art” at the Russian Museum through Feb. 20, 2006.
www.rusmuseum.org

TITLE: Chernov’s choice
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
TEXT: Pop vocalist Phil Collins, being brought by a Moscow bank to Russia this week, made news last month by hitting back at Oasis for what the U.K. paper The Daily Mirror described as a “decade of insults from Gallagher brothers Noel and Liam.”
The paper quoted Noel Gallagher as saying “People f***ing hate c***s like Phil Collins — and if they don’t, they f***ing should.” The quote came during British general election in 1997 when Labour Party supporter Gallagher warned that Collins would return from his tax exile in Switzerland if the Conservative Party won.
Eight years later, Collins reacted. According to The Daily Mirror, Collins described the Gallaghers as “horrible,” “rude” and “not as talented as they think they are” when appeared on BBC2’s comedy show Room 101 in September. Collins performs at Ice Palace on Tuesday.
From big showbiz to local underground, it is now unclear if the bunker club Griboyedov is able to celebrate its ninth anniversary this week as scheduled. As this paper went to press, none of its managers were available to comment on the consequences of a fire that broke out in the club in the early hours of Thursday morning. As Regnum news agency reported, one of the club’s smaller rooms was destroyed completely, while firefighters managed to remove two tanks of acetylene from the bunker to prevent them from exploding. The report did not specify the effect the fire had on the rest of the club.
The celebration had been due to take place without some of its founders and art directors. Dva Samaliota’s bassist and vocalist Anton Belyankin and drummer Mikhail Sindalovsky who direct the club’s musical and artistic programs are on tour in Western Europe with their band but left a video message which will be played at the party. However, the band’s former keyboard/saxophone player Denis Medvedev, a.k.a. DJ Re-disco, was due to be be present to spin his retro disco and Soviet pop records.
Solnechny Udar, Kolybel, Mister Maloi, Lighthouse and Zlobniye Administratory (the latter is a band comprising the club’s managers, as well as a bunch of DJs) have been scheduled to perform. Dva Samaliota will return by Nov. 4.
Griboyedov used to draw party-goes with its trendy dance rhythms but lately it was announced that the club would be pay more attention to live concerts. The party had been scheduled on 8 p.m. on Tuesday. It is recommended that you call the club in advance to find out if it is really happening.
The APosition Music Forum comes to end this Friday with a masterclass and a concert by New York performance artist Shelley Hirsch at GEZ-21. In concert Hirsch, whose style has been described as a combination of “birdcalls, staccato breaths, toning, and various vocal tricks with melodic jazz and storytelling,” will be joined by Alexei Plyusnin, the local musician who promoted the event. The masterclass is due at 8 p.m., the concert at 9:30 p.m.

TITLE: Funky fingers
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Tony Levin, the long-time bassist with Peter Gabriel and King Crimson, has also worked on many seminal rock albums by such artists as Lou Reed, Paul Simon and John Lennon. Now he steps into the spotlight with his own combo, the Tony Levin Band, with concerts in St. Petersburg and Moscow this month.
“First of all, I want to say how excited we are to be coming, finally, to Russia. I have wanted to play there, with Peter Gabriel, or King Crimson, for many years,” wrote Levin in an email interview with The St. Petersburg Times last week. 
“That it is finally happening, and with my own band, is a very special thing for me.”
There is another reason why Levin is excited about the tour because his mother came from Berdichev, a once-predominantly Jewish town in Ukraine. In an online diary Levin mentions that he and his brother, Peter, who is on tour with him as a keyboard player/programmer, have sought a way to travel to Ukraine and Belarus to visit the hometown of their mother and grandparents.
Born in Boston, Massachusetts, in June 1946, Levin began playing double bass at age 10. Five years later he played at the White House with a youth orchestra for John and Jackie Kennedy. 
Later, he attended the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, and played in the Rochester Philharmonic. Introduced to jazz and rock by now-renowned drummer Steve Gadd, who was also at the school, Levin moved to New York in 1970 where after a brief stint with a rock band he began working as a session musician playing bass with such diverse artists as Carly Simon, Don McLean, Alice Cooper, and Ringo Starr. He also performed at John Lennon’s final studio sessions which yielded “Double Fantasy” in 1980 and the posthumous album “Milk and Honey” in 1984.
According to Levin, his way of playing with any artist largely depends on what he hears in studio.
“What I listen to is the music itself — I do not have a bass ‘agenda’ that I need to bring with me. If the lyrics are the focus (as with Paul Simon’s great songs), it feels to me the bass should pretty much stay out of the way. But maybe there’s a little need somewhere to do something a bit special. John Lennon’s songs have a rock feel, so a catchy bassline will always fit in. In some music, like Peter Gabriel’s, there is often room for some new technique or sound on the bass... I greatly admire players, on all instruments, who consistently find just the right notes to play — what a special thing that is.”
Apart from the Levin brothers, the Tony Levin Band, now on its first European tour, features Jerry Marotta on drums, vocals and guitars, Larry Fast on synthesizers and electronic effects and Jesse Gress on guitars.
“What we will perform is a product of the musicians in the band,” wrote Levin. “I have a history with Peter Gabriel and King Crimson, of progressive music. We will do some of the material from the 4 or 5 albums I have put out. But there is much more to the band than just me. Three of us (Larry Fast, Jerry Marotta and I) played together for many years in Peter’s band — so there is a tightness, and friendliness among us, that the audience can see.  And we do a little of the old Peter Gabriel material that we know so well, each night.
“Then, I can’t resist doing a little King Crimson material, just for fun. We also like to jam a bit, and maybe will do a song or two everyone knows — lately [Led Zeppelin’s] ‘Black Dog’ has been our favorite — that we can open up on.” 
An innovative musician, Levin helped to popularize the Chapman Stick, the instrument that combines bass and guitar strings. He wrote that he will use it in his Russian concerts alongside the five-string electric bass and a fretless bass guitar.
“I play [the Chapman Stick] mostly as a bass and I like the tonal change it gives me — more percussive than a bass, and with it’s unusual tuning (fifth, and strung low to high) it helps me break away from the same old bass lines. I’ve especially used it a lot with Peter Gabriel and King Crimson. (We’ll probably play ‘Elephant Talk,’ which has, I guess, the most famous Stick line.)”
To broaden the possibilities of bass Levin developed Funk Fingers, a technique of playing the instrument with a pair of chopped-off drum sticks, first used on the track “Big Time” on Gabriel’s 1986 album “So.”
Performing with Gabriel and King Crimson poses different challenges for a bass player, according to Levin.
“Those two situations are very different,” he wrote.
“Peter’s vision is exceptional, and he expresses it through his songs — then lets his band join in and add the eclectic feel that it wants. His shows are theatrical, big productions, and a lot of fun. 
“[King Crimson leader] Robert Fripp’s vision is also an exceptional musical one, and I have a lot of faith in what he deems right for the band. But it is not an easy process, and he must review all ideas, let different mixtures of radical ideas go through their necessary days, and then see if it’s appropriate for the band. 
“The result, in simple language, is that we try out a lot of wild ideas that are awful sounding, but we don’t give up on them quickly. It makes for quite tortured work sessions. Add to this that Robert does not love touring, and that we are always pushing ourselves to play, individually, different than we have before, and you have... not an easy process. It’s worth the work, of course, and if there’s suffering... well... it’s King Crimson.” 
“Prog rock,” the term used to describe what such musicians as Levin do, is accepted for the lack of a better term for music innovation in rock, he wrote.
“I often run into different understandings of what prog rock is. We in King Crimson keep trying to break the boundaries, and do things we (and others) haven’t done before. That is a giant challenge — more so after you have succeeded on an album (I think we did, with the ‘Discipline’ album) because there is a temptation to keep doing that style. 
“So, bands that play in the style of progressive groups from the ‘70s are called Prog. But then there is no new term for those who try to do things nobody ever heard. 
“Now, I think great things are being done, all over the planet, by many musicians and bands. It’s a great time for music, and so much is being shared, even though it’s becoming a very hard time to make a living from your music, and get attention for it, with so much out there from so many places.” 
Having started out as a classical musician who then switched to jazz, Levin wrote that rock music gave him more opportunities for free expression.
“Classical music has always been my love, and probably will be my favorite for life. But I didn’t enjoy playing in an orchestra, and I also love challenges, and life in an orchestra was too stagnant for me,” he wrote.
“Jazz is great music, but I found myself out of sync, always wanting to try new ideas and sounds, in a genre which, at least at that time, was supposed to sound a classic way.
“So rock provided me with the best outlet — especially progressive rock.”
However, Levin’s classical background still echoes in his music.
“I laugh to think that at the end of Peter Gabriel’s song ‘On the Air,’ I played a strong bass line, borrowed from a Shostakovich symphony. I don’t think many people in live audiences through the years noticed that, but probably the listeners in Russia would be aware of it. Hey, maybe we will do that song!”

Tony Levin Band performs at the Center for Contemporary Art (formerly Priboi film theater) on Oct. 21.
www.tonylevin.com

TITLE: The shape of things to come
AUTHOR: By Matt Brown
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: VALENCIA, Spain — A hint of how St. Petersburg could enhance its profile as an opera Mecca came from Spain’s third city last weekend.
On Saturday, Europe’s newest — and largest — opera house, Valencia’s Palau de les Arts, held its inaugural concert in the presence of Queen Sofia of Spain. 
The completion of the futuristic new opera house is the final stage in an enormous science and culture park designed by Valencian architect Santiago Calatrava that local politicians hope will add the name of Valencia to the list of must-see cultural destinations. 
“[The Palau de les Arts] represents a correlation between spectator, musician and artist,” Calatrava was reported by the Associated Press as saying. 
The official opening event is followed by a year of preparations in which a repertoire will be selected and an orchestra hired in time for the 2006-2007 season.
The inauguration in Valencia comes as St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theater moves ahead with its plans for a second performance space housed in a new theater to open in 2009.
The Spanish project demonstrates how the development of Mariinsky II, as the new St. Petersburg theater is to be known, might proceed.
French architect Dominique Perrault signed a contract in July to supervise the planning and construction of his futuristic design for Mariinsky II.
Perrault’s design is in the shape of a geometric form, combining rooms of different sizes and different stories. The new building will have nine floors and three underground levels.
The construction of a futuristic building in the heart of St. Petersburg’s historic center has been met with scorn by traditionalists. Supporters say that investment in landmark new buildings can raise the international profile of a city.
The artistic director of the Mariinsky Theater, Valery Gergiev, said in August that the political backing of the Russian government has been key to the progress of Mariinsky II.
“The fact that the Mariinsky’s second stage project is taking shape reflects political and economic changes in Russia,” Gergiev said. 
“We have been talking about the second stage for decades but only after Russia has reached a certain level of stability, it became physically possible.”
Gergiev added that convincing the authorities that building Mariinsky II was a good idea was not easy.
“The government supports us now. How did I convince them? I told them, ‘you have lost trillions of rubles by making wrong decisions and developing inefficient policies. How about ‘wasting’ a couple of billions on a new theater, then?’ Naturally I have seen some unhappy faces after saying that but I have also found people who agreed with me.”
The current estimate for the cost of Mariinsky II is $242 million.
Gergiev described President Vladimir Putin as “a friend” of the Mariinsky Theater.
“Very few presidents understand the importance of culture, and Vladimir Putin does indeed,” Gergiev said.
Helga Schmidt, director of the Palau de les Arts, has also spoken about political patronage behind the Valencia project, which was backed by Valencian president Francisco Camps and paid for by the regional government.
“President Camps offered me every means available to make the opera house of the highest quality. This is fantastic and something which doesn’t happen very often. The Valencian government wants to make the building a reference point which attracts the most prestigious conductors of the moment and promotes the new values of classical and contemporary music.”
Many observers say that Valencia’s leaders are hoping for a “Bilbao-effect” in the Mediterranean resort city — referring to the international attention the Basque city received when it built a branch of the Guggenheim Museum designed by Frank Gehry there.
Valencia regional government spokesman Esteban Gonzalez Pons told The Guardian newspaper that building the new opera house was an investment in prestige and a magnet for upmarket tourists.
“We hope it will become the symbol of the city, like the opera house of Sydney,” Gonzalez Pons said.
The regional government of Valencia said the project had cost $303 million, although opposition leaders have said the figure was more likely to be in the region of $442 million, the Associated Press reported.
The project is built on the course of the River Turia which, after a flood in the 1950s, was diverted by engineers away from the city of Valencia. The land left behind was chosen as the location for the arts and sciences complex set in parks and gardens. 
Other buildings, also designed by Calatrava, include a planetarium which looks like an eye ball and a science museum reminiscent of a rib-cage. There is also Europe’s largest oceanographic park with aquariums devoted to the fauna of different oceans and seas. 
The new opera house is said to resemble a helmet or a boat, but perhaps looks more like a gleaming white sea shell with spiral stair cases like the spirals on the inside of a shell.
The interior has four performance areas including a main space seating 1,700 people that acts as a symphony orchestra concert hall, ballet and theater stage and opera venue. 
When fully operational, the building will be capable of seating 4,000 people. 
Calatrava spent 14 years on the project. 
“Because of the time spent, its size and because it involves music, this project is the most intense; the one I’ve devoted most time on, so far,” Calatrava said. 
The Valencia opera has hired Lorin Maazel, director of the New York Philharmonic, as artistic director for the first three seasons, and Zubin Metha, director of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, to direct an annual festival dedicated to Mediterranean music.
At the inaugural concert last Saturday, Maazel conducted a concert version of Bizet’s Carmen with soloists including soprano Angela Gheorghiu, tenor Roberto Alagna and baritone Carlos Alvarez.
Metha will bring the Israel Philharmonic to Valencia to wrap up a month of inaugural events on Oct. 24.

Staff Writer Galina Stolyarova contributed to this report.

TITLE: Aftershock Hits Pakistan as Aid Pours In
AUTHOR: By Sadaqat Jan
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan — An aftershock jolted parts of Pakistan on Thursday, panicking hungry, homeless survivors of last weekend’s devastating earthquake and forcing rescuers to suspend efforts to save a trapped woman, who died overnight. 
The 5.6-magnitude aftershock was centered 135 kilometers north of Islamabad, near the epicenter of Saturday’s 7.6-magnitude quake that demolished whole towns. The quake Thursday shook buildings, but there was no significant damage in an already demolished region.
“There was a lot of panic. People were scared. Even those who were sleeping in tents came out. Everybody was crying,” said Nisar Abbasi, 36, an accountant camping on the lawn of his destroyed home in Muzaffarabad, a badly hit city in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir.
A 22-year-old woman trapped in the rubble in Muzaffarabad died Thursday after the aftershock disrupted efforts to rescue her, rescuers and witnesses said.
British, German and Turkish teams had worked until 2 a.m., trying to extract the woman after a sniffer dog detected her in the debris. But they were forced to suspend their efforts for their own safety when the aftershock shifted the building in which they were working.
When the rescuers returned after daybreak, the sniffer dog whined, indicating that it had detected the smell of a corpse. Some rescue workers wept.
“It was a very difficult decision to leave a living person and I had a responsibility to my team. It could have meant their death,” said Steff Hopkins, a British team leader.
There have been dozens of aftershocks since the main quake, including a 6.2-magnitude temblor.
“They will go on for months, possibly years,” said Don Blakeman, a geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Earthquake Information Center.
The UN’s emergency relief chief Jan Egeland, who flew by helicopter to Muzaffarabad on Thursday to assess relief efforts, said he fears that “we are losing the race against the clock in the small villages” cut off by blocked roads.
About a dozen men worked through the night in Islamabad looking for survivors from a 10-story apartment building that collapsed in the quake, the only serious damage in Pakistan’s capital.
On Thursday morning, they pulled out two bodies and covered them in burial shrouds. A total of 40 bodies have been recovered from the building.
Hope of finding survivors dwindled in Muzaffarabad, where Britain’s Department for International Development was pulling out its team of 60 search and rescue workers, said Rob Holden, the team leader for UN disaster assessment and coordination, which is overseeing the overall rescue effort.
“No one is giving up but it is the acceptance that the actual real chances of finding someone alive are almost nil, so we don’t need all the specialist international teams,” Holden said, adding that there are still 18 international teams in the region.
A Russian team in Muzaffarabad on Wednesday rescued a 5-year-old girl who had been trapped for nearly 100 hours in the rubble.
Trucks and helicopters with aid from dozens of countries choked the roads up to the crumbling towns of Kashmir, but the hungry and the homeless in many hard-hit areas were still in desperate straits five days after the temblor struck.
The death toll was believed to be more than 35,000, and tens of thousands were injured.
“No country is ready for such a disaster,” President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said Wednesday. He acknowledged initial delays in his government’s response but said the relief operation was now in full swing. 
German, Afghan, Pakistani and U.S. helicopters delivered tents, blankets and medical equipment, and brought back dozens of badly injured people on each return flight. 
The United Nations estimated some 4 million people were affected, including 2 million who lost homes, and warned that measles and other diseases could break out.

TITLE: Security Stepped Up for Referendum in Iraq
AUTHOR: By Mariam Fam
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGHDAD, Iraq — U.S. and Iraqi forces stepped up security across Iraq on Thursday in an effort to reduce insurgent attacks aimed at wrecking this weekend’s constitutional referendum. 
One day after Iraqi lawmakers approved a set of last-minute amendments to the constitution, cities were unusually quiet as a four-day national holiday began. Wednesday’s deal sealed a compromise designed to win minority Sunni Arab support for the charter.
Government offices and schools were closed ahead of Saturday’s vote, and a 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew went into effect Thursday. 
Working under cover of darkness, U.S. and Iraqi forces erected concrete barriers topped with concertina wire in front of polling places, to protect them from insurgent bombs.
There are now 156,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, a total that has been rising in recent weeks as the 101st Airborne returns, along with lead elements of the 3rd Corps Support Command.
In the last 18 days, at least 438 people have been killed by militant violence as the insurgents try to scare voters away from the polls Saturday. Most of the fatalities have been caused by suicide car bombs, roadside bombs and drive-by shootings. The bodies of other Iraqis who had been kidnapped have been found in isolated areas.
“Our soldiers recognize that they are not here to influence the election, but they are here to allow the Iraqi people the opportunity to vote,” said U.S. Lieutenant Colonel Jeff Edge, as his battalion delivered barriers to a volatile Sunni Arab area of Baghdad.
During the first three days this week, Iraqi and U.S. forces in Baghdad, backed by Black Hawk helicopters, reported capturing 75 suspected insurgents, seizing three large weapons caches and rescuing an Iraqi man who had been kidnapped by insurgents.
On Wednesday, for the second day in a row, a suicide attacker hit the northwestern town of Tal Afar, killing at least 30 people and wounding 35. On Tuesday a suicide bomber killed 30 civilians when he plowed his explosives-packed vehicle into a crowded outdoor market in Tal Afar. Al-Qaida in Iraq claimed responsibility for that attack.
Also Wednesday, the military announced that two U.S. soldiers died when their vehicle rolled over while on patrol during combat near Balad, north of Baghdad. The crash brought to 1,962 the number of members of the U.S. military who have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

TITLE: WHO: Bird Flu Will Go Global
TEXT: AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE
SEOUL — The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) warned that it was just a matter of time before a global bird flu epidemic broke out, with disastrous results which would dwarf the impact from SARS. 
“Considering the current situation, it seems to be a matter of time before a flu pandemic takes place,” WHO director general Lee Jong-Wook told Yonhap news agency.
“Such an outbreak would bring about disastrous results, which will be huge enough to dwarf those from SARS,” he said Thursday.
SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) has left 700 people dead and cost 30 billion dollars in economic damage worldwide since it broke out in 2003.
At least 60 people have died from bird flu in the Southeast Asia region since 2003, the majority of them in Vietnam.
The WHO fears the H5N1 avian flu virus may mutate, acquiring genes from the human influenza virus that would make it highly infectious as well as lethal — possibly killing millions worldwide as the influenza pandemic of 1918 did.
Lee, who took the helm of the UN public health arm in 2003, also warned that a bird flu outbreak in South Korea alone could affect millions of people in a short period of time.
No human cases have been reported in South Korea so far, but 5.3 million poultry were infected and slaughtered between December 2003 and March 2004.
South Korean health authorities have warned that a bird flu outbreak could infect 10 million people, of whom 30,000 could die “in a very short period of time.”
The agriculture and forestry ministry here said a nationwide bird flu alert would be issued Friday following outbreaks in Asia and Europe.

TITLE: London Dramatist Scoops Nobel Literature Prize
AUTHOR: By Matt Moore
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: STOCKHOLM — British playwright Harold Pinter, whose juxtaposition of the brutal and the banal dubbed an adjective that bears his name, won the 2005 Nobel Prize in literature Thursday. 
The Swedish Academy said Pinter was an author “who in his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression’s closed rooms.”
In its citation, the academy said the 75-year-old playwright had restored the art form of writing plays. His works include “The Room,” “The Birthday Party” and “The Dumb Waiter” and his breakthrough work, “The Caretaker.”
“Pinter restored theatre to its basic elements: an enclosed space and unpredictable dialogue where people are at the mercy of each other and pretense crumbles,” the academy said.
Pinter is the first Briton to win the literature award since V.S. Naipaul won it in 2001.
The son of a Jewish dressmaker, Pinter was born in North London on Oct. 10, 1930. Pinter has said his encounters with anti-Semitism in his youth influenced him in becoming a dramatist. The wartime bombing of London also affected him deeply, the academy said.
The academy’s announcement came on Yom Kippur, Judaism’s most important holiday.
Dubbed the most influential British playwright of his generation, in recent years he has turned his acerbic eye on the United States and the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Most prolific between 1957 and 1965, Pinter relished the juxtaposition of brutality and the banal and turned the conversational pause into an emotional minefield.
Dark and peopled with unfortunates, Pinter’s idiom was so distinctive that he got his own adjective: “Pinteresque.”
His characters’ internal fears and longings, their guilt and difficult sexual drives are set against the neat lives they have constructed in order to try to survive.
In addition to plays, he has written for the cinema, penning such screenplays as “The French Lieutenant’s Woman,” “The Accident,” “The Servant” and “The Go-Between.”

TITLE: Russians Distraught Over World Cup Flop
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: Russia woke up on Thursday with a soccer-related hangover following another disappointing showing in a World Cup qualifying campaign. 
“Auf Wiedersehen!” splashed popular daily, Sovietsky Sport, on its front-page after Russia failed to reach next year’s finals in Germany following a 0-0 draw against Slovakia in Bratislava in their final qualifier on Wednesday. 
“We didn’t reach Berlin. Slovaks stopped Russian players,” echoed Rossiiskaya newspaper alluding to the victorious Russian soldiers who captured the Nazi capital to end World War II. 
Some of the Russian media sarcastically highlighted the street battles in Bratislava before and after the match. 
“3-2 in our favor,” said one headline in reference to the seriously injured Russian and Slovak fans. 
Slovak police detained 37 Russian supporters, although all but five were soon released. 
As Slovakia celebrated the point which put the nation on the brink of reaching the World Cup finals for the first time, Russians began some serious soul-searching. 
“Enough is enough,” was the verdict of daily Sport-Express. 
“Soccer bosses, players, head and assistant coaches have all come and gone, but in the end the result was still the same: we failed to advance even from such a weak qualifying group as ours. Will someone ever take responsibility for all this?” 
Russia have had four different managers in the last 3-1/2 years but none were very successful. 
Russian soccer chief Vitaly Mutko, who replaced long-serving president of the Russian Football Union Vyacheslav Koloskov in April, blamed his predecessor. 
“How was it possible that we had to play the deciding match away to our rivals?” a furious Mutko told Russian media. “Who permitted to have such a schedule in the first place?” 
Mutko hinted that Russia coach Yury Syomin, who replaced Georgy Yartsev midway through the qualifying campaign, should stay in the job and try to re-build the team. 
“As far as I see it, the problem was not our last match in Bratislava but rather our first qualifier (a 1-1 draw against the same opponents in Moscow) last September,” Mutko said. 
“We started our qualifying campaign on the wrong foot and we never recovered. That draw in Moscow was our biggest strategic mistake.” 
Wednesday’s draw was the latest in a series of disappointing performances by Russia in major international competition since the Soviet break-up. 
The Russians missed the 1998 World Cup finals in France and Euro 2000. Although Russia qualified for the 2002 World Cup finals, in Japan and South Korea, they failed to progress from one of the easiest first-round groups. At last year’s Euro finals in Portugal, Russia were the first team to be eliminated. 
Russia captain Alexei Smertin summed up the team’s feelings. 
“We tried as hard as we could but still it wasn’t good enough but as always life goes on and we’ll be back,” he said. 
In other matches Wednesday, France, Serbia-Montenegro and Sweden joined the field, meaning 27 of the 32 berths are decided for next year’s monthlong tournament. 
France, the 1998 World Cup champion, defeated Cyprus 4-0 to win European Group 4, and Serbia-Montenegro defeated neighbor Bosnia-Herzegovina 1-0 to take first in Group 7. 
Sweden beat Iceland 3-1 at home, which was good enough for second place in Group 8 behind group winner Croatia. Sweden advanced as one of the best two second-place teams. 
Poland was the other top second-place team after losing 2-1 at Group 6 winner England. The Netherlands, Ukraine, Portugal and Italy are the other European group winners. Germany advances automatically as the host nation.

TITLE: Sharapova Saved From Disgrace
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Top-ranked Maria Sharapova avoided losing her homeland pro debut when Anna-Lena Groenefeld retired with an ankle injury while controlling play Wednesday in the Kremlin Cup. 
The German player won 6-1 in the first set of the second-round match, and was leading 4-2 in the second set when she had to quit. Groenefeld tried to continue after receiving treatment, but served two double faults with tears in her eyes and retired. 
“I know that I did not win this match fairly,” Sharapova said. “I do not like such victories.”
Sharapova has six career victories due to an opponent’s retirement, but this was the first in which she was trailing. 
She retired with a chest muscle injury two weeks ago while leading in the semifinals of the China Open. Then she withdrew from a tournament in Filderstadt, Germany, and spent two weeks in Moscow practicing and treating the injury. 
“I would be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous before the match,” Sharapova said. “I knew she was a strong player. I wasn’t myself on the court today.” 
In men’s first-round action, unheralded Daniele Bracciali of Italy staged a major upset, coming back to knock out top-seeded defending champion Nikolai Davydenko of Russia 3-6 6-4 6-4. Earlier, Cyril Saulnier of France rallied to upset second-seeded Dominik Hrbaty of Slovakia 4-6 6-3 6-3. 
Sharapova won just seven points on her serve in the first set and lost six consecutive games. The Russian saved two break points in the sixth game of the second set before Groenefeld twisted her left ankle. 
In the quarterfinals, Sharapova will play another Russian, Yelena Likhovtseva, who rallied to upset fifth-seeded Patty Schnyder of Switzerland 1-6 6-4 6-3. 
Davydenko, ranked seventh in the world, won the first set, but Bracciali leveled. Serving for the match in the 10th game of the third set, the Italian, ranked 117th, double faulted twice before earning a match point with a drop shot. He converted with a passing backhand. 
In earlier women’s matches, two-time defending champion Anastasia Myskina of Russia and former winner Mary Pierce of France staged comebacks. 
Third-seeded Pierce, the 1998 champion, beat Flavia Pennetta of Italy 4-6 6-2 6-3 to advance to the quarterfinals. 
Playing for the first time since France’s loss to Russia last month in the Fed Cup final, Pierce broke back twice in the first set before Pennetta made a decisive break in the ninth game and served out the set. 
Pierce, the U.S. Open runner-up, won three consecutive games in the second set to go up 5-1 and broke the Italian in the eighth game to even the match. Pierce was down 2-3 in the third set but broke twice and went on to win. 
Myskina, who got her 10th career title in Calcutta, India, two weeks ago, dropped the first set but saved two break points in the 10th game of the second set. She won five consecutive games in the third set to go up 5-2 and sealed the match on serve with a smash.

TITLE: Local Enthusiasts Gather For Unique Squash Tournament
AUTHOR: By Yelena Andreyeva
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The 7th St. Petersburg Squash Open, the most prestigious squash tournament in Russia, is being held in St. Petersburg on Friday through Sunday. 
During the three days of the tournament 75 participants from Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Ukraine, Belarus, Croatia, Canada, Germany, Italy, Finland and Ireland will compete at the Hypersquash Sporting club courts.
This year, 53 men, 10 women and 12 junior rackets will vie for the $3,000 prize. As an amateur tournament, the St. Petersburg Squash Open provides sportsmen of different levels with a good chance to practice and demonstrate their skills at the championship.
“It’s a real holiday for squash lovers,” Irina Poddubnaya, vice president of the Russian Squash Federation, said. “Unlike the tournaments abroad where the Olympic knock-out system is usually used from the beginning of the tournament, this championship gives every participant the opportunity to play several matches at the qualifying stage within a group.”
Besides amateurs, the St. Petersburg Squash Open also involves a group of eight professional squash players including Russian No. 1 Alexei Severinov.
Many competitors have already taken part in the previous St. Petersburg Squash Open championships.
David Sly, a Canadian sportsman who was the winner of the tournament last year, didn’t hesitate in coming back to St. Petersburg. Although it’s his fourth time in the city, he still enjoys it and is always happy to be here. 
“I love to play squash and travel. This tournament is a good reason to come back to my favourite city,” Sly said.
Although squash only started developing in Russia about 10 years ago, Sly thinks that it has good prospects in the country. 
“It’s the first generation of players in Russia now,” Sly said. “When children who take up squash now grow up they will have good instructors.”
The international success of Russian tennis players should positively influence Russian squash players, he said.
Sly distinguishes squash from tennis as a very social sport that different people feel free to play. He says that unlike celebrities among tennis players who just play their matches and then go home, squash players often go out together to discuss the tournament they have competed over a beer.
The St. Petersburg Squash Open is taking place at the Hypersquash Sporting club at the Pallada business center at 2 Krasnogvardeiskaya Ploshchad and entry is free.