SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1115 (81), Friday, October 21, 2005
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TITLE: Ambassador Heats Up Hotel Sector Competition
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The new Ambassador Hotel, opened on Tuesday and built with a total investment of $30 million, is the fourth four-star hotel to open in St. Petersburg this year, and heralds a new era of expansion and competition in the city’s hotel sector. 
The nine-story building, located on Ul. Rimskogo-Korsakova next to the Yusupovsky Gardens and a 15-minute walk from St. Isaac’s Cathedral, comprises 255 rooms.
“The opening of Ambassador hotel is a big event for the city, especially at a time when St. Petersburg is concentrated on developing its tourist sphere,” said Alexander Prokhorenko, head of the city’s Tourism and Foreign Affairs Committee.
Andrei Sharapov, general director of the Ambassador hotel, said he was especially proud that the hotel was constructed with Russian financing alone, a rare case in the modern Russian hotel sector.
The Ambassador was constructed with an investment from Peterburgskiye Oteli (St. Petersburg Hotels) and loans from a number of Russian banks, with state-owned Sberbank providing $12 million.
Peterburskiye Oteli put in “only a percentage of the capital, enough for project start-up costs,” said Alexander Melnik, the company’s financial director.
“We didn’t feel we needed [to be under the wing of] a foreign hotel chain. The main advantage that [foreign chains] provide is cheap foreign credit, but we had no problems with attracting finances,” Sharapov said at a press conference held to mark the hotel’s opening.
The hotel has been designed as a fusion of 19th century and contemporary architecture, with a focus on modern technology. All the rooms are equipped with Internet access, direct-dial phones, and an interactive satellite TV system, he said.
Its facade, made of light gray and claret-colored granite and topped with a rounded glass tower, successfully matches the historic architectural ensemble of the neighborhood.
The Ambassador has 236 double rooms, six suites and a luxury presidential apartment. 
The hotel also has rooms that are fully equipped to accommodate disabled guests. It features an underground garage, business center, 100-seat conference hall, fitness center with swimming pool and saunas, beauty salon, and laundry and dry cleaning services.
There are two restaurants in the hotel, one of which is located on the ninth, top floor. There are also two bars on the ground floor.
The rates for accommodation at the Ambassador in 2006 will range from $200 for a standard double room in the off peak season to $320 in high season. 
Sharapov said he hoped the Ambassador would be the first in a chain of hotels employing the Peterburgskiye Oteli brand name.
Prokhorenko said there are plans to open another 20 hotels with 2,500 rooms within the next two and a half years. 
He said the city currently has 139 hotels with a maximum capacity of 36,000.  By 2010, St. Petersburg plans to add another 12,000 beds to that capacity.
However, with incoming tourism expected to develop, and optimistic predictions that it will reach five million tourists a year by 2010, even this capacity will fall short of meeting demand during the White Nights high season in May and June, experts say. They also point to a lack of two and three star hotels. 
Another task for the city’s tourism strategy is to increase the number of days that most tourists spend in the city from three to five days, and also to convince them to visit the city not only in the most popular summer season but also in winter, Prokhorenko said.
“The popularity of the city’s White Nights season dates back to the Soviet era, when Leningrad was marketed as the city of the White Nights, Prokhorenko said.  
“However, we should remember that before the Bolshevik revolution the city was known for exclusive winter balls and other festive events,” he said.
Prokhorenko said a return to that image could greatly improve the prospects of the hotel sector, where occupancy during the winter is a fraction of that during the White Nights season.

TITLE: Alarm As H5N1 Flu Hits Tula
AUTHOR: By Oksana Yablokova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — The country’s chief epidemiologist is tight-lipped about preparations for a possible flu pandemic that could kill hundreds of thousands of people, and he has offered little more than assurances that adequate measures are being taken.
Heath officials contacted by The St. Petersburg Times over the course of 10 days also were not forthcoming, and the World Health Organization expressed concern about Russia’s state of readiness, saying it too had been left in the dark.
Worries grew Wednesday when preliminary tests showed that hundreds of chickens, geese and ducks that suddenly died in a village in the Tula region had been infected with the deadly H5N1 strain of avian flu. If confirmed, the discovery would be the first time that the virus had appeared in European Russia. 
“We are concerned because Russia is too big and too close to where the virus is now cooking,” said Mikko Vienonen, the special Russian representative of the director-general of the World Health Organization, the international health watchdog that is linked to the United Nations.
“There is a concern that perhaps we do not know enough of what Russia is doing to prepare for the threat,” Vienonen said in an interview.
The threat of a bird flu pandemic is worrying doctors and governments around the world, and some specialists have warned that it could rival the 1918 flu pandemic, which killed up to 50 million people.
The H5N1 virus can pass directly from birds to people and appears to be spreading through migratory birds. Infected birds have been identified in Turkey, Romania and Greece in recent days, and suspicions emerged Wednesday that the disease had reached Macedonia. The virus was found in seven regions in eastern Russia over the summer.
Since the first case in Hong Kong in 1997, there have been 117 confirmed cases of avian flu crossing to people in Asia, and 60 people have died since 2003. Doctors fear the virus might mutate into a form that can be spread easily from person to person. 
Russia is stocking up on anti-viral medicines, preparing to test vaccines against the new strain and culling birds in infected areas, the nation’s top epidemiologist, Gennady Onishchenko, said at a news conference this week. 
“Fortunately, there have been no cases of the virus being transferred from birds to humans in Russia. If there were such cases in Russia or cases of the virus mutating anywhere in the world, we would take all the necessary measures,” Onishchenko said.
He stressed that he was acting under WHO forecasts, which predict new cases in Russia in the spring, when migratory birds start returning.
Responding to criticism about his silence on pandemic prevention measures, Onishchenko said that giving the issue additional publicity would only serve as a political gesture. “We are doing everything we need to be doing without spelling it out — an action that we find unneeded,” he said.
The WHO said that closely monitoring the virus and sharing information with international health bodies was crucial to tackling any outbreak. It also said it needed to closely cooperate with countries to quickly develop a vaccine in case the virus were to spread among humans. Until the virus mutates into a human-to-human form, scientists will be unable to develop an effective vaccine.
“As Russia is one of four nations in the region where the bird flu was found, we are very concerned and would like to be involved and offer any assistance we can,” Dr. Bernardus Ganter, WHO’s regional adviser for communicable disease surveillance and response, said by telephone from Copenhagen.
Ganter said he hoped to learn more from Russia on Monday, when a Russian delegation is expected to brief the WHO on its avian flu situation and pandemic preparations.
Officials from the Health and Social Development Ministry said only Onishchenko was authorized to grant interviews about the issue. He was unavailable for an interview over the past 10 days. His spokeswoman asked for faxed questions, but she replied with press releases from the summer outbreak.
Russia’s silence contrasts with the steady flow of information streaming out of Europe and the United States, which has announced that it would spend $4 billion on Tamiflu and other anti-viral drugs and take other measures to prepare for the possible pandemic.
During his summer vacation, U.S. President George W. Bush read “The Great Influenza,” John Barry’s account of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, and then controversially suggested military-imposed quarantines to control any pandemic on U.S. soil. Nothing like that has been discussed in Russia.
Asked whether President Vladimir Putin had taken an interest in the flu, Onishchenko said at the news conference, “Our president is well-informed and is showing an interest in the problem.”
Onishchenko also said regional health and epidemic officials had been ordered to stockpile anti-viral drugs, in compliance with WHO recommendations.
In an attempt to find a vaccine, the Health and Social Development Ministry’s Immunopreparat facility in Ufa will begin production of experimental vaccines later this month, Onishchenko said. Tests of the vaccines are to start before the end of this year, and some are to be carried out with volunteers.
“There is budget funding allocated for this purpose,” Onishchenko said, without elaborating on whether additional funding was also earmarked for other pandemic preparations.
Some Russian scientists said fears of a pandemic were overblown.
Lyudmila Karpova, a lead researcher at the St. Petersburg Influenza Institute, said the likelihood of widespread deaths was small and that Russia’s current response was balanced and adequate.
“It is not 1918 now,” Karpova said, referring to the deadliest of the three major flu pandemics during the 20th century. All were caused by mutated forms of an avian flu virus. “The level of development in medicine and the availability of antibiotics will help us cope with the problem if a pandemic strikes,” Karpova said.
“There is no doubt that a new virus will come one day. But, it’s less likely that it will come this winter while we are dealing with the current one,” she said.
Sergei Shishkin, an economist with the Independent Institute for Social Policy, noted that Russia could not afford to put together an expensive anti-pandemic program like the one in the United States. “Russia’s entire budget is comparable to the U.S. health care budget,” Shishkin said.
Onishchenko advised Russians to get regular flu vaccinations this winter, saying that was the best precaution against mutant forms of the virus. “By vaccinating, we are postponing the mutation of the virus and the appearance of a deadly one,” he said.

TITLE: HIV/AIDS Conference Focusses on Rights
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Social attitudes, phobias, prejudice against those infected with the HIV virus and access to treatment for all, regardless of age, race, social status and place of residence, are all on the agenda of the international conference “HIV/AIDS and Human Rights” currently being held at the Tavrichesky Palace. 
“The stigma that Russia’s victims of the virus confront in society is unbearable,” said Yury Zholobov, deputy head of City Hall’s Health Committee, speaking at the conference which opened Wednesday. 
“HIV sufferers have to keep their diagnosis secret, even from their closest relatives — otherwise they risk losing their jobs, being forced to relocate and being left completely abandoned,” Zholobov said.
Even when confronted with alarming symptoms, most Russians aren’t in a rush to take a test, as they know that once the diagnosis is confirmed, they will endure hatred, isolation and social opposition that, in Russia, go hand in hand with the illnesses’ medical symptoms.
With experts predicting that the virus could cut the Russian population by a third in the next fifty years, human rights advocates also expressed concerns about the way the Russian government would confront the problem.
“The country’s government is infamous for applying authoritarian strategies for the prevention of and intervention in social problems, and the historical examples are countless,” said St. Petersburg sociologist Yelena Zdravomyslova. 
“In this respect, AIDS is no different from terrorism. I dread to imagine what methods could be proposed to tackle the problem and the resulting consequences,” Zdravomyslova said. 
Dr. Jim Yong Kim, director of the World Health Organization’s HIV/AIDS department, shares these worries. “Ultimately, phobias may lead to killings or the physical isolation of those infected,” he said.
This year’s report from the Moscow Helsinki Group recalled the infamous 1987 open letter, signed by dozens of young doctors and published in the Russian media, which called for the boycotting of HIV/AIDS patients, and stipulated that they should not be given medical support. 
“Since only drug-users and prostitutes are affected by the disease, it gives us a good chance and a good tool to get rid of these low-lifes altogether,” reads the letter, quoted in the report.
Russia is facing an HIV/AIDS epidemic. Although state statistics suggest that only 330,000 people in Russia are infected, experts believe that the figures have already passed one million.
When one percent of the population has been infected, it is almost impossible to reverse the build up of the epidemic, experts warn. African countries such as Lesotho and Swaziland, where over 50 percent of the population is infected, are facing total destruction by the disease.
Russia and Ukraine are reported to have the highest growth rates of HIV infection in the world outside sub-Saharan Africa. In Moscow, up to 1,000 new cases are registered every week. Eighty percent of those infected are aged between 18 and 30 years old.
The World Health Organization offers a universal strategy for combating HIV/AIDS, but says each country has to develop an individually tailored policy to tackle the epidemic.
“Find out where the transmission is happening, why and how it is happening, and put a stop to it,” WHO’s Dr. Kim suggested during his speech at the conference. The WHO official cited China as a positive example. 
“After it was discovered that people in China got infected via blood transmission in hospitals and through intravenous drug use, the government went to extraordinary lengths to stop transmission,” Kim said. 
“By August of this year, fifty programs for clean needle exchange were operating in the country, with the numbers scheduled to triple by the end of the year and reach 1,400 by the end of 2008. Judging by their current speed and dedication, they’re sure to reach their goal.” 
In Russia, however, the epidemic has already reached the stage where half of the victims are infected through sexual contact. 
Russia has increased funding for HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention programs from 130 million rubles ($4.5 million) in 2004 — enough to treat just 600 patients — to 3 billion rubles ($140 million). Experts speaking at the conference, however, warned that this financing is unlikely to change prevalent negative attitudes.
“The first child born with HIV [in St. Petersburg] was due to start school this year, and the family was refused everywhere until the city government intervened,” said Lyudmila Kostkina, vice-governor of St. Petersburg for social issues.
“Even when taken to hospital after a medical problem or accident, they are often neglected: doctors at the Alexandrovskaya Hospital in St. Petersburg wouldn’t approach an HIV-positive patient for two days because they all were too scared,” said Lyudmila Alexeyeva, head of the Moscow Helsinki Group.
Since 2002, between 3000 and 4,500 new cases have been registered annually in St. Petersburg.
According to official statistics, 27,602 HIV cases were registered in the city between January 1987 and October 2005. Independent experts and city officials speaking at the conference, however, admitted that the real figures for St. Petersburg could be as much as five times higher. The conference will conclude on Friday.

TITLE: World Bank Presses Russia For Reforms
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz on Wednesday urged Russia to push ahead with institutional reforms and to fight corruption as he began an official two-day visit.
Wolfowitz, who last came to Moscow as U.S. President George W. Bush’s hawkish deputy defense secretary, took over the World Bank in June. The man who doggedly pressed for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq has surprised many skeptics during his short tenure, showing a softer side as he embraced such challenges as eradicating poverty in Africa.
Speaking after a meeting with Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref, Wolfowitz said Russia had come a long way in the past decade but that there was still a lot of work ahead.
“There are huge challenges, especially in the areas of administrative reform, judicial reform and combating corruption,” Wolfowitz said after meeting with Gref. “And also in some of the areas of basic human needs, especially health and education.”
Wolfowitz is scheduled to meet with President Vladimir Putin, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin and Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov on Thursday. 
Russia’s role as chair of the Group of Eight industrial nations in 2006 is expected to be a key focus of discussions during the visit, Wolfowitz’s first official trip to Russia since he took charge of the World Bank earlier this year. 
Talks between Wolfowitz and Gref on Wednesday were focused on more specific issues, such as how best to tackle judicial reforms, as well as on financial assistance. Programs on creating special economic zones and fighting AIDS were also discussed.
“We had a very good discussion about a lot of challenges that Russia faces,” Wolfowitz told reporters after meeting with Gref. “It is doing much better now than I feared would be the case 10 years ago.”
Gref praised the bank for providing expertise on enforcing transparency and accountability. “We need its global experience to make projects happen with full transparency,” Gref said.
“We are exceptionally grateful to the bank for the most effective cooperation ... in helping the Russian government to conduct reforms,” he said. 
Gref said Russia expected to receive a $50 million loan from the World Bank to help fund judicial reforms from 2006 to 2012. 
The World Bank is also to provide consulting services for the project. Details are yet to be finalized, Gref said.

TITLE: Africans, Jews Suffer In Month of Attacks
AUTHOR: By Ali Nassor
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A wave of hate crimes  has rocked St Petersburg in the last forty days, with a series of racial assaults on individuals and businesses, and vandalism of a cemetery, in what human rights advocates are describing as an alarming trend. 
“I’d call it the month of terror, were it not for fears that I’d be publicizing the extremist values these people are proud of,” said Aliou Tunkara, head of the St Petersburg African Union, referring to a month that saw two Africans killed, a number of foreigners put into intensive care, the destruction of over 100 gravestones in the city’s Jewish cemetery and repeated attacks on a Jewish restaurant.
Joseph Kuate, 27, an asylum seeker from Cameroon was attacked last Monday at a bus stop near the Chernaya Rechka metro station by a group he described as “guys in black and army boots, some in caps and others with shaven heads, armed with chains and sticks.” 
“Seeing that I was bleeding and that there were people running after me, a cab stopped and took me to Nevsky Prospekt,” said Kuate, speaking at the Mariinsky Hospital where he was recovering from his injuries.
The driver dropped Kuate off at the 28th police station on Ulitsa Marata, though he said the duty officer was not keen to let him in. “He slammed the door shut in my face, and then it took at least half hour of repeated shouting and knocking on the door by three girls and two boys who were hanging around the courtyard before the officers let me in, wrote the report and called an ambulance,” Kuate said.
The attack on Kuate came just a few weeks after the murder of a Congolese student, Roland Epasak. Epasak was attacked on Sept 10., and died from his injuries three days later in hospital.
Shortly after Epasak’s murder, the banned extremist organization Freedom Party claimed responsibility for the attack. The organization issued a press release saying that it had deployed “white patrols” in the city center “to cleanse the city of unwanted elements where the police has failed.”
On Sept. 19, a Jordanian student at the Mechnikov Medical Academy, Jaudat Ashamail, was assaulted and taken into intensive care at the same hospital where Epasak died.
On Sept. 28, Leandre Sawadogo from Burkina Faso died at home following an assault in the street committed in May. Sawadago had undergone three brain surgery operations to treat the results of the attack, and spent much of the intervening four months in a coma. 
The spate of attacks, however, has not been restricted to the city’s dark-skinned community. 
Members of the local Jewish community have expressed concerns over repeated acts of vandalism at the city’s Jewish cemetery and a series of attacks on a local Jewish restaurant, Shalom, over the past month. 
Yury Vdovin, head of the local branch of human rights organization Citizens’ Watch, is pessimistic about the apparent trend in St. Petersburg and the city’s role as a beacon for extremists across the country. 
“When [the extremists] beat the drum in St Petersburg, Moscow and the provinces start trying to catch up,” he said, commenting on the recent attack in Voronezh, which resulted in the murder of a Peruvian student.

TITLE: Two Charged in $5.3 Million Bribe Case at Tax Inspectorate
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Prosecutors filed charges Wednesday against a senior Federal Tax Service official and a Central Bank official who are suspected of demanding a $5.3 million bribe from a Moscow bank in exchange for dropping a back tax claim. 
Oleg Alexeyev, deputy head of the Federal Tax Service’s department of credit organizations, and Alexei Mishin, a senior legal expert at the Central Bank’s Moscow district department, have been charged with receiving a large bribe, Moscow City Prosecutor Ilya Malofeyev told reporters. 
If convicted, the two face up to 12 years in prison.
Officials from the Federal Security Service, or FSB, and from the tax service’s internal security department detained Alexeyev in the Baltschug Kempinski hotel on Monday after he received a $1 million down payment on the $5.3 million bribe, Malofeyev said.
Alexeyev’s job was to supervise tax payments from banks, Malofeyev said.
The commercial bank tipped off the tax service’s internal security department and the FSB about the demand, he said. The bank has not been identified. The amount of the bribe was one-tenth of the back tax claim, or $53 million, the FSB said Monday.
Alexeyev was arrested in the Baltschug Kempinski restaurant after he received a suitcase filled with $1 million from a bank representative and began to count the money, prosecutors said. 
The FSB had covered the $100 bills in the suitcase with an invisible substance. In FSB footage shown on Channel One television, an FSB officer trained a device that radiated a green light on the bills and then on Alexeyev’s fingers to show that the suspect had handled the bills.
Tax inspectors uncovered alleged violations in how the bank had calculated its taxes during a recent check, and Alexeyev had demanded $1 million to secure a ruling from the Central Bank’s Moscow branch that the violations — which lead to tax arrears — were not serious, Kommersant reported, citing an unidentified city prosecutor.
Under the arrangement, the rest of the bribe was to be paid after the tax service withdrew its back tax claims, the prosecutor said.
Mishin was detained several hours later in his home, and a search of his office, located across the street from the hotel, turned up more than $1 million in three suitcases, the FSB said.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Flu Vaccination
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Over the last two weeks at least 28,500 St. Petersburg inhabitants have been vaccinated against flu, Interfax reported.
Those receiving the vaccine were all in the high risk group, which includes medical workers, schoolchildren, and the elderly. All of them received the vaccination free of charge. The total number of inhabitants believed to be in the high risk group amounts to 255,000.
The city’s medical authorities said that, at present, between 400 and 4,500 new cases of flu are registered daily. Outbreaks of flu are considered to have reached the level of an epidemic when 9,500 new cases are reported per day.

Israeli Diplomat Robbed
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The city prosecution opened a criminal case following an attack against an Israeli diplomat in St. Petersburg on Wednesday, Interfax reported.
Mikki Boguslavsky, a representative of the Israeli Embassy in Moscow, who currently works in St. Petersburg, was assaulted by an unidentified assailant while walking through the Tavrichesky Gardens on the way home from work. Boguslavsky was knocked unconscious and his mobile phone, digital camera, cash and credit cards were stolen.

Heating Turned On
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Heating in all the centrally heated buildings in the city begins on Friday, Interfax reported.
The decision was taken by the city’s Energy and Engineering Committee following a fall in average temperatures to below 8 degrees Celsius, and forecasts for colder weather in the coming days.

Yabloko Picketed
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Representatives of the Nashi youth movement held a picket in front of the St. Petersburg office of the Yabloko political party on Thursday. 
The picket was organized to protest against a declaration made by Maksim Resnik, Yabloko’s leader in St. Petersburg, who stated that the party was ready to unite with representatives of the National Bolshevik party, Interfax reported.
The picket, which was not sanctioned by the city authorities, was led by Nashi’s federal commissar Vasily Yakemenko.
Yabloko representatives said they do not consider their union with the National Bolsheviks as “Yabloko slipping into a fascist ideology,” Interfax reported.

TITLE: Tour Operators Start Consolidation Deals
AUTHOR: By Yevgenya Ivanova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Moscow-based TUI Mostravel Russia acquired the option to buy a 51 percent share of Riviera, one of the leading tour operators in the Northwest region, the Moscow firm said Thursday.
Some market insiders saw the move as the first step in the consolidation of Russia’s tourist market, necessary for the domestic industry to compete on the global arena.
TUI Mostravel Russia, or TMR, can realize the option of acquiring a controlling stake in Riviera during the next four years, as Riviera expands its business and opens branches in Russian cities outside of the Northwest, Vadim Lezhnin, president of Riviera, said Thursday. 
“TMR is interested in buying Riviera shares once the [Northwest] company becomes bigger. We’ve been assigned the task of developing our network of branches across the country. Cooperation with Mostravel can speed up this process, Lezhin said. “Riviera’s second task is to expand the number of destinations the company offers.”
Riviera has an extensive branch network and 19 direct sales offices in the Northwest and the Ural regions. TMR will look to promote the awareness of its brand and increase its own sales volumes through its involvement in Riviera, Lezhin said.
Helene Lloyd, director of TMI tourist consultancy, welcomed the deal as “very much needed for [Russia’s tourism] industry.”
“It is probably the first move in terms of consolidation of the market,” she said Thursday in a telephone interview.
“The fact that the Russian market is not consolidated prevents it from developing further. There are many small companies, but some big players need to emerge, if Russian firms are to compete with global tour operators,” Lloyd said.
“If you compare the Russian market to any other European market, there are probably four or five major tour operators in Western European countries. In Russia there are hundreds,” she said.
In the case of Mostravel, which in 2004 formed a joint venture with one of the largest international tour operators TUI AG, it is also a move that shows a bigger involvement of foreign firms in Russia, Lloyd said.
Steven Caron, president of Sindbad Travel International saw the agreement between Riviera and TMR as a part of the current trend of Moscow companies from various sectors expanding their network and operations by purchasing smaller agencies throughout Russia.
“It’s an economy of scale. Companies need to grow in order to compete not only in Russia, but on a global level. It is pretty important these days to align your company to an international global partner,” he said.

TITLE: Rosneft Looks to Buy Locally
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Russia’s third-largest oil and gas company, Rosneft, said Wednesday it will double its budget spending in 2006. St. Petersburg authorities hope major portions of the extra cash will come to local producers.
Rosnest will invest 53 billion rubles ($1.8 billion) in 2006 on pipeline orders and buying new equipment, a near 100 percent increase on the 27 billion rubles ($942.5 million) the company spent last year, Ramil Valitov, vice-president of Rosneft, said Wednesday at a meeting in St. Petersburg.
At the meeting, organized by the city’s committee for economic development, industrial policy and trade and Novaya Era electro-technical firm, city authorities said they expected Rosneft to spend a tenth of its 2006 budget on orders to St. Petersburg producers.
“We will launch many major projects and a large sum should fall to Russian companies,” said Yury Dumansky, a vice-president at Rosneft.
In 2004 and 2005, St. Petersburg producers earned only 75.4 million rubles ($2.6 million) worth of orders from Rosneft, which was fairly minor for an industrial city such as St. Petersburg, said Vladimir Blank, chairman of the committee for economic development, industrial policy and trade.
The main obstacles to wider cooperation with local producers were high product prices in relation to poor product quality, Rosneft managers said. The oil company expects to cut costs by 25 percent by working directly with equipment producers, bypassing distribution firms and retailers.
Rosneft holds regular invitation-only tenders to choose its equipment suppliers. In the third quarter of 2005, the oil major saved 600 million euros ($717.3 million) on signing contracts with the tenders’ winners, Valitov said.
At the meeting on Wednesday, Rosneft had invited about 100 local producers to discuss possible cooperation.
The committee for economic development, industrial policy and trade has promoted locally produced equipment to monopolies as well as major, state-owned corporations.
As a result, orders for local companies from the largest regional railway operator, Oktyabrskaya railway, jumped fivefold in 2004, with 200 contracts signed to the sum of 4 billion rubles ($139 million), Blank said.
Industrial companies provide 50 percent of the profit tax to the city’s budget, employing 20 percent of the work force, said Viktor Masalov, director for industrial policy at the St. Petersburg Industrial and Entrepreneurial Union.
“Industrial development programming is one of the officially declared functions of local authorities, necessary from both an economic and political point of view. To be competitive the city must ensure a favorable business environment,” he said.
At present, the committee said it is targeting increased cooperation in the oil and energy sector. In September it started promoting local producers to the world’s largest gas monopoly Gazprom. LUKoil and Unified Energy Systems have been picked as the next potential buyers, Blank said.
St. Petersburg producers could get 5 percent to 10 percent of Rosneft’s orders for electric equipment, turbines, diesel engines, among others in 2006, he said.
“We do not promote uncompetitive producers but help the efficient ones,” Blank said. The committee chairman did not rule out transferring the promotion of local producers to a specialized industrial agency in the near future.
For the moment, the city’s committee for economic development, industrial policy and trade will form a working group with Rosneft’s managers. Rosneft is obliged to provide information on purchase plans and upcoming investment projects, while St. Petersburg producers will come up with offers for technological solutions.
Local producers said they were positive about securing Rosneft’s orders. Anatoly Bessonny, general director of Lenniikhimmash, a city-based chemical machine-building firm, said the “positive experience of the city authorities’ work with Gazprom should spread to [winning over] Rosneft.”
“Despite such meetings’ strictly formal appearance, they do result in practical cooperation,” said Alexander Fedotov, general director of Novaya Era.

LONDON (Bloomberg) — Rosneft has agreed to buy a stake in one of eastern Siberia’s largest oil fields, operated by BP’s Russian unit, from the holding company of Russian billionaire Vladimir Potanin.
Rosneft will buy 25.94 percent of TNK-BP’s oil-exploration unit, Verkhnechonskneftegaz, from Interros Holding, which is co-owned by another Russian billionaire, Mikhail Prokhorov. BP’s TNK-BP holds a 62.7 percent stake in the field, Rosneft said today in an e-mailed statement. Rosneft did not disclose the value of the transaction.
“The entering of one more oil company into the project will give it more dynamism,” Marina Dracheva, a spokes-woman at TNK-BP, said. “The development plan is approved and fits in with the program for East Siberia [exploration].”

TITLE: Changes to Tax Code Get Duma Blessing
AUTHOR: By Anastasiya Lebedev
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A controversial bill intended to relieve courts of the burden of settling minor tax claims sailed through the State Duma on Wednesday in its second reading. 
Duma deputies approved the bill by a vote of 341 to 42. 
President Vladimir Putin proposed the bill — to go into effect on Jan. 1, 2006 — to ease the workload of courts. The changes to the Tax Code would empower tax authorities to collect fines under 5,000 rubles ($175) for individuals and 50,000 rubles for organizations without a court decision. 
Critics have assailed the bill as depriving taxpayers of the presumption of innocence and hurting small businesses the hardest.
“It’s fair to talk about the revocation of the presumption of innocence,” said Vadim Zaripov, head analyst at Pepeliaev, Goltsblat & Partners, which specializes in tax law.
Under the new law, businesses that commit technical violations such as late tax filing could find fines withdrawn from their bank accounts without a prior court hearing, he said. 
Furthermore, tax inspectors could qualify any accounting error as a “gross violation” and fine violators without first substantiating the claim in court.
Taxpayers can challenge a fine, Zaripov said, but a loophole for overzealous tax collectors is that there is no specified grace period in which violators are guaranteed an appeal.
 “If they demand to pay the fine in a day or two, no one will have the time ... to prepare their complaints for a higher authority,” he said.
Small businesses would feel the impact of a 50,000 ruble fine the most, said Sergei Voropayev, director of tax dispute resolution at Deloitte & Touche’s Moscow office.
Moreover, small businesses often lack the resources necessary for qualified legal representation, he said.
Simplifying court procedures and increasing court staff would have been a better solution to ease the courts’ workload, Voropayev said.
Duma deputies proposed a number of amendments after the bill was heard in its first reading in September, but the Budget and Taxes Committee rejected the majority of them, including those specifying procedures for fine collection and appeals.
Deputies must approve the bill in a third reading before it can be sent on to the Federation Council and Putin.

TITLE: Secret List Names Firms That Finance Terrorism
AUTHOR: By Maria Levitov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia’s financial transactions watchdog said Wednesday that it had uncovered hundreds of domestic and foreign organizations linked to terrorism.
The Federal Financial Monitoring Service has exposed 112 foreign and 21 Russian companies, as well as 317 foreign citizens and 1,122 Russians, whose activities are related to channeling funds to terrorists, said the service’s head, Viktor Zubkov.
A list of their names was compiled last month, Zubkov said in comments published on the service’s web site.
“Only the Central Bank has access to the list, which is updated about once per quarter. It is published in a secure section of the service’s web site,” the service’s spokesman, Mikhail Vinitskovsky said. Banks, credit institutions and other organizations must obtain the Central Bank’s permission to view the names of the blacklisted individuals and firms.
The list is not the service’s first, but no statistics for previous quarters were immediately available.
“In the current environment, similar work is carried out all over the world,” said Alexei Goryayev, an economist at the New Economic School’s Center for Economic and Financial Research.
Keeping the list confidential prevents undue worry about terror financing and causing panic, Goryayev said. The information on the companies is later used by security agencies for further probes. 
For example, an investigation by the service has led to the banning by the Supreme Court of the Moscow branch of a Muslim philanthropic organization. 
The service has discovered more than 18 Russian-based partners of that charity organization, with “suspicious transactions” totaling 52 million rubles ($1.8 million), Zubkov said.
Zubkov said the service cooperated with the Foreign Ministry, the Prosecutor General’s Office and foreign anti-terrorist organizations to combat money laundering and other shady financial activities related to financing terrorism.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Toshiba Secrets Leaked
TOKYO (Bloomberg) — An employee at Toshiba Corp.’s subsidiary in Japan may have sold company secrets to a Russian trade official, the Nikkei English News reported Thursday, citing an unidentified police official.
The Japanese man, who wasn’t named in the report, worked at the Toshiba Discrete Semiconductor Technology Corp. and is suspected of selling technology secrets for 1 million yen ($8,653) between Sept. 2004 and May 2005, the report said. The case was sent to the prosecutor’s office for criminal investigation, it said.
The information, passed on to an official working at the Trade Representation of the Russian Federation, may be related to semiconductors used in military applications, such as missile guidance systems, submarines, and radars for fighter planes, the report said.

Google Eyes Moscow
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Google Inc., operator of the world’s most-popular Internet search engine, will open a sales and marketing office in Moscow by January, Kommersant said.
Google plans to spend about $30 million next year in Russia to gain a market share in the “contextual advertising” industry, which gears web ads to the individual computer user, the newspaper said today, citing senior executives of Russian Internet companies who have been approached by Google.
Companies in Russia spent about $20 million last year on such ads, Kommersant said, citing data from Aton.

Citigroup Buys NL
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — A Citigroup Inc. private equity unit bought more than 25 percent of Russia’s National Logistics, Vedomosti said, citing Ilya Brodsky, president of the closely held Russian company.
Citigroup Venture Capital paid $37.5 million for the stake and Germany’s DTB Financial Services paid $12.5 million for a smaller stake, the newspaper cited DTB director Hans Bayer as saying.
National Logistics owns and operates more than 150,000 square meters (1.6 million square feet) of warehouses at three terminals in the Moscow area and expects revenue this year of about $60 million, Vedomosti said.
The Moscow-based company plans to use the money raised from the share sale to build more than 200,000 square meters of storage in Novosibirsk, Samara and Rostov-on-Don, Brodsky told the daily.

GM Makes Last Offer
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — General Motors said they have made their final offer to Russia’s leading auto-maker AvtoVAZ concerning a joint venture factory, business daily Vedomosti reported Thursday.
Executive manager of General Motors in Russia and the CIS, Warren Brown, said Wednesday that his company has put forward its final suggestions for the $500 million engines and transmission gears factory, expected to be built in Toliyatti, the paper said.
AvtoVAZ will make a decision on the plant at a meeting penned for Oct. 27.

Khodorkovsky Found
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the jailed Russian billionaire whose whereabouts have been a mystery for 10 days, is in a Siberian labor camp near the Mongolian border, a lawyer for the former Yukos chief executive said.
Khodorkovsky, once Russia’s richest man with a fortune of $15 billion, will serve the remainder of his eight-year sentence at Colony YaG 14/10 in Chita, a Siberian region bordering Mongolia and China, according to the lawyer, Genrikh Padva. “We confirmed his location [on Thursday],” Padva said.

TITLE: Putin’s Spreading War
AUTHOR: By Masha Lipman
TEXT: The attack on Nalchik, capital of Kabardino-Balkaria, was a carefully planned guerrilla operation carried out in broad daylight in a big city. The estimates of the fighters’ numbers have varied from 50 to 600, but the important fact is that they were able to penetrate the city unnoticed and unhampered, thus demonstrating a clear advantage over numerically far superior federal forces in planning, intelligence and organization.
Vladimir Putin inherited the problem of Chechnya when he came to power. He pledged to make Russia safer, but during his tenure, terrorism and subversive activity have steadily expanded. His launching of the second atrocious war in Chechnya soon after he took office as prime minister in 1999 led to a vicious circle of guerrilla attacks, followed by retaliation by federal forces, which in turn brought out increasing numbers of young Chechen men seeking revenge. Later Putin opted for a Chechenization of the crisis and ended up with a pro-Moscow Chechen leader with a reputation as a butcher; his armed followers are reported to use abductions, hostage-taking and torture against their enemies. This man, Ramzan Kadyrov, was granted the highest state award and was personally befriended by Putin, who received him in the Kremlin.
Terrorist attacks under Putin have included the Dubrovka theater siege in the fall of 2002, in which more than 800 people were taken hostage by Chechen terrorists; a botched rescue operation left 120 hostages dead. After that, terrorist attacks followed in a quickening succession that climaxed in the terrible tragedy at the Beslan schoolhouse in North Ossetia in September 2004. The terrorism problem was no longer confined to Chechnya; it had spread all over the North Caucasus and was making plain the need for a major rethinking of policy.
But instead of rethinking things, Putin seized on the Beslan tragedy as an excuse to launch a political crackdown and to further curb democratic practices. The information about the situation in the North Caucasus, as well as anti-terrorist operations, became even more tightly filtered by state-controlled TV networks. The investigation of Beslan, like that of the theater siege before it, has been much more about helping high-ranking officials avoid accountability than about a careful probe of the government’s policy flaws.
When Putin took over as president, Kabardino-Balkaria was quiet. But his use of brutal force in Chechnya has backfired, producing growing numbers of revenge-seekers. Further centralization of power has led to deeper problems of the kind inherent in a heavily bureaucratic system: poor performance, lack of accountability, failure to coordinate efforts because each official seeks first and foremost to avoid responsibility at any cost. A local leader with an independent source of authority is regarded with suspicion — loyalty to the Kremlin is valued above all. This breeds incompetence and powerlessness among local officials.
Putin and those around him routinely attribute violent attacks in the North Caucasus republics to international terrorism. In fact, what all these predominantly Muslim regions have in common is the abominable corruption of the local elites, awful social conditions and disenfranchised populations that become easy prey for radical underground groups.
In addition, each of those territories has its own problem. For instance, in Dagestan, where there is a complicated entanglement of dozens of ethnic groups, the balance among clans is cracking, leading to intense feuding. As a result, some 100 subversive attacks and shootouts have occurred there over the past 10 months. In Kabardino-Balkaria, one of the causes of trouble appears to be a fierce crackdown on Muslim believers; the closure of most mosques and brutal police treatment of those suspected of ties with Islamists have pushed young men to organize against the police.
So far the government’s social policy has been largely limited to pouring more money into the troubled regions — money that mostly ends up in the pockets of the corrupt.
Rather than masterminding a strategy to address these problems, Putin has allowed them to build; he blamed terrorism in the North Caucasus on evil outside forces seeking to weaken Russia because they regard it as a “threat that needs to be eliminated.”
Back in the mid-1990s, when the first Chechen war began, there was talk of a nightmarish scenario in which the nations of the Caucasus would join the Chechen rebels in their secessionist cause. This threat never materialized and still does not seem imminent, but the specter of a Caucasus war is closer today than it was in the Russia that Putin inherited.
The Kremlin is hardly unaware of the gravity of the North Caucasus problem. One year ago Putin put Dmitry Kozak, one of his most efficient men, in charge of this troubled region. But even if good decisions are made, a huge hurdle will remain: the irresponsibility and inefficiency of Putin’s bureaucracy. Taking that on is a task Putin is not ready for.
 
Masha Lipman, editor of the Carnegie Moscow Center’s Pro et Contra journal, writes a monthly column for The Washington Post, where this comment first appeared.

TITLE: Protecting Kids From Terrorism
AUTHOR: By Olga Romanova
TEXT: In case you missed it, the government just wrapped up a month-long nationwide anti-terrorism program with the slogan: “We won’t allow the Beslan tragedy to be repeated!” Trees were planted and meetings were held in cities and towns across the country. The highlight of the program was a forum called “A Future Without Terrorism. No Future for Terrorism,” which featured a fiery speech by Aslanbek Aslakhanov, who serves as President Vladimir Putin’s adviser on the North Caucasus. Aslakhanov exposed the foot-dragging bureaucrats and saboteurs who are out of step in the war on terrorism. And he found them in the nation’s schools. The schools were “not doing their part to help tackle the biggest challenge facing the state and society: counteracting terrorism,” Aslakhanov said. The schools have yet to introduce special classes “devoted to fostering zero tolerance toward the ideology of terrorism,” he said.
There’s another little problem, however, which is providing security for our schools and kindergartens. Anyone who has children knows how this usually works in practice. In Orenburg, by contrast, people decided to take matters into their own hands and raise money to protect their schools. Orenburg Deputy Mayor Lyudmila Marchenko told Itar-Tass that “over the course of a month, local residents, organizations, businesses and private firms deposited money into a special account.” In the end, Orenburg raised 1.33 million rubles ($46,000) that will be used “to acquire additional equipment and to install alarm systems,” Marchenko said.
Hang on. That means that Orenburg’s schools currently have no alarm systems or “additional equipment,” and it’s unlikely that Orenburg is an exception. So where is all the money going that has been allocated in the federal budget for security, prevention and the war on terrorism?
In 2004, after the tragedy in Beslan, we were told that the 2005 federal budget would contain a record $105 million to fund these activities. In 2006, funding for the federal anti-terror program alone will increase fivefold. The purchase of special technology is covered under a separate budget item, as is public relations support for the war on terrorism.
So why is a major city like Orenburg — and probably many more besides — not seeing any of this money? There’s no way to find out. This section of the budget is secret. The Audit Chamber recently completed its investigation of public funds allocated for the war on terrorism, and judging by its silence you’d have to assume the money was spent properly — to conduct monthlong nationwide programs and adjust the school curriculum, apparently. Let’s hope that’s all it was spent on.

Olga Romanova, an anchorwoman for Ren-TV, is a columnist for Vedomosti, where this comment first appeared.

TITLE: Use Oil Windfall to Cover Pensioners’ Debt
AUTHOR: By Konstantin Sonin
TEXT: Speaking at the “Russia: Going Global?” conference last week, Oleg Vyugin, head of the Federal Service for Financial Markets, advanced a very sound idea. It’s well known that high oil prices have allowed the Russian government to increase spending while also squirreling away sizeable sums in the stabilization fund. There’s just one problem with the money in the stabilization fund, however. You can’t spend it domestically without incurring negative macroeconomic consequences. 
Of course, if the government were to seize the opportunity presented by sky-high oil revenues to strengthen crucial economic institutions (the courts, for example) as well as reducing the level of corruption among public servants, it could spend this money on domestic priorities without fear of sparking inflation. But that’s another story.
Vyugin proposed using a portion of the stabilization fund to cover future deficits in the state pension fund, which are foreseen as a result of unfavorable demographic trends. A competent immigration policy would go a long way toward solving this problem even without drawing down the stabilization fund, but that’s another story too.
Vyugin is definitely on to something. As New Economic School professor Alexei Goryayev has shown, however, Vyugin’s good idea could be developed into something even better. 
Here’s how. When pension reform was introduced two years ago, part of the working population was given the opportunity to shift their money from the state pension fund into privately managed accounts. This new “funded” system does not allow workers to choose whether or not to invest their money, but it at least gives them more control over investment choices, which in theory should lead to higher returns down the road. Such individually managed accounts are considered more progressive than the old “pay-as-you-go” pension system because they create a stronger link between the interests of workers and investors and the public good. The idea behind the reform was sound, but as often happens in this country, the implementation left something to be desired.
Here’s what happened. When privately managed accounts were introduced, everyone born before 1967 — the greater part of the current working population — was excluded from the new funded scheme. The government’s thinking was that if the pension accounts of these workers were transferred from the state pension fund into private accounts, the fund would no longer have enough money to cover current pension payments. Workers born before 1967 were excluded for the same reason that they are crucial to the success of pension reform: They currently earn more than any other sector of the work force. As a result, in 2003 pension reform was implemented only in part because total implementation would have created a temporary deficit in the state pension fund.
The windfall from high oil revenues that Vyugin mentioned would be best used to make up this deficit. This money could be used to pay current pensions instead of the money being paid into the system by workers born before 1967, thereby allowing these workers to shift their pensions into privately managed accounts. This solution would make the macroeconomists happy, and today’s pensioners wouldn’t notice a thing. 

Konstantin Sonin, professor at the New Economic School/CEFIR, is a columnist for Vedomosti, where this comment first appeared.

TITLE: Russian extravaganza
AUTHOR: By Larisa Doctorow
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: BRUSSELS, Belgium — Europalia, a biannual arts event in Belgium that showcases a chosen nation, this year focuses on Russia to follow a growing Western fascination with its undiscovered cultural heritage. The cultural charm offensive, which began in Brussels on Oct. 3, features Russian art, music, dance and theater events throughout Belgium.
Of the $14.6 million that the four-month long extravaganza is costing to stage, nearly half comes from Belgian sources, with participation split between the government, private sponsors and ticket sales. Given the commitment of public funds, there is an effort to distribute events throughout the country, although the principal venues are in Brussels, where they occupy the best museum space, concert halls and theaters. The signature event of the entire Europalia is an art exhibition, “Russian Avant-Garde,” at the Palais des Beaux Arts and the capital is flooded with posters for it. 
The main contributor of exhibits to the show is St. Petersburg’s State Russian Museum. Deputy director Yevgenia Petrova gave The St. Petersburg Times a guided tour of the show. 
“Our intention was to show our riches. As a result you see the works displayed closely together in the museum halls, with hardly any empty space between them,” Petrova said. 
“Our second goal was to present different aspects of each master. Our provincial museums were of great help because they complemented our collection with their own works. We selected works from 22 Russian museums and we tried to make the show rich and varied,” Petrova said. 
With more than 300 works on display, the show exceeds in sheer numbers other exhibitions on the Russian avant-garde that have been held in the West since the 1980s. Trends within the avant-garde such as Neoprimitivism, Abstractionism, Fauvism, Super Realism, Futurism, Cubo-futurism and Rayonism dominate the show.
Famous painters are represented by different works associated with them. Vasily Kandinsky is represented by a landscape, Natalia Goncharova by works demonstrating her passion for movement, and Kazimir Malevich by a portrait of a hero of labor.
The largest hall is devoted to Malevich, whose enormous “Black Square,” “Circle” and “Square” dominate a whole wall.
When he opened the exhibition earlier this month, President Vladimir Putin eagerly posed for cameras against the background of Malevich’s famous abstract canvasses.
The engineer and artist Vladimir Tatlin is represented by several three-dimensional works including the striking “Corner Counter-Relief” from 1914.
Made of wood, ropes, copper and steel and suspended from a wall in a corner, it could be called the world’s first “installation.”
Works such as this both surprised and greatly impressed the Belgian art critics who toured the show at its opening.
“From Tsar to Emperor,” the second major Russian art show of the Europalia festival, opened a week later and is more traditional. It presents a historical and cultural picture of Russia over three centuries.
The first part concentrates on Moscow, its culture and art leading up to the accession of Mikhail Romanov to the Russian throne in 1613. The second part deals with the founding of St. Petersburg in 1703 and ends with the dazzling imperial court of Catherine the Great who reigned from 1762 to 1796.
The organizers have brought beautiful and precious things that are familiar to the Western public, such as icons, silver objects in niello, historical portraits and paintings, and objects belonging to imperial collections.
But there are other exhibits which, although dear to the Russian soul, might leave foreigners unmoved, such as the clothes and belongings of Peter the Great and Empress Elizabeth, or the jars containing babies’ heads and disfigured animals preserved in alcohol that have been brought from the collection in St. Petersburg’s ever-popular Kunstkamera.
It also seems the organizers made a mistake in bringing 15th century birch bark letters from Novgorod to a country which in the same period enjoyed remarkable prosperity from the wool trade, textiles and luxury goods and was busy inventing oil painting. Belgian visitors were quick to remark that this comparison with medieval Muscovy is not to Russia’s advantage.
Meanwhile, the peoples of Russia’s Eurasian steppe are highlighted in two smaller shows. One of them deals with the Huns in the Lake Baikal region, depicting their culture and daily life on the basis of excavations. The exhibits date from the 3rd century B.C. to the end of the 1st century A.D. and have mostly been drawn from the collection of the State Hermitage Museum.
A exhibition in the Cinquantenaire Museum focuses on the Trans-Siberian Railway and displays over 300 items illustrating the customs and art of people inhabiting Siberia along the railway line. The show begins with Yermak, the 16th century conqueror of Siberia and describes the traces left in Siberia by the Decembrists (a group of 19th century revolutionaries), and the writers Fyodor Dostoevsky, Anton Chekhov and Boris Pasternak.
Other events bring Belgium up to date with the latest developments in Russian visual arts. Among the 28 separate exhibitions that make up the Europalia there are events devoted to cinema, photography, street art and fashion shows. “Contemporary Street Art” features heaps of washing machines and refrigerators dumped near a public library on a small square in the center of Brussels. The appearance of this work, made up of about 60 of these mostly white relics, prompted loud demands for its removal from Brussels residents.
Performing arts are also central to Europalia and Belgian theater-goers would have to be blind and deaf not to be aware of Russia’s presence. Tickets to stage performances by Russian theater companies are now mostly sold out — something quite extraordinary in Brussels.
The St. Petersburg director Lev Dodin, playwright and actor Yevgeny Grishkovets, and actors Alexander Petlura and Pyotr Fomenko have proved a big draw. In Antwerp, shows from Moscow director Anatoly Vasilyev, who is widely known in neighboring France will be seen, and in Liege, to the south of the country, Fomenko will appear. The drama performances are accompanied by subtitles — although judging by the latest European Commission statistics that show Russian to be the fifth most spoken language in the European Union, ahead of Spanish, there may well be a large number of people in the audience who will not need this help.
Belgian theaters are also staging readings from Russian authors, both classic and modern. Russian writers including Lyudmila Ulitskaya and Tatiana Tolstaya plan to come to Belgium to participate in roundtables. Their novels have been translated into French and they have their followers in Belgium.
St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theater participated in Europalia’s opening events with a brilliant performance of Prokofiev’s early opera “The Gambler.” The opera had its world premiere in Brussels in 1929, and this performance was a sort of homecoming. Russia’s best known soloists and choirs will all put in appearances in Belgium during the Europalia season. The concert program also gives space to contemporary classical music, with works by composers Vladimir Martynov, Viktor Kisin and Rodion Shchedrin to be performed.
Belgium’s interest in Russia is not as sudden as it appears — the two nations share links dating back centuries. In 1788 Catherine the Great invited Belgium’s Prince de Ligne to Russia to participate in a trip to the Crimea. He came and she conferred on him the title of General of the Russian army. In his memoirs he spoke about the empress with great admiration. Near Brussels, the Chateau Beloeil has remained in the hands of the Ligne family for centuries and the owners are organizing a grand reception to celebrate the friendship between Belgians and Russians.
On a more modest scale, the tourist office together with the Europalia administration has created a guided walk, the “Russian Promenade,” in the center of Brussels, during which people will learn about the links between the two cultures and peoples. 
The walk starts in front of the royal palace where a bust to Peter the Great was erected at the end of the 19th century to commemorate his 1717 voyage to Brussels, Antwerp and Spa.

www.europalia.be

TITLE: Chernov’s choice
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Moloko, a leading local underground club that is closing at its current location, will say goodbye with concerts by popular bands Tequilajazzz (Friday) and Markscheider Kunst (Saturday). 
Sunday will be an all-day farewell party. The club will open at 11 a.m. to hold a table football tournament in the afternoon and a concert by dub band Samosad Bend. Entrance is free.
Two international prog-rock giants will perform in the city this week. The Tony Levin Band was formed by the legendary bass player Tony Levin. Levin, who released three solo albums and one as the Tony Levin Band, is better known as member of King Crimson and Peter Gabriel’s band. His playing can be also heard on many classic albums, including Lou Reed’s “Berlin” (1973), Paul Simon’s “Still Crazy After All These Years” (1975), John Lennon’s “Double Fantasy” (1980), Tom Waits’ “Rain Dogs” (1985), Brian Ferry’s “Boys and Girls” (1985) and David Bowie’s “Heathen” (2002).
The Tony Levin Band concert is part of the so-called “King Crimson Festival,” a series of British prog-rock related events launched by Moscow promoter Alexander Cheparukhin after he brought King Crimson to Russia in July 2003. The previous three concerts were by the duo TU consisting of the band’s members Trey Gunn and Pat Mastelotto in April 2004, Bill Bruford Earthworks in May 2004 and Quodia, a project from Gunn and Joe Mendelson, in October 2004.
The Tony Levin Band perform at the Center for Contemporary Art (formerly Priboi film theater) on Friday.
Also due is the comeback tour of Van der Graaf Generator, the seminal prog-rock band from the 1960s and 1970s, which reformed earlier this year. Van der Graaf Generator will play at the Music Hall on Tuesday. See interview with founding member Peter Hammill, page iv.
Trendy bar Datscha resumes its “Datscha Goes Reeperbahn” series of parties this week. The idea of bringing DJs from Hamburg came from Anna-Christin Albers, the bar’s owner, who hails from the German city. 
This week’s Hamburg DJ is Merten Kaatz, founder of one of the first soul clubs in Hamburg, The Shelter Club. Kaatz will play a set of soul, R&B, funk, ska, garage on 45 rpm vinyl records, on Friday.
J.D. and the Blenders’ all-night event at Platforma on Friday will be also herald the launch of the first Russian-language web site fully devoted to soul music. A concert by the soul-funk band will be followed by DJs Year Show and Soul Boss.
Also this week sees a memorial concert for the recently deceased local punk singer Alex Ogoltely of Narodnoye Opolcheniye at Manhattan on Wednesday, Japan’s Klezmer/improv band Komatcha Klezmer performing at Platforma on Thursday, and a concert by commercial gypsy folk from Goran Bregovich and his Wedding and Funeral Band at the Oktyabrsky Concert Hall on Thursday.

TITLE: Matisse matters
AUTHOR: By Andrei Vorobei
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A new exhibition at the State Hermitage Museum sheds light on the work of Henri Matisse and is drawn from one of the two great acquisitions that make the Hermitage collection of works by the French artist one of most important in the world. 
The first considerable acquisition was made in the 1930s and included many great paintings of the “fauvist” period of the master, which originally were a part of the collection of Western European art  belonging to Moscow merchant and patron Sergei Shchukin.
But “A Priceless Gift,” which opened earlier this month  in the Twelve Column Hall of the New Hermitage, is takes the second considerable addition of Matisse works to the museum’s collection as its subject.
The unusual story of Lydia Delektorskaya lies behind it. For 22 years, from 1932 until the artist’s death in 1954, Delektorskaya, a Russian ÎmigrÎ, was Matisse’s secretary and assistant. 
A model, friend and maybe more, Delektorskaya was the inspiration and subject of many of Matisse’s works. Almost half the works in the new exhibition are portraits of her. 
After Matisse’s death, Delektorskaya, who died herself aged 88 in 1998, began donating his works to the Hermitage. 
Beginning in the 1960s and continuing to the 1980s, the donation included more than 100 pieces — drawings, engravings, books, several sculptures and two paintings. 
The most of the works are charcoal, pencil or ink drawings including artist’s studies, sketches, still-lifes, nudes and so on. While possessing a rich collection of Matisse paintings, from the Shchukin collection among others, the Hermitage didn’t have drawings, engravings or sculptures by the artist until the Delektorskaya bequest. 
Whichever media Matisse worked with, from the economical use of lines in his drawings and engravings, to the pure, flat color of his paintings, the artist sometimes gives the impression that his art came “easily and simply” (to borrow the title of one of the Delektorskaya catalogs) and is little more than decorative. However, this impression couldn’t be further from the truth.
As one of Matisse’s advocates, the remarkable New York art critic Clement Greenberg, rightly said: “If the word [decorative] is now largely a discredited word, at least in its pejorative sense, it’s Matisse’s doing more than anyone else’s.” 
The artist’s intention was to make the perception of his works serene and comfortable, which, above all, is expressed in his famous metaphor of his art as a relaxing “armchair” for the eye of the viewer. 
But behind this “decorativeness” and visual simplification lies a complicated technique of the highest artistic merit.
The Delektorskaya donation also perfectly covers another important aspect of Matisse art — book illustration. The artist was one of those who raised the artistic level of book illustration to create so-called livre d’art or art books. 
Illustrations by Matisse for texts by Stephane Mallarme, James Joyce and Charles Baudelaire form part of the exhibition. 
Matisse’s original art book “Jazz,” also on display, demonstrates his decoupage technique in which fragments of colored paper are pasted onto white or colored backgrounds. The book is named “Jazz” because, according to the artist, “decoupages correspond to the very spirit of jazz.” 
In contrast to paintings, drawings and engravings require careful storage and can’t be exhibited often or for long durations. The last time a similar exhibition was mounted by the Hermitage was in 1980. In short, “A Perfect Gift” is an exceptional exhibition. 

“A Priceless Gift” runs through Jan. 15, 2006. www.hermitage.ru

TITLE: Verdi revisited
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Giant oil derricks replace Egyptian pyramids in Moscow director Dmitry Bertman’s updated rendition of Verdi’s biblical opera “Nabucco,” which premieres at the Mariinsky Theater on Saturday. 
The company’s first opera premiere of the new season, Bertman’s production was originally created for Moscow’s Helicon-Opera, where it premiered in 2004 as a joint project with the Dijon Opera Theater and Paris’s Opera de Massy to high critical acclaim. 
“Nabucco” has never been staged in St. Petersburg before. Rehearsing for the roles are Zlata Bulycheva, Yekaterina Semenchuk, Irina Gordei, Sergei Aleksashkin, Vladimir Vaneyev, Viktor Chernomortsev and Edem Umerov.
“Most directors tend to interpret the opera as a story of confrontation between two nations,” Bertman said. “This is a tempting option indeed, and all the more so because Verdi composed magnificent choirs for this opera and incorporated numerous mass scenes in the work.”
But Bertman chose a different, more personal and psychological approach.
“Just like most other Verdi operas, ‘Nabucco’ is a passionate drama, with characters of Biblical scale, who, like Abigaille, mask their weakness and loneliness with cruel brutality,” Bertman said.
The opera begins in Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem, where terrified Jews pray to God to halt the advance of the brutal Assyrian ruler Nabucco, who has invaded their land and is approaching the city. Nabucco’s daughter Fenena is held hostage in the temple. Fenena is happily in love with Ismaele, the nephew of the king of Jerusalem. But she has a rival in her sister Abigaille, who arrives at the temple with soldiers and offers to save Ismaele if he returns her feelings. The man refuses, and worse, he helps Fenena to escape to her father. 
Abigaille discovers she is a child of a slave, which means she can’t inherit the throne, and nurtures plans to kill the real heir Fenena, who converts to Judaism. Abigaille’s vendetta is interrupted by the arrival of Nabucco, who loses his mind after being struck by lightning. Abigaille becomes Regent and tries to kill Fenena but Nabucco escapes from his ward, saves his daughter and regains power. In the finale Abigaille poisons herself. 
One of the composer’s early operas, “Nabucco” was the first successful opera the then 29-year-old composer had written when it premiered in 1842. Among the composer’s lightest works, “Nabucco” is loosely based on an Old Testament tale about the persecution of the Jews by the Assyrians. The Jews triumph, and a famous chorus “Va, pensiero” from the opera became an anthem in Italy for oppressed people. At the time, the country was occupied by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. 
Bertman said his production explores the connection and parallels between the ancient times and the modern day on different levels.
“We had no intention of making the opera more modern,” he said. “Rather, our goal was to establish the parallels and expose them to the audiences.”
In February of next year the Mariinsky will present another Verdi opera — “Falstaff.” Another Moscow director, Kirill Serebrennikov, will stage the production.
The Mariinsky’s impressive stock of Verdi operas already includes Walter Le Moli’s “Rigoletto,” Andrei Konchalovsky’s “Un Ballo in Maschera,” Charles Roubaud’s “La Traviata,” Elijah Moshinski’s “La Forza del Destino,” Yury Alexandrov’s “Otello” and “Don Carlos,” David McVicar’s “Macbeth” and Alexei Stepanyuk’s “Aida.” 
Most of the shows from that list have been mounted over the past four years. 
In 2001, which UNESCO declared the year of Verdi to mark the 100th anniversary of the composer’s death, the Mariinsky produced an avalanche of operas from his repertoire. This resulted in a patchy selection of shows, which London critics panned at a Verdi Festival later that year. 
Alexandrov’s “Otello” was even considered as racist by one reviewer who was shocked by the director presenting the Russian singer playing Othello in blackface. 

“Nabucco” at the Mariinsky Theater on Saturday, Sunday and Oct. 30.
www.mariinsky.ru

TITLE: Band reunited
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Van der Graaf Generator, a seminal British “progressive rock” band that came to prominence in the 1960s and ’70s has returned with its classic lineup, a new album and a tour. Founding member, vocalist and guitarist Peter Hammill describes it as a “genuine musical effort.”
Reunions are no longer the sensation they once were now that so many bands have found that it’s a good way to capitalize on their past success. This motivation was most cynically expressed by the Sex Pistols’ John Lydon.
“We share a common cause — and it’s your money,” was the infamous remark that Lydon made when asked about the band’s 1996 Filthy Lucre reunion tour.
Speaking to The St. Petersburg Times by phone earlier this month, Hammill dismissed any possible suspicions audiences may harbor about such cynicism.
“That’s not the case with Van der Graaf, partly because I don’t think we’re going to make very much money. We never made very much money in the first place,” said Hammill, 56.
“On the other hand, we hope not to lose money, equally, I have to say that. But you’re right, this is not a reunion that’s about money. 
“Fundamentally it’s something that started just because all four of us had a realization that none of us are getting any younger. And if we’re ever going to do it, we’d better see if it’s possible to do it now, while we are all still capable of doing it. So originally we got together to see if there was anything worth doing entirely in private, in a kind of secret way. And we decided that, yes, there was something we could do.
“But fundamentally it is to do it for its own sake, that’s what the story of this reunion is, and equally to do it while we can and without being devoured either. So it’s a genuine musical effort, I think you could say.”
Although Van der Graaf Generator has a new album, the two-disk “Present,” released in April, Hammill said the band will not concentrate on the new material when playing live.
“Obviously we did a whole new album which is very important to us, but if we were going to do anything, then it had to be clear that there was something new to be done as well as old stuff,” he said.
“But naturally it would be idiotic to come and play for the first time in St. Petersburg as Van der Graaf and only play new material. So we’ll be doing 
just a couple of things from ‘Present,’ and then doing representative songs from the past. Although obviously another important point is that we’re all men who are now 50 years old, we’re not pretending to be the 19 or 20 year-olds we were when we first started doing things, because that’s another way in which reunions are sometimes horrible.
“We’re keen on saying that this is what we’re doing now, rather than just something from the past.”
As well as Hammill, Van der Graaf Generator features Hugh Banton on keyboards, Guy Evans on drums and Dave Jackson on saxophone and flute.
The band first formed in 1967 while its members were studying at Manchester University. It is named after a high-voltage electrostatic energy generator built by Dr. Robert Jamison van der Graaf in 1931.
The reformed lineup is considered to be the “classic” one, with three of the members appearing on “The Aerosol Grey Machine,” Van de Graaf Generator’s 1969 debut while Jackson joined for the second outing, the 1970 album “The Least We Can Do Is Wave To Each Other.” 
Van der Graaf Generator’s erratic career of break-ups and gettings back together finally came to a halt in 1978. By that time the group had released nine albums, while Hammill had released seven solo records. The band’s definitive compilation, a 4-CD box set called “The Box,” was released in 2000.
According to Hammill’s online newletter, the original impetus for the Van der Graaf Generator reunion came from the band meeting to perform “Still Life” at the end of his solo gig at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in February 2003. A major reunion concert took place at the Royal Festival Hall, London, last May, followed by several European dates in the summer.
Hammill, who performed solo in St. Petersburg in 1995, said he finds being with Van der Graaf Generator again “very exciting.”
“Obviously I’ve been playing music continuously, sometimes in bands, sometimes in duos, sometimes solo, but there’s obviously something unique about Van der Graaf’s spirit,” he said. “It’s very exciting for us to tap into that.”
“Equally the response that we have had from people has been absolutely fantastic. I mean it’s probably better now than in the past when we were working. So altogether it’s been a marvelous experience,” he said.
Hammill’s songwriting touches on social and political issues, as demonstrated by “Every Bloody Emperor,” the opening track on “Present.”
“I wrote it immediately before the recent war in Iraq, and living in Britain at this particular time, it’s a very obvious political response to the way in which we appear to be governed,” he said.
In some ways Hammill changed or foresaw the development of rock music. 
One of the most striking examples was his anarchic, “proto-punk” album “Nadir’s Big Chance,” released in 1975. 
Hammill said that the record was made on behalf of his “alter ego” — the 16-year old fictitious angry teenager Rikki Nadir — keen on “smashing the system with the song!” The work was gratefully embraced by would-be punks, among them the Sex Pistols’ Lydon.
“Of course a number of people have cited me as an influence,” said Hammill. “I think it’s to do with attitude rather than music, although there are aspects of ‘Nadir’ that have attitude, clearly. Knowing three chords and bashing an electric guitar very loudly is  good fun and creative.
“For better or worse, during the time I’ve been making music, there’s been a certain aspect of no compromise in terms of what I do, and of just doing what I do for its own sake. Which I think was central to the punk ethic generally, particularly when it started. And I think that that attitude, which has been the thing that has been influential on people of that era, and on subsequent people, is why people named me and Graaf as influences.
“This I think is the thing that musicians and artists pass on down through the generations, as much as the actual stylistic things. It’s a question of a way to behave, a way to present oneself, and a way to be true to what one actually tries to do musically or artistically.”
Hammill agrees that the punk explosion was perhaps a reaction to the pomposity of 1970s “prog rock,” but he reserves a special place for Van der Graaf Generator’s position.
“That was not really a problem, because I never liked categorization in any way, to be honest,” he said.
“So I can say that there are a lot of bands of our generation that were vilified when they came along, but we’ve never had that kind of feeling. And I think that’s right, because Van der Graaf may be a crazy group, but one thing it is not is pompous.”
The spirit of the late 1960s when Van der Graaf Generator was starting out and that of today, as it reforms, are beyond comparison, according to Hammill.
“They are completely different planets,” he said.
“I have obviously had 35-40 years of putting music on the planet. I myself  am a completely different person. They are completely different planets in almost every way imaginable. On the one hand, yes, we’re all much more cynical now, on the other hand, some of this cynicism is well-learned. When I started it seemed to be a time of, not universal hope, but of the idea that many, many things were possible. Some of those things have turned out not to be necessarily so beneficial.
“They are just two entirely different worlds. But in any case, the best thing one can do at any time is to be alive on the planet right now.
“That’s always been my motto and my intention and I hope I’ll carry on doing that.”
Van der Graaf Generator performs at Music Hall on Tuesday. www.sofasound.com

TITLE: Hurricane Wilma’s Edge Touches Mexico
AUTHOR: By Will Weissert
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: CANCUN, Mexico — Much of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula was under a hurricane warning Thursday, as Hurricane Wilma swirled off its eastern shore. The storm, which has been blamed for 13 deaths, slowed down, pushing back predictions of when it might hit Florida. 
Tourists were ordered to leave the Florida Keys, and everyone was told to evacuate the island of Isla Mujeres, near Cancun. Authorities were poised to move out thousands of others Thursday from low-lying areas in a 1,000-kilometer swath covering Cuba, Mexico, Belize, Honduras, Jamaica, Haiti and the Cayman Islands. 
The National Hurricane Center in Miami said Wilma had lost some speed. 
“Because it is moving slower, we don’t anticipate it making landfall in Florida until sometime on Sunday, a day later than previously forecast,” hurricane center meteorologist Jennifer Pralgo said. 
Some of the estimated 70,000 tourists still in Cancun and surrounding areas were taking the warnings more seriously than others. 
Standing knee-deep in the ocean and drinking beer in Playa de Carmen, south of Cancun, Mike Goepfrich, of Minneapolis, Minnesota, said: “As long as they give me beer in the shelter, and my kids are safe, we’ll be fine. We’re going to ride it out here.” 
Nearby, fisherman Rolando Ramirez, 51, was helping others pull their fishing boats from the water in preparation for Wilma’s passage. 
“People here aren’t concerned about anything,” Ramirez said. “They don’t know that when the hurricane comes, this will all be under water.” 
At 5 a.m. EDT, Wilma had sustained winds of 241 kilometers per hour, down from a peak of 282 kilometers per hour, but forecasters said it could strengthen again. 
Wilma was centered 314 kilometers southeast of Mexico’s Cozumel Island, and was moving west-northwest at 13 kilometers per hour. 
Countries across the region prepared for the worst. Much of Central America was still recovering from Hurricane Stan, which left more than 1,500 people dead or missing. 
The storm was on a curving course that was due to carry it through the narrow channel between Cuba and Mexico on Friday, possibly within a few miles of Cancun and Cozumel. 
In the coastal state of Quintana Roo — which includes Cancun — officials ordered the evacuation of four low-lying islands, including Isla Mujeres, and also closed the popular cruise-ship port on the island of Cozumel. 
“This is getting very powerful, very threatening,” Mexican President Vicente Fox said. Hundreds of schools in Quintana Roo were ordered to be closed Thursday and Friday, and many will be used as storm shelters. 
Predictions differed on where the hurricane would go and how strong it would be when it reaches U.S. shores, where Florida residents began buying water, canned food and other emergency supplies. 
Wilma’s track could take it near Punta Gorda on Florida’s southwestern Gulf Coast, and other areas hit by Hurricane Charley, a Category 4 storm, in August 2004. 
The state has seen seven hurricanes hit or pass close by since August 2004, causing more than $20 billion in estimated damage and killing nearly 150 people.

TITLE: Doubts Remain Over Hussein’s Court Case
AUTHOR: By Luke Baker
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BAGHDAD — Saddam Hussein’s trial lasted only a few hours before being adjourned, but it was long enough for international observers to get a taste — and overall they were left unconvinced about the credibility of Iraq’s tribunal. 
While praising the efforts of the chief judge, a Kurd with a wry smile and a pleasant manner, legal experts said they were uneasy about how parts of the process unfolded and uncertain whether it would ultimately be seen to be fair and efficient.
Several said the most positive aspect of the trial for crimes against humanity was that it was quickly adjourned, an indication of the extent of their concerns.
“We have our fair trial reservations,” said Miranda Sissons, a senior associate with the International Center for Transitional Justice, which offers help to countries dealing with past abuses. Sissons was present in court on Wednesday.
“[The] adjournment gives the Iraqi tribunal the opportunity to address head-on concerns about its ability to conduct a fair trial.”
The three or so hours that Saddam spent in court were mostly taken up with the defendants identifying themselves, giving Saddam a chance to showboat about still being president.
One of the biggest concerns observers raised was that the chief prosecutor, in his opening statement, was permitted to ramble for 15 minutes, making a sweep of allegations seemingly unrelated to the case at hand. The defense was aghast.
“I was troubled to see the prosecutor make what was effectively a lengthy, pretty political statement that wasn’t necessarily legally grounded,” said Richard Dicker, director of Human Rights Watch’s international justice program.
“It didn’t appear that the defense lawyers, the accused, the prosecutor and the judge were all operating from the same playbook in terms of the rules of the session,” he said.
“There was this sense of an ‘anything goes’ process, and I wasn’t at all encouraged by that.”
At the same time, Dicker praised efforts by the judge, Rizgar Mohammed Amin, to show fairness and respect to the defendants, and for being patient.
Harangued by Saddam, the gray-haired Amin, seated on a raised dais, smiled and was calm.
“The judge had a light touch and bent over backwards to be polite and respectful,” said British lawyer Wesley Gryk, who monitored the proceedings for rights group Amnesty International.
“The prosecutor was more politicized, and there are some concerns about that.”

TITLE: U.S. Faces New Atrocity Charges
AUTHOR: By Daniel Cooney
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KABUL, Afghanistan — The U.S. military said Thursday it found “repugnant” and would investigate a television report that claimed U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan burned the bodies of two Taliban fighters and then used the action to taunt other Islamic militants. 
A spokesman for Afghan President Hamid Karzai said the government has launched its own investigation into the alleged desecration. 
“We strongly condemn any disrespect to human bodies regardless of whether they are those of enemies or friends,” said Karim Rahimi. 
Australia’s SBS television network broadcast video footage that purportedly showed U.S. soldiers burning the bodies of the suspected Taliban fighters in the hills outside the southern village of Gonbaz, near the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar. 
The network said the footage was taken by a freelance journalist, Stephen Dupont, who said he was embedded with the 173rd Airborne Brigade of the U.S. Army earlier this month. Dupont said the burnings happened on Oct. 1. 
In the footage, two soldiers who spoke with American accents later broadcast taunting messages that the SBS said targeted the village, which was believed to be harboring Taliban soldiers. 
Dupont said the soldiers responsible for the loudspeaker broadcasts were part of a U.S. Army psychological operations unit. 
The U.S. military said the Army Criminal Investigation Division had opened an investigation into alleged misconduct that included “the burning of dead enemy combatant bodies under inappropriate circumstances.”

TITLE: IN BRIEF
AUTHOR: Flu Spreads in Thailand
TEXT: BANGKOK (AP) — A 48-year-old man who died after handling his neighbor’s sick chickens became the 13th person confirmed dead from the disease in Thailand, the prime minister said Thursday. 
Initially, authorities said the man, who died Wednesday, had tested negative for the virus. 
But on Thursday, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said new lab results confirmed the bird flu diagnosis. 
The victim was hospitalized with severe pneumonia on Sunday, about two weeks after he killed, cooked and ate his neighbor’s sick chickens. 
Officials said the birds had died of abnormal causes but were not tested for bird flu. 
Writers Tackle Google
SAN FRANCISCO — Five major publishers filed suit against Google on Wednesday, seeking to block plans to scan copyrighted works without permission and derail Google’s push to make many of the world’s great books searchable online. 
The complaint, lodged in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, names as plaintiffs McGraw-Hill, Pearson’s Pearson Education and Penguin Group (USA) units, Viacom’s Simon & Schuster and John Wiley & Sons. 
The suit seeks a declaration that Google infringes on the publishers’ copyrights when the Web search leader scans entire books without the permission of copyright owners. 
Talks Held in Iraq
BAGHDAD, Iraq — Arab League chief Amr Moussa, who has said Iraq is on the verge of civil war, held talks with Iraqi leaders on Thursday on a tough mission to promote national reconciliation in the country. 
On his first postwar visit to Iraq, the former Egyptian diplomat met Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari and was also expected to hold talks with President Jalal Talabani and leading Shiite cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. 
“We spoke about the new Iraq and the specific mission of the head of the Arab League … in the framework of a national dialogue and national Iraqi reconciliation,” Moussa told a news conference after his talks with Jaafari.

TITLE: Astros Take on White Sox in World Series
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: ST. LOUIS, Missouri — Roy Oswalt tossed seven brilliant innings to lead the Astros to a 5-1 Game Six victory over the St. Louis Cardinals on Wednesday, handing Houston the National League title and a first World Series appearance. 
The Astros, who were one strike away from clinching the pennant at home Monday, rebounded from the crushing loss with a dominating performance to take the best-of-seven championship series 4-2 and become the first Texan team to host a World Series game.
Houston will now meet the Chicago White Sox in Game One of the Fall Classic at U.S. Cellular Field on Saturday.
“It’s indescribable, I’ve waited so long for this to happen,” said Craig Biggio, who has spent his entire 18-year career in an Astros uniform.
“A lot of great players have never got a chance to go to the World Series and I was hoping I wouldn’t be one them. I’m not greedy, I’m not selfish, I just wanted to get to a World Series one time.We never gave up, we kept battling. I know we’ve got five million people in Houston who are pretty pumped up.”
The victory ended 44 years of frustration and near misses for the Astros and their fans.
Until Wednesday, the Astros had gone 0-5 in games in which they had a chance to win the NLCS, including Monday’s contest when they were leading 4-2 with two-out in the ninth when Albert Pujols smacked a three-run homer to force Game Six.
For the second consecutive year the Astros returned to Busch Stadium holding a 3-2 series lead, but this time would not be denied.
Oswalt, a 20 game winner during the regular season, sparkled again, allowing just one run on three hits while striking out six with a walk.
“I love the pressure, I love it when it counts,” said Oswalt, who was named series MVP.
“We came in here knowing they had to catch us and knew the game we had to play. “No one gave up on us.
“We believed in ourselves, I think halfway through this season we got it going and nobody looked back.
“The biggest thing tonight was we got the early lead — then I knew I could go right at them.
“I could throw fast balls, the key to me was keeping guys off base.” Backed by Oswalt’s stingy pitching, the Astros drew first blood in the third inning when Brad Ausmus charged home on Mark Mulder’s wild pitch. 
Biggio then singled in Adam Everett to push the Astros in front 2-0, silencing the soldout crowd at Busch Stadium. 
Jason Lane homered to deep left in the fourth increasing the Houston lead to 3-0 before the Cardinals finally got on the scoreboard in the fifth on John Rodriguez’s sacrifice fly. 
The Astros answered right back in the top of sixth, restoring their three run cushion on Everett’s sacrifice to third while Morgan Ensberg closed out the scoring with an RBI single in the seventh. 
Yadier Molina popped up to right to end the game, triggering a wild celebration by the Astros and a sad farewell for Cardinals fans who exited Busch Stadium for the last time. 
The ballpark is to be demolished to make room for a new stadium. 
“We got beat because they played better then we did,” Cardinals manager Tony La Russa said. “We did a lot of good things this year but not enough good things to win this series.”

TITLE: New Rules Give NHL Momentum
AUTHOR: The Associated Press
TEXT: TORONTO — Gary Bettman is beaming, and for good reason.
Sweeping changes have reinvigorated the NHL, the commissioner said in a speech during the annual Sports Media Canada luncheon Wednesday. 
“For the first time in a long time, the NHL has momentum,” he said. “I’m determined to see us build on that.”
By increasing the size of offensive zones, eliminating center-line offsides, reimplementing tag-ups to reduce offside calls, and by cracking down on interference, there is more space for skilled players to show their stuff. Scoring is up by about one-third.
“We’re seeing teams make increasing use of the long pass so the puck goes up the ice now in the blink of an eye,” said Bettman. “We are seeing speed through the neutral zone, we’re seeing odd-man rushes, we’re seeing shots from the wings, breakaways, and goals being scored by players driving for the net.
“We’re seeing third-period lead changes and we are seeing players using their sticks for the intended purpose of sticks, and that is to handle and to propel the puck — not as a tool for checking.”
Additionally, Bettman said, “fighting is down by more than one-third as the elimination of stickwork has removed many previous flashpoints in the game.”
All this — plus the well-received introduction of shootouts — means better games, he said.
“More games are up for grabs right up until the final buzzer,” said Bettman. “That’s great, and the fans are loving it.”
The new collective bargaining agreement, forged only after the loss of the 2004-2005 season, has “enabled teams, wherever they are located, to obtain and retain star players.”
“Talent has been more equally distributed throughout the league,” he said. “By necessity, smart management will replace chequebook management in the NHL.”
The comeback season’s attendance figures are encouraging, he maintained, although thousands of seats have been empty for recent games in New Jersey and Washington. Baseball and basketball didn’t fare nearly as well at the gate after schedule disruptions as the NHL is doing, he said.
“Two weeks into the season we’re at 93 per cent capacity,” said Bettman. “That’s a five per cent increase over 2003-2004.”
Bettman said that what is happening in the NHL today “is a fulfilment of the vision we had going back a number of years.”
On the issue of visors, which has resurfaced following recent facial injuries suffered by Mats Sundin and Kris Draper, Bettman said the league wants to grandfather in mandatory use, but won’t do it without agreement from the NHL Players’ Association. Recent polls of players suggest that won’t happen.
Bettman downplayed poor attendance figures in some rinks before elaborating in his speech: “In places where there still are some empty seats, there are fewer empty seats than there were in the past,” he said. “But I didn’t expect we’d come back from the work stoppage to 100 per cent of capacity overnight, but the fact we’re up five per cent is spectacular.”

TITLE: Lyon, Liverpool, Chelsea Nail Champions League Victories
AUTHOR: By Trevor Huggins
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Holders Liverpool, Chelsea and Olympique Lyon set a course for the Champions League knockout stage but there was a scare for Real Madrid on Wednesday. Lyon, who opened their Group F campaign with a 3-0 drubbing of Real, look certain to qualify after reaching nine points from three games with a 2-1 win over Olympiakos Piraeus. 
Real moved up to second place on six points but were trailing 1-0 to Norwegian outsiders Rosenborg Trondheim in the second half before running out 4-1 winners. 
Premier League rivals Chelsea and Liverpool, on seven points apiece, are favourites to qualify in Group G after the English champions crushed Real Betis 4-0 at Stamford Bridge and the European champions edged Anderlecht 1-0 in Brussels. 
Big-spending Chelsea were the night’s most convincing winners after a wobbly start, with Jose Mourinho’s side ripping the Spaniards to shreds. 
Ivory Coast striker Didier Drogba steered home the first, Portugal defender Ricardo Carvalho pounced on a goalkeeping blunder to make it 2-0 before the break and England’s Joe Cole rifled in a superb third. 
Though Argentine substitute Hernan Crespo headed the fourth, Chelsea’s most impressive player was Ghanaian Michael Essien, utterly dominant in midfield. 
France striker Djibril Cisse scored Liverpool’s winner after 20 minutes, volleying home a Dietmar Hamann corner. 
However, they faced plenty of second-half pressure before handing Anderlecht a record 10th consecutive Champions League defeat and joining Chelsea with a four-point lead over Betis. 
Lyon looked to be cruising after Brazilian midfielder Juninho gave them an early lead with a trademark free kick, only for Pantelis Kafes to level in the 84th minute with a fine dipping shot. 
There was still time, however, for Juninho to set up Sidney Govou for Lyon’s winner from close range in the 89th minute. 
England captain David Beckham was the architect of a Real victory which put their campaign for a 10th European Cup back on track. 
Beckham, on sparkling club form this season, provided the crosses for both Woodgate and Helguera. Beckham rounded off his performance in the 82nd minute by bending a superb free kick round the Rosenborg wall.