SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times DATE: Issue #1117 (83), Friday, October 28, 2005 ************************************************************************** TITLE: Airlines Left Without Tickets by Bureaucracy AUTHOR: By Lyuba Pronina PUBLISHER: Staff Writer TEXT: MOSCOW — Travelers may soon be unable to book flights out of Russia because of a bureaucratic provision holding up blank airline tickets at the border. Some airlines have enough tickets to last them only two weeks, as customs holds up new stocks under a regulation, that requires airlines to receive government certification before importing tickets. The new regulation — which is intended to help monitor the import of valuable documents with security features such as water marks — includes airline tickets. Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov signed off on the decree in July, and it went into force on Oct. 1. “Airlines are running dry on tickets, and without them they cannot provide their service,” said Marek Pedersen, Russia and CIS manager for SAS Scandinavian airlines. Qatar Airways said it had enough tickets left to last two weeks, while Delta Air Lines reported having stocks for another two to three months. The regulation affects not only foreign carriers, but domestic airlines as well. “We have a considerable amount of tickets stranded at customs and can last only a few weeks,” said Aeroflot deputy general director Lev Koshlyakov. Irina Skibinskaya, a spokeswoman for the Federal Customs Service, said she was unaware of the problem. “But in any case it should not be addressed to us, as we have to comply with the law,” she said. Koshlyakov said that Aeroflot would appeal to the government to have the problem cleared up. “This problem came unexpectedly, and it requires an urgent solution. About 80 percent of tickets used by domestic airlines are printed abroad because the quality here is simply not acceptable,” he said. “It is ridiculous that a ticket has been made equal to stocks and bonds.” Pedersen, who heads the airline committee of the Association of European Businesses, said he had appealed to Fradkov and Transportation Minister Igor Levitin to strike plane tickets from the decree. Airline representatives said they believed that tickets fell into the category of valuable documents by mistake. “Tickets only become valuable documents when issued to passengers,” Pedersen said. Alexei Yepifanov, Qatar Airways sales and marketing manager for Russia, said that even if airlines tried to seek certification they would hit another snag: a requirement for all documents to be printed in Russian. Foreign airlines print their tickets in English and in the language of the country of origin. Konstantin Rubakhin, a spokesman for the Transportation Ministry, said that the ministry was preparing an appeal to the Economic Development and Trade Ministry to make amendments. In a world where e-tickets are ordered through the Internet, the entire issue of paper tickets might well seem irrelevant. But another piece of arcane legislation is holding domestic carriers back from joining the 21st century. The International Air Transport Association has set a 2007 deadline for the world’s airlines to switch completely to e-ticketing. However, Russian tax authorities are blocking e-tickets because their regulations require a paper coupon as proof of payment. Even users of private or corporate jets have to produce paper tickets for the tax man. TITLE: Ecologists Cry Foul Over Dam Deadline AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova PUBLISHER: Staff Writer TEXT: As government officials announced a funding, a confirmed deadline and a comprehensive schedule for the completion of the St. Petersburg Flood Protection Barrier Thursday, city’s environmentalists said the construction is an illegal and risky experiment with uncertain consequences. Boris Paikin, head of the Directorate of the Flood Protection Barrier Construction said work on the project, which received 1 billion rubles ($35 million) in funding from the federal budget this year, is going ahead at full steam, and looks set to meet the 2008 deadline set by President Vladimir Putin earlier this year. “Fifteen billion rubles are needed to complete the construction by 2008, and the government has already confirmed allocation of 11.5 billion rubles,” Paikin said at a news conference at the Interfax News Agency Thursday. “Next year, 2.4 billion rubles will be provided.” The construction of the Flood Protection Barrier has now been dragging on for 25 years. Work on the dam began in 1980 but construction was suspended in 1987 after a series of mass protests, with environmental activists saying it will cause catastrophic environmental damage to the Neva delta, and the Gulf of Finland which will be ultimately turned into a swamp. Construction was only resumed in 2003. “Of course, the infrastructure was destroyed, and we have to correct the works all the time to take into account new technologies,” Paikin said. “But now, there are only two years to go before the barrier will be completed. And there are no protests from environmentalists anymore.” Activists at the local headquarters of Greenpeace contacted Thursday, however, said the dam was still surrounded by an ocean of environmental problems. “To begin with, the construction is illegal,” said Dmitry Artamonov, head of the St. Petersburg branch of Greenpeace, citing the Russian law on environmental expert examinations, which stipulates that when construction is resumed following a suspension, a new environmental examination is required. “The construction is still using the outdated initial examination, which is no longer relevant.” Specialists from the Krylov Central Research Institute this week announced that they had discovered serious faults in the barrier’s filtration system. Paikin said the faults would be ironed out during the construction process. Environmentalist also say large quantities of construction waste are being discharged into the water, including toxins. Additionally, the dam has dramatically reduced natural flows, by as much as 80 percent according to some calculations, turning the Neva Bay from a self-filtering water reservoir into a storage tank, ecologists said. “The stagnation has caused ecocide, genetic changes and cancer in aquatic flora and fauna,” Artamonov said. Many locals have complained that they have lost their favorite beaches due to water stagnation caused by the dam. “Going to the beach has become impossible in what used to be popular resorts like Repino, Komarovo and Solnechnoe,” said Alexandra Morozova, who owns a dacha in Repino. “Smelly, stagnant waters make it a suffocating experience, and the beach is covered with huge quantities of rotting seaweed.” Part of the problem results from 25 percent of sewage and industrial waste in St. Petersburg being pumped directly into the Neva and the Finnish Gulf owing to a shortage in waste treatment facilities. “And that’s not including numerous illegal discharges,” Artamonov said. “The construction of the dam will only be possible when the city is capable of cleaning up all its waste.” Next month Paikin leaves his post to be succeeded by Vladimir Kogan, co-owner of the St. Petersburg’s Bank For Industry And Construction. Paikin said no alternatives to Kogan were considered. “He is an ideal candidate for the job,” Paikin said. “He is such an obvious choice that there was no need for any competition.” In 2002 European Bank for Research and Development funded an international research and analysis project on economic and flood vulnerability, which included a section on St. Petersburg. Located only 3 meters to 4 meters above sea level, St. Petersburg is extremely vulnerable to regular flooding, and there are indications that the flood frequency is increasing, the report says. Forty-six floods have occurred since 1980. An economic analysis included in the report accounts the total annual average damage owing to flooding is nearly $70 million. The worst floods in the history of St.Petersburg occurred in 1824 and 1924, when the flood waters from the Gulf of Finland and Neva Bay flowed down the streets and canals of the city to damage roads, bridges, embankments and flood low-lying buildings in the city center. If it were to be repeated, such a flood would destroy the metro system, lead to an overflow in sewage facilities and the collapse of public infrastructure, the report said. TITLE: English Migration Cards To Return AUTHOR: By Stephen Boykewich PUBLISHER: Staff Writer TEXT: MOSCOW — The Russian-only migration cards that have caused chaos on incoming flights in recent weeks will be replaced with the old dual-language version, the Federal Migration Service said Wednesday. “It has been decided to use the old dual-language cards until the end of the year,” migration service assistant director Konstantin Poltoranin said by telephone Wednesday. The migration service delivered Russian-only cards to airlines and border control points at the end of September without explanation, replacing ones that were printed in both English and Russian. American and European business organizations lobbied hard for a return to the dual-language cards as complaints from their members poured in. “There was much consternation on having to fill out cards in a language that many American businessmen don’t read,” said Andrew Somers, president of the American Chamber of Commerce. Foreign Investment Advisory Council members raised the issue with Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref and Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov during the FIAC’s Oct. 17 plenary session. Gref was “completely surprised” by news of the change and vowed to intervene, said Andreas Romanos, head of the Association of European Businesses. Similar lobbying efforts helped overturn a recent migration service rule on the registration of foreign travelers, and a separate effort may soon lead to the softening of a rule requiring foreign workers to be tested for leprosy and several other diseases, Somers said. Recent arrivals to Russia have described confusion aboard planes and delays at the border as non-Russian speakers have struggled with the single-language cards. “The stewardesses were apologizing as they handed out the cards to people who didn’t know Russian,” said Alex Settles, a visiting scholar at the Higher School of Economics, who flew into Moscow from Paris on Oct. 1. “You could tell they knew it was going to be a problem.” Other passengers reported longer than usual lines at passport control as border officials corrected mistakes on the cards. “The woman next to me had written ‘Marriott Hotel’ under grazhdanstvo,” or citizenship, said Shaun Walker, a journalist who flew to Moscow from Baku on Saturday. “Obviously, the Aeroflot staff were offering no help,” Walker said. Aeroflot spokeswoman Irina Danenberg insisted that the airline was offering assistance to any passenger who needed it. “Excuse me, but people coming into the United States have the same problem,” Danenberg said. “Not everyone speaks English, you know.” Airlines were caught off guard by the change, which came without any official announcement. Joe Santore, Delta Airlines’ station manager at Sheremetyevo Airport, said the Russian-only cards “just appeared one day” without explanation in a shipment from the Federal Migration Service. Brand-new cards will be introduced next year “that will not present inconveniences for foreign citizens filling them out,” Poltoranin said. The migration service’s reversal follows another recent change of heart over a rule that would have required foreigners who have multi-entry visas to renew their registration every time that they entered the country. The requirement was eliminated in September after complaints by the American Chamber of Commerce and the Association of European Businesses. Somers said he had also made headway on a recent rule requiring foreigners to be tested for leprosy, syphilis, and four other diseases before receiving work permits. The migration service is negotiating a possible relaxation of the rule with health authorities, at least for travelers from Western countries, Somers said. “The government has recognized that there’s very little leprosy in the U.S.,” he said. Poltoranin confirmed that the rule was being reconsidered and might be changed at the beginning of 2006. In the meantime, airline representatives insisted they had the migration card situation under control. Just to be on the safe side, Delta is preparing English translations of the cards to put on all its Russian flights, and the company’s bilingual cabin attendants are being “very proactive” in helping non-Russian speaking passengers, Santore said. He also said he had seen passengers on other airlines being proactive themselves. “Some of them are offered migration cards and they open their briefcases and have a whole stack of the old dual-language ones,” Santore said. Somers was satisfied with what he said was a “very intelligent, reasonable” decision on the part of the migration service. However, he said that he did not expect smooth sailing for foreign travelers to Russia from now on. “Based on the track record, we can’t anticipate what the problems will be, but they’re sure to come,” he said. TITLE: Minister Slams Police on Crime Statistics AUTHOR: By Carl Schreck PUBLISHER: Staff Writer TEXT: The state of affairs at police stations across Russia is “catastrophic” with rank-and-file officers widely corrupted and detectives whitewashing statistics, Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev said Wednesday. Speaking in the Kurgan region town of Shadrinsk, on a tour of police stations in central and eastern regions, Nurgaliyev said Wednesday that more than 29,000 crimes and violations had been committed by police officers from January through September, a 41 percent increase on the same period last year. “The number of violations among police officers is growing,” Nurgaliyev said, RIA-Novosti reported. “These are just the violations that have been uncovered.” Nurgaliyev’s criticism was reserved primarily for police precincts in several regions that he said he decided to visit because he had little trust in reports he had received from senior officers. Nurgaliyev called police work at the district and small-town level “catastrophic” and “rife with violations” in tracking and registering crimes, Russian media reported Thursday. Nurgaliyev said that the problem of police officers boosting crime-solving rates by manipulating statistics, a practice known in police jargon as “chopping sticks,” was prevalent nationwide. TITLE: Accidents Soar As Snow Jams City PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times TEXT: The average number of road accidents doubled and traffic jams blocked up all the bridges in town on Wednesday as winter arrived in St. Petersburg catching the local authorities unawares. Heavy snowfall began shortly after 8 a.m., and by noon 373 accidents had been registered. The number of accidents was further increased by the unexpectedly low temperatures on the preceding night which brought black ice to the city’s roads. By the end of Wednesday, the total number of traffic accidents had passed 800, many involving three or more vehicles. Eight cars were involved in the largest which took place on Vasilievsky Island. One fatality was reported. TITLE: Academy To End Animal Testing AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova PUBLISHER: Staff Writer TEXT: The St. Petersburg Veterinary Academy this week committed itself to bringing an end to vivisection for educational purposes, becoming the first university in Russia to do so. Yelena Maruyeva, head of the Moscow-based Vita center which works to protect animal rights, said thousands of animals are killed annually by every veterinary institute in Russia for teaching purposes, despite alternative methods being used widely in developed countries. Far more are killed in research on new drugs or cosmetic products. “The Draize Rabbit Eye Test, which is horrendously stressful for the animal, is still being used in the cosmetics industry to test skin irritation but there is a reliable alternative method that uses an embryonated chicken egg, which has a very similar structure,” Maruyeva said. “Imagine a rabbit with its head tightly fixed, with drops of new cosmetic products being tested on its eye — this is pure torture but it can be replaced perfectly adequately by a reliable non-animal technique,” she said. “Students can use models, computer programs or simulators to practice,” said Nick Jukes, head of Interniche (the International Network for Human Education), a UK-based non-profit non-governmental organization represented in over forty countries. Jukes said there are currently over 500 different techniques that can be used in teaching students that don’t involve killing animals, such as the use of models. “Models help students to gain confidence when learning basic operations such as giving injections. It’s much more stressful to have to carry on sticking a needle into a live animal until it dies.” Where real animals are essential, Interniche recommends the use of animals that have died of natural causes. “In every city it’s always possible to find enough animals which have died naturally or have been euthanised,” Jukes said. “As a final step in training, we suggest sending students to veterinary clinics to assist experienced specialists.” Veterinary practices are often brutal in Russia. Piglets, for example, are castrated — so that they fatten up faster — without anesthetics, Maruyeva said. The entire veterinary system in the country needs an overhaul, she argued. “Veterinarians in Russia are mainly trained to treat farm animals such as cows, pigs or poultry, which are traditionally viewed as producers of milk, eggs, poultry or meat, rather than as sensitive living creatures,” Maruyeva explained. “In fur farms, animals are euthanised in a merciless way by using drugs to cause suffocation and paralysis. Other methods include gas poisoning or running a deadly dose of electricity through animals’ anal orifices,” she said. Jukes said alternative methods have become the norm in most universities in developed countries. He pointed out that Ukraine embraced the new concept seven years ago, while several universities in Belarus tried the methods out three years ago. Nevertheless, Russian universities have been slow to change over to new approaches, often for financial, rather than ethical reasons. “In our department, computer simulators are especially precious: many drugs aren’t immediately available for training purposes or it’s too expensive to get them in large enough quantities for regular teaching,” explains Vladimir Sokolov, head of the pharmacology department of the St. Petersburg Veterinary Academy. Sokolov said the introduction of computers has sparked the interest of students. “The more enthusiasm they show, the better they learn the subject,” he said. “We hope that other universities will follow our example soon.” In Western Europe, most universities were forced to introduce alternative methods by frequent protests from students who pleeded their right not to kill animals in the practice of their professional duties. Birgit Vollm, a graduate of the University of Frankfurt and the University of Witten/Herdecke in Germany, took the Frankfurt university to court in 1988 after failing to reach an agreement with her professors. She won the case and another that followed several years later. “The court gave more weight to my freedom of conscience than to a professor’s freedom of teaching,” Vollm wrote in a report published on the Interniche website. “I decided to continue my studies at another university where no animal experiments and dissections are done. I completed my studies and qualified at the University of Witten/Herdecke. But the lawsuit has not been in vain because it built the foundations for many other lawsuits in Germany,” she wrote. This year, Interniche is offering a $20,000 grant to Russian universities willing to switch to alternative methods. Applications have to be submitted before Nov. 25. TITLE: Norway Slaps Fines On Russian Vessels PUBLISHER: The Associated Press TEXT: OSLO — Norway issued fines Wednesday of 2.15 million kroner ($330,000) against the owners of two Russian ships detained for fishing violations in the Barents Sea. The Kapitan Gorbachev and Dmitry Pokramovich were intercepted off the Svalbard islands on Monday after failing to properly notify Norwegian authorities of their activities, officials said. TITLE: Killer Sentenced to 8 Years, Swiss Prosecutor May Appeal AUTHOR: By Pilar Wolfsteller PUBLISHER: Reuters TEXT: ZURICH — A Swiss court jailed a North Ossetian man for eight years on Wednesday for the premeditated killing of an air traffic controller he held responsible for a crash that killed his family. Vitaly Kaloyev’s wife and two children were killed when a DHL cargo plane and a Bashkirian Airlines passenger jet collided in Swiss-controlled airspace on July 1, 2002. By hiring a private detective, Kaloyev tracked down Danish national Peter Nielsen, the only air traffic controller on duty at the time of the crash, and confronted him at his home near Zurich airport, stabbing him to death in front of his wife and three children. Under Swiss law, premeditated killing ranks between murder and manslaughter and carries a maximum sentence of 20 years. He has already served more than 600 days in custody in Switzerland. “This is an extremely mild sentence, and I will seriously consider appealing. I cannot be content with eight years,” said Zurich’s chief prosecutor. He had wanted 12 years. “He killed his unknowing and defenseless victim with great brutality in a horrible way,” the judge said. Dressed in black, the native of North Ossetia refused to stand for the ruling and showed no reaction to the verdict. As he left the courtroom, he turned to smile and wave at his supporters, including his brother Yury and North Ossetian leader Taimuraz Mamsurov. Nielsen’s father and sister were in court but declined to comment on the ruling. Kaloyev’s defense team is likely to launch an appeal, said Genrikh Padva, whose law firm took part in Kaloyev’s defense. “We were counting on the punishment being less severe, as he came to this crime through such heavy torment,” Interfax quoted Padva as saying. Russia plans to ask Switzerland to hand Kaloyev, 48, over to Russia to serve his prison term there, Interfax quoted a Justice Ministry official as saying Wednesday. On Tuesday, a haggard-looking Kaloyev had told the court that since the deaths of his wife and children, aged 10 and 4, he had lost the will to live. He said repeatedly he had not intended to kill anyone, saying all he wanted was an apology. He said he tried to show Nielsen photographs of his children, but Nielsen rejected the gesture. “I saw black, and it was as if the bodies of my children turned in their grave,” Kaloyev said. The midair collision over the German village of Uberlingen, close to the Swiss border, killed 69 people, mostly children, traveling on a Bashkirian Airlines flight from Moscow to Barcelona. Two DHL pilots also died. Nielsen, who was 36 when he died, had been alerted to the intersecting flight paths just 44 seconds before the crash. He told the pilot of the Russian Tu-154 to descend to avoid a collision, even though early-warning instruments aboard the plane had told the pilots to climb. The DHL Boeing 757’s automatic anti-collision system also instructed the pilots to descend to the same level, where the Boeing’s tail fin sliced open the passenger jet. Both aircraft disappeared from radar screens 15 seconds later. TITLE: Growth Lets Lexus Lead Russian Expansion AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna PUBLISHER: Staff Writer TEXT: The car company Toyota Motor will dramatically increase the number of its Lexus luxury brand dealerships in Russia, expecting stable growth in sales over the coming years, the company president said Wednesday. Next year the company plans to introduce six new showrooms, said Tomoaki Nisitani, president of Toyota Motor, the company that represents Toyota Motor Corp. in Russia. The company first appeared in Russia in 2002. There are currently only four Lexus dealers operating in Russia - two in Moscow and two in St. Petersburg. By October of this year Toyota Motor had sold 4,000 Lexus brand cars in Russia – a 50 percent increase on the same period last year. Nisitani hopes to sell a total of 5,000 by the end of the year and expects further sales growth in 2006. “Lexus has huge potential in Russia,” Nisitani said. A car industry expert saw Toyota Motor’s sales plans as realistic. “I think the company carefully estimated its capabilities. Lexus market performance this year apparently proved the sales forecast correct,” said Alexander Bragin, consumer industrial products group leader at Deloitte. Although Toyota Motor is staking a growth in sales on its Lexus RX400h and Lexus GS430 models, introduced in Russia last year, it has also just launched the new Lexus IS250 – the seventh Lexus model to be sold in Russia. It was recently previewed at St. Petersburg’s car exhibition “Auto + Automekhanika,” and is set to go on sale at the start of next year. Nevertheless, as plans for new Lexus dealerships to be based in Moscow, Samara, and Yekaterinburg take shape, existing showrooms are at full capacity. By way of comparison, Ford Motor Company increased the number of Jaguar dealers in Russia from three to seven over the last year, while its sales forecast for 2005 is only 500 cars, Sergei Gurdzhian, marketing manager of Jaguar Land Rover Russia said earlier this year. That is ten times less than for the Lexus. “Expansion of sales offices is a good sign from the customers’ point of view,” Bragin said. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, sales of new foreign models exceeded $9 billion last year, representing more than half of total sales. From 2003 the market grew 35 percent in money terms while the total number of cars sold increased by only seven percent, up to 1.6 million cars. “Consumer interest is growing in more expensive and higher-quality cars, with imported brands the primary beneficiaries,” according to the 2004 global financial review of the car industry carried out by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Considering the stable demand for foreign cars in Russia, any expansion of luxury car dealers in Russia could be limited, among other factors, by the “company’s ability to control dealers, keep up with demand, and maintain a single standard of quality. Some companies effectively manage more than 10 dealers and fail to control their representatives,” Bragin said. TITLE: GM Motors Towards Hydrogen-Powered Cars AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna PUBLISHER: Staff Writer TEXT: By 2010 General Motors, the world’s largest car manufacturer, has promised to develop economically viable models of a hydrogen-powered car, the company announced Wednesday at an exhibition in St. Petersburg. Although experts remain pessimistic, the company’s managers said that a new Research and Development office opened this week in Moscow would help them make advances in developing energy-saving and advanced materials. The efficiency of petroleum-based internal combustion engines could be improved by about 20 percent, but the future belongs to hydrogen fuel cars, said Alan Taub, executive director for R&D at General Motors. Industry experts expressed skepticism, however, about the feasibility of such vehicles. “There is no simple and economic way to produce hydrogen. Hydrogen is not found free in nature, and to produce it from water you need at least as much energy as it can give back when it is used,” said Gianguido Piani, an independent expert on the power industry. Apart from the unsolved problem of how to store hydrogen, “new infrastructure to distribute hydrogen as fuel would probably cost at least as much as the current gas or oil transport and distribution infrastructure,” Piani said. Among more viable petrol and diesel substitutes he named ethanol and bio-diesel. “Ethanol is already used in Brazil and the USA. Bio-diesel is mostly used in central Europe,” Piani explained. He went on to say that the EU has already planned a directive stating that until 2010 about 5.75 percent of all fuels for transportation used in Europe must be of vegetable origin. Production costs for vegetable fuels are twice as high as for gasoline or diesel, but become relatively less important when oil prices go up. “Vegetable fuels do not pollute the environment, are biodegradable, have no net CO2 emissions and can be used on existing engines with minor modifications. Their yield in terms of mileage is 5-10% less than for fuels of fossil origin,” Piani said. Nevertheless, GM hopes to contribute to technological advancement, which is one of the main goals for “serious automotive companies,” said Warren Browne, CEO of General Motors CIS. At the moment GM is the only foreign carmaker running research and development operations in Russia. According to Ralf Wagener, managing partner for Ernst & Young in St. Petersburg, “this idea of opening a research and development center is likely to be followed by other car and component manufacturers in the St-Petersburg region, given Toyota, Ford and Scania production.” “Thus the region is becoming a new automotive cluster in Russia, and given the high intellectual potential of Russian scientists it will play a significant role in researching and implementing environmental friendly technologies,” Wagener said. At a press briefing Vladimir Blank, chairman of the city committee for economic development, industrial policy and trade, emphasized the positive effects which could result from scientific and technological cooperation between large foreign companies, Russian authorities and scientific centers. Wagener saw the GM initiative as just another event proving that the car industry “is one of the powerhouses of the Russian economy attracting growing interest from foreign investors.” TITLE: Ford Bosses Drive Past Strike Fears PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times TEXT: Despite conflict and the continuing threat of strike, company managers at Russia’s only Ford plant said they will nevertheless keep to next year’s predicted rates of production and sales. “We do not see the threat of a strike,” said Teo Shright, general director of Ford Motor Co. in Russia, adding that the company has agreed to satisfy some of the workers demands for wage increases. In mid October workers of the Vsevolozhsk-based Ford plant demanded a 30 percent increase in wages and the introduction of insurance packages, and threatened to strike. Within several months the company will introduce a new wage calculation system based on a tariff scale. A special commission was also created to allocate social insurance funds, Shright said. He confirmed that the company will meet the announced production figures of 60,000 cars in 2006. Earlier this year Ford announced an investment of $30 million to expand its production facilities and introduce the new Ford Focus II model at its Vsevolozhsk plant in Leningrad Oblast. “Ford Focus is our top priority. This year we are planning to produce 36,000 cars including 25,000 of the new Ford Focus II,” said Shright. New Ford Focus models have already proved popular with customers. Orders for the Ford Focus II Coupe already amount to 10 percent of the plant’s total, though the production line was launched only in August, which is a “good start for the new model,” according to Irina Sharovatova, marketing director of Ford Motor Russia. “All models produced by the Vsevolozhsk plant are in demand since they are in a popular price range,” said Alexander Bragin, consumer industrial products group leader at Deloitte. Last year Ford produced about 29,000 cars on the Vsevolozhsk plant, selling a total of 39,241 cars in Russia. In St. Petersburg, where Ford occupies 12.7 percent of the market, “we want to expand our market share to 15 percent,” said Sergei Bogdanov, vice-president of Ford Motor in Russia. TITLE: Mitvol Threatens LG’s Moscow Plant AUTHOR: By Conor Humphries PUBLISHER: Staff Writer TEXT: Foreign investors building factories in the Moscow region have become the latest target for Oleg Mitvol, a former businessman turned environmental crusader. Motivated by environmental concerns, Mitvol’s actions threaten the construction of a $100 million factory being built by South Korea’s LG Electronics, as well as the operations of Dutch-Italian confectioner Perfetti Van Melle. “They seem to think that the laws don’t apply to them. We want to show that in Russia the laws apply to everyone,” Mitvol said by telephone on Wednesday. Mitvol is deputy head of the Federal Service for the Inspection of Natural Resources Use. Mitvol argues LG started the construction of its plant — which is to manufacture appliances such as televisions and washing machines — before ordering the required ecological study. “Without a state ecological study, you can’t build. And they don’t have an ecological study,” he said of LG’s plant in the Ruzsky area of the Moscow region. Perfetti Van Melle, which makes brands such as Mentos and Fruittella, is under fire for allegedly illegally clearing 9 hectares of trees at its site in the Istrina area of the Moscow region. In LG’s case, Mitvol’s agency first discovered the paperwork discrepancies in an inspection on Sept. 7, he said. After missing a Sept. 21 deadline to come up with the required documents, Mitvol’s organization then decided to refer the matter to the Interior Ministry, which could stop construction of the factory, due to be completed in spring 2006. LG does not have the environmental study yet, said Mia Satar, an adviser to the CEO of LG Russia. However, the study is being carried out, he added, with the relevant documents having been sent to the Federal Service for the Inspection of Natural Resources Use in the Moscow region over a month ago. “The ecological study is underway,” he said, adding that like many factory projects in the Moscow region, construction was going on in parallel to the bureaucratic process. Generally, a positive state environmental study is required to secure a construction permit, said David Broderson of Moscow real estate firm Noble Gibbons. But it is possible the company had previously come to an agreement with the Moscow region to allow construction due to the size of the investment, Broderson added. Meanwhile, Mitvol’s agency asked the Interior Ministry three months ago to initiate criminal proceedings against Perfetti Van Melle, Mitvol said, adding that he was not currently aware of what stage the process was at. Perfetti Van Melle was unavailable to comment on the case. Former businessman Mitvol has attracted huge attention since taking up his post at the Natural Resources Ministry in the summer of 2004 by targeting what he sees as ecological violations in high-profile places. TITLE: Kudrin Warns of Market Crash AUTHOR: By Gleb Bryanski PUBLISHER: Reuters TEXT: Inflows of foreign capital could drive up the ruble and even trigger a market crash after currency controls are lifted in 2007 unless inflation is tamed, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said Wednesday. “With current high inflation rates, we are going to suck in speculative capital like a vacuum cleaner. With the slightest fall in oil prices, this money could send Russian markets into a spin,” Alexei Kudrin told a panel discussion in Moscow. In 2007 Russia will lift reserve requirements on capital account transactions that serve as a barrier for short-term money inflows. With interest rates on short-term government paper at around 7 percent and a strengthening currency, Russia may become a magnet for international “hot money” flows, Kudrin said. “Yields [on government T-bills] can go up to 8 to 9 percent, there are no such yields elsewhere in world markets,” Kudrin said. Kudrin also said sterilizing potentially inflationary inflows, by diverting windfall earnings from oil exports into a stabilization fund, was a high priority. “Our main task is to reduce inflation by 2007-08 and not to spend [money from] the stabilization fund, on the understanding that this is one of the main instruments for fine-tuning Russian monetary policy,” Kudrin said. The government aims to reduce inflation, expected to exceed a government target of 11 percent this year, to 7 to 8.5 percent in 2006 and to limit real effective appreciation of the ruble to 4 percent, down from a projected 9 percent in 2005. The government has used a nominal exchange rate of the ruble at around 28.6 to the dollar in its budget calculations for the next three years. “High inflation rates and nominal appreciation of the ruble are a double evil,” Kudrin said. The rise of the ruble is undermining Russia’s enfeebled industrial base, making it less competitive and simultaneously boosting imports. Russian industry representatives said ruble appreciation was outpacing growth. “Our economy did not earn this money, it won it in a lottery,” Alexander Livshits, a deputy CEO of the world No.3 aluminum producer RusAl and a former finance minister, told the panel discussion. “Give us [an exchange rate of] 30 rubles to the dollar and we will outcompete anyone,” he said. TITLE: IN BRIEF TEXT: GDP Rises 6.6 percent MOSCOW (Reuters) — Russia’s gross domestic product grew by 6.6 percent in September compared to the same month in 2004, and was up 5.9 percent in the first 9 months of the year, a senior Economic Development and Trade Ministry official said Wednesday. The ministry also revised its forecast for October consumer price inflation to 0.7 percent from 0.6 percent after consumer prices rose 0.3 percent last month, said Andrei Klepach, head of the ministry’s economic forecasting department. Aluminum in the Can ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — Russian Aluminium, the world’s third-largest aluminum producer, spent $23 million increasing production capacity at is for beverage can factory in the Leningrad oblast. The ROSTAR-Vsevolzhsk plant can now make an extra 850 million cans a year, bringing production capacity at Rusal’s two factories in the region to 3 billion cans a year, the company said in an e-mailed statement. Its customers include Heineken Holding NV. Whirlpool Operations MOSCOW(Bloomberg)—Whirlpool, the world’s second-biggest appliance maker, plans to start making refrigerators and washing machines in Russia at a plant owned by Turkey’s Vestel Elektronik Sanayi ve Ticaret, Vedomosti said, citing Natalya Berezovskaya, head of Whirlpool’s Moscow office. Whirlpool is in talks about using part of the factory so it can expand sales in Russia, the newspaper said. Whirlpool wants to produce around 50,000 to 60,000 units per year at the plant, the newspaper said, citing an unidentified representative of a foreign electronics maker in Russia. BAT Flies In Russia LONDON (Bloomberg) — British American Tobacco, the world’s second largest cigarette maker, said Thursday that more sales in countries such as Russia have helped beat growth expectations. The number of cigarettes sold by BAT under its four main brands rose 9 percent in the year’s first nine months, led by growth of 17 percent at Kent in Russia and Romania and 23 percent for Pall Mall. TITLE: An Oil-Rich Test for Bush AUTHOR: By Jackson Diehl TEXT: In the past two weeks, U.S. President George W. Bush’s administration has launched a concerted attempt to translate its pro-democracy rhetoric into action in two little-known Eurasian countries whose importance is about to soar. Within six weeks, it could pull off a political feat that would electrify a region and energize the president’s freedom doctrine. Or it could find itself with yet another messy and possibly dangerous foreign policy dilemma. The test comes in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, two former republics of the Soviet Union that hold all of the early 21st century’s big cards: huge unexploited oil riches; a majority Muslim population and a location between Russia, China, Iran and Afghanistan. Thanks to large investments by Western oil companies, and in Azerbaijan’s case a newly completed pipeline, both are about to become very, very rich. In a few years, their names will be as familiar to Western energy consumers as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Both are also ruled by autocrats who would like to follow the Persian Gulf states’ example and forge a strategic partnership with the United States. And both of those strongmen have scheduled elections: Azerbaijan for parliament on Nov. 6 and Kazakhstan for president on Dec. 4. The Bush administration could have ignored those events; both countries, after all, have been staging fraudulent votes for years, just like the friendly autocrats of the Middle East. Instead, Bush chose to engage. Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan got a letter from the U.S. president and a visit from a senior State Department official last week. Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan was visited by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice the week before. The messages to them were almost exactly the same: Hold a free and fair election, and you can “elevate our countries’ relations to a new strategic level.” That could mean a lot — not just state visits to Washington for Nazarbayev and Aliyev (who covets one), but also closer military ties, help in solving problems (such as an unresolved war between Azerbaijan and Armenia), and status as primary U.S. partners in the Caucasus and Central Asia. It could also send a powerful message to several neighbors — such as Uzbekistan, whose strongman just broke off his “strategic partnership” with the Bush administration rather than go along with demands for liberalization. Both Aliyev and Nazarbayev say they are game; both have taken a few steps toward complying. Aliyev has given his parliamentary opponents some time on state television, while Nazarbayev allowed his principal challenger to legally register and get on the ballot. But here’s the problem: The Bush administration has told the two presidents that the arbiter of whether their elections are fair will be the observer missions of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. And the OSCE reps in both countries warned last week that the governments were failing the test. Little wonder. Nazarbayev has been rounding up youth group leaders and tightening controls on the media, while Aliyev sealed off the international airport last week to prevent the return of one of his principal rivals and then arrested or fired several members of his Cabinet on charges of plotting a coup. The OSCE in Azerbaijan denounced the “increasing number of violent incidents, the use of excessive and unjustified force against demonstrators, as well as questionable detentions and mass arrests.” In Kazakhstan, its mission chief declared that “at present, from our point of view, the [OSCE] recommendations have not been met.” Nazarbayev and Aliyev may want to please Bush, but they are also terrified that they will be victims of a “color revolution,” the popular pro-democracy revolts that have ousted authoritarian regimes in three other former Soviet states in the past two years, in each case after an election the OSCE called unfair. Their opponents are openly modeling themselves after the youth groups and political coalitions that called people to the streets of Tbilisi and Kiev. Their Russian friends, trying to restore Moscow’s influence, are suggesting that Washington’s real goal is another revolution. When he held a press conference in Azerbaijan last week, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried was immediately asked if he was not “the gray cardinal of the color revolutions.” In fact, the last thing the U.S. administration wants right now is turmoil in another Muslim oil state. It is hoping that a combination of proffered carrots and fear of the consequences of fraud will cause Aliyev and Nazarbayev to reform just enough that they can be embraced as democratic allies. But time is running out quickly; what if one or both of the regimes are flunked by the OSCE? “You have to mean what you say, which means we have to be prepared to be disappointed,” one official told me. And if people then take to the streets to call for democracy, as they have elsewhere? For now, the administration isn’t saying what it will do then. Jackson Diehl is a columnist at The Washington Post, where this comment first appeared. TITLE: Idols of the Intelligentsia AUTHOR: By Alexei Pankin TEXT: Alexander Yakovlev, the Politburo member in charge of ideology who has been called the architect of perestroika, died last week. One month earlier to the day, the former editor of the newspaper Moskovskiye Novosti, Yegor Yakovlev, passed away. Yegor Yakovlev was known as the foreman of perestroika. In the interim, Moskovskiye Novosti was sold for the third time in the past two years. The new owner made it immediately clear that he regarded the newspaper as a status symbol, and that he could just as well have bought an elephant or a dirigible and stuck his name on them in order to generate a little publicity. Meanwhile, former Yukos owner Mikhail Khodorkovsky was transported to a penal colony in the distant Chita region where he will serve out his eight-year sentence, and oligarch Roman Abramovich was sworn in for a new five-year term as governor of the Chukotka autonomous district in the Far East. A number of papers opined that Abramovich had been sentenced to another five-year hitch up north. There is a symbolic connection among these seemingly disparate events. It has frequently been remarked in the days since Alexander Yakovlev’s passing that without him Mikhail Gorbachev would have been far less committed to the cause of democracy; while without Gorbachev, Yakovlev would never have broken into politics in the first place. Much the same could be said about the relationship between the two Yakovlevs. If not for Alexander, Yegor would never have become editor of Moskovskiye Novosti or lasted so long in the job. Yegor, in turn, consistently pushed Alexander in the direction of glasnost and freedom. If not for Yegor, Moskovskiye Novosti, created to serve Soviet foreign policy propaganda needs, would never have emerged as the progressive voice of perestroika. And the newspaper would never have become a brand name recognized around the world. As a reward for Yegor Yakovlev’s service in the cause of democracy, Moskovskiye Novosti was granted a luxurious building on Pushkin Square, in one of Moscow’s most expensive neighborhoods. For years the newspaper rented out portions of the building, and the financial independence that this afforded allowed Moskovskiye Novosti to keep its distance from both the regime and the oligarchs. After acquiring a controlling stake, the president of the company respected the newspaper’s editorial independence. As he expanded and diversified his business holidings, however, he began to consider his support of the newspaper a form of philanthropy, and finally a burden. Two years ago, he sold the Moskovskiye Novosti “brand” to Leonid Nevzlin and Khodorkovsky, but kept the building for himself. Under its new ownership, Moskovskiye Novosti degenerated into a Yukos propaganda rag. This position may have matched the convictions of the editorial staff, but it didn’t make for terribly appealing reading. Soon infighting split the editorial staff, and Nevzlin sold the paper to a Ukrainian businessman, who resold it a few months later without even appointing a new editor. Khodorkovsky, meanwhile, found himself interned at a labor camp in a uranium-polluted area near the Chinese border. What does he have in common with Abramovich, whom President Vladimir Putin has once again dispatched to the frozen north as governor of Chukotka? They both made their fortunes in identical fashion. Both were part of the group close to former President Boris Yeltsin to which he sold the country’s national resources for a song back in the mid-1990s. What’s the difference between the two men? Khodorkovsky got the idea that he was a free man who could dispose of his newfound riches as he saw fit, for which he was duly punished. Abramovich behaved properly and was rewarded when the state paid him $13 billion to buy back what it had given him for next to nothing 10 years before. Did all this money make Abramovich a free and happy man? The inauguration ceremony at which he was sworn in as governor of Chukotka looked more like a funeral. Clearly the regime can make even a billionaire an offer he can’t refuse. Then again, thousands of Chukchi worship Abramovich like a god. Is this what Alexander and Yegor Yakovlev dreamed of 20 years ago? Alexei Pankin is opinion page editor at Izvestia. TITLE: Satire revisited AUTHOR: By Kevin O’Flynn PUBLISHER: Staff Writer TEXT: What would you do with Ksenia Sobchak’s organs? The new satirical magazine Krokodil has a suggestion for the bits of the It Girl of today. First comes praise: Sobchak fulfills an important state function, one of the first articles in the magazine asserts, calling her “the bearer of the nation’s genetic code, the symbol of its dreams, the real image of the flowering and brains of the riches of Russia.” Then the solution: “When troubles fall on the motherland, Ksenia Sobchak’s organs can be sold off, which will undoubtedly preserve the beauty of the Russian person in the world and help ease the nation’s terrible economic problems.” The praise then continues discussing the It Girl’s finer parts, from her pink little ears to her little pink brain. Sobchak, the wealthy socialite host of the “Dom-2” reality show, is a symbol of all the things that editor Sergei Mostovshchikov hates about today’s society. His new magazine is a revival of an old Soviet satirical journal that probably would have hated Sobchak too. The original Krokodil, or Crocodile, was founded in 1922, a few years after the Revolution. It was a time when dozens of satirical publications bloomed milling for an eager audience. But the majority were shut down as censorship took root, with only Krokodil surviving into later years. It was a satirical magazine but its ultimate aim was to support Soviet society. Its cartoons and articles attacked what the government considered social ills. That didn’t mean its satire was toothless. Soviet cartoonists attacked familiar topics: the gabbing of committees, the pompousness of local leaders, the groveling before officials and even bribery and corruption. Many of the country’s foremost writers — including Vladimir Mayakovsky and Sergei Dovlatov — contributed to Krokodil at one time or another. This month, Krokodil was revived after a lingering death in post-Soviet times. Based in Moscow, its office is down the corridor from the office of Novaya Gazeta, the biweekly paper that has opposition, if not satire, running through its veins. The building, which belongs to Moskovskaya Pravda printers, is one of those old Soviet buildings with long, dusty corridors and signs on the walls with cartoons on how best to put out a fire. The door to the Krokodil office, a small room for the four full-time Staff Writers, is covered in a green, scaly piece of what looks like crocodile-skin wallpaper. During a recent interview in the office, Mostovshchikov defined the new Krokodil in terms of what it stands against. “It is anti-society and against the morals of today’s society,” he said between cigarette puffs. The editor listed face control, glossy magazines and Chechnya’s controversial deputy prime minister as some of the new ills facing Russian society. “If a person doubts that Ramzan Kadyrov is a Hero of Russia, then he is our reader,” he said. Also on the editor’s hit list is the ubiquitous (some would say obnoxious) television host Vladimir Solovyov. “That’s the kind of guy who you would never let into your house,” Mostovshchikov said. In look and feel, the magazine is different from any other. Despite having the same price as a glossy, a hefty 149 rubles, it comes wrapped in a brown paper envelope reminiscent of an old Soviet post envelope — or a wino’s drink bag. It is printed on old Soviet-style paper that took the publishers ages to find, Mostovshchikov said. “We searched for months,” he recalled. They eventually found it in a town in the Vologda region where it was being used to make school books. The first issue of the magazine has only one ad and that, for a tourist company offering vacations in the Carpathia region of western Ukraine, could be taken for a joke. Across the envelope of the first issue is the large headline “There are two days of oil left. Page 9.” Inside is a 48-page magazine whose cover features a bear with very sharp teeth dancing with a hunter — the magazine with its audience — and a few bay leaves thrown in as a present. The issue, with a limited run of 20,000 and initially limited to sale in Pyatyorochka supermarkets and BP gas stations in Moscow, has been swept off the shelves thanks to its sharp humor, cartoons and undisguised contempt for some of the favorite bugbears of modern Russia. Mostovshchikov wants to satirize the things that no one else satirizes. And there are surely no other publications that would publish a cartoon of Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev with a bomb on his back, bumbling along in a pastiche of the Soviet version of Winnie the Pooh. One whole page of cartoons has the title “How the Ukrainians are Dangerous.” It begins in the first frame with a devilish scene of eggs hatching on a bleak hillside, and claws or perhaps tails poking through the shells. The caption underneath says, “There are 50 million of them.” Another picture shows Darth Vader walking into a room full of provincial 19th-century Russians. The caption reads, “Moscow proposes to return certain powers to the regions.” One whole page is taken up with a cartoon called “Catastrophes of the 21st Century” that shows an aerial view of Triumf-Palas, a recently-built and much-derided neo-Stalinist apartment block. The building is cracked and crumbling, with smoke pouring into the sky. Bombing it from above are two angry, airborne squirrels. The subtitle is “Attack of the Park Squirrels on Triumf-Palas.” It’s a surreal, almost New Yorker-ish picture, although rooted in reality — Triumf-Palas was built on the site of a park famed for its squirrels. The playfulness represents traits that Mostovshchikov has taken from magazine to magazine. Mostovshchikov’s biggest success was his first editorship at Stolitsa, a wickedly funny satirical journal that appeared in 1996 and had burned out by the end of the following year. It issued bumper stickers with pictures of Zurab Tsereteli’s Peter the Great statue and had a nihilist, often evil sense of humor. He went on to edit Bolshoi Gorod, Men’s Health and Novy Ochevidets, none of them for very long. The last was an attempt to bring The New Yorker, in style and content, to Russia — it even replicated the look of the venerable U.S. weekly down to its cartoons, layout and choice of fonts. The editor said he was aiming to turn Krokodil into something like The New Yorker. But for the English-speaking reader, it may be more reminiscent of the eXile, the scandalous alternative English-language newspaper. Parts of Krokodil echo the eXile’s risk-taking and — for some, maybe — its offensiveness. That being said, however, there is about as much material in one issue of Krokodil as in a year’s worth of eXile. “The eXile is a great publication,” Mostovshchikov said, adding that it is in opposition to The Moscow Times (sister English-language newspaper of The St. Petersburg Times), with one publication representing one thing, the other its complete opposite. In Russian publishing, he said, there is no such opposition. One critic has said, and not as a compliment, that all of Mostovshchikov’s magazines have been versions of Krokodil, but only now has he finally managed to get the brand name to match the content. Despite his neighbors down the corridor, the editor denied that he was setting up a political paper. Rather, he said, his target was society as a whole. One of the problems he has faced was a lack of both satirical writers and cartoonists, he said. Indeed, the quality of the first issue varies widely, often turning verbose in the text or obscure in the cartoons. At its best, though, there is something you cannot find in any other Russian publication. On the back of the issue is a drawing of a scene from an Indian film, with the word Krokodil written in fake Hindi script. Underneath is a preview of what may come in future issues: “The cats close down the Kuklachyov Theater, the Bee Gees in the Kremlin, a complete timetable of all hurricanes and suburban trains, the first Russified chessboard and Bruce Willis against sausages and green peas.” TITLE: Chernov’s choice AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov PUBLISHER: Staff Writer TEXT: Moloko went out with a bang on Sunday. The notorious underground club had to shut its doors early in the day because it was besieged by hundreds of fans arriving for a free farewell party. Forced out of its basement location by the city authorities, the club hopes to reopen at a new venue, possibly in March. Its closure leaves a hole in the local club scene. There are only a few places that are open to innovative music and friendly to fans. Boris Kovac, a composer, musician and multimedia artist, will perform this week with his latest ensemble La Campanella. Kovac comes from Novi Sad, a multi-cultural city in the former Yugoslavia, now in Serbia. After 1991 he lived and worked mainly in Italy, Slovenia and Austria. In 1996 he returned to Novi Sad. “His composition, like a great release, possessed the spellbinding quality of great folk music: easy virtuosity, attention to the minutiae of expression, unembarrassing pathos... a deep base of audible, almost tactile emotion,” British musician Chris Cutler has written. “Kovac slips easily across that twilight zone where contemporary composition and folk music touch.” With Kovac on vocals, alto and soprano saxophones, La Companella includes Goran Penic on accordion, Vukasin Miskovic on classical guitar, Milos Matic on double bass and tamburitza, and Istvan Cik on drums. During its visit to Russian, the band is scheduled to play five dates in Moscow and one in St. Petersburg. The concerts are likely to be based on Kovac and La Campanella’s first album “World after History,” released last May. Kovac and La Campanella perform at Platforma on Wednesday. A pair of concerts to look forward to have been announced. Jane Birkin and Arto Lindsay will perform in November. The London-born, Paris-based singer and actress Birkin was part of “Swinging London” in the 1960s, famously appearing in Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Blowup,” then becoming notorious for being the wife of the late French singer Serge Gainsbourg. She made a sensation with the controversially sensuous “Je t’aime... moi non plus” in 1969. Birkin’s most recent album, “Rendez-vous,” was released in March 2004. It features collaborations with Bryan Ferry, Portishead’s Beth Gibbons and Placebo’s Brian Molko as well as Manu Chao and Caetano Veloso. Birkin performs at the Music Hall on Nov. 19. Lindsay is a New York vocalist and guitarist who first found underground fame as the frontman of DNA and a pioneer of “no wave” in the late 1970s. DNA was featured on the Brian Eno-produced four-band compilation, “No New York,” which also included Lydia Lunch-fronted Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, James Chance and the Contortions and Mars. Since then, Lindsay’s work has gone in several different directions including playing with punk-jazz band Lounge Lizards and producing Brazilian pop records. Lindsay will perform on Nov. 27. No venue has yet been named. TITLE: Figures of speech AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova PUBLISHER: Staff Writer TEXT: What would a figure of speech look like? How would you personify odd Russian expressions? An exhibition at The St. Petersburg Doll Gallery at 53 Bolshaya Morskaya Ulitsa, provides the answers. The shop’s new display is a playful take on well-known Russian proverbs, common expressions and slang. It is an an easy and entertaining way to learn some new expressions, particularly Russian euphemisms for somewhat indecent original ideas. Ask a Russian, for example, about the exact meaning of the expression “Yapona mama” (“Japanese mother”). Some might direct you to the trendy, upscale Moscow restaurant. Others are likely to simply wave you off or deliver such a long and confused explanation that you will regret having asked the question. But at the Doll Gallery, the expression is personified by a young and serene Japanese lady nursing a baby. Artist Varvara Skripkina takes a literal approach: the baby indicates motherhood, and the ethnic dress leaves no doubts concerning the land of the doll’s origin. There is hardly anything is this peaceful figure to suggest that “Yapona mama” is in fact a euphemism for a tremendously common Russian saying, or, rather, exclamation, where in the place of “Japanese” an obscene word is used. “Yapona mama” is one of about forty dolls made by St. Petersburg designers Gulya Alexeyeva, Alexandra Dubrovina, Tatyana Gurina, Alexander Zinchenko, Irina Velte, Ksenia Mikheyeva, Yelena Kuznetsova and other artists for the show. In the same vein as “Yapona mama” is Alexander Zinchenko’s “Yaponsky gorodovoi,” which translates as “Japanese policeman,” and is name of another dining establishment in Moscow. Wandering through the exhibition is like solving children’s puzzles. Guessing the expression from what you see is lighthearted entertainment. The easiest conundrum to solve is Gulya Alexeyeva’s “Kuzkina mat” (“Kuzya’s mother”) — a plump elderly pussycat, dressed in knitwear, holding a poster with a picture of her prodigal son. Being introduced to Kuzya’s mother (“Ya tebe pokazhu Kuzkinu mat”) is a popular Russian threat. The display introduces us to the “son of a bitch’s daughter” (“sukinogo syna doch”) and “The Shameless Red Girl” (“Ryzhaya besstyzhaya”). Visitors get the idea behind Yelena Kislukhina’s “Raving nonsense” (“bred sivoy kobyly”) which arrives in the form of deranged dark grey horse. When translated literally, the expression means “grey horse’s delirium.” A round-faced girl with a watering can in her hand has a rather eccentric haircut, groomed in the shape of trees and bushes. This is “Golova Sadovaya” or “Garden Head” designed by Ksenia Mikheyeva. The expression refers to a dumb or short-sighted person. “Bozhy oduvanchik” literally means “God’s dandelion,” and Yelena Pivovarova shows us a fragile, absent-minded person, always up in the clouds, shaped in the form of a flower. The artists’ renditions of popular heroes of the Russian language are cause for debate. There is certainly no canonic way to portray a “chmo” (“pariah”) — Alexandra Dubrovina and Alexander Zinchenko expressed their own ideas of what these unworthy subjects look like — but the show provides an interesting insight into Russian culture and language. The exhibition travels to Moscow for a week from Oct. 30 until Nov. 7. www.dollsgallery.ru TITLE: Finnish cure AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov PUBLISHER: Staff Writer TEXT: For Finnish television viewers Niko Nurminen might be a familiar face. But the long-time foreign correspondent with Channel Four News in Finland is this week coming to St. Petersburg as the vocalist and guitarist of Rohto, a Helsinki-based rock band. “I keep that role as far apart from the music as I can,” wrote Nurminen about his television work in an email interview with The St. Petersburg Times this week. “I travel a lot as kind of a fireman covering news events. Every now and then I’m on the screen and penetrate people’s homes through satellites. But it’s the events that count, not the face or the person. Some people recognize me, especially some news junkies, but I guess they know that I’m just another guy from the factory — which produces news instead of sausages. The news work has been going on fine with the music: it is such another world. The flipside of course is the lack of time: it can be that we just can’t get together for months because I’m constantly on duty somewhere.” In 1997 Nurminen spent a stint at Moscow University attending lectures on journalism and studying Russian. He later returned to Moscow as a television news reporter and has even put a few questions to President Vladimir Putin in Russian several times. However, music represents a different world to him, he wrote. “Making music is something I can’t put in words: when you feel that the right groove is there it seems like the singing is electricity that glues you to microphone and you get so high that you forget about your surroundings.” The Finnish music scene has recently attained an international profile with such goth-tinged heavy rock bands as HIM, Nightwish and 69 Eyes having become arguably the country’s hottest musical exports in years. These bands also tend to sing in English. But you will not find a word of English on Rohto’s website: the group performs exslusively in Finnish. “It’s been a natural choice this far,” wrote Nurminen, who writes the band’s lyrics and most of the music. “I speak some other languages but Finnish is my mother tongue and some poets like [Pentti] Saarikoski, [Eino] Leino, [Aleksis] Kivi or [Uuno] Kailas use this strange language that has been blowing my socks off since I was a boy. I am not a purist though and I’ve done some songs in English recently. Let’s see how they come out.” Discussing his approach to songwriting, Nurminen wrote that “to me it’s true that personal is political and small subjects can be huge.” “I’ve done a song about a man who woke up bearded in St. Petersburg, had lost everything and did not remember anything. I’ve written a song about a creole sugarcane cutter from Mauritius who works his ass off for a white plantation owner and surviving just on the thought that he can play percussion in a sega band after the working day is done.” For Nurminen, the band’s name, Rohto (an old Finnish word for natural cure or natural medicine) means a “thing that keeps me alive” and originated from a conversation with drummer Tommi Ouvinen, who became ill just a few days before the band’s first concert. “So I asked him if he had tried any rohto to cure himself. So we took the name.” Rohto started in 1997 in Helsinki. As well as Nurminen and Ouvinen, the band includes Mats Takila on guitar and programming and Anssi Ahvenniemi on bass, with the latter having joined in 2003. Nurminen and Ouvinen have been playing together in different bands since 1993. Nurminen wrote he became involved with music despite the reluctance of his father who used to be a bass player in a pop band in the 1960s. “My father didn’t let me touch his guitar when I was a kid — he knew better and didn’t want his only child to wreck his young life,” he wrote. “I didn’t take the advice and made the mistake of buying my first guitar when I was 14 — I got the money selling newspapers on the streets. After a week I had a ‘band.’ The first song consisted four rock-barre chords and it was called ‘Marshmallow’ like the band itself. I wanted play Led Zeppelin’s ‘Immigrant Song’ constantly, but the drummer thought that Bonzo Bonham is too holy to touch. I didn’t learn to play other people’s songs even if I wanted to, so I had to start making my own.” While admitting his liking to bands from The Beatles to the Ramones, the Pixies, the Posies, Jane’s Addiction and Radiohead, Nurminen wrote his singing style has been influenced by “dark male voices.” “My own influences have arisen from a handicap that I have: I am some kind of second-hand baritone, so dark, male voices ranging from Nick Cave, Tom Waits and Lou Reed to Mark Lanegan or the magnificent [Moscow band] Moralny Kodeks have been easy to identify with,” he wrote. “After a good session I sometimes feel I could be worthy of licking boots of [late Russian singer-songer Vladimir] Vysotsky.” Rohto performs at Griboyedov on Saturday and at Platforma on Sunday. www.rohto.biz TITLE: Israel Attacks Gaza After Suicide Bombing AUTHOR: By Ramit Plushnick-Masti PUBLISHER: The Associated Press TEXT: JERUSALEM — The Israeli army launched an offensive against Islamic Jihad militants Thursday, carrying out a series of airstrikes in what Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said would be a “broad and nonstop” response to a suicide bombing that killed five Israelis. The offensive will include airstrikes and artillery attacks in Gaza and arrest raids in the northern West Bank, where Wednesday’s bomber came from, a military official said on condition of anonymity under military regulations. As a last resort, Israel could re-enter Gaza, which it evacuated last month. Israeli media reported that troops would also retake Palestinian towns, and conduct house-to-house searches. The threatened Israeli response to the bombing in the central town of Hadera ratcheted up pressure on Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to confront militant groups. Abbas has refused to crack down on armed groups such as Islamic Jihad, fearing civil war. Sharon said the military operation was necessary because of Abbas’ refusal to take action and said it would be impossible to resume peace talks until the Palestinians rein in the militants. “Unfortunately the Palestinian Authority has not taken any serious action to battle terrorism,” Sharon said before meeting the visiting Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov. “We will not accept under any circumstances a continuation of terrorism. Therefore our activities will be broad and nonstop until they halt terrorism.” “The state of Israel would very much have liked to move peace efforts forward,” he added. “To my regret, as long as terror continues we shall not be able to move forward as we would have wished.” In an initial step, Israel carried out four air-strikes in the Gaza Strip early Thursday, targeting open fields used by militants to fire rockets, the army said. Islamic Jihad said Wednesday’s bombing was to avenge the killing of one of its West Bank leaders earlier in the week. The suicide bombing embarrassed Abbas, who hours before the attack demanded that the militant groups stop violating a cease-fire declared last February. The small Islamic Jihad group signed on to the truce last spring but has repeatedly flouted the cease-fire by claiming it has the right to retaliate for any perceived Israeli violations. It has carried out four suicide bombings inside Israel since the truce. Israeli officials accused arch-enemies Iran and Syria of assisting the attackers, noting that Islamic Jihad is funded by Tehran and is headquartered in Damascus. “This infrastructure is murderous and we will try to deal with it and silence it,” Amos Gilad, a senior Defense Ministry official, told Israel Radio. The attack came hours after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad praised suicide bombings and said Israel should be “wiped off the map.” Vice Premier Shimon Peres called for Iran to be thrown out of the United Nations for the president’s comments, which drew wide international condemnation. TITLE: Oil-for-Food Report Reveals Massive Fraud AUTHOR: By Edith Lederer PUBLISHER: The Associated Press TEXT: UNITED NATIONS — More than 2,000 companies paid about $1.8 billion in illicit kickbacks and surcharges to Saddam Hussein’s government through extensive manipulation of the UN oil-for-food program in Iraq, according to key findings of a UN-backed investigation. The report — released in full Thursday by a committee investigating claims of wrongdoing in the $64-billion program — indicates that about half the 4,500 companies doing business with Iraq paid illegal surcharges on oil purchases or kickbacks on contracts to supply humanitarian goods. The investigators reported that companies and individuals from 66 countries paid illegal kickbacks through a variety of methods while those paying illegal oil surcharges came from, or were registered in, 40 countries. Thursday’s final report of the investigation, led by former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, strongly criticizes the UN Secretariat and Security Council for failing to monitor the program and for allowing the emergence of front companies and international trading concerns prepared to make illegal payments. According to the findings, the Banque Nationale de Paris S.A., known as BNP, which held the UN oil-for-food escrow account, had a dual role and did not disclose fully to the United Nations the firsthand knowledge it acquired about the financial relationships that fostered the payment of illegal surcharges. The oil-for-food program was one of the world’s largest humanitarian aid operations, running from 1996-2003. Under the program, Iraq was allowed to sell limited and then unlimited quantities of oil provided most of the money went to buy humanitarian goods. It was launched to help ordinary Iraqis cope with UN sanctions imposed after Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait and became a lifeline for 90 percent of the country’s population of 26 million. But Saddam, who could choose the buyers of Iraqi oil and the sellers of humanitarian goods, corrupted the program by awarding contracts to — and getting kickbacks from — favored buyers, mostly parties who supported his regime or opposed the sanctions. He allegedly gave former government officials, journalists and UN officials vouchers for Iraqi oil that could be resold at a profit. Tracing the politicization of oil contracts, the new report said Iraqi leaders in the late 1990s decided to deny American, British and Japanese companies allocations to purchase oil because of their countries’ opposition to lifting sanctions on Iraq. TITLE: 11 Immigrants Die in Dutch Airport Blaze AUTHOR: By Toby Sterling PUBLISHER: The Associated Press TEXT: AMSTERDAM — A fire raged through a prison complex at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport on Thursday, killing 11 illegal immigrants awaiting deportation and injuring 15 other people, authorities said. The nationalities of the dead were not immediately known. “They were illegal aliens waiting to be extradited to their countries of origin,” said Immigration Service spokesman Martin Bruinsma. “We are still busy trying to confirm their identities.” The prison block on the east side of Europe’s fourth largest airport is surrounded by a two-meter fence and barbed wire. Set up in 2002, it is used to detain people who arrive by plane and are refused entry to the Netherlands, including drug smugglers and failed asylum seekers. An unknown number of detainees escaped during the fire. The fire broke out shortly after midnight and raged until 3 a.m. Firefighters and airport police were among the injured, according to the news reports. Four people were hospitalized for treatment. A prisoner told the Dutch television station NOS that guards initially did not take prisoners’ warnings of a fire seriously and told them nothing was wrong. “They didn’t open the door. They kept us locked up. Our throats started hurting. We were kicking and screaming,” said the detainee, who was not identified. About 350 prisoners were being held in the complex when the fire broke out. Some 43 were in the wing that caught fire. TITLE: White House Prepares For Possible Indictments TEXT: AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE WASHINGTON — Anticipation was high ahead of an announcement by a special prosecutor probing a CIA leak scandal, as the White House waited to see if top aides would be indicted in a crisis threatening to taint President George W. Bush’s presidency. Ignoring frenzied speculation over his intentions, prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald on Wednesday met the grand jury he is using to decide whether White House heavy hitters broke the law by blowing the cover of CIA agent Valerie Plame. The grand jury’s mandate expires on Friday, and there were growing signs Fitzgerald was putting final touches to his near two-year probe, apparently zeroing in on Bush allies Karl Rove and Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby. Despite expectations, Fitzgerald made no announcement Wednesday and sources familiar with the case told The Washington Post a final decision on charges in the two-year-long probe would come on Friday. The intricate case arose from the Bush administration’s drive to declare war on Iraq and claims top officials “twisted” intelligence to justify a conflict which has now claimed the lives of 2,000 US soldiers. Rove, Bush’s political guru and Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, swept past flashbulb-popping press packs as they left home for work before dawn. The White House, enduring a tortuous wait for news of the probe, insisted it was business as usual, even as Bush’s vanquished 2004 election rival Senator John Kerry unleashed a savage assault on the White House over the affair. “We certainly are following developments in the news, but everybody has got a lot of work to do,” said Bush spokesman Scott McClellan. Anyone indicted would almost certainly resign immediately, and Bush is expected to follow up with a short televised statement to the American people in a bid to shake off the whiff of scandal. Fitzgerald, who on Wednesday arrived in court carrying two large legal attache cases, may seek indictments under a law which makes it a crime to knowingly out an undercover CIA agent, and consider perjury or obstruction of justice charges.