SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1155 (21), Friday, March 24, 2006
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TITLE: Belarus Opposition Leader Urges Solidarity
AUTHOR: By Yuras Karmanau
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MINSK — Assailants attacked an aide to the opposition leader in Belarus on Thursday after state television broadcast a recording of an alleged conversation in which he consulted with a Polish NGO on protest strategies, an opposition spokesman said. 
The alleged beating was among the latest incidents in what opposition leader Alexander Milinkevich called a campaign of persecution against Belarussians challenging authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko’s re-election. 
The vote has been denounced by his domestic opponents and Western critics as deeply undemocratic. Belarussian election officials have rejected formal opposition complaints challenging the vote. 
Viktor Korniyenko, a deputy chief on Milinkevich’s staff, was beaten by two assailants in the entranceway to his apartment building, Milinkevich spokesman Pavel Mazheika said. The attackers clubbed Korniyenko on the head and he was hospitalized in serious condition, Mazheika said. 
On Wednesday, state-run television broadcast what it characterized as a recorded phone conversation between Korniyenko and a representative of the Batory Foundation, a Polish-based nongovernmental organization that has conducted democracy-support programs in Belarus. 
The representative told Korniyenko that opposition leaders should not urge a halt to protests on Oktyabrskaya Ploshchad and should boost the size of the protest tent camp where young demonstrators are maintaining a constant vigil, according to a transcript of the alleged conversation. 
It was printed Thursday on the front page of the newspaper published by Lukashenko’s administration. 
The state-media reports about the alleged conversation fit in with Lukashenko’s repeated claims that the opposition is supported by Western forces seeking to bring him down and control Belarus. State television has also broadcast reports saying the protests are financed by Western embassies, allegations the diplomatic missions deny. 
The Central Elections Commission on Thursday declared Lukashenko the official winner of Sunday’s election, saying final results showed he received 83 percent of the vote, compared to 6.1 percent for Milinkevich, the state news agency Belta reported. The official results differed little from preliminary results issued Monday. 
Milinkevich says Lukashenko’s official tally is “monstrously inflated” and is calling for a new vote. 
Early Thursday, he told tent camp residents entering the fourth day of an around-the-clock vigil that they had defied expectations by maintaining their vigil as long as they have. 
About 200 people occupied part of the freezing downtown square overnight, keeping a toehold for the opposition between rallies that have brought out thousands of people each night this week. 
Milinkevich said that although the demonstrations have been comparatively small and have not succeeded in achieving their demand of new elections, they represented a big step forward. 
“Nobody had expected what has happened here,” he said. 
Police have not moved to disperse the protesters, but they have picked up many would-be participants and supporters. The human rights center Vyasna said that more than 150 people have been detained in connection with the protests against the election, some of them released but others tried and sentenced – usually to a week or two behind bars. 
“We must defend one another,” Milinkevich told a crowd of about 4,000 in Oktyabrskaya Ploshchad on Wednesday night. “The authorities are violating the law, they have organized large-scale repression.” 
Gearing up for a major test of strength, Milinkevich emphasized his call for protesters to come out in force on Saturday, the anniversary of the declaration of the first, short-lived independent Belarussian republic in 1918. 
Vyasna said Thursday that 20 to 30 people were detained near the square overnight. 
The Interior Ministry said police had detained about 15 people over the previous 24 hours for taking part in the unsanctioned protest, the Interfax news agency reported. The ministry declined to comment. 
The persistent protest is unprecedented, as Lukashenko has been silencing dissent since his first election in 1994, but opposition leaders acknowledge the crowd in a corner of the square is not big enough to force a new election.

TITLE: Jury Clears Teenager Of Killing Tajik
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova and Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A jury has cleared a teenager of murder charges in the stabbing of a 9-year-old Tajik girl in 2004, finding him guilty instead of hooliganism and calling for leniency in his sentence.
Prosecutors said they would appeal the verdict, delivered late Wednesday in the St. Petersburg City Court.
“The jurors made a groundless decision and ignored the strong evidence we presented,” Prosecutor Svetlana Yefimenko said. “We are definitely going to send an appeal.”
Nine of the 12 jurors found Roman Kazakov, now 16, not guilty in the death of Khursheda Sultanova. A simple majority is needed for a verdict in jury trials.
Natella Ponomoryova, a lawyer who represented the girl’s family in court, said that the defendant skillfully played on the jurors’ emotions.
“Kazakov got acquitted because he managed to get the jurors to feel compassion for him and feel sorry for him,” she said. “His young age may have played a role as well.”
Kazakov, who had maintained his innocence, was the only one of eight defendants charged with murder in the attack on the girl, her father, Yusuf and an 11-year-old cousin in the courtyard of their apartment building on the night of Feb. 9, 2004.
The seven other defendants, now aged 15 to 21, were charged with hooliganism. The jury acquitted one of them Wednesday after he had admitted his participation in the attack during the investigation into the incident and again during the five-month trial, which was closed because four of the defendants are juveniles. The other six maintained their innocence but were convicted of hooliganism Wednesday. 
The court will convene Friday to consider sentences for the defendants.
Prosecutors say the young men were drinking in a park in central St. Petersburg on the night of the attack and approached by unidentified men who convinced them to attack the Tajik family. 
The girl was stabbed nine times.
Her murder has been singled out by the Amnesty International as one of the worst racially motivated crimes in Russia. St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko had taken the investigation of the case under her personal control.
Yury Vdovin, an activist with the St. Petersburg branch of the Citizens’ Watch rights watchdog, said Wednesday’s verdict echoed far-reaching xenophobic sentiments in society. “The verdict reflects growing xenophobia, the unsympathetic way most people are feeling toward non-Russians,” he said, noting that racism was particularly strong in St. Petersburg.
Russian experts on violent xenophobia concur that St. Petersburg is the skinhead capital of Russia and accounts for a disproportionally large number of attacks against dark-skinned migrants and foreigners.
Vdovin and Alexander Verkhovsky, a Sova researcher who tracks the violence, said St. Petersburg law enforcement authorities were partially responsible because they tended to treat offenders with lenience. Verkhovsky noted two recent trials involving local neo-Nazi groups Schultz 66 and Mad Crowd that dragged on for two years each and ended with relatively light sentences for the defendants.
Verkhovsky said that since courts only recently began to qualify attacks against migrants as being racially motivated and to issue heavier sentences for attackers, the number of racially motivated murders has dropped from 46 in 2004 to 28 last year.
“In the Sultanova case, the attackers should be given serious sentences to deter nationalist youth in St. Petersburg from committing such attacks,” he said.

TITLE: Duma Approves Constitutional Court Move
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The State Russian Duma voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to pass amendments to a law on the Constitutional court that will allow the transfer of this federal organization to St. Petersburg.  348 parliamentarians backed the long-discussed and much-debated move and fifty-four voted against the proposal.
The driving force behind the transfer is Governor Valentina Matviyenko, who has been promoting and advocating the idea of handing some state functions over to St. Petersburg since she started her job in the autumn of 2003. 
“I am very happy about the vote results,” Matviyenko told reporters on Thursday. “It shows that we have been fighting for the right cause.”
Initially, Matviyenko’s plans received little in the way of backing from Moscow, with no leading politicians speaking out in support of her endeavors. But the situation changed recently, with top federal officials, including President Vladimir Putin, speaking favorably of the move. 
“This issue has already been heavily discussed, so debates in the Duma were brief,” Vadim Tyulpanov, speaker of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, told reporters after the vote on Wednesday. 
“The vast majority of lawmakers have spoken favorably about the move in the past and the debates didn’t take very long. I am convinced that St. Petersburg, originally created as a capital city, is fully prepared to assume some of the federal functions.”
The move’s advocates say the relocation will serve to strengthen Russia’s legal system and ensure the independence of the court. 
“Power is overly concentrated in Moscow, and this isn’t right,” Matviyenko told reporters earlier this year. “Duties have to be more evenly spread in a large federal state like Russia, and the capital should be relieved of certain responsibilities.”
Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, called the transfer a useful and much-needed step. “This is very important, and I would very much support the transfer of the Supreme Court, the Culture Ministry and some other federal organizations as well,” Zhirinovsky said during the debates on Wednesday. “We should give more power to the regions by moving federal bodies to cities like Nizhny Novgorod, Rostov-on Don and other centers of federal districts. These steps, if taken, would give a major development boost to the regions concerned,” he said.
However, the ambitious project is not without its critics, who have referred to the relocation as a “deportation.” 
Semyon Borzenko, one of the leaders of the youth branch of Russia’s Communist Party (KPRF), said the project lacks a solid economic foundation. “It will cost the state millions of dollars to transfer the court here, while the outcome of such a decision — in practical terms — is vague,” Borzenko said in a telephone interview on Thursday. 
It has been estimated that the court’s relocation will take a year and a half to complete, and will cost 221 million rubles ($7.95 million), but the Duma may amend these figures during the forthcoming second and third readings of the law.
“Politicians who promote the idea openly admit that the move is aimed at improving the image of St. Petersburg and giving the city more political weight,” Borzenko said. “But the price for this image-building seems a bit high, especially in circumstances where so many people live below the poverty line and die prematurely in Russia. If it was used to help these people, the money would be better spent,” he said.
A number of the members of the Russian Constitutional Court sent a letter to the Duma asking the lawmakers to carefully weigh up the consequences of their decision.
Signed by some of the court’s leading experts, including its chairman Valery Zorkin, the document, distributed in the Duma before the hearing on Wednesday, said that the relocation “may destroy the stability of the court’s work.”
Among the likely negative consequences of the transfer, the experts named temporary slowdown, loss of qualified professionals who prefer to stay in Moscow and increased complications in liaising with other state bodies. 
The Pro-Kremlin party United Russia has strongly backed the proposal.  Lyubov Sliska, vice-speaker of the Russian State Duma, has often spoken in favor of the plan, suggesting that relocation would reduce speculation about high levels of corruption in the capital and the pro-Kremlin bias of Russian courts.

TITLE: Rodina Leader To Be Ousted
AUTHOR: By Francesca Mereu
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Rodina leader Dmitry Rogozin will be fired at a party congress Saturday and replaced with Alexander Babakov, a wealthy businessman who heads the party’s presidium and is closely associated with the Kremlin, senior Rodina members said.
Rogozin said Thursday that he did not know whether he would even be able to attend the congress. He said police, citing a bomb threat, broke up a Rodina meeting earlier Thursday that was supposed to appoint him as a delegate. 
The developments appear to be part of a Kremlin-sponsored initiative to regain control of the nationalist party, which by all accounts it slapped together shortly before the 2003 parliamentary elections to steal votes from the Communists. 
Rodina has since emerged as a strong political force, and Rogozin clearly upset the Kremlin and fellow party members by adopting a passionate oppositional voice — particularly by hitting the streets with the Communists and Yabloko to protest the monetization of state benefits last year.
“Now that he has spoiled his relations with the presidential administration, nobody understands what’s the use of keeping Rogozin on,” said Marat Gelman, an intellectual architect behind the creation of Rodina.
Gelman said he was “cooperating” with the Kremlin to solve problems surrounding the party.
Rogozin will be given the chance to step down “to save face,” but if he does not, Rodina delegates at the congress in Moscow on Saturday will remove him, said Mikhail Delyagin, who chairs Rodina’s ideological council. 
“There are two reasons for this decision: The main one is his xenophobic advertisement in the Moscow City Duma elections that offended many party members. The other reason, which is no less important, is that the Russian leadership has said that if Rogozin does not quit, the party’s registration will be taken away,” said Delyagin, an economist who joined Rodina in April 2004.
A court barred Rodina from participating in December’s City Duma elections after Rogozin appeared in a campaign commercial that likened dark-skinned migrants to garbage.
Gelman also said the delegates would oust Rogozin.
Babakov was unavailable for comment this week.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Three Fires In City
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) – Three major fires were extinguished by fire services on Thursday with no loss of life, Interfax reported.
A fire in the early morning Thursday at the Technical University on Moskovsky Prospekt. It is believed to have been caused by an explosion in a laboratory on the first floor of the four-story building. 
A fire on two floors of a building at the Military Medical Academy on the Vyborg Side was put out with the aid of over ten fire engines. 
The third fire broke out at the Theater on Liteiny on Thursday afternoon, and six fire engines worked to extinguish it, fontanka.ru reported.

Scotsmen Flying In
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A delegation of notable Scottish literary figures is visiting St. Petersburg this weekend at the invitation of the Caledonia club for Scottish expatriots. 
Writer William McIlvanney, scholars Gerry Carruthers and Ken Simpson, and journalists Drew Cochrane and Cameron Simpson will be giving talks at the Herzen and St. Petersburg State universities on Sunday and Monday. 
Long-time St. Petersburg resident Adrian Terris of the Caledonia club described the visit as an “attempt to better pull together the great literary bonds between Scots and Russians’ latent potential of kindred minds, spirit and cultural values.”

Suicide Statistics
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — An expert from the Moscow-based Serbsky Institute for Social and Forensic Psychiatry said Russia has the world’s second highest suicide level after Lithuania, Interfax reported.
According to national average statistics, there are 36.6 suicides per 100,000 people in Russia every year, but figures vary dramatically depending on the region. In Moscow, 11 suicides per 100,000 people are registered annually, while in St. Petersburg the figure is 17.8 suicides.
Boris Polozhy, a leading expert with the institute, said the main reasons behind the depressing statistics are “problems in private life, loneliness and unfulfilled expectations.”
Russia’s southern regions have the lowest suicide levels – 1.1 in Dagestan and 4.8 in Northern Ossetia – but figures are high up north. In the Komi republic, 110.3 suicides are registered per 100 000 people, and 95.7 suicides in Nenetsky district.
The Serbsky Institute called for the creation of a network of state-funded psychiatric centers.

TITLE: Report: 52% of Wives Battered
AUTHOR: By Francesca Mereu
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — More than half of all Russian wives have been battered by their often-drunk husbands, while a third of husbands have been hit — but usually during arguments, according to a survey.
Women say they complain mainly about chores, while husbands say their biggest gripe is over sex.
A total of 52 percent of women said they had been beaten at least once by their husbands, and 41 percent said they had been beaten more than once, said Irina Shurygina, a leading sociologist and co-director of the survey.
“The problem of domestic violence is a universal problem, but in Russia is becoming a serious one, since numbers are big. Only less than half of the women said they have never been beaten,” said Shurygina, who works at the Sociological Institute of the Russian Science Academy.
Forty-five percent said their husbands had never hit them.
In 70 percent of cases, the men became aggressive after drinking. 
“Women usually tell off their husbands when they come home drunk, and as a response they beat them,” Shurygina said. 
Shurygina said the beatings are serious, and the women often have to be treated by doctors or are hospitalized.
Husbands, in contrast, said they usually suffered only minor injuries, such as bruises or scratches, after being hit by their wives.
Thirty percent of women confirmed that they had beaten their husbands, said Irina Gorshkova, the other sociologist who headed the survey. “But 93 percent of these women said that they used violence during a domestic fight,” said Gorshkova, who works for the Gorbachev Foundation. Seven percent of the women said they beat their husbands regularly for no specific reason.
Women said their most frequent complaint was that their husbands were not helping with chores. Other complaints about husbands included not showing affection, excess drinking, ignoring the children and not earning enough money.
Men said they complained about a lack of sex and about the quality of sex.
The survey was carried out in 2003 and is the latest of its kind. It was little reported when released and is now receiving national attention after Komsomolskaya Pravda devoted a page to it Monday. The survey’s authors said the situation surrounding domestic violence has not changed.
The survey of 1,058 men and 1,076 women was carried out in Moscow and the surrounding region, the Buryatsk autonomous district, Bashkortostan, Karelia, Irkutsk, Omsk and Stavropol. It had a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

TITLE: Siberian Court Overturns Ruling, Frees Driver
AUTHOR: By Judith Ingram
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — A Siberian court on Thursday overturned the conviction of a driver sentenced to four years in internal exile for his role in the death of a regional governor killed in a road accident, closing a case that had ignited a firestorm of criticism in Russia. 
Last month’s conviction of Oleg Shcherbinsky had inspired a series of protests among Russians, fed up with accidents allegedly caused by official vehicles fitted with flashing lights and given priority on the nation’s roads. 
Protesters tied white ribbons on their cars’ antennae to express solidarity with a man they saw as a scapegoat. 
The pro-Kremlin United Russia party took up Shcherbinsky’s cause, collecting tens of thousands of signatures on a petition delivered to the Altai regional court ahead of the ruling. 
Mikhail Yevdokimov, the comedian-turned-governor of the Altai region, was killed in August when the car he was riding in smashed into a tree after colliding with the car driven by Shcherbinsky. 
Yevdokimov’s driver and bodyguard also were killed, and the governor’s wife was seriously injured. 
Shcherbinsky’s legal team had alleged that the governor was traveling at at least 200 kilometers an hour and that while the car’s flashing light was turned on, its siren was not. 
Anatoly Kucherena, a prominent, politically connected Moscow-based lawyer who was retained for the appeal, said that “all the evidence pointed exclusively to the innocence” of Shcherbinsky. 
“Now a citizen in this country can have his or her rights that have been infringed upon restored,” Kucherena said in televised comments. 
“We had faith from the very beginning to the end,” said Shcherbinsky’s wife, Svetlana. 
Shcherbinsky was freed from pretrial detention after the ruling. Russian state television showed him being greeted outside the jail in the city of Biisk and getting into a car with one of the protest stickers that have sprouted across Russia on the back window. 
“All of us are Shcherbinsky,” it read.

TITLE: U.S. Slams Ossetian Initiative
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: VIENNA, Austria — The United States on Thursday condemned a recent statement by the leader of Georgia’s Moscow-backed breakaway region of South Ossetia that his territory will ask to be recognized as part of Russia. 
Julie Finley, U.S. Ambassador to the Vienna-based Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said the U.S. reconfirmed “our unequivocal support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Georgia and the peaceful resolution of both the South Ossetia and Abkhazia conflicts based on that principle.” 
South Ossetia has run its own affairs since breaking away from Georgian control in an 18-month war that ended in 1992. South Ossetia and another separatist province, Abkhazia, have close ties with Moscow, which has granted Russian citizenship to many of their residents. 
In comments shown on Russian television Wednesday, South Ossetia leader Eduard Kokoity said he and his supporters intended to lodge a petition with the Russian Constitutional Court “because there are historical documents about Ossetia’s status as part of Russia.”

TITLE: Ivanov Gets Boost in Race for the Kremlin
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov will head a new high-profile commission that oversees state military procurement and does not answer to the prime minister, according to a decree signed by President Vladimir Putin.
The degree will expand Ivanov’s powers and elevate an official with the Economic Development and Trade Ministry, Vladimir Putilin, to the rank of minister. He will serve as Ivanov’s deputy on the permanent defense industry commission.
Ivanov’s appointment appears to place him neck-to-neck with Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in a tacit competition over whom Putin will nominate as his successor in 2008. Putin late last year put Medvedev in charge of multibillion-dollar social project to improve health care, education, agriculture and housing.
Putin announced the decree at a Cabinet meeting Monday and stressed that the commission, unlike other government commissions, would work on a permanent basis.
The commission can make decisions without coordinating them with other government agencies or with Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov, who is not a member of the commission, according to a copy of the decree on the president’s web site. Fradkov, however, will be able to veto commission decisions.
Ivanov will be allowed to submit drafts of presidential decrees to Putin for signing, a privilege that even Fradkov does not enjoy.
Ivanov’s deputy on the commission, Putilin, was most recently the head of defense and security department at the Economic Development and Trade Ministry.
The changes indicate that Ivanov has surpassed Fradkov in influence, defense analysts said Tuesday.
In November, shortly after being elevated together with Medvedev to the rank of deputy prime minister, Ivanov attempted to take state military procurement under his control. But Fradkov, who oversaw procurement as the head of an interagency defense industry commission, refused.
“There appears to have been a fierce competition between the two in recent months, and Ivanov won,” said Alexander Golts, an independent military analyst.
As the head of the commission, Ivanov will assume control over a budget totaling $25 billion, which in addition to the $17 billion budget of the Defense Ministry will include state military procurement and arms contracts with foreign countries, Kommersant reported Tuesday.
The appointment boosts Ivanov’s chances as a candidate to succeed Putin, said Alexei Makarkin, a defense analyst at the Center for Political Technologies. “Ivanov has been able to pose proudly on camera next to new bombers and nuclear submarines as a customer, and now he can also pose as the man who coordinates their production,” Makarkin said.
By expanding his powers beyond the limits of a single ministry, Ivanov will get an edge over Medvedov, who does not have a ministry and only recently began posing for the television cameras, Makarkin said. Before being appointed to the government, Medvedev headed the presidential administration.
Ivanov’s new role is unlikely to have any effect on the ailing defense industry, Golts said. “It is not coordination that the industry needs but a clear policy in which the government spells out its priorities,” he said. 
Ivanov announced Tuesday that the military would lift restrictions on the nonmilitary use of Russia’s version of the Global Positioning System by the end of this year.

TITLE: State May Answer For Yukos in U.S.
AUTHOR: By Carl Schreck and Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Russian government has been served with a lawsuit by U.S.-based shareholders of Yukos through diplomatic channels and will have until mid-May to respond or face a possible default judgment ordering the payment of up to $9 million in damages, a lawyer for the shareholders said Wednesday.
Thomas Johnson Jr. of the Washington-based law firm Covington & Burling said the U.S. State Department informed him by telephone Tuesday that the Russian government had been served the summons on March 14 as part of a lawsuit by 12 holders of Yukos’ American Depositary Receipts against the government, a group of senior government officials and four state energy companies.
The suit — which Yukos’ parent company is funding — accuses them of securities fraud in the de facto renationalization of Yukos and was filed in the United States last fall.
Under U.S. law, foreign governments have 60 days to respond to a summons, which is delivered to the respective foreign ministry by the State Department, giving Russia a May 15 deadline, Johnson said.
“The State Department had to serve the summons,” Johnson said. “It’s not a sign that the State Department is happy or unhappy with Russia. It’s their legal duty.”
The Foreign Ministry could not confirm whether it had received the summons because it does not comment on documents received through diplomatic channels, said a ministry spokesman, who declined to give his name.
The U.S. Embassy declined to comment.
Johnson said he expected to receive documents from the State Department confirming the summons Wednesday afternoon in Washington.
The summons follow a series of legal papers served to Russian officials in connection with the lawsuit, which was filed in a U.S. District Court in Washington in October.
The minority shareholders say Industry and Energy Minister Viktor Khristenko and Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin were served while visiting Washington in October and January, respectively, although Kudrin has denied receiving the papers. Khristenko also initially denied being served, but several weeks later confirmed that he had received them.
The minority shareholders also say they served a summons to Sergei Bogdanchikov, president of state-owned oil producer Rosneft, while he was attending an energy conference in London last month. Bogdanchikov has denied receiving the papers.
Other defendants include Gazprom chairman and First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, Rosneft chairman and deputy presidential administration head Igor Sechin, and Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller. Also named in the suit are Rosneft, Rosneftegaz, Gazprom and Gazpromneft.
President Vladimir Putin cannot be named as a defendant because he is immune from prosecution as head of state.
The lawsuit states that the 12 plaintiffs, who include former U.S. National Security Adviser Richard Allen, lost a total of $3 million due to the drop in market value of the 115,000 American Depositary Receipts in Yukos they had purchased over a three-year period.
Johnson said he would be “surprised” if the Russian government did not respond to the lawsuit by May 15, but that he would expect his clients to receive a default judgment in their favor if it did not.

TITLE: Deal on Visa Laws Could Come in May
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia and the European Union expect to sign a long-awaited deal on easing visa regulations by the end of May, officials from both sides said Wednesday. 
EU and Russian officials at a meeting in Moscow said the agreement on so-called visa facilitation would be signed before or during an EU-Russia summit planned for May 25 in Sochi. 
The agreement is unlikely to scrap visas between Russia and the EU entirely but it should simplify the complex and costly procedures for getting them. 
They said a deal on readmission of migrants should be signed at the same time. That deal relates to assurances Brussels has sought from Russia that it will take back illegal immigrants deported from EU states.  
“Our intention is to sign the two agreements no later than the EU-Russia summit in May,” EU Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini said. “Our intention is that the two agreements will enter into force by the end of the year.” 
“Our final goal is a visa free regime between Russia and the European Union, but it is a long term goal,” Frattini said. 
Viktor Ivanov, an aide to President Vladimir Putin, said Moscow was also ready to sign a deal by May 25. “It will be pretty helpful in terms of making it easier for the peoples of our countries to cross borders,” he said.
EU and Russian officials had anticipated signing the visa facilitation and readmission deals at a summit in London last September, but that did not materialize.

TITLE: Officially City Lacks Presence
AUTHOR: By Nikita Savoyarov
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: BERLIN — Around the world tourism is booming: this was the message to take from the world’s largest travel trade fair, the 40th ITB Berlin, which ended last week. Yet despite the presence of 103 ministers and their deputies and 86 ambassadors from all over the world, not one Russian official was in attendance. 
The ITB was a success, however, playing host to nearly 100,000 visitors, and nearly 11,000 exhibitors, breaking all its previous records.
According to the annual report presented by Francesco Frangialli, the Secretary General of the UN World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO),  from 2002 to 2005 annual trips increased by 100 million to 808 million people. The tourist industry has again showed its extraordinary resilience, said Frangialli — “terrorism can kill tourists but cannot harm tourism.”
Even faced with new dangers, like the bird flu epidemic, the UNWTO declared, “Travel without fear! Go wherever you want! There is absolutely no cause for panic.”
Perhaps the only cause for concern then was insufficient Russian presence at the fair, something which again shows up the lack of a decent state tourism policy.
The Russian stand was shared by Moscow and St. Petersburg, along with a few regional cities. The design of the stand itself was old-fashioned and completely overshadowed by the Turkish effort, whose bright, loud display took up the majority of that particular hall’s space. 
Faced with this, the St. Petersburg exhibition did try  and reinforce its representation on the national stand, merging with various adjacent travel companies and taking advantage of the stylish set which backed them.
As part of the Russian exhibition, the results of the EU-project “Tourism Development in Northwest Russia” were presented by Sergei Korneyev, the vice president of RUTI (Russian Union of Travel Industry), John Marrow, the Project Leader and Gottfried Hilz-Ward, a key expert on the ITB-Workshop “New Windows on Russia.” The latter was organized with support from the German union of medium-size travel enterprises (ASR). ASR’s president, Stefan Busch, participated in the event together with several members of the union – German tour operators – in order to establish new and effective cooperation with the Russian travel industry. 
This summer the FIFA World Cup will be held in Germany with the country expecting an extra five million foreign tourists. The competition was most effectively promoted in the form of German Chancellor Angela Merkel who visited the fair on March 10. The advantages of hosting such a global event were evident in the fair’s strong Greek presence. Still building on its role as host of the summer Olympics two years ago, the country was the official partner of ITB 2006.

TITLE: Finns Expand With Energy
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Finnish company Fortum is looking to increase its stake in the Petersburg Generating Company by 12.5 percent, Andrei Likhachov, the CEO of Territory Generating Company N1, said Wednesday, Interfax reported.
Petersburg Generating Company appeared as a result of the division of local power monopoly Lenenergo into power generating, distribution and network management companies.
The owners of the 12.5 percent stake, who were against the restructuring,  sold their shares to Lenenergo last year.
“At the moment we are negotiating to give Fortum the 12.5 percent stake of Petersburg Generating Company, owned by Lenenergo,” Likhachov said.
Unified Energy Systems, which is supervising the restructuring of Lenenergo, proposed selling the shares for $99.4 million. Lenenergo shareholders are allowed to buy out the shares, unless another investor offers a higher price, by March 31.
Fortum has already appealed to the Federal Antimonopoly Service for permission to increase its 30.7 percent stake in Petersburg Generating Company. 
Fortum also holds 35 percent of Lenenergo shares.
As a result of power industry reform,  in the future the Petersburg Generating Company, Kolenergo and Karelgeneratsya will merge with the Territory Generating Company N1.
By enlarging its stakes in regional generating companies, Fortum would increase its share in TGC-1 accordingly. At the end of 2005 Fortum negotiated the purchase of a 24.8 percent stake in Kolenergo from Norilsky Nikel.
An expert said that restructuring could improve the efficiency of the business, though the respective companies will never escape the risks associated with the power industry in general.
State-controlled generation and distribution companies would face a higher risk of political interference in their pricing policy and strategy and could be forced to participate in unprofitable and risky projects, Yevgeny Korovin, credit analyst at Standard & Poor’s, said in an analytical report on credit risks in the Russian power industry.
“For those companies whose credit compares favorably to UES, then separation will eliminate the potentially negative influence of its weaker associate,” Korovin said. The credit qualities of the new owners will also contribute to company solvency.
Vitaly Yermakov, expert at Cambridge Energy Research Associates in Moscow, indicated two major risks that a foreign company would face when investing in Russian power generation.
“We do not have long-term contracts for the gas supply necessary for power plants. Tariffs are low, but you could not expect a consistent supply of gas. In January-February this year Mosenergo had to buy oil, which is three times more expensive than gas, because extreme frost affected supply,” Yermakov said.
Another disadvantage comes from tariffs on energy, which do not allow a large return on investment.
“Russian companies do not invest in power assets alone. They create industrial holdings based on a vertically integrated production chain, and thus power generation is only a part of a value-added chain,” Yermakov said.

TITLE: China Offers Transneft $400M for Oil Pipeline
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: BEIJING — China National Petroleum Corp. will provide Transneft with $400 million to build a long-promised pipeline that was originally supposed to ship Yukos oil to China, Transneft president Semyon Vainshtok said Wednesday.
Vainshtok made the announcement in Beijing as President Vladimir Putin wrapped up a two-day visit with assurances that he had not forgotten an agreement he had struck with Chinese President Hu Jintao in May 2003 to construct the pipeline.
Vainshtok said CNPC would finance a feasibility study for the pipeline and cover construction costs on Russian soil. The pipeline is to branch out from the still-unbuilt Far East pipeline at Skovorodino, about 70 kilometers from China.
The terms for the $400 million were unclear. Vainshtok classified the money as a “gift.”
“We have worked with them for two years, so CNPC should give us this gift, or liwu, as they say in China,” Vainshtok said, Interfax reported.
He said that the first installment would arrive this year, and construction of the Far East pipeline would be finished by the end of 2008.
The pipeline, which was to cost $2.5 billion and have a maximum throughput capacity of 30 million tons of crude per year, was due to become operational in 2005. Instead, however, Yukos has been crushed by the state through a series of multibillion-dollar tax claims, and the pipeline plans were first suspended and then attached to an appendix to plans by Transneft, the state-owned pipeline monopoly, to build a pipeline connecting eastern Siberia with Russia’s Pacific coast.
Putin told a business forum in Beijing on Wednesday that the pipeline would become a reality. 
“If this project is successfully completed — and that is beyond doubt — it will provide for significant increases in the volume of oil supplies from Russia to China,” Putin told the forum, which Hu also attended, The Associated Press reported.
Rosneft president Sergei Bogdanchikov, playing up China’s need for energy, said Wednesday that his company also planned to expand its role in the region, Interfax reported.
He said Rosneft had signed agreements with CNPC to create joint ventures that would work on oil production and the marketing of refined oil products.
It was unclear which fields in Russia the Rosneft-CNPC oil venture would operate. Bogdanchikov said the venture would bid for licenses on the market and would have access to several exploration licenses held by Rosneft. 
China has long been eyeing stakes in Russian energy companies but has yet to succeed in gaining access to Russia’s energy stock and vast hydrocarbon resources. The other venture would give Rosneft access to China’s growing retail market. Rosneft wants to sell gasoline in China, and the deal could position it to act fast should China move to liberalize its tightly regulated domestic fuel market.
The deals come on top of pledges this week to double Russian-Chinese trade by 2010 and to build two huge natural gas pipelines by 2011. With those promises, the Russian leadership appears to be signaling that China will become a major focus of Russia’s external economic relations — even though the substance of the deals has yet to be determined.

TITLE: Shatalov Urges Further Tax Cuts
AUTHOR: By Maria Levitov and Anastasiya Lebedev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Shatalov on Wednesday urged the government to continue cutting taxes, including a long-awaited tax break for developers of new oil fields.
The government’s ongoing tax reform, which has significantly lowered the tax burden on individuals and businesses over the past six years, should continue in 2007, Shatalov said during the Cabinet’s budget forecast committee meeting, Interfax reported.
The committee, which was meeting to discuss next year’s budget, did not discuss a controversial proposed cut in value-added tax to 13 percent from the current 18 percent. The Finance Ministry has opposed the cut, which is widely seen to have the backing of Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov.
Shatalov told the meeting, which was chaired by Fradkov, that the VAT issue needed further analysis. He later unveiled some possible changes to VAT administration on the sidelines of Wednesday’s meeting, Interfax reported.
In addition to tax benefits for the development of new oil fields, Shatalov proposed other benefits, including tax breaks on education and health care expenses for individuals, the news agency said.
Fradkov said taxes should be viewed not only as a source of budget revenue, but also as an instrument for ensuring economic growth. “There needs to be a balance, and seeking this balance requires serious intellectual and professional efforts,” Fradkov said, Interfax reported.
Analysts welcomed the Finance Ministry’s proposal on oil extraction taxes, saying the move would bring in much-needed investment to ensure the nation’s long-term oil supply. 
Instituting tax breaks to encourage the development of new oil fields is “absolutely vital,” Maxim Shein, head of research at BrokerCreditService, said Wednesday.
“The energy sector has been chronically underinvested in, which may result in its collapse in 20 years,” he said.
While he welcomed the proposal, he said the government should go further to institute a differentiated mineral reserves extraction tax, taking into account the age of an oil field and the complexity of its development.
In the oil sector, mineral reserves extraction tax rate is pegged to world oil prices, but it does not take into consideration factors like the cost of developing an oil field. 
Pyotr Medvedev of Ernst & Young’s tax services expressed doubt, however, that the government would give oil companies a 10-year extraction tax break without instituting another tax to make up for the resulting shortfall in budget revenues. 
The budget committee said Wednesday that the Finance Ministry’s proposals required clarification, but that the work should begin as soon as possible to allow the tax changes to come into effect in 2007, Interfax reported.
Shatalov told reporters on the sidelines of Wednesday’s meeting that the Finance Ministry was also exploring changes on how VAT rules were applied to businesses. A new registration procedure could be implemented, exempting companies with relatively little turnover from VAT, Interfax quoted Shatalov as saying. That initiative would be implemented no sooner than 2008, he added.
Shatalov also unveiled another possible change, which would change the minimum capital requirement for businesses in a bid to crack down on tax shelters, Interfax reported Wednesday.
Half of all businesses registered in Russia are created for tax-evasion reasons, Federal Tax Service chief Anatoly Serdyukov told the State Duma on Wednesday, Interfax reported.
The country’s financial, customs and security services intend to tackle the issue, he said.
Some phony businesses pose as suppliers, which should be liable for VAT, but disappear after carrying out just a few financial transactions, said Vadim Zaripov, head analyst at Pepeliaev, Goltsblat & Partners, who specializes in tax law. Economists say such shell companies cost the federal budget up to 100 billion rubles ($3.6 billion) in lost revenues each year, he said.
Cracking down on shell companies and illegal imports could make up for the budget revenue shortfall that would be created if the VAT rate were cut, said Dmitry Belousov, senior analyst at the Center for Macroeconomic Analysis and Short-Term Forecasts.

TITLE: Big spenders
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: ST. MORITZ, Switzerland — A much-praised “champagne climate,” an enviable 322 sunny days a year, some of the most sophisticated ski runs in the Alps, a taxi ride in a bob-sleigh run carved in natural ice, a stroll through a narrow lakeside with designer shops packed like sardines and a former residence of a Russian tsar (now a hotel): St. Moritz is all this — and it gives you the perfect chance to wear your diamond-studded, solid-gold sunglasses. 
This is a place to take the plunge into opulent chic — if your pocket can stand it. 
Russians flock to St. Moritz, and make up to a quarter of the guests visiting the resort in the winter. The Kempinki Grand Hotel des Bains reported a massive Russian invasion this year, estimating that Russian guests made up to 90 percent of their clientele around last New Year. 
With their passion for St. Moritz, the Russian nouveau riches are in fact following the footsteps of Russia’s last tsar, Nicholas II, who developed a taste for this elegant Alpine resort back in the early 19th century. 
In 1913, which history records as Russia’s most prosperous year, Tsar Nicholas built a residence in St. Moritz, which was later turned into the five-star Carlton hotel with lavish comforts and a “tsar’s menu” in its Le Romanoff restaurant. The giant windows of its noble marble-lined breakfast room face East, and beams of light slowly fill the hall as the sun rises; mulled wine is served here with honey.
Russia’s nouveau riches seem to have been digested by Western resorts. A witty St. Moritz native described Russians’ current standing in a historical overview of pilgrimages to the Alpine village.
“You know, we didn’t really like the Brits in the beginning: they were way too cold and snobbish, but we got used to them in the end, and money is a good enough reason...” she said. “We didn’t quite like the Americans at first either: these guys were always more relaxed than the others, and used to put their feet on the table, but we learnt to put up with them, too.”
Arabs, she went on, were just too different to have been accepted immediately but they won through in the end. And, yes, the Russians were a bit of a shock to the genteel Swiss too: they had a habit of suddenly dropping their fur coats off their shoulders and onto the floor after trying them on, and sales girls in local shops never could catch the coat on time, no matter how hard they tried, the St. Moritz native said. 
“Now we have just about been reconciled,” she addded. “But the next wave might come from China...”
The history of St. Moritz as a ski resort dates back to 1864, when Johannes Badrutt bought his first property here — currently the five-star Kulm Hotel, the oldest lodging in the village.
St. Moritz could have lived happily from simply exploiting its marvelous slopes. 
This region, known as Engadine, the largest winter sports region in the country, has 88 diverse downhill ski runs from the easiest to most challenging, with many of them accessible from St. Moritz on a cable car. Each Friday night, the run in Corvatsch is illuminated and opened for Snow Night rides.
Yet the smart imaginative use of this Alpine resort’s charming lake would easily put any marketing manager from a competing resort in an unenviable bind.
Spacious tents emerge on the frozen lake in the winter to accommodate the St. Moritz Gourmet Festival, where Michelin chefs create artful culinary concoctions with finest ingredients such as black truffles, foie gras, langoustines, and Tahiti vanilla. 
The Cartier World Cup Polo on Snow, White Turf horse racing, Gold Rush on the Lake greyhound races, and the Snow and Symphony classical music festival take center stage on the frozen lake in colder times of the year.
St. Moritz is a pioneer of both sports and glamour. This place welcomed the first Alpine tourists and boasts the first hotel in the world ever to be named a “Palace.” It held the first horse races on snow and the first European ice-skating championship.
In 1979, St. Moritz went as far as hosting the a golf tournament on the frozen lake.
The White Turf horse racing event, held for the 100th time next year, traditionally attracts international crowds. 
The sun shines straight into your eyes when you climb to your seat in the stands, and you can’t help thinking that if it gets too warm, the horses won’t have much luck on the ice. But the horses do beautifully.
You don’t need to look around to guess that these races are mink-coat territory yet bets start from as little as two Swiss francs ($1.50).
Another local exclusive event are skijoring races, which are also a tradition of 100 years standing. The wintry equivalent to waterskiing, skijoring takes a lot of courage and demands serious physical fitness. All these events happen in adddition to St. Moritz’s permanent stock of adrenaline kicks. Home to the world’s only natural-ice bob-sleigh run, St. Moritz has something up its sleeve for an ultimate extreme adventurer.
The Olympic Bob Run (www.olympia- bobrun.ch), opened in 1890 and with over 30 World Championships behind it, has bob-taxis, offering a 1,585-meter-long bob-sleigh run at a speed of 140 kilometers per hour. The ride is a bargain of 210 Swiss francs ($161).
Tobogganning-addicts head to the Cresta Run (www.cresta-run.com), inaugurated in 1885 and covering a three-quarter mile ice canal from the 12th century “Leaning Tower” in St. Moritz to the village of Celerina. The ride has ten testing corners along a course that drops 514 feet. Entrace fee of 450 Swiss francs ($345) buys you a series of five rides.
This resort was fashioned for big spenders and money always made wheels turn here. Even so, with care, and if you plan well, you may be able to negotiate your way between the glamorous shopping arcades of St. Moritz, adorned with Prada, Chanel, Cartier, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Ermenegildo Zegna boutiques and other fancy deluxe labels, to find relative bargains. 
People have been visiting here since the Middle Ages. But until 1864, most of them came in the summer. St. Moritz originally drew the attention of visitors for the healing powers of its mineral springs. The effects of St. Mauritius mineral water were appreciated at the highest level. In 1519, Pope Leo X promised full absolution to every Christian visitor coming to the spa.
The growing numbers of wealthy Russians coming to St. Moritz may suggest some people feel the Pope’s offer is still valid.
To plunge into the healing springs, visit the health center of the Kempinski Grand Hotel des Bains. One of the largest Alpine spas, pampering its guests with modern Swiss cosmetic lines using gletcher water, alpine herbs and triple-DNA, this place has much more than a pool filled with mineral water. 
For a more old-fashioned yet romantic pleasure, go on a horse-drawn sleigh ride. The sleigh station is located next to the Catholic church in St. Moritz Bad, and it costs 55 Swiss francs ($42) for half-an-hour, or 95 Swiss franks ($72) for an hour.
Galina Stolyarova was a guest of Switzerland Tourism

TITLE: Dark days
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: An award-winning documentary depicts day-to-day life under the Siege of Leningrad during World War II using little-seen footage.
Documentary filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa did not shoot a single frame of his latest film, “Blockade.” Instead, he pieced together silent footage from the 1940s that chronicles the Siege of Leningrad, adding a soundtrack of street noises, but no accompanying narration.
The black-and-white footage all came from the archive of the St. Petersburg Studio of Documentary Films, which, surprisingly, has only 3 1/2 hours of material from the period. 
“Blockade” is made up of fragments, some quite lengthy, that show the gradual transformation of Leningrad, as St. Petersburg was then known, over the near 900-day siege, in which over half a million city residents died, most of them from starvation.
Loznitsa never considered adding commentary to the film, he said in a recent interview at Moscow’s Dom Kino. 
“If I put in a voiceover, I offer my view, and that means I exclude the possibility of the viewer having his own view,” the director said. “He has either to agree with me or not agree with me.” 
The soundtrack uses material taken from the archive as well as contemporary recordings of crowds, such as one from a market in Minsk. 
“When you completely take away any words and add ordinary sounds to the footage, doing so convincingly, it suddenly opens up in a different way,” Loznitsa said.
The film had its Western European premiere at the Rotterdam Film Festival in February, and it was shown at the New York Underground Film Festival earlier this month. Earlier this month, it won a White Elephant, a prize awarded by Russian critics. 
It is also nominated for best documentary in the Nika competition, whose award ceremony is today. 
The first scenes show German prisoners being paraded down a central street, with passersby hurrying past or stopping to stare. One woman runs alongside the convoy and suddenly spits at the soldiers, most of whom have limbs in slings or walk with crutches. 
As the fighting draws closer, people run for shelter during air raids, hastily draw blackout curtains and fight fires that rip through buildings — scenes that echo what was going on in London or Dresden at the time.
Slowly, though, the city loses power and petrol, trolley bus wires drape the roads and trucks are abandoned. People break up the seats in a stadium for firewood. A handwritten notice lists household goods, from a bed to a guitar. 
“I will sell or exchange them for food or papirosy cigarettes,” it explains.
“I tried to structure the film around the onset of horror,” Loznitsa said. “Death advances, and life falls away. That happens gradually and unnoticeably for us; we gradually immerse ourselves in the nightmare of a completely absurd existence.”
At its worst, the besieged city is full of bundled figures pulling sledges, some loaded with shrouded corpses. The footage of the siege ends with a scene of bodies being prodded into place in a mass grave.
Despite a lack of outlets for documentaries in Russia, the film has been warmly received, Loznitsa said. 
After a recent showing for siege survivors in St. Petersburg, an elderly lady called the studio asking to meet the director, he recalled. When the receptionist asked her why, she explained, “‘I want to give the boy a hug,’” he said. 
That’s not to say the film sentimentalizes the period. After the scenes of Victory Day fireworks, the film cuts to a huge crowd in a square, jumping up to see what is happening in the center, where a group of men are being hung from a gallows.
This footage, shown at the end of the film, was shot in 1946 and comes from a documentary called “The People’s Verdict,” Loznitsa said. It shows German prisoners of war, a detail that is secondary in the director’s view. 
“Only 60 years ago, we gathered on the street and watched other people being hanged,” he commented. “On the one hand, you can understand people, since they lived through something that — I don’t know — reconciled them to such a fact.” 
On the other hand, though, the scene is “impossible to understand” for people today, he added.
Originally from Kiev, Loznitsa studied at the VGIK film institute in Moscow and moved to work in St. Petersburg in 2000. He still travels to the city regularly from Lubeck, Germany, to where his family emigrated four years ago. 
In his documentaries, the director never uses voiceovers or sounds recorded on location.

TITLE: Chernov’s choice
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
TEXT: Last week dissolved the negative mood brought about on the music scene by John Cale’s performance at PORT club when the great man banned smoking and his manager scanned the crowd with a flashlight and chasedout fans who took pictures. 
Performing at Red Club last Friday, the Manchester-based band I Am Kloot took a different line and not only allowed people to take pictures, but frontman John Bramwell saluted fans with a glass of beer and members of the band actually smoked on stage. 
I Am Kloot’s regular three-man lineup was augmented by Colin McLeod on keyboards and Norman McLeod on slide guitar. The fact that half of the band’s equipment was stuck at London’s Heathrow Airport was overcome.
Meanwhile, the sound system was excellent, the atmosphere was positive, a lot of young fans came and the songs and performance were great. This might well have been the best local concert in the last two or three years.
According to Alla Vasilyeva of the British Council, the band was chosen by journalist Artyom Troitsky and promoter Maxim Silva-Vega of Avant Music at the Glastonbury festival last year, and the British Council sponsored the band’s trip here.
Last week Avant Music revealed plans for future concerts which include gigs by the Austin, Texas-based band And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead (scheduled to perform at Moscow’s Apelsin Club on April 22), the Scottish duo Arab Strap (to headline the festival Avant 2006 in Moscow due to be held on June 24 and 25) and, most intriguingly, U.S. singer/songwriter Devendra Banhart (on July 2). No St. Petersburg dates so far have been planned.
On the local front, however, Platforma came up with perhaps its most exciting schedule ever — revealing a lot of interesting international acts scheduled to perform at the venue in April.
New York-based guitarist Gary Lucas, who has visited the city a couple of times before,  returns to perform as Gary Lucas & Gods and Monsters, an outfit featuring ex-Talking Heads Jerry Harrison on keyboards, ex-Modern Lovers Ernie Brooks on bass, Television’s Billy Ficca on drums, and Hungry March Band’s Jason Candler on alto sax (April 12). 
The BBC Radio 3 World Music Awards winners Warsaw Village Band will perform April 9. Nina Nastasia, the U.S. singer and John Peel favorite, will perform at Platforma on April 13. 
The Belgian guitar-based alternative band dEUS will perform as previously announced on April 15.
SKIF 10, or the 10th Sergei Kuryokhin International Festival, has announced it will feature Fred Frith, Chris Cutler, Phil Niblock, Acoustic Ladyland and Felix Kubin among dozens of other artists. The festival will be held in the city on April 20-23.
However, there seems to be no interesting international acts playing in the city this week. Local bands Tequilajazzz (Red Club, Friday) and Markscheider Kunst (Platforma, Saturday) might prove worthwhile substitutes.

TITLE: Singing and fighting
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Chumbawamba, the politically-minded British anarcho-punk group with a substantial cult following in St. Petersburg, failed to make it to the city in June when its local concert was canceled at short notice because a promoter failed to produce funds to cover the band’s expenses. 
But this week the band is sure that its gigs at St. Petersburg’s Platforma on March 31 and Moscow’s Apelsin Club on Apr. 1 will go ahead as planned.
“It all fell through at the last minute,” said vocalist and trumpeter Jude Abbott, speaking to The St. Petersburg Times this week from her home in Leeds, in northern England, about last year’s no-show. “I’m definite we’re coming this time, we’re taking care of it.” .
With half of Chumbawamba’s electric, eight-piece lineup on a “lengthy sabbatical,” according to the band’s official web site, Chumbawamba will perform as an acoustic four-piece outfit, featuring Lou Watts on vocals and keyboard, Boff Whalley on vocals and guitar and Neil Ferguson on bass. 
Chumbawamba comes to Russia on the back of “A Singsong and a Scrap,” the band’s most recent album released last month on the British folk label No Masters. Has Chumbawamba become a folk band?
“Well, you know Chumbawamba, we’re never a 100 percent any sort of band,” said Abbott.
“We’re a bit folk at the moment. We’re playing acoustically and the new album does sound quite folky, but I think we’ll never be a 100 percent folk band because we’re all steeped in pop and punk traditions, really, so there are elements of those things.”
The new album has some beautiful songs with skilled folk arrangements. 
“We wanted it to sound like a group of people sitting down and playing some songs,” said Abbott.
“You know, with a lot of Chumbawamba albums, the production is all over it and there’s lots of samples and drum loops and little things that sort of put it in the 21st century. But here’s a group of people with some guitars singing and this is what it sounds like, obviously. We had to cheat like mad to make it sound like that....I suppose it sounds all natural.”
According to Abbott, the new album can be seen as a continuation of “English Rebel Songs 1381-1914,” Chumbawamba’s 1988 album of unaccompanied radical folk songs.
“‘English Rebel Songs’ were songs largely from history, from the past, and this is kind of continuing the tradition of writing political songs, or songs about the state of the world or people’s lives, but written by us and bringing it up to date.”
However, the new album does feature an existing folk song, the Italian “Bella Ciao.” The song is very well-known in Russia because it was the theme song to a popular Yugoslavian World War II TV mini-series shown in the Soviet Union in the 1970s.
“It’s one of those songs  that has a fantastic tune and you can, as we’ve done, you can put your own lyrics to it.”
Chumbawamba wrote its own words to “Bella Ciao” with the lines “And I will tell them [...] that our sunlight is not for franchise/And wish the bastards drop down dead,” in commemoration of the antiglobalist icon Carlo Giuliani, who was killed in a fight with police during the 2001 G8 summit meeting riots in Genoa.
“Partly, it will be a disaster if we try to sing in Italian, but also we wanted to make it our own and also bring it up to date. We initially wrote it about the anti-globalization movement,” said Abbott.
“It’s like waving and saying goodbye to someone who’s going off to, in the Italian case, fight fascists, or, in the case of our song, going off to demonstrate or to do a political action, so it has still got the same sense and sentiment, even if  it has different words.”
While 10 out of the 12 tracks on “A Singsong and a Scrap” are original, there is also an unaccompanied cover version of “Bankrobber” by The Clash.
“We’ve actually been doing it live for a long time so we thought we should put it on the album. It fits in because, in a way, you could argue that songs like that and people like [Clash frontman] Joe Strummer are radical in the way that some of that stuff on ‘English Rebel Songs’ is.”
As in its title, the album finds Chumbawamba in fighting mood. The band takes on religious fundamentalism in a song called “Walking into Battle with the Lord” that musically imitates a church hymn.
“How could you write songs at the moment and not refer to the political situation we’re in, at this scary fundamentalist time?” said Abbott. “The songs sound quite gentle, perhaps, but the politics are still, you know, right in there.”
According to Abbott, the band has shrunk to an acoustic quartet for both practical and creative reasons.
“In many ways, the electric band has come to a bit of a dead end because it’s very expensive to take it out on the road, because it’s so big and we weren’t getting very much money. So financially it has become a liability. 
“And then at the same time, once we re-recorded ‘English Rebel Songs,’ the acoustic side took on a bit of a life of its own. Things develop and change. We don’t want to be like The Rolling Stones, still going when we are 60, you know, and churning out the same old stuff.”

Chumbawamba performs at Platforma on March 31. www.chumba.com

TITLE: Master of prints
AUTHOR: By Andrei Vorobei
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: To mark the 400th anniversary of the birth of Rembrandt, the State Hermitage Museum is displaying its entire collection of the master’s etchings and prints. These works reveal that Rembrandt the printmaker was second only to Rembrandt the painter.
On July 15 the world celebrates the 400th anniversary of the birth of one of the most exceptional and enigmatic figures in art history — Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, also known simply as Rembrandt. 
The State Hermitage Museum, which features a notable selection of the paintings of the 17th century Dutch master, has joined the celebration with a not-to-be-missed exhibition, “Rembrandt Prints from the Collection of Dmitry Rovinsky.” 
According to Roman Grigoriyev, director of engravings at the Hermitage and curator of the event, this is Russia’s largest and most comprehensive collection of the master’s prints. It is the first time that all 340 of the artist’s prints have been put on display since the collection was given to the Hermitage in 1897 in accordance with the will of statesman and collector Rovinsky. 
“The exhibition is dedicated not only to Rembrandt. It pays respect to Rovinsky and it displays everything that was considered by him to be a ‘Rembrandt.’ At the same time, of course, certain corrections to attribution have been made in accordance with the present state of things,” Grigoriyev told The St Petersburg Times. 
The naming of Rembrandt’s prints and deciding whether they really are by Rembrandt is a problem that has existed for hundreds of years and continues in the present day. The number of catalogs raisonnÎ of the Rembrandt legacy on display (books containing various versions of the same print), including three volumes of Rovinsky’s “Atlas,” demonstrates some of the attempts to fix this problem. 
The issues arise from the essence of etching itself. The reason for compiling such catalogs is that an etching can have several states —  intermediate variants of an image — and a certain number of high-quality impressions. This has direct effects on the market, and Rembrandt’s prints were already collectable during his lifetime. 
As an engraver, Rembrandt was second only to Rembrandt the painter. Moreover, Rembrandt was more diverse in his prints — in addition to his traditional painting genres such as portraits and illustrations of biblical, mythological or historical subjects, with his prints he produced landscapes, nudes, and even one still life. 
The Hermitage exhibition arranges all this in two halls marking two periods: works produced in Leiden, where the artist was born in 1606, and those made in Amsterdam where he moved as an established artist around 1632 and spent the rest of his life until his death in 1669.
The artist’s principal print technique was etching, then a new invention and which, thanks to Rembrandt, reached an advanced stage of development. 
As in his paintings, light was a structural element in Rembrandt’s prints. Etching allows the thinnest gradation and smooth treatment of light and shade to reach the painterly effect of chiaroscuro in a printed medium. 
The Swiss art historian Heinrich WÚlfflin, when he analyzed the difference between High Renaissance and Baroque styles, used Rembrandt’s etchings as one of the most mature and apt visual manifestations of Baroque principles for their painterly effects, their flickering, moving forms, their vision of depth, their optical sense of objects, and the obscurity of the image.
Such complexity was due to Rembrandt’s constant experimentation. In a distinct number of the prints on display, he suggests a remarkably wide variation of methods. Some parts of the etching are worked in great detail, while the rest is half-elaborated or simply given in outline. 
If in the early works this can be explained by the necessities of production, in the mature period this “unfinished-ness” becomes a means of artistic expression.  This happens, for example, in “The Hundred Guilder Print” (circa 1648). This etching is also a striking example of the artist’s inventive practice of combining different techniques (usually a mixture of etching, drypoint and burin), and how it benefits artistic vocabulary. 
“Although quite a significant number of works are not signed by the master, in the case of ‘The Hundred Guilder Print’ list, there was no need — simply because there was no artist who could have done it at the same level of complexity and virtuosity,” Grigoriyev said. 
With the same logic, Rambrandt turned some traditional technical defects in etching into a means of artistic expression. 
Rembrandt was also one of the first artists to experiment with different kinds of papers and vellum. In order to emphasise this or that effect he would use common white hand-made European paper or oriental paper from Japan and China, which was more luxurious and expensive, for a soft visual effect.
Perhaps one of the most distinct features about Rembrandt’s print art is how frequently and thoroughly he could rework the plate and where the alteration of the states of one etching could be significant. 
“This is a case in which Rembrandt’s continuous explorations luckily corresponded to the market for collecting,” Grigoriyev said. 
Indeed, in different states the artist could add or clear away effects, details and figures from the plate, that is, with little change to the new state it could be sold as anew. In certain cases, we can now see narratives or a kind of conceptual program in such developments of the image through its various states. 
“Sometimes we can bring in the category of time in such sequence of states of one etching,”Grigoriev said. 
Perhaps, the most exciting and semantically motivated effect could be found in “The Entombment” (1654).
Rembrandt set the scene in a huge arched space — a grave where a body is to be lowered. The artist began with a light scene in the first version and from there on it became darker until he put the whole scene in the finalfourth, version in almost complete darkness. 
“Like a stage director, Rembrandt put out the light in the etching by degrees,” Grigoriyev said.
	
“Rembrandt Prints” runs through June 11 at the Hermitage. www.hermitage.ru 
Keep track of all Rembrandt events between July 15 2006 and July 15 2007 at www.codart.nl/rembrandt_2006/

TITLE: Basque Terror Group Announces Ceasefire
PUBLISHER: fribourg tourism board
TEXT: AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE
MADRID — The armed Basque separatist group ETA called on all Basques to support the fragile peace process after announcing a historic permanent ceasefire to end nearly four decades of bloody conflict on Wednesday. 
Against a background of prudence born of past failures, it followed up its ceasefire by urging all parts of Basque society to “move from words to action” by getting involved in the peace process.
There was a measured response from politicians and the media, who warned of a long road ahead to cement lasting peace after a struggle that left more than 800 people dead.
Wednesday’s communique, read out by one of three hooded figures against a backdrop of ETA symbols, was the first time in its half-century history it had promised to renounce violence on a “permanent” basis.
Previous ceasefires, in 1989 and 1998-1999, collapsed within months as ETA renewed its armed campaign for an independent state covering Spain’s northern Basque region and parts of southwestern France.
The group said this ceasefire, which meets the key government condition for political talks, would take effect from midnight Thursday.
In an extended statement in the Basque nationalist daily Gara, the movement said that it was “up to all sectors of Basque society to develop this process and conciliate all the agreements on the future” of the region.
“It is the moment to speak out,” it went on.
“All sectors together must make serious commitments so that all together we can construct the democratic solution that Euskal Herria (the Basque country) needs.
“It is the moment to act with courage and take deep decisions, moving from words to action.”
Politicians broadly welcomed the announcement, which Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who made resolving the conflict a top priority, had been awaiting for months.
He said Wednesday that Spaniards were now “united by hope,” having already been “united in the face of the horror” of terrorism, but warned that “a long road lies ahead.”
The conservative opposition Popular Party and some victims’ groups voiced scepticism and even pro-independence Basque media warned that peace would not be reached immediately.
Popular Party leader Mariano Rajoy noted that as ETA had not announced that it was actually disbanding, its statement was “not a renunciation of criminal activity.”
The general secretary of the Basque Socialist Party, Patxi Lopez, said the government could not sit down straight away with the radicals.
“It is not simply a question of stopping committing attacks — they have to stop racketeering and threatening the whole of society, and abandon urban violence,” Lopez said.
The pro-government El Pais newspaper spoke of an “unparalleled opportunity” for peace, adding that “it would be irresponsible not to try to make good use of it.”

TITLE: Prince Steps Into Cartoon Controversy
AUTHOR: By Martin Burlund
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Criticism of the Mohammed cartoons gathered pace Tuesday as Prince Charles, heir to the British throne, blasted the cartoons.
“Highest among those values of our common inheritance, and born of our love of God, must always come respect for each other, and for His creation,” the Prince said before 800 spectators at the Al-Azhar University, Sunni Islam’s oldest institution of learning, in Cairo, Egypt.
“Our beliefs and values call out for peace and not conflict,” he added.
Prince Charles made the speech as he was awarded an honorary doctorate for his conciliatory stance during the controversy over cartoons satirising the Prophet Mohammed.
The cartoons were first printed in Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten and sparked a conflict between Muslims and the West which resulted in violent demonstrations and attacks on Western embassies in Muslim countries.
Carsten Juste, who remains editor of the newspaper, has expressed regret several times for the complications the drawings generated. In neighboring Sweden, the foreign minister was fired as part of the ongoing ramifications of the cartoon controversy.
Laila Freivald is accused of lying to the media about the closing of a Swedish website, which published the 12 cartoons. When the site closed, she denied she had anything to do with the shutdown, but in fact the Foreign Ministry had communicated with the web portal that shut down the site.
The new foreign minister will be Bosse Ringholm, who is currently vice-premier.
Meanwhile, six imams from Denmark were Wednesday and Thursday attending a conference with 300 Muslim intellectuals in Bahrain. They called for an end of the boycott in some Muslim countries against Danish goods.
A scheduled visit by Denmark’s prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, to India from April 2, has also been postponed due to widespread protests over the publication of the cartoons.

TITLE: Coca-Cola Runs Dry In Zimbabwe
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: HARARE, Zimbabwe – For the first time in at least 40 years, supplies of Coca Cola dried up Wednesday in yet another sign of crippling economic crisis in Zimbabwe, where people suffer acute bread shortages and farmers warn that worse is yet to come. 
Harare agents for Atlanta-based Coca-Cola Co. said local production of the drink stopped earlier this month, but refused to say why. Bar and cafe owners said they had been promised resumed deliveries at the end of the month, but were told hard currency shortages had prevented licensed bottlers importing the secret concentrated syrup used to mix the popular soft drink.
One sports club in Harare on Wednesday sold imported canned Coke made under license in Malaysia for 100,000 Zimbabwe dollars ($1), double the price of the locally bottled version.
It was the first Coke drought across the country for at least four decades, shop owners said. Throughout the seven-year guerrilla war that ended white rule and led to independence in 1980, Coca-Cola was available in rural stores in the heart of war zones.
Traditionally, it has been the country’s best-selling soft drink, and its absence underscored the nation’s worst economic crisis since independence.
Farmers’ groups on Wednesday predicted a further decline in wheat production, blaming acute shortages of fertilizers, gasoline and electric power to run aging irrigation equipment.
Shortages of bread, a second staple after corn, also in short supply, power outages and scarcities of gasoline, fertilizer and other essential imports have become routine in the troubled southern African nation.

TITLE: 3 Iraq Hostages Rescued by Coalition Forces
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGHDAD — U.S. and British troops Thursday freed three Christian peace activists in rural Iraq without firing a shot, ending a four-month hostage drama in which an American among the group was shot to death and dumped on a Baghdad street. 
Major General Rick Lynch, the U.S. military spokesman, said the hostages were being held by a “kidnapping cell” in a house in western Baghdad, and the operation to free the captives was based on information from a man captured by U.S. forces only three hours earlier.
“They were bound, they were together, there were no kidnappers in the areas,” Lynch told a news briefing.
He also said military operations concerning other hostages were ongoing.
Still missing is Jill Carroll, a freelance writer for The Christian Science Monitor who was kidnapped Jan. 7 in Baghdad. She has appeared in three videotapes delivered by her kidnappers to Arab satellite television stations.
When asked whether he had any information about Carroll, Lynch said: “None that I can discuss at this time.”
“There are other operations that continue probably as a result of what we’re finding at this time,” Lynch said. “So you’ve got to give us the opportunity to work through that.”
The Iraqi Interior Ministry said the three captives were rescued northwest of Baghdad between the towns of Mishahda, 20 miles away from Baghdad, and the western suburb of Abu Ghraib, 12 miles away. 
British officials in Baghdad said those freed were Canadians James Loney, 41, and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32, and Briton Norman Kember, 74. The men — members of the Chicago-based Christian Peacemaker Teams — were kidnapped Nov. 26 along with their American colleague, Tom Fox.
The body of Fox, 54, of Clear Brook, Virginia, was found earlier this month.
“We remember with tears Tom Fox,” group co-director Doug Pritchard said. “We had longed for the day when all four men would be released together. Our gladness today is bittersweet by the fact that Tom is not alive to join his colleagues in the celebration.”
In London, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said Kember was in “reasonable condition” in Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone. 
The two Canadians required hospital treatment, but he gave no further details.
Straw also gave few details of the operation, saying only that it followed “weeks and weeks” of planning.
At least 56 Iraqis died Thursday in violence, including a car bombing that killed 25 people in the third major attack on a police lockup in three days. 
A suicide car bomber detonated his explosives at the entrance to the Interior Ministry Major Crimes unit in Baghdad’s central Karradah district, killing 10 civilians and 15 policemen employed there, authorities said.

TITLE: 255-Year Old Tortoise Dies
TEXT: AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE
KOLKATA, India — Zoo officials in Kolkata have said that a famed 255-year-old tortoise brought to the eastern Indian city during the rule of the British East India Company has died.
The giant Aldabra tortoise was one of four brought by British seamen from the Seychelles Islands as gifts to Robert Clive of the East India Company in 1875. 
The tortoise died after a string of illnesses, Kolkata Zoo director Subir Chowdhury told AFP on Thursday.
“Adwaitya (The Only One), who delighted the zoo visitors for 131 years, died on Wednesday morning,” Chowdhury said. “His shell will be preserved in the zoo. All zoo employees are saddened by his death.”
The three other tortoises given as gifts to Clive died soon after they arrived in Kolkata, formerly known as Calcutta, he said.
“Adwaitya spent his early days in Robert Clive’s garden,” the zookeeper said. He was later transferred to the Alipore zoo, located in the city’s southern district, after it opened in 1875.
Despite his many years of life, he only became sick eight years ago when an infection was detected in his legs, Chowdhury said. He was successfully treated at that time.
“Our records show the tortoise was born in 1750, but some have claimed he was born in 1705,” he said. 
He added that the zoo will use a scientific method known as carbon-dating to determine his real age.

TITLE: ‘South Park’ Takes Revenge on Chef
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK — Isaac Hayes’ Chef character got a true “South Park” send-off Wednesday night — seemingly killed off but mourned as a jolly old guy whose brains were scrambled by the “Super Adventure Club.” 
The thinly disguised satire continued the show’s feud with Scientologists in its 10th season premiere on Comedy Central.
The soul singer has voiced the Chef character in “South Park” since 1997, but left recently because of what he called the animated show’s religious “intolerance and bigotry.” 
Hayes didn’t participate in making Wednesday’s episode.

TITLE: Powerful Clubs Plan to Sue FIFA For $1Bln
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: Eighteen of Europe’s most powerful clubs — known as the G14 group — have launched a bid to sue soccer’s governing body FIFA in Belgian courts for $1 billion. 
The G14 is responding to the contentious issue of club players being used at international level as well as growing commitment to Champions League games and also demand a share of the revenue from World Cup ticket sales.
Michel Platini, an executive committee member of European football’s governing body UEFA who will run for the UEFA presidency next year, labelled G14 a self-serving body which has “no legitimacy” and is motivated by greed, AFP reported.
“The G14 has no legitimacy,” said Platini after a UEFA executive committee meeting Wednesday.
“Clubs have the right to make certain demands, but they must do so through already exisiting bodies, including the UEFA clubs forum or the national federations.
“The G14 is simply following the money trail. The big clubs always want more. For them, sport is just a way to make money. We don’t share that philosophy.”
At a court hearing Monday in Belgium the G14 launched a bid to sue FIFA over what it sees as the unlawful use of club players in national teams.
G14’s involvement follows an attempt by Belgian first division club Charleroi to sue FIFA after one of their midfielders, Abdelmajid Oulmers, was injured while playing for Morocco against Burkina Faso on November 2004. 
He was unable to play for his Belgian side for over 200 days.
“The G14 demands 860 million euros in damages from the International Football Federation (FIFA) to cover the losses incurred by the 18 clubs in the G14 over the past ten years,” said the G14 group’s lawyer, Jean-Louis Dupont. 
“This figure covers the cost of putting players at FIFA’s disposal and their unavailability after they have been injured while playing for the national team.”
Currently, the clubs cannot retain players who are fit and eligible for international duty — a ruling that the G14 feels violates European law. 
French legend Platini was scornful over the G14 move.
“It’s ridiculous! Players want to play for their national team,” he said.
“International matches are also important for clubs because it adds value to players when it comes to transfer time. Opposing freeing up players [for international duty] just doesn’t make sense.” 
In another statement, the G14 demanded a share of the revenue from World Cup ticket sales.
(Reuters/SPT)

TITLE: Zenit Prepares To Do Battle With Sevilla
AUTHOR: By Martin Burlund
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: FC Zenit St. Petersburg beat Torpedo Moscow 2-0 at Petrovsky Stadium on Wednesday in the Russian Cup quarterfinal. The win gives the St. Petersburg side a chance of advancing to the semifinal of the Russian Cup, after the two teams meet in the second leg of the quarterfinals on April 14 in Moscow.
But Zenit coach Vlastimil Petrzela was more worried than satisfied after the game. He complained that his players are exhausted from a packed schedule.
Zenit has already played 15 matches this season and only lost one of them. At a press conference after beating Torpedo, Petrzela said that his main focus is on the UEFA Cup and the Russian Cup. Victory in one of those would give Zenit the chance to play in Europe again next season.
Wednesday’s game was in effect a warm-up to the important UEFA Cup tie on Thursday in which Zenit faces Spanish side Sevilla FC in the UEFA Cup quarterfinal. The St. Petersburg team has already met Sevilla once this season and once last season.
Zenit, which hosted both games, won the last match 2-1, but still ended second in the UEFA Cup group behind Sevilla on goal difference. Striker Alexander Kerzhakov scored both Zenit goals. 
Kerzhakov also helped Zenit to this year’s UEFA Cup quarterfinals by scoring against Olympique Marseille in the aggregate win.
In its first match last season in the UEFA Cup group stage Sevilla stopped Zenit from advancing further by clinching a draw. The Russian side needed to win the match to advance.
Although it has yet to win a match against Zenit outright, Sevilla has picked up confidence by winning against other Russian teams.
In the last 32, the Spanish side beat FC Lokomotiv Moscow 3-0 on aggregate.
Sevilla coach Juande Ramos believes this season’s defeat against Zenit may hand a small advantage to the Russian side even though the Russian Championship began only last Sunday. 
Zenit drew 1-1 at home to Saturn and meet Amkar Perm on Sunday in a final preparation for the matches against Sevilla.	 
“We have a keen desire to reach the last four and although Zenit may lack fitness, they will have a mental edge,” Ramos told uefa.com.
“At this level all teams provide some level of difficulty,” he said. “We would have liked to have played at home in the return, but if we play well in the first leg we’ll go to St. Petersburg with less anxiety.”
Zenit are also placing greater importance on the first encounter when they travel to Sevilla FC’s Ram×n SÇnchez-PizjuÇn Stadium on Thursday.
“We’ve already played Sevilla twice in the past two seasons so we know them and they know us,” said Zenit representative Leonid Genusov. “Both games were in St. Petersburg, though, and we’ve never played in Seville so it could be an advantage to them.” 
The return game will be played at Petrovsky Stadium on April 6. The aggregate winner will face the winner of the quarterfinal between FC Schalke 04 and PFC Levski Sofia.

TITLE: Drama Queen Pittman Takes The Spotlight in Melbourne
AUTHOR: By Julian Linden
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MELBOURNE — Australia’s Jana Pittman grabbed the spotlight at the Commonwealth Games with victory in the women’s 400 meters hurdles on Thursday, quite fitting for a self-confessed drama queen who is never far from the headlines.
The former world champion sped around the Melbourne Cricket Ground track in 53.82 seconds, setting a new Games record to successfully defend the title she won in Manchester four years ago.
Natasha Danvers Smith of England finished second in 55.17 while Scotland’s Lee McConnell was third in 55.25 but neither could catch Pittman, who was roared home by a packed stadium of about 83,000 spectators.
“This is just fantastic, nothing will ever beat this, it’s the greatest day of my life,” Pittman said in a television interview.
Pittman followed up her victory at Manchester in 2002 by winning the world title the following year but has been plagued by injuries and controversy ever since.
She did not win a medal at the Athens Olympics but still managed to play the starring role after injuring her knee 17 days before the Games then dashing to London for surgery to just make it to the starting blocks in the ancient Greek capital.
A back injury forced her to miss last year’s world championships in Helsinki and there were concerns about her prospects of winning in Melbourne after she injured her hamstring in the lead-up.
The drama was not only consigned to her health.
The 23-year-old, who is engaged to marry England’s 2002 Commonwealth Games 400m hurdles champion Chris Rawlinson, was involved in a “catfight” with her team mate Tamsyn Lewis.
Reprimanded by team officials, Pittman then announced she was considering leaving Australia because she was fed up with her image, but was back revelling in the spotlight after winning in her home town on Thursday.
“I’ve tried very hard to keep a low profile these last few days,” she said.
“I know I’m a very misunderstood person but I really thought that by doing this on the track I can turn it around.
“Tonight just showed that people in this country really love their sport and love their heroes and I really hope one day I’ll do my talking with my feet and nothing else.”

TITLE: Sports Watch
TEXT: Rice Spurns NFL Job
NASSAU, Bahamas (Reuters) — U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice officially turned her back on Wednesday on her dream job — commissioner of the National Football League. 
“Unfortunately it came open at the wrong time,” said Rice, an avid fan of pro football and especially the Cleveland Browns. 
The job is open after the commissioner, Paul Tagliabue, announced on Tuesday he will retire in July.

Fascists Warn Muslims
ROME (AFP) — The World Cup in Germany is set to become a battleground between fascists and Muslims, an Italian member of a European neo-Nazi movement warned. 
In a statement published by Italian daily Repubblica, the member of AS Roma’s notorious ultra hooligan group claims neo-Nazis across Europe met in Braunau in Austria to plan attacks against supporters from Islamic countries during the World Cup in Germany from June 9 to July 9.

Cuban Baseball Heros
HAVANA (Reuters) — Cuba gave its baseball team a hero’s welcome on Tuesday and said the runner-up prize money from the World Baseball Classic would go to victims of Hurricane Katrina in the United States. 
Even though they lost 10-6 to Japan in the final of the WBC in San Diego on Monday, the amateur Cuban players were received as champions for getting so far in a tournament organized by professional baseball.
Cheering schoolchildren and workers lined streets waving Cuban flags and shouting “Viva Cuba!” as the players rode into Havana in a motorcade of open Soviet-era military jeeps.

LeBron Triple-Doubles 
CLEVELAND, Ohio (AP) — In basketball, LeBron James, Cavaliers, recorded his ninth career triple-double with 37 points — including his first game-winning shot with 0.9 seconds left in overtime — 12 assists and 11 rebounds as Cleveland outlasted Charlotte 120-118.
Chris Wilcox, SuperSonics, scored a career-high 30 points and grabbed 14 rebounds, leading Seattle to a 114-105 victory over Milwaukee.
Paul Pierce, Celtics, had 32 points as Boston defeated Toronto for the eighth straight time at home, 110-96.
Allen Iverson, 76ers, had 29 points and 10 assists after missing four games, helping Philadelphia to a 115-106 victory over Atlanta.

Romario goes AWOL
RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) — Former Brazil striker Romario missed training with Vasco da Gama for the fourth time in a row on Tuesday, increasing speculation that he is set to leave the club. 
The 40-year-old, who last year finished as the Brazilian championship’s top-scorer with 22 goals, last appeared for his team during the 2-0 defeat by Cabofriense in the Carioca championship one week ago. After criticising his team for making schoolboy errors, he missed training sessions this week. Romario also failed to turn up for a meeting with club president Eurico Miranda.