SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1161 (27), Friday, April 14, 2006
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TITLE: Hate Crime Penalties To Increase
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Russian government on Thursday approved a bill to impose tough penalties for racist violence and anti-Semitism, news agencies said, as two more attacks on foreigners were reported in a rising tide of hate crimes in the country. 
The bill to be submitted to parliament calls for jail terms of up to three years for persons convicted of crimes with racial motives or with the aim of sowing ethnic, religious or ideological hatred, ITAR-TASS and RIA Novosti said. 
It also called for imposition of fines of up to 1,000 times the minimum wage index rate, or 100,000 rubles ($3,600), for the production, distribution or use of Nazi paraphernalia or symbols, the reports said. 
“The production or spread of agitation materials including propagandistic literature is considered one type of extremist activity” in the bill, an unnamed government spokesman was quoted by ITAR-TASS as saying. 
Approval of the draft legislation comes amid increasing attacks in Russia on ethnic minorities, Jews and foreigners.
Human rights groups and top Russian officials alike have identified ethnic hatred and race crime as a serious problem. 
Most often however, these attacks are still treated by local law enforcement personnel as acts of “hooliganism” rather than hate crimes, carrying relatively light — if any — legal penalties and little social stigma. 
Earlier this month, a student from Senegal was brutally murdered after leaving a night club with friends in St. Petersburg in what authorities quickly identified as a racist crime. 
Meanwhile, there were two more attacks on foreigners reported Thursday in Russia. 
In the eastern city of Chita, a group of 12 to 15 youths shouting nationalist slogans attacked a group of Chinese workers at a construction site, Echo Moscow radio station reported, citing information from the Center for the Fight against Xenophobia and Nationalism. 
Police arrived on the scene within half an hour of the start of the incident, which occurred on Sunday. Six people were arrested and have been charged with “minor hooliganism” which is punishable by a fine of up to 500 rubles ($17) or days in jail, the report said. 
There were no reports of serious injuries. 
Separately, in the western city of Nizhny Novgorod, a 22-year-old Malaysian student was hospitalized with a concussion after she was attacked by an unknown assailant who hit her on the head and fled, RIA Novosti said. 
Police were questioning witnesses to the attack, which occurred late Wednesday, but so far no arrest had been made, the report said.

TITLE: Critics Weigh In After Governor’s Address
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: At a round-table on Thursday on the state and development of St. Petersburg, several members of the city’s Legislative Assembly said poor cooperation between City Hall and the parliament is hampering positive changes. 
“Anatoly Sobchak vetoed a mere handful of laws during his tenure as city mayor, while Vladimir Yakovlev would block every second law, but Governor Valentina Matviyenko rejects 90 percent of the laws we propose,” said Natalya Yevdokimova, head of the Commission For Social Issues of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly. 
The meeting at the Rosbalt News Agency served as a follow-up to the annual address delivered by Governor Valentina Matviyenko to the Legislative Assembly on March 29.
Matviyenko’s speech was enthusiastic and optimistic in character. In the governor’s opinion, the main achievements of her cabinet during her 2 and a half years in office have been political stability and an impressive increase in budget income.
According to City Hall’s Finance Committee, the city budget’s revenues increased from 75.7 billion rubles ($2.5 billion) in 2003 to 93.3 billion rubles ($3.2 billion) in 2004, and 144.2 billion rubles ($5 billion) in 2005.
But Oleg Nilov, head of the Commission For Youth, Sports and Tourism of the Legislative Assembly and one of the local leaders of the Party Of Life said the success of a governor would best be judged on different grounds.
“These tons, kilometers, kilograms and so forth coming in huge numbers are great, but the proper criteria to assess the governor’s work have to be life expectancy, the birth rate and living standards,” he said. 
“If people continue dying early, if families are too poverty-stricken to have children, if almost nobody can afford a mortgage, then, let’s face it, all these impressive tons and kilometers don’t work.”
What Matviyenko described as political stability, some of her critics dubbed political servility.
“City Hall and the Legislative Assembly, dominated by the pro-presidential party United Russia, are politically homogenous, which makes the parliament a puppet and toothless body, too weak to swim against the current,” said Ruslan Linkov, head of the Democratic Russia organization in a telephone interview on Thursday. 
“Sporadic critical voices don’t make a difference, and pro-government decisions are highly predictable,” Linkov said.
In the address to the parliament, Matviyenko said the main goal of her government is to make St. Petersburg a European city in terms of quality of life and living standards. 
“We are deservedly regarded as ‘the European capital of Russia’,” Matviyenko said. “The city is changing for the better by the minute, its authority is growing, and St. Petersburg is already much more than just a nice-looking backdrop for protocol meetings — it’s a major political and financial center where important decisions are made,” she said.
Mikhail Amosov, head of the assembly’s Democratic faction, said the salaries of state-employed locals can’t even be described as modest in the context of the rapid growth in budget income.
Linkov laughed at the governor’s aspirations. Rephrasing Peter the Great’s remark which described St. Petersburg as a window on Europe, he compared the city to a tiny air vent which flaps back and forth with the slightest gust of wind.
“Take any aspect of life in the city — roads, communal services or health care — and St. Petersburg fails miserably,” Linkov said. “But if you listen to the state-run TV channels, they say we are nearly there with the quality of life.”
Natalya Yevdokimova, head of the Legislative Assembly’s Commission for Social Issues, said the city is on the brink of a demographic catastrophe and a massive cash influx is needed to fund social packages aimed at encouraging families to have more children.
Igor Rimmer, deputy head of the city parliament’s Legislation Commission, defended the governor, suggesting that the pace of reforms is slow not because the policies themselves are weak but because the governor has been unlucky with the group of citizens she has been given to govern: ordinary people are just too poor. 
“If they received decent salaries and pensions, most of the problems she is desperately trying to crack, wouldn’t exist. For instance, most people would have been able to take out mortgages.”
In her speech, Matviyenko discussed ethnically motivated killings. “An image of a racist capital of Russia is being forced on St. Petersburg,” she said. “Investigations of all racial killings are under my personal control, and these crimes deserve the most severe punishment.”

TITLE: Foreigner to Manage Russian Soccer Team
AUTHOR: By David Nowak
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Guus Hiddink’s move to coach Russia has been approved by the Russian Football Union, making the Dutch coach the first foreigner to take charge of the Russian national soccer team.
“We worked very hard to find a candidate for this position. We met many specialists, including those from Russia, but we decided to go with Guus Hiddink,” Itar-Tass quoted Russian football chief Vitaly Mutko as saying.
Mutko said Hiddink had agreed to a 2 1/2-year contract and would travel to Moscow to sign it on Friday.
The 59-year-old is concurrently manager for Dutch top division side PSV Eindhoven — which secured its national championship on Sunday — and the Socceroos, Australia’s national team. The Australians qualified in November for the World Cup finals for the first time in 32 years, after beating Uruguay in a playoff. Hiddink, who told a Dutch television channel on Monday that he would quit the Dutch team at the end of the current season, will join Russia after the monthlong World Cup, which ends June 9.
Russia has been without a national team coach since November, when current Dynamo Moscow coach Yury Syomin resigned after the team failed to qualify for the World Cup.
That was the latest episode in a disappointing era for Russia, which exited after the first round of the last World Cup in Japan and South Korea and failed to qualify for the previous competition eight years ago in France.
For the first two years Hiddink will receive $2.43 million, with bonuses for good performances, he added. If all goes well, the contract could be extended to 2010 and the World Cup in South Africa, should Russia make it.
The parties were hammering out the deal up until Wednesday, when Mutko confirmed Hiddink would sign.
The controversy that surrounded Sweden’s Sven-Goran Eriksson’s appointment as England coach — also that country’s first foreign manager — has not been mirrored in Russia.
“The manager’s nationality doesn’t matter,” Dmitry Navosha, senior editor at Pro Sport magazine, said Tuesday. “What matters is to get a high-quality coach — the higher, the better.”
But Navosha added that the Russian Premier League did not have any coaches who matched Hiddink.
“I am 100 percent convinced that a coach of [Hiddink’s] quality doesn’t exist in Russia at the moment. This was a great decision. ... He is one the world’s top 10 managers at this time,” he said, lamenting the fact that Russia could never draw Jose Mourinho away from Chelsea. Mourinho is widely regarded as one of the best, if not the best, coaches in the world, having led the Portuguese team Porto to consecutive European trophies.
A glance at Hiddink’s record during his 24 years in management reveals the kind of success that Russia has been starved of and that Mutko is so eager to tap. During his first stint with PSV he triumphed in the European Cup, the Dutch championship and the domestic cup in a triple-winning 1988.
Since then, he has won the Dutch title with PSV six times and reached the semifinals in the last two World Cups: first coaching the Netherlands and then South Korea.
Hiddink said he had held talks with oil billionaire Roman Abramovich, owner of English Premier League champion Chelsea, while negotiating with the RFU.
“I spoke with Abramovich, who wants to help lift the Russian national team to a higher level,” said Hiddink, Reuters reported.
Hiddink’s contract will be paid for by the National Football Academy, Itar-Tass reported, a non-commercial fund that is headed by Abramovich.
Hiddink will become the sixth foreigner to coach a Russian national sports team: The rugby, trampolining and male and female volleyball teams have been led by non-Russians.
Hiddink plans to bring in Dutch assistants and appoint a domestic coach when he starts this summer.
“I will form a Dutch staff but also with a Russian who knows Russian football,” Hiddink said. “We have to analyze the situation and get the team afloat.”
“If they finalize the deal, then Russia is very lucky to have snared Guus for the next four years, just as we are extremely fortunate to have him for the next three months,” John Boultbee of Football Federation Australia told Agence France Presse on Tuesday. “He is Aussie Guus rather than Russky Guus for a few months yet.”

(AP, Reuters)

TITLE: Student G8 Mirrors Upcoming July Summit
AUTHOR: By Evgenia Ivanova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The creation of a multinational monitoring body for energy transportation, a global network of research and development centers and increased international collaboration to prevent money laundering are just a few of the proposals put forward by a group of international students in a report released in the city on Thursday.
The document was the result of a project modeled on the Group of Eight international body which took place in St. Petersburg on April 3–9, mirroring the real G8 conference that will take place in the city in July.
The youth forum was organized by the St. Petersburg-based International Youth Diplomacy League, or IYDL, with the support of City Hall and the Council of Rectors of St. Petersburg’s Institutions of Higher Education.
The project brought together students and graduates from Great Britain, Germany, Italy, Canada, France, Japan, Russia and the U.S. 
In an attempt to find solutions to major issues for international development, the students formed delegations consisting of heads of state (or the heads of government), six ministers and a sherpa – a person responsible for the technical and analytical support of the project.
According to Sergei Andreyev, chairman of the committee on science, culture and education of the city’s Legislative Assembly, another organization supporting the event, it had taken the students a year to prepare a coherent concept for the discussions.
“The aim of the event is to brainstorm and try to shift the development of our civilization in a positive direction,” Andreyev said, speaking at the IYDL’s press conference on April 4.
It’s planned that a document summarizing the Model G8’s findings will be distributed among the members of the Group of Eight before their St. Petersburg conference. 
Stephen Kinnock, director of the British Council in St. Petersburg and North West Russia, and Helena Perroud, head of the French Institute in St. Petersburg, welcomed the IYDL’s initiative.
Kinnock said: “I hope that the result of these meetings will be very interesting, not only to the Council, as a body dealing with education and politics among many things, but to the Group of Eight leaders too.”

TITLE: Brit Adventurer Faces $72 Fine
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — A court opened hearings Thursday on a Briton and an American who have been confined to a remote eastern village after crossing the frozen Bering Strait on foot and entering Russia without going through a border checkpoint. 
Briton Karl Bushby and American Dimitry Kieffer were detained April 1 and were being held in Lavrenty, 800 kilometers northeast of the provincial capital, Anadyr. 
“The foreigners could be fined 2,000 rubles ($72) each and expelled from Russia,” the Interfax news agency quoted Judge Yury Ivanov as saying on Thursday. 
A verdict was expected Friday from the court in Chukotka.

TITLE: Bureaucrat Killed In Novosibirsk Stabbing
AUTHOR: By Carl Schreck
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — A state official once responsible for overseeing often-controversial property sales was knifed to death Tuesday in Novosibirsk in what prosecutors say was a contract murder tied to his old job.
Sergei Korolko, former head of the Federal Property Management Agency’s department responsible for selling off property confiscated in criminal investigations, was found around 10 p.m. local time in a pool of blood in the stairwell of his apartment building, Natalya Markasova, a spokeswoman for the Novosibirsk Regional Prosecutor’s Office, said by telephone Wednesday.
Korolko, 53, was still alive when building residents found him and called an ambulance. He died in the hospital 30 minutes later from multiple stab wounds and a head injury, Markasova said.
Korolko’s assailants have not been identified, Markasova said.
Markasova declined to give further details but said prosecutors had classified the slaying as a contract murder connected to his post with the agency.
Activists and businesses that have had confiscated wares sold off by the agency suggested the Federal Property Management Agency was running large-scale scams in tandem with law enforcement authorities.
These scams, the critics say, are made possible by a law that allows the state to sell off property seized during criminal investigations, even before a final court decision has been made.
Agency spokesman Nikolai Nikolayev declined to speculate Wednesday on possible motives for the murder. But Nikolayev did say Korolko had been sent on assignment in mid-February to take over as interim head of the agency’s Siberian branch after the previous head, Vladimir Zhmulyov, was relieved of his duties for “unsatisfactory” work.
“He did a successful job there getting things in order and was set to come back to Moscow in two or three days,” Nikolayev said of Korolko.
In a statement posted on its web site on Wednesday, the Prosecutor General’s Office identified Korolko as the current head of the department responsible for selling confiscated property, but Nikolayev said he left that position about six months ago.
Before his assignment to Novosibirsk, Korolko was the deputy head of the agency’s regional coordination department, Nikolayev said.
The sale of confiscated cell phones alone by the Federal Property Management Agency is believed to have generated “hundreds of millions” of dollars in illegal profits that line the pockets of corrupt officials. In late March, police confiscated 167,500 Motorola handsets as illegally imported merchandise after they had cleared customs at Sheremetyevo Airport. The handsets, intended for Yevroset, Russia’s largest cell phone retailer, were subsequently taken to the Kamos-T warehouse, which is accredited by the Federal Property Management Agency for storage, Kommersant reported. Yevroset has appealed to Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov and others to intervene.
Kirill Kabanov, head of the National Anti-Corruption Committee, said Korolko’s death could be job-related. “He had taken a different post, but in reality he was still serving the same function,” he said. “It’s a dangerous business.”
Nikolayev dismissed that assessment, saying Korolko’s work as a property agency official was not connected to “any risky affairs.”

TITLE: U.S. Criticizes Russia Over Arms Cuts
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — A top U.S. diplomat said Wednesday that Russia had failed to fulfill its commitments to reduce nonstrategic nuclear weapons in Europe and that the two nations still had disagreements over dismantling and safeguarding Russian nuclear stockpiles. 
“We believe that Russia hasn’t completely fulfilled the Russian side of the presidential nuclear initiative,” said Stephen Rademaker, acting assistant secretary of state for arms control, referring to a U.S.-Russian initiative of the early 1990s that called for cuts in the number of tactical nuclear weapons. 
Rademaker acknowledged that the United States still had a “relatively small number” of tactical nuclear weapons in Western Europe, but said that the total number of such weapons had been cut by 90 percent in line with former U.S. President George Bush’s commitment made in 1991. He said that Russia had never fully met a similar pledge made by former President Boris Yeltsin. 
“Certainly there have been steps taken by Russia, very important steps in the direction of fulfilling the presidential nuclear initiative,” he said. “But those steps fall short of full implementation.”
Moscow has insisted it made good progress on the issue, but Rademaker said the situation is just as it was when he raised the issue in October 2004. 
A recent article in the U.S. journal Foreign Affairs said the decay of Russian strategic nuclear arsenals put the United States on the threshold of gaining nuclear primacy. 
Rademaker said the article was “manifestly untrue” in its key arguments, pointing to sharp reductions in the U.S. arsenals and Russian military modernization efforts.

TITLE: Report: Bureaucracy Booming
AUTHOR: By Francesca Mereu
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Inefficient bureaucracy has only gotten worse since President Vladimir Putin took office six years ago, with the number of state employees increasing more than 10 percent in 2005 alone, according to a new report by the State Statistics Service.
The number of civil servants — excluding the personnel of the Defense Ministry, Federal Security Service and other so-called power agencies — grew by more than 143,500 to total 1.46 million, or one bureaucrat for every 100 Russians, according to the report, which was released Tuesday.
In comparison, the United States, which has some 2 million government employees, and Britain, with 500,000, have less than one civil servant for every 100 people.
What makes the growth striking for Russia is that it comes despite a much-touted campaign by Putin to streamline government. As part of that drive, Putin eliminated ministries and demoted many deputy ministers in 2004.
Observers said bureaucracy was growing because some people were taking advantage of another one of Putin’s campaigns — to create a stronger state — to take low-paying public sector jobs in the hope of pocketing hefty bribes as they rise through the ranks.
The biggest increase in staff numbers last year was in the executive branch, which hired 132,000 new civil servants. 
The statistics service report says the number of bureaucrats has steadily increased since Putin became president in 2000, with the exception of one year, 2001. During his presidency, Putin has sought to create a so-called vertical of power by taking back powers delegated away from the executive in the chaotic years after the Soviet collapse. 
Even though he has tried to streamline bureaucracy at the same time, observers said those efforts only added more bureaucrats.
“Bureaucracy is the most profitable business in Russia, and a growth in bureaucrats is usually followed by a growth in corruption,” said Kirill Kabanov, chairman of the National Anti-Corruption Committee, a think tank.
Bureaucrats took about $5 billion in bribes in 2004, according to a study released last year by Indem, another anti-corruption think tank.
The average monthly salary of a medium-level federal bureaucrat is about $700, but many take home up to $1 million per year, Kabanov said.
Corruption has become so rampant that some opportunists are ready to pay hefty sums to win senior government posts, business magazine Kompaniya reported in January. The magazine said a minister’s post costs $10 million, while a governor’s post costs $8 million, a parliamentary seat costs $2 million and a job in customs costs about $1 million.
“People want to work for the government because this is the most convenient business in Russia,” Kabanov said.
Several authoritative studies have shown an increase in corruption under Putin. Corruption watchdog Transparency International bunches Russia with Sierra Leone, Niger and Albania when it comes to corruption. The 2005 Indem study said the average bribe had increased by 70 percent since 2001.
Kabanov claimed it now took about four years for a mid-ranking bureaucrat to buy a 200-square meter apartment for some $5 million along Moscow’s prestigious Rublyovskoye Shosse.

TITLE: LNG Pipeline to Create 8,000 Jobs
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The joint Russian-Canadian Liquefied Natural Gas plant (LNG) planned for Leningrad Oblast will earn $40 million annually, Petro-Canada’s vice president Graham Lion announced at a forum in St. Petersburg on Tuesday.  
Speaking at the International Fuel and Energy Forum, Lion said that the $1.5 billion project, to be constructed by Russian power giant Gazprom and Canadian oil and gas company Petro-Canada will create 4,000 jobs during construction. By 2010, the plant will employ 8,000 workers, the Prime-TASS news agency reported Tuesday.
The plant will produce five million tons of LNG annually, which will be transported to a re-gasification plant to be constructed at Gros-Cacouna, Quebec.
Petro-Canada will supply gas to the Canadian states of Quebec and Ontario as well as to the United States, Lion said.
The plant will be operated by Baltic LNG, a company owned by Gazprom (80 percent) and Sovkomflot (20 percent). Earlier the head of Petro-Canada, Ron Brenneman, said that according to a prior agreement with Gazprom, the Canadian company could “theoretically” acquire a 50 percent stake in Baltic LNG, Prime-TASS reported.
There is no simple answer as to what is more economical — transfer by pipeline or by LNG, said Vitaly Yermakov, an expert from Cambridge Energy Research Associates.
“LNG could be more expensive for clients. So far Gazprom’s strategy has focused on pipeline supply. Its pipelines were constructed in the 1970s and have long since depreciated in value. But when considering the construction of a new pipeline, North-European Pipeline for example, costs are comparable with LNG,” he said.
LNG projects are mainly stimulated by concerns of safety and the need to diversify energy supply, Yermakov said. 
“LNG is like crude oil. It can be transported anywhere without being tied to existing routes,” he said.
Gazprom could not miss out on this market niche, Yermakov said. Algeria, for example, already supplies significant volumes of LNG to Europe. 
Nevertheless, the profitability and pay-back period for LNG remain difficult to estimate, given that Gazprom has so far swapped gas for LNG at random and has therefore not announced any financial details, Yermakov said.
Federal authorities are supporting the strategy of diversification. Russia is going to increase supplies of oil and gas to the world market both by way of pipelines and LNG and through alternative sources of energy, minister for finance Alexei Kudrin said after a meeting with German minister of finance Peer Steinbrueck earlier this year, the AK&M news agency reported.
Russia has also negotiated the supplying of LNG to Mexico and Chile.

TITLE: Retailers Join Forces In $2.4 Bln Food Merger
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Private equity firm Alfa Group said on Wednesday that Russian food retailers Perekryostok and Pyatyorochka would merge in a deal giving it control of a market leader with sales of $2.4 billion.
In the two-stage transaction, London-listed discounter Pyatyorochka will buy control of Perekryostok, Alfa’s supermarket business, for $300 million plus 15.8 million new Pyatyorochka shares.
In stage two, Alfa will buy 54 percent of Pyatyorochka for $1.18 billion in cash. 
“The deal creates a company that is an unchallenged market leader,” said Raiffeisen Bank analyst Alexander Balakhnin.
The deal, already flagged in advance, would create Russia’s leading food retailer with 880 stores, of which 413 are franchises, at a time of booming consumer demand fueled by a long oil boom. Alfa, which also has interests in oil, telecoms and banking, said the merged firm would target sales of $6 billion in 2008.
“The merger creates an exciting combination of two great companies, and we are committed to creating a truly world-class business over the longer term,” Alfa chairman Mikhail Fridman said in a statement.
Analysts said the deal was a key step toward consolidating Russia’s fast-growing but fragmented retail sector, with the enlarged company’s sales nearly double those of rival discounter Magnit.
“The deal marks a long-awaited consolidation of the business caused by stronger competition,” said Gazprombank chief analyst Sergei Suverov. “Consolidation will undoubtedly continue.”
The merger is expected to close in the second quarter. 
Pyatyorochka runs suburban convenience stores and is strong in St. Petersburg and Moscow, while Perekryostok is a mid-range supermarket chain. Alfa said it would run them while exploiting economies of scale in purchasing, logistics and distribution.
“We are running both businesses in parallel,” said Noble. “In the short run, there will be no change.”
Perekryostok chief executive Lev Khasis will become chief executive officer of the enlarged group. After the transaction, Pyatyorochka founders Andrei Rogachev and Alexander Girda will retain a 21.2 percent stake. The two have also granted a call option to Alfa to buy out their Karusel hypermarket business in 2008.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Baltika Dividend
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Baltika breweries will pay $115.8 million in dividends for 2005 — a 69.3 percent increase on 2004 figures, RBC reported Tuesday. Shareholders will earn $0.88 per one share.
Baltika owns five brewery plants, one malt plant and 31 distribution offices across Russia. 
By the end of 2006 the company will merge with Vena, Pikra and Yarpivo and operate 10 plants in nine regions.
Baltika net income rose by 72 percent to 190.4 million euros ($229 million) last year as beer consumption increased. Sales increased by 22.2 percent to 977.2 million euros.

Murmansk Coal Port 
MURMANSK (Bloomberg) — Kuzbassrazrezugol and the Siberian Business Union Holding plan to build a $200 million port in Murmansk to export the fuel, Vedomosti newspaper reported.
The two Russian coal producers will jointly build the terminal that will have a capacity of 15 million tons a year, the newspaper reported, citing Vladimir Gridin, president of Siberian Business.
The companies hope to complete the terminal in 2009 or 2010, the newspaper reported, citing a representative of Kuzbassrazrezugol that it didn’t identify. The plan is in its early stages and the exact cost of the terminal and shareholding still need to be completed, Vedomosti said.

Parnas Profits
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Parnas-M announced earnings of $1.35 million for 2005 compared to $214,440 the previous year, RBC reported Tuesday. Total revenue was $106.5 million last year, revenue from sales — $9 million.
Parnas-M, owned by Dutch company Ulysses North Management (57 percent) and EBRR (30 percent), is the head company of Parnas holding, which consists of 22 firms.

TITLE: Vilnius Warned Over Yukos Sale
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: VILNIUS — Lithuania, which wants to buy oil refinery Mazeikiu Nafta from Yukos Oil, was warned by the Russian government that money for the purchase must be directed to Yukos’ biggest creditor Rosneft.
Lithuanian Prime Minister Algirdas Brazauskas told radio Ziniu Radijas that negotiations over the Mazeikiu sale have been hampered by the Russian government’s warning that money must reach Moscow, even though the Russian government is not involved with the sale.
“The question is how to direct the money flow from London towards Moscow,” Brazauskas told the radio station.
Brazauskas said he hopes Yukos will sign the sale agreement Thursday and the deal will be completed sometime before Easter. Lithuania, which owns 41 percent of Mazeikiu, plans to sell 75 percent to another investor after it buys the oil refinery.

TITLE: City Exchange to Introduce Internet Trading
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: St. Petersburg Stock Exchange announced Wednesday the introduction of special software that will let stockbrokers offer their clients trading services over the internet, Interfax reported.
“During the first period of internet-trading we will introduce a module allowing access to FOREX — the trading of currency futures. Later we will introduce modules allowing access to the trading of shares, including Gazprom shares,” the deputy director of St. Petersburg Stock Exchange, Alexei Sergeyev, said in a statement.
According to the statement, the main advantage of the new system is that brokers using it will not have to provide any technical support to their clients — that activity will be carried out by St. Petersburg Stock Exchange specialists.
“If the system is free of charge, it could be interesting as a reserve means of access to the trading of futures,” said Vladimir Tarasenko, deputy director of sales department at CIT Finance investment bank.
“At the same time, for a client who trades in several different markets it is more convenient not to have to adjust to each bourse’s own system. The most common internet-trading system at the moment is Quik,” he said.
“Brokers can already fine tune their technologies to existing systems, and using just another one might not be that interesting,” Tarasenko added.
Anton Gadeudin, financial consultant at BrokerCreditService, said that the new system is unlikely to raise mass interest among traders.
“The largest internet-brokers are based outside St. Petersburg. Internet-trading for the most part attracts speculative players. They use borrowed resources and look for platforms with maximum liquidity and leverage opportunities, which are concentrated in Moscow,” Gadeudin said.
The new system would mainly be used by city traders, who are not active market players, he said. 
The monthly turnover of internet-trading at the St. Petersburg Stock Exchange would be about $300 million to $350 million, which is equivalent to about three percent of turnover at the Russian Trading System and Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange, Gadeudin said.
He suggested that internet-trading of euro-dollar futures and oil futures could be more promising.
“Oil trading has serious potential for development in St. Petersburg. In the northwest we already have infrastructure for processing and exporting oil (Vysotsk and Primorsk ports and the Baltic Pipeline System), plus forthcoming gas facilities with the North European Pipeline. The total transported volume could reach the equivalent of 150 million tons of oil,” Gadeudin said.
“A large regional bourse for trading oil, including oil futures, could be created in St. Petersburg, based on an internet-trading system for speculative private investors. The large volume of speculative capital could be attracted to this very segment of trading in St. Petersburg,” he said.

TITLE: Shtokman Gas Project Linked to WTO Fight
AUTHOR: By Stephen Boykewich
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia appears to be signaling to U.S. officials that if it is not admitted to the WTO, American firms will be barred from taking part in the Shtokman natural gas project.
Two sources who spoke to senior Russian officials said the implicit quid pro quo has emerged in the last month.
“My discussion with Russian officials has clearly suggested that while there is no formal connection” between WTO accession and participation of U.S. companies in Shtokman, “there is an informal understanding that if Russian membership in WTO is blocked, it would be considerably more difficult for American companies to win participation in Shtokman and other major Russian energy projects,” said Dmitry Simes, head of the Nixon Center, a Washington-based think tank.
Many people in Washington believe there is an implied link “so obvious that it doesn’t need to be stated,” Simes said.
Ariel Cohen, who heads the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington and is close to many senior officials in the White House and on Capitol Hill, added: 
“In March, in my conversation with senior-level Russian decisionmakers, I found expressed skepticism and a lack of desire to proceed with Shtokman. This is driven by deterioration in U.S.-Russian relations in general and by frustration with the outspokenness of Chevron on Russian business practices in the energy sector.”
The Shtokman natural gas field, in the Barents Sea, contains 3.7 trillion cubic meters of gas. 
Gazprom officials were expected to name their foreign partners Friday but indicated that it may be a few more weeks before they name them.
The possible delay — Gazprom initially said it would decide in March — comes in the wake of the White House issuing a list of more stringent conditions for Russia’s accession to the WTO.
The United States is the only major country blocking Russia’s bid to join the 149-member global trade group.
U.S.-Russian energy cooperation came to a virtual standstill in 2003, with the arrest of former Yukos chief Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
That move effectively ended talks between Yukos and Chevron and ExxonMobil to take a major stake in what was then Russia’s largest oil firm.
U.S. companies have since expressed frustration over a lack of access to Russian energy resources and unclear terms for partnership with Russian companies.
Chevron is one of five companies that made Gazprom’s shortlist to share a 49-percent stake in the Shtokman project.
The project entails shipping gas to the United States and other markets in the form of liquefied natural gas, or LNG. 
The other companies on the short list are ConocoPhillips of the United States, Norway’s StatOil and Norsk Hydro and France’s Total.
Spokespeople for Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Gazprom declined to comment on the Shtokman venture, saying that all negotiations were confidential.
American companies have been demanding a bigger percentage of the joint project than Gazprom is willing to give, said Vladimir Milov, president of the Institution for Energy Policy and former head of Russia’s Federal Energy Commission from 1997 to 2001.
“Companies vying for partnership today are already demanding concrete percentages,” Milov said. “If three partners are picked, they won’t get more than about 15 percent each,” while Chevron wants 25 percent, Milov said.
While Gazprom is motivated primarily by commercial considerations in its choice of partners, Milov said, the WTO conflict has become so politically volatile that it now encompasses the Shtokman deal.
“I have no doubt that today, the question of WTO accession will be connected with all the major issues on the table between Russia and the U.S., including American participation in Shtokman,” Milov said.
Oil and gas analysts said that participation of Norsk Hydro and Statoil was virtually guaranteed, since they have crucial technical expertise in hydrocarbon extraction in the Barents Sea, but that Gazprom also has a strong commercial interest in involving one or more U.S. company.
The need for a U.S. partner to ease access to the U.S. LNG market is clearly one of the reasons Chevron and ConocoPhillips made the shortlist, said Steven Dashevsky, head of research at Aton brokerage. “Without the U.S. companies involved, there will be problems entering the American market,” Milov said.

TITLE: Cargo Giant Plans London IPO, Urges Improvements
AUTHOR: By Conor Humphries
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Volga-Dnepr, the global leader in transporting oversized cargo, is hoping to hold an initial public share offering in London or Russia in 2007, the company announced Wednesday.
The details of the IPO are currently being discussed with lead managers, but the listing would most likely be on Russia’s MICEX or RTS bourses, senior vice president Sergei Shklyanik said at a briefing. A London offering is also on the cards, he said.
The company plans to offer up to 25 percent of its stock to investors. 
While Volga-Dnepr enjoyed a successful year in 2005, Russia’s cargo industry is losing billions of dollars annually. The sector is hamstrung by poor infrastructure, the group’s president, Alexei Isaikin, said. 
There are only three airports in Russia that are capable of servicing Western cargo planes. In addition to Domodedovo and Sheremetyevo airports, Volga-Dnepr’s hub in Krasnoyarsk has basic facilities, he said. 
Despite Russia’s unique positioning between Asia and Europe, most international airlines currently only fly over the country instead of using it as a transit hub for refueling and reloading, which could potentially be a great source of revenue for Russia.
“We’re not just losing tens of thousands of tons of cargo from China to Europe, we’re losing out on an entire industry,” Isaikin said. He estimated that with additional investment in infrastructure, in the long-term, Russia could earn around $28 billion from cargo transportation.
Boris Rybak, head of the Infomost aviation consultancy, said there was undoubtedly a huge market to be tapped. 
But first of all Russia should implement serious improvements in the customs system at airports if it is to attract major international players.
The possibility of breaking up Asia-Europe routes half-way would make trips for international carriers more efficient. 
“If there was a hub in the center of Russia, every flight from Europe to Southeast Asia could carry an extra 15 to 20 percent cargo,” said Rybak.
Russia’s cargo market is currently worth around $5 billion to $6 billion and with additional investment it could increase by 50 percent, Rybak said.
Volga-Dnepr controls 56 percent of the global heavy cargo air market, said general director Gennady Pivovarov. The majority of its revenue comes from serving Asia-Europe charter flights.
The company estimated profits of $5.1 million under international standards for 2005 on revenues of $487 million, up from losses of $12 million the year before.

TITLE: Russia Makes Headway In Latest WTO Trade Rankings
AUTHOR: By Anna Smolchenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — On the back of surging commodity prices, Russia has moved closer to the forefront of the world’s trading nations, notching up in the rankings of global exporters and importers, according to the most recent WTO trade report.
Over the past year, Russian exports of fuels and manufactured products grew 34 percent to $245.3 billion, making the country the world’s 13th-largest merchandise exporter in dollar terms, up from No. 15 in 2004, the World Trade Organization said in its annual review of trade trends.
Over the same period, the country’s merchandise imports — machinery, farm products and chemicals — grew by 28 percent to $125.1 billion, placing Russia 19th, up from last year’s No. 23.
Russia, however, did not even make it onto the WTO’s separate ranking of the world’s 20 leading exporters in commercial services. The most recent trade figures further underscore the imbalances in Russia’s exports structure and point out the need to diversify the economy, Michael Finger, a senior economist at the WTO, said on Wednesday.
While it became a larger merchandise exporter, Russia did not move a notch in the rankings of service exporters in the past year. Russia’s international sales of services in the first three quarters of 2005 accounted for a meager $24.3 billion, making it the world’s 27th-largest exporter of services, according to Finger’s estimates.
By comparison, China and India respectively pocketed $81.2 billion and $67.6 billion from exporting commercial services like tourism. The United States, the top exporter of services, raked in $353.3 billion.
Finger warned that Russia’s impressive record of growing international trade was hardly sustainable. “Enjoy, but don’t think it’s going to last forever,” he said by telephone from Geneva. “Energy is not providing many jobs,” he said.
World trade growth slowed down last year to 6 percent in real terms after a record 9 percent growth in 2004. Russia was one of the few countries that posted large growth in imports and exports.
A stronger ruble is largely responsible for Russia’s growing imports.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Voestalpine Purchase 
LINZ, Austria (Bloomberg) — Voestalpine, Austria’s biggest steelmaker, bought 80 percent of steelmaker Arkada Profil to expand its business in Russia.
Arkada sells steel products used in construction and had 30 million euros ($36.4 million) in sales last year, Linz, Austria-based Voestalpine said in a statement today. It didn’t give a value for the transaction.
Voestalpine has an option to buy the remaining shares in Arkada within five years. Arkada operates in Jarcevo, about 300 kilometers (187 miles) west of Moscow. 

Balfour, Jarvis Road Bid
LONDON (Bloomberg) — Balfour Beatty and Jarvis have been asked by Russia to consider bidding for one of the country’s first Public Private Partnership projects, the London-based Times newspaper said.
Balfour Beatty and Jarvis have been approached about submitting bids to accounting firm Ernst & Young, which has been selected to run an auction in connection with an 8 billion-pound ($14 billion) contract to build a high-speed motorway, the newspaper said.
Russia may be planning as many as 20 similar projects, including 12 transport contracts, to be funded through a Public Private Partnership program that could be worth over 50 billion pounds ($80 million), the newspaper said.
Other transport projects include a ring road around Moscow and port terminals at St. Petersburg, Novorossiysk and Murmansk, the newspaper said.

Blavatnik’s Film Plans
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Leonid Blavatnik, a Russian-born billionaire, plans to build a film studio near Moscow, Vedomosti said, citing the head of Blavatnik’s production company in the national capital.
Amedia, 50 percent of which is owned by Blavatnik’s Access Industries Inc., plans to start building the studio close to Moscow this year, Amedia President Alexander Akopov told the Russian language daily newspaper.
Blavatnik will invest $50 million in the project as well as providing the land, Vedomosti said.
Blavatnik, who owns stakes in oil, plastics and mining companies, is a U.S. citizen.
Domestically produced films have gained in popularity in recent years, with some, such as “Night Watch,” beating costlier Hollywood feature films at the local box office.

Pipeline Vagaries
HONG KONG (Bloomberg) — Russia’s government may delay an agreement to supply crude oil and gas to China through pipelines because of domestic opposition, a Standard & Poor’s report said.
Russian people are concerned that Chinese imports are threatening local industries and President Vladimir Putin may not want to be seen to be increasing China’s influence over his country, S&P’s analysts, including Bei Fu in Hong Kong, wrote in a report Wednesday.
“Finding diverse and stable energy supplies such as from Russia is critical for China over the long term,” the report said. Russia agreed in March to build two pipelines from the country’s Pacific coast to China.
“Russia’s new energy agreements with China are vague,” the S&P report said. 
“No route or cost estimates have been given for the gas pipelines and only a sketchy timetable has been provided.”

TITLE: Reach Out to Putin’s Russia
AUTHOR: By Joseph Nye
TEXT: When U.S. President George W. Bush famously looked into President Vladimir Putin’s eyes a few years ago, he should have seen a new Russian tsar. For a president who has put democracy promotion at the top of his agenda, Putin’s Russia is an awkward problem.
U.S. Senator John McCain suggested that Western leaders should boycott the summit of the Group of Eight leading industrialized nations scheduled for St. Petersburg this summer. Meanwhile, journalists report a policy debate between Dick Cheney, the U.S. vice president, who urges a tougher line toward Putin’s backsliding, and Condoleezza Rice, the U.S. secretary of state, who reportedly takes a more pragmatic position. Bush apparently rejected McCain’s advice, but the problem of dealing with Putin’s Russia remains difficult.
I recently revisited Moscow. The city looks more like a normal European capital than the dreary city of 20 years ago. In the 1980s, Russian colleagues risked critical comments only when walking outdoors or in noisy restaurants, but never in their bugged offices. This time I found students, journalists and politicians willing to criticize Putin openly. Russia may not be democratic but there is certainly more private property and personal freedom than there was two decades ago.
Ironically, Mikhail Gorbachev, the man who helped make that freedom possible, is not very popular in Russia today. At a recent Gorbachev Foundation conference and concert celebrating his 75th birthday, he was praised by intellectuals and artists, but many members of the public blame him for weakening Soviet Russia. As one friend told me, when Gorbachev visited his home city, crowds shouted abuse at him. He stopped and shouted back: “Don’t forget I am the one who gave you the right to shout!”
But free speech is not the same as democracy, particularly when it cannot be amplified and organized for political purposes. While newspapers and some radio stations are openly critical of the regime, television is strictly controlled. As one of Putin’s supporters proudly explained: “We are a manipulated democracy. It is really no different than Berlusconi’s Italy.” But despite Silvio Berlusconi’s influence over his television stations as prime minister, the outcome of the Italian elections was an open question. No one expressed any doubt that Putin’s United Russia would control the next national elections.
What will Russia’s future look like? One former political leader suggested that Russian politics is like a pendulum. It had swung too far in the direction of chaos under Boris Yeltsin and was now swinging too far in the direction of order under Putin, but would eventually reach equilibrium.
Others were not so sure. A young State Duma member told me he foresaw a continual decline of freedom rather than a return to equilibrium. 
Dmitry Trenin, deputy director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, argues that “although not democratic, Russia is largely free. Property rights are more deeply anchored than they were five years ago. Russia’s future now depends heavily on how fast a middle class — a self-identified group with personal stakes in having a law-based government accountable to taxpayers — can be created.”
Faced with this uncertainty, how should we respond? Rice said last December that “the fundamental character of regimes matters more today than the international distribution of power.”
Yet in addition to its democracy agenda, the United States has a realist agenda based on very tangible interests. It needs Russian co-operation in dealing with issues such as nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea, the control of nuclear materials and weapons, combating the current wave of Salafi-jihadist terrorism, and energy production and security (which will be a focus of the G8 agenda). Moreover, Russia possesses talented people, technology and resources that can help to meet new transnational challenges such as climate change or the spread of pandemic diseases.
There may not be as much conflict between these two agendas as first appears. If the United States were to turn its back on Russia, it would not advance the growth of liberal democracy in Russia. Most Russian liberals I spoke to believed such isolation would accelerate the xenophobic and statist tendencies long present in Russian culture and make the liberal democratic cause even more difficult.
In their view, the United States should look to the long run, use its soft power of attraction, expand exchanges and contacts with Russia’s new generation, support Russia’s entry into the World Trade Organization and address Russian deficiencies with specific criticisms rather than general harangues or counter-productive isolation.
The sources of change in Russia will remain rooted in Russia, and American influence will be limited no matter what Americans do. But petulant actions that play well in domestic politics in the United States may hinder rather than help Russians who share Americans’ values.

Joseph Nye is a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and an author, most recently of “The Power Game: A Washington Novel.” He was an assistant secretary of defense and chairman of the National Intelligence Council in the early 1990s. He contributed this comment to the Financial Times.

TITLE: Making the Most of Due Diligence
AUTHOR: By Andrey Pekhovsky
TEXT: With the development of the market in Russia, ever more foreign investors are beginning to look at the country as a viable investment opportunity. More and more foreign firms are attempting to break into the Russian market, while others are attempting to cut their costs by setting up production or local branches here in order to promote themselves and gain an advantage over the competition. 
Among the various ways for foreign companies to enter the Russian region, a favorite among investors is to acquire a working production source such as a factory or to buy a plot of land on which to build a new facility.
The investor can either directly buy the land, building or equipment necessary or acquire a company (or a stake in it) which possesses the assets that interest it. 
Whatever the option taken, a key stage in this investment process is the carrying out of a detailed legal analysis – due diligence – of the rights that are being acquired, both to the property and to the right to participate in the activities of the company. 
After all, the investor has to be absolutely certain that he really is getting what he thinks he’s getting and that the deal will be profitable. In order to achieve that, he needs accurate and, as far as possible, objective information on the current owner of the rights, the condition of the company in question, its position on the market, its production capacity, its obligations, its partners and its creditors and debtors. 
Usually, the due diligence process takes in research and analysis on corporate rights (including corporate governance and management of the group, its share structure, anti-monopoly regulation) and detailed checks on the way the company was originally incorporated, as serious violations of the law in that process can be used as grounds to liquidate the company if those infringements cannot be resolved. In connection with this, particular attention is paid to the whether the founders followed the obligatory procedures in the creation of the company. In addition, how the charter capital was formed is examined in detail. 
In Russia, as charter capital contributions need not be made in cash, some truly bizarre forms have been used: “the right to use the telephone in the building of the founder on working days between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m.,” “a dog’s kennel,” “an Eastern European Alsatian dog,” “a potted plant” and, in one memorable case, a large herd of horned cattle…
During the due diligence process, the founding documents are checked in order to make sure that they are in accordance with the legislation and in order to ascertain what obligations have to be complied with in the structuring of the deal being considered. 
There is a whole series of other issues that have to be examined in the due diligence process, though it would take more than one article to go through them in detail: real estate rights, rights to other assets, intellectual property rights, licensing, major business operations, ecological legislation, labor relations (including trade union relations), the structure or creditor and debtor relations, tax issues, currency legislation, legal disputes and issues raised by contractors… The list goes on. 
The documents to be examined in all this can be provided by the company or they can be received from third parties, such as state bodies, registries, open information resources and the like. 
The importance of due diligence in the lead up to a transaction can’t be overstressed. The negative consequences that investors may face if this stage in the process is neglected or poorly carried out are often greater than the time and money saved by not carrying out a legal analysis.
The information received during the course of the checks will help the investor to make a decision that is consistent with his or her aims and goals, as well as ensuring that the acquisition doesn’t bring any unexpected surprises.

Andrey Pekhovsky is an attorney at Pepeliaev, Goltsblat & Partners.

TITLE: Smart rock
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Vocalist and guitarist Tom Barman, who founded dEUS 16 years ago, is enthusiastic about the band and its current combination of members, which he said is capable of doing things that the early dEUS was not.
The band, arguably Belgium’s best-known avant-rock group, returned to performing from a lengthy sabbatical last year and is now on tour in support of its fourth album, “Pocket Revolution.” It will perform in St. Petersburg this week.
“It’s very focused,” said Barman, 34, speaking by phone from a tour bus as the band was heading from San Francisco to Seattle during its recent U.S. tour.
“You know, sometimes you have to go through a lot of pain, shit, conflicts, fights, you come to a situation where everybody is having a good time. That’s I think what’s happening now. We have very good musicians, people with a lot of experience, but at the same time there's a kind of enthusiasm. 
“I think it’s one of the best lineups we’ve ever had, so we played tight shows and at the same time I can concentrate more on my parts, I don’t have to concentrate on everybody playing right. You know, sometimes it was a bit wild at some stage when everybody was going in different directions and not in one direction so, you know, it’s kind of growing older, getting a bit more mature, but at the same time there’s a lot of energy and I think sometimes there’s more energy at the shows that we do now, than there was 10 years ago.”
Apart from Barman and another long-timer Klaas Janzoons on violin and keyboards, the other members —  Stephane Misseghers on drums, Mauro Pawlowski on guitar and Alan Gevaert on bass guitar — joined in 2004 as dEUS began to work on the new album.
“Pocket Revolution” proved to be a difficult album, according to Barman.
“It was a very difficult record to make because some people left during the process, so we’re very happy that it’s there and we’re touring with it now,” he said.
To Barman, the album’s title has something to do with the rebirth of dEUS.
“I have my own idea of it, it’s very personal, it has to do with the whole process of the album and of what happened, how we made it,” he said.
“It was kind of trying to get the band going, to keep the band going, at a time when it was very difficult. But we survived, you know.”
Although “Pocket Revolution” has been described as dEUS’s most straightforward album, Barman argues that it is still permeated with the band’s experimental spirit.
“Well, it is more kind of straightforward, but I don’t think it sounds like straightforward rock as we know it,” he said.
“It’s kind of straightforward for dEUS, but I think it still has the dEUS touch, you know. We wanted to make an album that was fun to play live, with a lot of uptempo songs. And kind of rocking, making people dance a bit more. And the combination with the old stuff — we make sure that that it has a wide spectrum of very intimate and very melodic to very noisy and very loud. So it’s the way I like it, basically. 
“For the next album I think we'll combine the two things that you know about dEUS. You know, more straightforward but also more experimental.”
Barman, who studied at film school and has shot music videos both for dEUS and other bands, used time away from the band to direct his first feature film, “Any Way the Wind Blows” in 2003. His earlier film effort, a five-minute short “Turnpike” was shown in several film theaters around Europe with the cult hit  “Trainspotting” in 1996.
Barman formed dEUS in Antwerp in 1991, first as a cover band performing songs by such bands as the Velvet Underground and the Violent Femmes.
“You know, as a young band we started with songs the other people wrote, that is true, but then soon we started writing our own songs and after a year already I think actually all the set was built from our own songs. But yeah, the Velvet Underground is very important, yeah.”
“I think all the albums are great. Even when John Cale left the Velvet Underground, I think, a kind of experimentalism was lost, but the songwriting became better and better.”
Barman said that dEUS’s other influences include newer bands such as Sonic Youth.
“They are an influence, but I wouldn’t say they were a direct influence. They are an eternal influence for me personally, you know, Captain Beefheart or J.J. Cale or the Velvet Underground is, you know, a permanent influence, but it's not like we sat down and tried to, you know…”
“Pocket Revolution” includes some splashes of noise but also an occasional gentle pop song.
“The kind of music we make, the way we make it, comes from a different place than classic songwriters,” Barman said.
“On the other hand, I like classic songwriting as well. This album is experimenting a lot with that… You know, at one point I was being very stubborn and I had a very stubborn and I hope original idea and at the same time I try to write songs that are kind of in the tradition of songwriting.”
According to Barman, the band’s members listen to jazz  a lot as well as to current pop music.
“We’re looking at a documentary of Thelonius Monk in a bus,” he said.
“We are listening to a lot of jazz and I like the new Gorillaz album a lot, I think it’s great, and I like Interpol, and I like Mark Lanegan and I like… Oh, I like Arctic Monkeys a lot, too. I like the music and the lyrics are very funny as well, so it’s just a funky record. It’s really good.”
Barman said he finds the current folk revival positive.
“I followed the musical developments of the last 20 years quite thoroughly. In the beginning I didn’t like dance music, then I started to like it, you know, electronic, dub-orientated music. And now I am very happy with the whole folk revival. I don’t think we make folk, we don’t make folk at all.
“It’s just basically song-orientated music. I think it’s a good thing that there’s young people that are really getting into songs again instead of beats. I think it’s a good development.”
In his own songs, Barman said he avoids straightforward subjects such as politics.
“As far as I’m concerned, I try to be more in the poetics department,” he said.
“I’ve never been the kind of guy to really write explicit political songs or engagement songs, but I think it’s important they exist. On the other hand, I think I’m very engaged in a kind of emotional thing that I want to reach with my lyrics, so I think it’s some kind of engagement, too.
“I don’t know if there’s a point I try to make. You know, we try to give good shows and try to make good albums that kind of move you in an emotional way. It’s rock music, so it’s emotional music. Apart from what I sing about I don’t really feel the need to express myself. We try to be as honest and you know as authentic as possible and, I think, people feel that, sense that, and it touches them. And I think that’s important enough, that's enough.”

dEUS performs at Platforma on Saturday. www.deus.be

TITLE: Lessons in love
AUTHOR: By Andrei Vorobei
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Love  looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; 
And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind    		          — Shakespeare 
Just a few weeks after opening its summer blockbuster “Rembrandt Etchings,” revealing the Old Masters genius as a printmaker, the State Hermitage Museum has opened another exhibition of prints, “Raising Cupid: French Engravings from the Age of Gallantry,” running until May 21 in the New Hermitage’s Hall of Twelve Columns, 
Behind the neutral title, lies a literate and enthralling show. It features 18th Century French engravings on the themes of love and sex from the Hermitage’s collection, airing in public for the first time what was once strictly for private viewing. 
The 100 prints selected for display come from the personal collection of Tsar Alexander II which he partly had inherited from Nicholas I. 
The “Age of Gallantry” in 18th century France witnessed a transition from the refined and subtle rococo epoch to a severe and plain neoclassicism, against the background of the age of Enlightenment with its mania to describe and catalogue everything, including love affairs. 
The EncyclopÎdie and the Marquis de Sade were the products of the same libertine culture of the epoch. 
Traditionally, from the two main sources of romantic and erotic education were novels, consumed by women in high society, and images — paintings and engravings — that were devoured by men in a masculine culture defined by heterosexual patterns. 
What at first seems an absolutely motley collection of works, in terms of technique, when they were made and their quality, has in the hands of curator Dmitry Ozerkov — the Hermitage’s senior researcher — been arranged into a consecutive, well-proportioned and intriguing system: the part called “Raising Cupid” is followed by “The Pupil, or Cupid’s Lesson,” and “Figures of the Language of Love.” 
Amour, Cupid, Eros are different names of the God of Love, personified by the eternal chubby young boy with a bow and arrow, the traditional iconographical elements which helps to distinguish him from an ordinary putti or cherubs. Cupid was educated in the science of love by Mercury, the god of trade, profit and commerce, from whom the word mercurial is derived, which, according to a standard dictionary, is used “to refer to something erratic, volatile or unstable.”
Nothing good could be expected from such an education: the often irresponsible young God always was object of pranks and subject to friendly punishments. 
“Figures of the Language of Love” is the main and the most inventive part of the exhibition. 
Ozerkov has given each engraving by its content or implicit meaning, a letter from the alphabet which stand for certain patterns in love — Adventure, Despair, Desire, Enjoyment, Exposure, Innocence, Seduction, Fidelity and so on. 
“The idea of the exhibition is, moving form one term to another, to outline the sphere of subtle love experiences of the period” Ozerkov said. 
The curator wittily visualises what 20th century French intellectual Roland Barthes suggested in his amazing non-fiction work “A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments” in 1977 in which, in alphabetical order, the author composed a list of so-called “figures” of love  — certain situations, feelings or gestures of the lover at work. 
Almost half of the images feature mythological scenes, which was one of the prevalent ways for an artist to circumvent official censorship. In genre prints, Cupid sometimes appears to be only a sign —  in the form of picture on a wall or of sculpture in a garden. 
The real meaning in this body of images can often be extracted thanks only to details in code, for instance: “the small bird in a closed cage symbolizes a maiden’s innocence, while a bird flying out of an opened cage to freedom symbolizes its loss.” 
Another widespread and often laughable way to “correctly” read the engraving is by its title, which were usually citations from favored works of literature from the period. 
Like Barthes, Ozerkov’s vocabulary is heavily rooted and equipped with texts, including translations, correspondence, novels and poetry from 18th century France, from which he took the most stable and approved “Figures of the Language of Love.” At the same time, since the curator was limited by the range of engravings at his disposal his vocabulary maybe less complete, but it is no less exciting for that.   
“Raising Cupid: French Engravings from the Age of Gallantry” runs through May 21 at the Hermitage. 

www.hermitage.ru

TITLE: Renewing the Philharmonic
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Shostakovich Philharmonic Hall is to undergo its first major renovation in nearly half a century.
The St. Petersburg Philharmonic, which closes its main performing venue, the Shostakovich Grand Hall for six-months of renovation on July 5, will perform thereafter at the State Academic Capella and Heraldic Hall of the State Hermitage Museum, company’s artistic director Yury Temirkanov said on Tuesday.
The Philharmonic’s schedule of performances will shrink significantly due to the repairs. Only four kinds of season tickets will be available for the next season, and the rest of the concerts will be less regular. Another major sacrifice will be this year’s International Arts Square Festival — St. Petersburg’s premiere arts event in the winter — which is not going to happen this time round.
“This winter, we are organizing a different event,” Temirkanov said. “Called ‘Farewell to the Year of Mozart,’ it will start on Dec. 5 — the day of composer’s death — and last until Dec. 30. Not only Mozart’s music will be featured at the festival but also works by other Viennese classical composers as well.”
A new summer festival called “Musical Collection” will take the place of the “June Stars” event that was launched last year during the last month of the 2005/06 season. The event’s philosophy remains the same: world renowned musicians perform classical audiences’ favourites. 
Among the highlights of this year’s event, which runs from June 4 until July 4, are piano recital of Denis Matsuyev on June 8 with a program of Beethoven, Chopin and Mussorgsky; a solo recital by Mariinsky baritone Vasily Gerello on June 6 with a program of Russian romances; and several performances of the Philharmonic symphony orchestra under the baton of Temirkanov or Maxim Shostakovich on June 4 and 30, and July 4.
Igor Naumov, director of the Shostakovich Grand Hall, said the reconstruction is not only aimed at renewing the seats, chandeliers, pillars and the rest of the interior but is to be a complete overhaul of the space. 
“New sound engineering equipment will be installed, and we are now consulting acoustic engineers,” Naumov said. “We will be updating the lighting system, as well as heating, electricity and water pipes.”
The reconstruction is funded jointly by the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development and the Russian government.
Temirkanov said the orchestra will be touring more extensively both in Russia and abroad during the renovation. 
“For the first time in many years we will have a grand tour of several towns in Siberia,” Temirkanov said. “And I am convinced that, reconstruction or not, the practice of extensive tours across Russia must be continued. It is hard to find sponsors for these tours, and this time we will use the EBRD grant.”
The last major renovation of the Shostakovich Philharmonic took place in 1957, and was only partial, Naumov added.
The renovation is all the more challenging now that the Temirkanov has just removed the company’s executive director Vladimir Gronsky. The Philharmonic hasn’t had much luck with its managers, having changed three directors over the past ten years, with all of them being forced to resign before the end of their contracts.
While Gronsky tried to downplay the disagreement in an interview with Vecherny Petersburg newspaper this week, saying that his was a peaceful and consensual departure, Temirkanov said he was unhappy with the director’s short tenure. Gronsky lasted for less than a year.
“I had realized I made a mistake with Gronsky back when I was introducing him to the orchestra,” Temirkanov confessed. “But he was making beautiful promises, and I felt I should give him a chance to show his skills. That was my mistake. He promised to me that he would start learning English, and then I discover that he goes around our accountants asking for mighty cash advances to pay his tutors.”
Aside from the English lessons anecdote, Temirkanov said the main reason for his departure was Gronsky’s incompetence. 
“He procrastinated with preparations for the reconstruction and signed some unexplicable deals which we had to cancel.”
Arts management in Russia is a challenging task. Running a state arts institution takes much more than just skill and knowledge. It takes enormous enthusiasm. 
Although it has been one and a half decades since state funding of the country’s arts institutions was drastically cut, a new breed of arts managers capable of keeping afloat those large and venerable companies of the caliber of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic havn’t yet emerged.
Dynamic and efficient managers in most cases prefer to use their talents in spheres other than the arts, while classical music is still often perceived by them as a lost cause.
Classical music audiences in Russia and Western Europe still differ significantly. Russia’s aristocracts, a nautral constituency for classical music, were killed or fled the country after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, while the Soviet intelligentsia, another fan base, had a hard time adapting to perestroika and became penniless. The majority of today’s nouveau riches have not yet developed a taste for classical music.

www.philharmonia.spb.ru

TITLE: Art in cyberspace
AUTHOR: By Andrei Vorobei
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The National Center for Contemporay Arts and the Educational Center of the State Hermitage Museum have launched a groundbreaking new project dedicated to internet and digital art. 
“Unauthorized Access: Hackers and Crackers” features an extensive array of internet works, most of which are for the first time being shown in the context of a classical museum.
According to the organizers, including  curators and media artists from New York and St. Petersburg, the aim of the project is to destroy the myth that hackers are pests on the healthy body of the internet through demonstrations of different “unauthorized” internet activities and their possible positive social effects. 
With Russian and Eastern European hackers frequently in the news for selling stolen personal data on the world wide web the image of these shadowy figures could certainly be improved.
With more than 100 international works of cyber art, the project tries to overcome another traditional stereotype by drawing a distinction between the internet art and ordinary web design, something which is not always obvious. 
Whatever the problem, “communication not representation” is one of the main propositions of this new art.

“Unauthorized Access: Hackers and Crackers” runs through April 23 at the Educational Center of the Hermitage.  www.ncca-spb.ru

TITLE: Chernov’s choice
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
TEXT: International acts continue to play at Platforma, with dEUS, possibly Belgium’s best-known indie-rock band performing on Saturday. See interview with singer and guitarist Tom Barman, page iv.
JFC Jazz Club continues to celebrate its 10th anniversary with a series of concerts called “Jazz Spring in St. Petersburg.” J.D. and the Blenders perform on Monday.
Boy George, who performed a forgettable live concert in the city in 1995, returns as a DJ to spin discs at a night party called “WhoZeFreaks?” at Sovetskaya Hotel on Friday. Did the event’s promoters tell the artist that they advertized him as the “most respected freak of today” in an official news release?
FIGS, a local band of drummers, appears to growing increasingly popular with local audiences. The band, which makes rare performances mostly at GEZ-21, or the Gallery of Experimental Sound, and at music festivals such as SKIF, includes Katya Fyodorova of the folk-punk band Iva Nova on metal percussion, drummer Alexei Ivanov of the experimental band Soyuz Kommercheskogo Avangarda, locally-based British drummer Marcus Godwyn, who also leads his band The Noise Of Time and ZGA’s Nikolai Sudnik on percussive objects. FIGS, which is acronym for the members’ last names, will perform at GEZ on Saturday.
Check out the urban folk band La Minor at Platforma and the alternative band Kirpichi at Orlandina on Friday, the often funny art/musical collective NOM at Griboyedov and garage-rock band Kacheli at Manhattan on Saturday.
More international artists have been announced for the SKIF festival, the city’s biggest annual alternative music event. SKIF, or the Sergey Kuryokhin International Festival, named after the late local musician, gathers musicians in many genres, from folk to rock to improv and experimental.
The Amsterdam-based band Zea, which  is scheduled to perform at SKIF’s opening night on Thursday, will arrive even earlier to do a club gig at Platforma on Tuesday. Zea features Arnold on guitar and vocals and Remko on electronics and has been described as being influenced by hip-hop, techno, noise and pop and as re-arranging and mixing their influences “until the fragments fall into an exciting new form of song.”
The first night also features Tryptyk Peterburski, a joint Polish-Russian project led by prog-rock musician Jozef Skrzek who was famous in the U.S.S.R. for playing with the 1970s Polish bands Breakout and SBB. Skrzek, who sings and plays keyboards, will be supported by Michal Gier on percussion and local musicians Alexander Ragazanov on drums and Mikhail Ogorodov on drums, vocals and keyboards.
Other SKIF performers include Fred Frith, Chris Cutler, Phil Niblock, Acoustic Ladyland and Felix Kubin, among  others.
Since last year SKIF has been based at the Modern Art Center, the former Priboi Cinema on Vasilyevsky Ostrov. It runs from Thursday through April 23.

TITLE: Devout dialogue
AUTHOR: By Andrei Vorobei
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The serious people at the Department of the New Art Trends at the Russian Museum have put on an exhibition of works by the 69-year old Russian naÕve artist Katya Medvedeva whom some have called an amazing “babushka,” who “paints like 5 year old kid.” 
Medvedeva became an artist at the age of 39. Thirty years on she has a very impressive list of exhibitions to her credit, especially outside Russia, with shows in Helsinki, Darmstadt, Berlin, Mainz, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Paris, Nice, New York and Chicago, among others. 
This is probably best explained by both good promotion efforts and foreigner’s traditional interest in freak Russian cultural phenomena, such as matryoshka dolls and samovar water boilers. 
Despite much of which is dubious in Medvedeva’s art, and the banality and clichÎ of those who appreciate it — one collector calls it the “painting of an open soul” — there is a distinctive group of religious works on show which  are of interest. 
Such works as “Advent to the temple of the Blessed Virgin” (2005) or the diptych “Righteous Men on the Judgement Day” (1989), as well as other devout topics, demonstrate that religious works are Medvedeva’s true metier in which she has something to say. 
“Prayer is a pattern; the way you pray is the way you work. When you paint you talk with God; dialogue is the hardest and most necessary thing” Medvedeva explained in her biography. 
At the opening of the exhibition earlier this month, the artist was very funny and talkative, she suggested to everybody that they paint. 
“But you shouldn’t do it for want of something better to do. In this case it is dilettantism,” Medvedeva said. 

“Katya Medvedeva” runs through May 9 at the Marble Palace. www.rusmuseum.ru; www.medvedeva.ru; 
www.katya-medvedeva.ru

TITLE: Life on earth
AUTHOR: By Andrei Vorobei
TEXT: St. Petersburg artist Sergei Denisov juxtaposes science and love in his exhibition ‘Natural Histories’ at the Anna Nova Gallery 
Local artist Sergei Denisov, who is known for finding visual poetry in the classifications and laws of natural science, has a new show on at the Anna Nova Gallery under the title “Natural Histories.” 
Recently Denisov’s team project “Entertaining Physics,” was nominated for an “Innovation” National Contemporary Visual Art Award. 
Now the artist is displaying seven paintings with the same motif: a loving couple is juxtaposed with enlarged anatomical studies of insects, fish, reptiles, digestive organs, skeletons, blood circulation and other visualisations of natural or scientific phenomena. 
All this is made with flat planes of bright colors and simplified, graphic forms resembling poster art that playfully suggests a broad spectrum of associations. 
One amazing mixed media trick involves a video of an animated mosquito projected onto a canvas with an image of a young woman in a relaxing pose who seems to meditate on the hypertrophied insect. 
An innovation of the exhibition is a so-called “art concert” supervised by local music critic and composer Vladimir Rannev. “Natural Histories” was the theme of five pieces of music by contemporary composers from St. Petersburg, Moscow and Lucerne, Switzerland, which premiered last Saturday in the gallery.

“Natural Histories” runs through April 22.
 www.annanova-gallery.ru

TITLE: Rags to riches
AUTHOR: By Evgenia Ivanova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: When it is still snowing in St. Petersburg, the last thing one might want to see is the next year’s fall/winter fashions. 
But as the 13th season of the city-based prÐt-a-porter week Defile na Neve demonstrates, the designs on show are not as depressing and gloomy as the seasons the they are made for. 
With four more days to go before the event closes Monday, the event presents shows by seventeen designers. Labels such as Kogel, Pirosmani, and Princess and Frogs, all of which recently participated in the Moscow-based Russian Fashion Week, will display work Friday. 
The weekend is devoted to designers from Moscow (Masha Sharoyeva), Vilnius (Ramune Piekautaite), Kiev (Ukrainian Fashion Game) and Yekaterinburg (Solo Design).
Famed St. Petersburg designer Tatiana Parfenova’s show is also scheduled for Sunday, with the traditional follow-up by another star of the city’s rag trade Tatyana Kotegova on Monday evening.
Although the event has a reputation of being a stage for well-known professionals as Tantsurina, Pogoretskaya and Kiselenko (whose shows were presented during the event’s first two days), the organizers say they are always on a look-out for young artists.
“The catwalk of Defile Na Neve is open for talented beginners and I consider it my mission to find young ‘stars’ whose works don’t fade in the presence of well-known designers,” Irina Ashkinadze, the event’s director, said. 
“Some people complain there are a lot of students at the show, but I say we should support young designers because the commercial success of the story we call Russian fashion will be seen in five, or maybe even ten years,” she added.
This season includes two debut collections, one from Ukrainian designer Alexander Kanevsky and one from St. Petersburger Timur Kim. 
Seventeen-year-old Kim already tried to get his collection into the event six months ago, but failed due to his work was being, as he puts it, “too studenty for such a serious event.”
 This season Kim’s collection was more mature and things changed. Kim presented his futuristic, yet wearable, collection, “In the Year 2525,” on Thursday and Ashkinadze predicts the young designer has a great future.
“Pay special attention to this young man,” she said.  
Kim said that it was his determination to produce his clothing on commercial scale that helped him to get noticed.
Unlike other fashion festivals, Defile na Neve is based on the idea that “commercial is good” and demonstrates not only designers’ creativity but also the financial potential of their brands. 
“We have pretended for a long time that fashion is all about art, and that the business component of fashion doesn’t exist, but it does. Everyone is willing to receive public recognition and it’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Inna Syomkina, PR director for the House of Irina Tantsurina, whose show traditionally opened the fashion week, said.

TITLE: Italy in Crisis as Berlusconi Digs in Heels
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: ROME — Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Wednesday denounced what he called widespread fraud at Italy’s general election and demanded his center-left rival Romano Prodi be stripped of victory. 
Prodi immediately condemned Berlusconi’s efforts to overturn the results of the April 9-10 election, the closest in modern Italian history, and his allies warned that the prime minister was stoking dangerous political tensions.
The stand-off between the leaders of Italy’s two main coalitions pushed Europe’s fourth largest economy into uncharted waters and toward a full-blown crisis.
“The election result has to change because there was widespread fraud,” Berlusconi told reporters after meeting President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.
“There was fraud that doesn’t go in all directions. It just goes one way,” he added, suggesting that the alleged ballot box irregularities had all been at the expense of his alliance.
Prodi, attending a victory rally in his home city of Bologna in northern Italy, dismissed the allegation.
“We have won ... Berlusconi has to go,” said Prodi, a former president of the European Commission whose victory has been acknowledged by France, Spain, Luxembourg and the European Commission but not Washington. 
According to Interior Ministry data, the center-left won the election for the lower house of parliament by just 25,000 votes out of 38.1 million ballots cast.
Berlusconi earlier this week demanded a review of 40,000 disputed ballots that were not included in the final tally because of alleged errors in the way they were filled out.
On Wednesday, he suggested the problem might be much bigger, saying statements from 60,000 voting stations across Italy had to be checked “one by one.”
During his campaign, Prodi promised to introduce a civil partnership law for same-sex couples if he became prime minister, Planet Out, a gay-lesbian news service, reported.
Abortion rights and same-sex partner rights were big social issues with voters, as several thousands of pro-gay and pro-choice Italians demonstrated in the streets during the campaign. The Catholic Church also wielded its influence to try and sway voters against the two progressive causes.
The election benefited transgender candidate Vladimir Luxuria, who is nearly assured of a seat in parliament. Luxuria is a member of the Reformed Communist Party and has pledged to work for LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual) rights.

(Reuters/SPT)

TITLE: After 40 Years, Police Catch the Real Don Corleone
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: CORLEONE, Italy — Italy’s reputed No. 1 Mafia boss was arrested Tuesday at a farmhouse in the Sicilian countryside after frustrating investigators’ efforts to catch him for more than 40 years on the run, the Interior Ministry said. 
Bernardo Provenzano, Italy’s most wanted man, is believed to have taken over the Sicilian Mafia after the 1993 arrest of former boss Salvatore “Toto” Riina in Palermo. 
“Bastard! Murderer!” a crowd shouted as black-hooded policemen took the elderly man out of a sedan and rushed him into the courtyard of a police building in Palermo. The gray-haired Provenzano, wearing a windbreaker and tinted glasses, glanced aside at one point but made no audible comment. 
A Palermo police spokesman, Agent Daniele Macaluso, said Provenzano had been arrested in the morning near Corleone, the Sicilian town made famous in the “Godfather” movies. He was then driven to Palermo, 37 miles north of Corleone. 
He was being questioned by anti-Mafia prosecutors in police offices, but was saying little, answering only questions about his identity, the Italian news agency ANSA reported from Palermo. 
Interior Ministry Undersecretary Alfredo Mantovano described Provenzano as “the most important person from Cosa Nostra” after Riina, the so-called “boss of bosses” — who was also arrested after years as a fugitive. He called the arrest “an important step forward ... for the entire nation.” 
Prosecutors describe Provenzano as a man who helped Cosa Nostra increasingly spread its tentacles into the lucrative world of public works contracts in Sicily, turning the Mafia into more of a white-collar industry of illegal activity less dependent on traditional revenue-making operations like drug trafficking and extortion rackets. 
Provenzano, on the run since 1963, has proven an elusive target. 
Turncoats have told investigators in recent years that he avoided capture for so long by sleeping in different farmhouses across the island every few nights and by giving orders with handwritten notes, not trusting cell phone conversations for fear that they were monitored by police. 
Authorities were also hampered in their hunt for him because their last photo of Provenzano dated back nearly 50 years. However, personnel at a clinic in southern France where Provenzano is believed to have been treated for prostate problems under a false name a few years ago helped police to create a new composite sketch. 
Italy’s top anti-Mafia prosecutor, Piero Grasso, who for years as Palermo’s chief prosecutor had personally led the hunt for Provenzano, said on RAI radio that he felt “great satisfaction, great emotion” at the arrest.

TITLE: World Bank Targets Poverty With Debt Relief
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: WASHINGTON — World Bank member nations on Tuesday approved a long-awaited $37 billion debt relief package for 17 impoverished countries that included ways to compensate the development lender for the write-off.
The approval brings to an end months of tough negotiations among the World Bank’s biggest donors over how to fund future loans by the bank’s low-interest lending arm, the International Development Association.
The 40-year term of debt cancellation will begin on July 1. It will cover debt service payments of the 17 countries to the World Bank on debt accumulated to the end of December 2003, allowing governments to increase spending on programs that reduce poverty.
“This is a historic agreement combining increased financing with debt relief, which will help poor countries meet the Millennium Development Goals,” World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz said.

TITLE: Oils Well That Ends Well At Fast Food Chains
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TRENTON, New Jersey — A study of fast-food chains’ products around the world found remarkably wide variations in trans fat content from country to country, from city to city within the same nation, and from restaurant to restaurant in the same city.
The researchers said the differences had to do with the type of frying oil used, and the main culprit appeared to be partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, which is high in trans fats.
“I was very surprised to see a difference in trans fatty acids in these uniform products,” said one of the researchers, Dr. Steen Stender, a cardiologist at Gentofte University Hospital in Hellerup, Denmark, and former head of the Danish Nutrition Council. “It’s such an easy risk factor to remove.”
McDonald’s, which promised in September 2002 to cut trans fat in half, and KFC parent Yum! Brands Inc. said the explanation is local taste preferences. But nutrition experts and consumer activists said it is about money: Frying oil high in trans fats costs less.
The Danish researchers tested products from the chains’ outlets in dozens of countries in 2004 and 2005, analyzing McDonald’s chicken nuggets, KFC hot wings, and the two chains’ fried potatoes. The findings were reported in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: ElBaradei in Tehran
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran’s hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vowed Thursday that Iran won’t back away from uranium enrichment and said the world must treat Iran as a nuclear power. The comments were made as Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, arrived in Tehran for talks aimed at defusing tensions over Iran’s nuclear program. 
“Our answer to those who are angry about Iran achieving the full nuclear fuel cycle is just one phrase. We say: Be angry at us and die of this anger,” the official Islamic Republic News Agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.
Ahmadinejad declared on Tuesday that Iran had successfully produced enriched uranium for the first time, a key process in what Iran maintains is a peaceful energy program.

Pooh Under Foot in LA
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Winnie the Pooh sure does love his honey, but the beloved bear now has something just as sweet: a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. 
The children’s character, created in the 1920s by British author A.A. Milne, was joined Tuesday at the star’s unveiling by his Hundred Acre Wood pals Tigger, Eeyore and Rabbit.
Pooh debuted as a cartoon character in the 1966 Disney featurette “Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree,” and went on to star in dozens of films, specials and several cartoon series.


War Objector Jailed
ALDERSHOT, England (Reuters) — A British air force doctor who refused to go to Iraq was jailed for eight months on Thursday after being found guilty by a court martial of disobeying orders. 
Australian-born Malcolm Kendall-Smith refused to go to Iraq in 2005, arguing the war was a crime. The judge ruled that the British presence in Iraq was legal and told the five-officer panel acting as a jury to ignore the officer’s arguments.
The case is the first of its kind in Britain over the war in Iraq.
Kendall-Smith’s lawyer Philip Sapsford described him to the court as “a man of great moral courage.”

Norway Crime Wave
OSLO (Reuters) — It’s murder in Norway at Easter. 
Rushing off to their mountain cabins for one last ski before the snow melts, Norwegians are also stocking up on thrillers for a national tradition known as “Easter Crime.”
Sales of crime books jump around 500 percent in the week leading up to Easter, estimates bookshop chain Tanum, while television and radio programmers schedule back-to-back thrillers over the Easter break, which in Norway lasts 5 days.
“People sit inside their cabins, watch crime on television and then read crime books at night,” said book reviewer Ane Farsethaas, who prefers 19th century British detective Sherlock Holmes to the modern thrillers most of her compatriots devour.
“It’s a very Norwegian thing to do,” she said.

TITLE: Detroit Destroys Cleveland
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: DETROIT, Michigan — Cleveland fans hated to see LeBron James limp off the court. So did Tayshaun Prince. The Detroit Pistons were on their way to a 96-73 home victory over the Cavaliers on Wednesday night when James landed awkwardly while being guarded by Prince on a three-point play late in the third quarter. 
Even though James and the Cavs loom as a possible second-round opponent for the Pistons, Prince didn’t want to see James hobbling off the court and trying to keep weight off his left ankle.
“For one of our players, or any other player, this is an important time of the season and you don’t want anyone to get hurt,” Prince said. “You want them to try to help their team accomplish something. Hopefully, this is not too serious for the Cavs and he can get back healthy.”
James left the court moments later for X-rays, and the Cavs said he was taking it as it comes. His status for Cleveland’s game against New York on Thursday night wasn’t immediately known.
“It’s sprained pretty good, but nothing serious,” James said. “You never really know until the next day, but I’ve had them before, and this is nothing that bad.”
The Cavs have the option of resting James, because they are locked into the No. 4 seed in the Eastern Conference. Everything below Cleveland remains jumbled.
Milwaukee beat Washington on Wednesday night, while Indiana, Philadelphia and Chicago all were winners. The Wizards are in fifth place, the Bucks and Pacers are a game behind them, and the 76ers and Bulls are another game back in a tie for eighth.
There are no such worries for the Pistons, who moved within a game of earning home-court advantage throughout the playoffs. Detroit will secure home court with one more victory, or a San Antonio loss. The Pistons have the tiebreaker because they beat the Spurs in both meetings.
Detroit (63-15) tied the franchise record for victories and if it wins one of the last four games, it will break the record set during the 1988-89 season, when the Bad Boys went on to win the first of two straight titles.
“As I said in the locker room, people die to get to 50 (wins),” Pistons coach Flip Saunders said. “To get to 60 is really something. Every win beyond that shows that you’ve been able to play at a pretty high level for a long time.” 
In other games, it was: Chicago 96, Atlanta 90; Indiana 117, Boston 112; Orlando 103, Toronto 96; Memphis 96, Charlotte 88; Philadelphia 116, New Jersey 96; Milwaukee 100, Washington 97; New Orleans 104, Seattle 99; Minnesota 82, Houston 79; Utah 104, Denver 83; Golden State 114, Dallas 102; and the Los Angeles Clippers 97, Portland 93.

TITLE: Lackluster Arsenal in Danger of Losing Champions League Spot
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Arsenal was held to a 
1-1 draw by relegation-threatened Portsmouth on Wednesday as its hopes of finishing fourth in the English Premier League suffered a blow. 
The result left the European Cup semifinalist four points behind north London rival Tottenham Hotspur in the race for the final qualifying spot in next season’s Champions League.
Arsenal moved up a place to fifth, above Blackburn Rovers on goal difference, while Portsmouth stayed in the bottom three but climbed one spot to 18th, level on points with Birmingham City. 
Thierry Henry put Arsenal ahead after 36 minutes with a precise shot into the far corner but Lomana LuaLua equalised for Portsmouth in the 66th with a powerful header. 
Arsenal striker Emmanuel Adebayor squandered two clear chances to put Arsenal further ahead before LuaLua’s leveller but he contrived to miss with a shot and a header. 
“Given the chances we created and the chances they had it was a disappointing result for us,” Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger told Sky Sports.
The Londoners made several changes after a 2-0 loss at Manchester United on Sunday, fielding a young central midfield partnership of Abou Diaby and Alex Song. 
However, Wenger refused to blame his team selection, saying: “I don’t think we dropped the points tonight because of that.”  Henry got Arsenal off to the perfect start as he showed his class with a fine goal from outside the box after dispossessing Sean Davis and playing a neat one-two with Adebayor. 
“It was a great point,” said delighted Portsmouth manager Harry Redknapp. “To go behind to Arsenal and come back and take a point was a great performance. We deserved it in the end.”

TITLE: Zenit Advance To Russian Cup Semi
AUTHOR: By Martin Burlund
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: FC Zenit St. Petersburg is through to  the semifinal of the Russian Cup after a 5-2 aggregate win over Torpedo Moscow. The teams met Wednesday in Moscow with a 2-0 advantage to Zenit after the first leg two weeks ago at Petrovsky Stadium in St. Petersburg.
Zenit, which won the second-leg game 3-2, scored all its goals in the first half. Down 3-0 at halftime, Torpedo needed to score six goals to tip the aggregate in their favor, but only managed two. 
The win increased Zenit’s chances of winning the Russian Cup, which will mean qualification for the UEFA Cup this fall, but first the St. Petersburg team must get past Moscow powerhouse CSKA which is currently top in the Russian Premier League. Zenit lies at tenth. The other semifinal is between Spartak Moscow and Saturn Moscow Region.

TITLE: Sports Watch
TEXT: Petrova Qualifies
CHARLESTON, South Carolina (AFP) — Russian second seed Nadia Petrova, coming off her second WTA title of 2006, reached the third round of a $1.3 million clay court event with a three-set victory. 
Petrova, who won the Amelia Island final last Sunday, defeated Ukrainian qualifier Alona Bondarenko 6-1, 0-6, 6-2. She will next face Czech Lucie Safarova, who ousted Germany’s Julia Schruff 6-4, 6-0.
Also advancing was Russian fourth seed Svetlana Kuznetsova, who eliminated U.S. wild card Meghann Shaughnessy 6-0, 6-1.
Kuznetsova, who advanced to a matchup with Spain’s Lourdes Dominguez Lino, had retired from an Amelia Island semifinal with a right adductor strain.

Puzzled Russians
SAN ANTONIO, Texas (AP) — A team of three students from Russia proved their brainy prowess Wednesday, winning an academic competition in which they had only five hours to solve perplexing computing puzzles.
The team from Saratov State University won the 2006 Association for Computing Machinery’s International Collegiate Programming Contest.
Working in teams of three, contestants in the 30th annual event had five hours to solve 10 problems that would ordinarily take months to complete. Saratov solved six in the allotted time.

Space Soccer Fun
STAR CITY, Russia (AP) — Cooperation between nations comes easily at zero gravity — but soccer is a different matter, Brazil’s first man in space said Tuesday after a nine-day visit to the International Space Station.
Pontes, who carried a Brazilian flag and soccer jersey to the space station in the hope that it would bring his national team victory in this summer’s World Cup, said he also took along a soccer ball — but found the most popular sport on Earth a daunting challenge hundreds of kilometers above the planet.
“I took a football with me to space, but I did not manage to play there because the ball was simply floating there and it turned out to be too complicated,’’ he said with a smile. 

First ‘Lineswoman’?
ZURICH, Switzerland (Reuters) — Nelly Viennot of France could become the first female official at soccer’s World Cup if she passes FIFA tests later this month. 
FIFA said Viennot would be among 82 assistant referees who will be tested for “World Cup worthiness” in Frankfurt on April 18-21. 
A final 60 will be selected in early May for World Cup duty in Germany.
FIFA has already announced the names of the 23 referees who will officiate at the 2006 World Cup.