SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1163 (29), Friday, April 21, 2006
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TITLE: Gazprom: Do Not ‘Politicize’ Energy
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Russian state-run gas giant Gazprom has warned the European Union not to “politicize” terms for Russian gas supplies, implicitly threatening to sell its product elsewhere if the EU seeks to impose too many conditions on the company. 
In a statement posted on its website, the company said Gazprom chief Alexei Miller held a meeting with EU ambassadors Tuesday in Moscow where a “frank and objective” conversation took place regarding Russian energy supplies to Europe. 
“Gazprom was and is the main supplier of natural gas to Europe. We understand our responsibility and henceforth will remain the guarantor of energy security for European consumers,” the company said, adding there are “no doubts” that Russia has the supply and can deliver it unfailingly. 
“Nevertheless, one cannot forget that we are actively developing new markets such as North America and China... Competition for energy resources is increasing. 
“It needs to be noted that attempts to limit Gazprom’s activity in the European market and to politicize gas issues, which are in fact solely economic, will not produce good results,” the statement on the Internet said. 
A Gazprom source said the company was particularly opposed to talk in Brussels about applying EU anti-monopoly regulations to the Russian company. 
“We do not think that anti-monopoly legislation in the EU can be applied to Gazprom,” said the source, who asked not to be named. 
Gazprom briefly cut gas deliveries to Ukraine at the start of this year when Ukraine balked at signing a new contract scrapping Soviet-era subsidies and raising the price it pays for Russian gas shipments to the market rates paid by other European countries. 
The two sides finally agreed to a price that was about half of what Gazprom had demanded, but the cutoff of supplies to Ukraine had a knock-on effect that disrupted gas supplies to a number of European countries further along the pipeline. 
European Commission president Jose Manuel Durao Barroso raised the possibility of EU anti-monopoly measures against Gazprom when he met Russian President Vladimir Putin here earlier this year.

TITLE: Russia Stands By Iran
AUTHOR: By Judith Ingram
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia on Thursday rejected a U.S. call for Moscow to end its cooperation with Iran in constructing the Bushehr nuclear power plant. 
Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin said the plant had no relation to Iran’s work in uranium enrichment. 
“The adoption of a commitment on ending cooperation with this or that state in some sphere lies exclusively in the competence of the UN Security Council,” he said in a statement. “Up to now, the Security Council has taken no decision on ending cooperation with Iran in nuclear energy.” 
Every country “has the right to decide with whom and how it should cooperate,” Kamynin said, adding that the Bushehr project was “under the full control” of the U.N. nuclear watchdog — the International Atomic Energy Agency. 
U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns told reporters Wednesday in Moscow that the U.S. had called on countries to end all nuclear cooperation with Iran, including work on the Bushehr plant. He also said that countries should stop all arms exports to Iran — Russia is supplying Iran with sophisticated air defense missiles. 
Burns said such action would send a message to Tehran that its behavior meant it would no longer be “business as usual.” 
The United States, which believes Iran is intending to make nuclear weapons, has been pushing for tough measures because of Iran’s refusal to suspend its uranium enrichment program. 
Russia’s atomic energy chief also reacted negatively to the U.S. call. Speaking in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, Sergei Kiriyenko said that Russia’s work in building the $800 million plant “fully meets all international norms and agreements.” 
“All the spent fuel will be returned to Russia for reprocessing, so this cooperation creates no problems, no threats to the nonproliferation regime,” Kiriyenko said in remarks broadcast on state television. 
Robert Einhorn, a senior adviser to the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said it was doubtful that Iran could use the Bushehr plant as part of any nuclear weapons program. 
“At this point, what the (U.S.) administration is saying is, if you have a country that is violating its safeguard obligations, does it make sense to continue even benign nuclear cooperation with that country?” he told The Associated Press. 
Earlier Thursday, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Kislyak said Russia would wait to review next week’s report by IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei before making any further decisions on how to handle the standoff over Iran’s nuclear program. 
“We will determine our reaction depending on the contents of the report,” Kislyak was quoted as saying by the ITAR-Tass news agency. “The IAEA has ideas of what is happening and what is not happening in Iran. We’ll be relying on these evaluations.” 
ITAR-Tass quoted an unnamed Iranian source as saying that an Iranian delegation led by Javad Vaidi, deputy secretary of Iran’s National Security Council, was meeting Thursday with Russian diplomats. 
The source said the Russian side was briefing the Iranians on the results of this week’s Moscow meetings among the five permanent UN Security Council members and Germany, ITAR-Tass reported. 
A Foreign Ministry spokesman said he had no information on such a meeting, and the Kremlin Security Council said it was not involved. 
Burns gave an upbeat assessment of this week’s Moscow talks, which also included representatives of the Group of Eight major industrialized countries. 
“Nearly every country (involved in the talks) is considering some sort of sanctions, and that’s new,” Burns told reporters Wednesday after two days of meetings. 
Envoys from the so-called EU-3 — Britain, France and Germany — held at least two hours of talks in Moscow on Wednesday evening with Vaidi and Deputy Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, but there was little progress, the British Foreign Office said. 
“We detected nothing new in the Iranian position,” it said. 
Burns stressed that all participants in the talks were intent on preventing Iran from achieving nuclear weapons capability, but said there continued to be differences over what action would be needed to do that. He declined to specify which countries did not support possible sanctions. 
Russia and China, both of which are permanent Security Council members, are seen as the most resistant to sanctions. 
“What is new is a greater sense of urgency given what the Iranians did last week,” Burns said, referring to Iran’s announcement that it had succeeded in enriching uranium for the first time. 
Being able to enrich uranium is a significant step toward being able to produce nuclear weapons, though Iran says it will use the process only to fuel nuclear power stations. 
China also renewed calls for a negotiated settlement Thursday. 
“We hope relevant parties will exercise restraint and show flexibility to properly handle the Iranian nuclear issue, to create conditions for the solution of the issue through negotiations,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said at a regular briefing in Beijing. 
Iran has consistently resisted calls to abandon its enrichment program.

TITLE: Indian Student Latest Street Violence Victim
AUTHOR: By Ali Nassor
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: St. Petersburg extremists struck again Wednesday in a violent hate crime that left an Indian medical student hospitalized with stab wounds in the third racist assault in a week.
An unidentified group stabbed Anjar Kishore-Kumar, 23, a fifth-year student at the Mechnikov Medical Academy at around 8 p.m. as he was making his way to his hostel on Kirillovksaya Ulitsa.
Kumar said that he was attacked by two skinheads who shouted racist comments during the assault, the students who came to his aid said. 
Citing doctors treating Kumar at the Mariinsky hospital on Thursday, the hospital’s spokesperson, Maria Kuznetsova, said the patient’s condition was “satisfactory, following stitches on two deep stab wounds to the throat.” 
Dmitry Bendor, prosecutor for the Central District, said the case was being investigated as attempted murder, but said the motive for the attack had not yet been established.
The attack on the Indian student came four days after two Mongolian students were beaten by a gang of around 10 men on the St. Petersburg subway system and an Afghan man was attacked at an outdoor market. 
The attacks were made in parallel with similar incidents in the regions of Voronezh, Volgograd, Nizhny Novgorod and in the Siberian city of Chita, with victims including Roma, Vietnamese and Chinese workers, and a Malaysian student.
Earlier in the month, a Senegalese student was fatally shot with a weapon bearing a swastika symbol. It was the sixth hate murder in St Petersburg in seven months.
Meanwhile, foreign students in St. Petersburg have been urged to remain indoors amid fears of racist attacks following on-line announcements by extremists that street violence against non-Russians would be stepped up as part of Hitler’s April 20 birthday celebrations.
A number of academic institutions have given foreign students a formal three-day vacation until Saturday.
“We wouldn’t have gone to classes, anyway,” said Jonas Joseph from Tanzania, a third-year IT student at the St. Petersburg Engineering Technology University. He and his friends stopped attending classes on Monday.
“Today [the hostel’s administration] put an announcement on the wall saying they have been warned by neo-Nazis that they would come to the hostel to kill us,” he said, referring to the dormitory on Prospect Ispytatelei Prospekt. A similar announcement was placed in a neighboring hostel on Prospekt Ispytatelei.
“Those of us with urgent things to attend to have been advised to avoid public transport,” Joseph said. 
The management of the hostels of the Mechnikov Medical Academy have declared a nine-hour curfew starting 9 p.m. for inhabitants. “Doors will be closed to let no one out, and of course no visitors can come after that time,” said one of the students living in the hostel where Kumar was attacked.
The St Petersburg police said they would deploy more troops on the streets for a three-day period starting Thursday in response to the threats that have been made by the extremists.

TITLE: Oil Tycoon Khodorkovsky Transferred to One-Man Cell
AUTHOR: By Maria Danilova
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky has been transferred to a one-man prison cell as part of the authorities’ campaign of intimidation against the man who was once Russia’s richest, his lawyer said Thursday. 
Khodorkovsky’s transfer to the single-person cell Wednesday night came after an incident last week when another prisoner slashed him in the face while he slept. 
Prison authorities said keeping Khodorkovsky away from other convicts at the Siberian prison where he is serving his sentence was needed for his personal safety. 
Lawyer Yury Schmidt told reporters that his client was being punished. 
“This is an attempt to demoralize, to discredit Khodorkovsky,” he said. 
He said the move will deprive him of interacting with other people and taking advantage of prison facilities, such as the TV room. 
“What (Khodorkovsky) was most afraid of was to be transferred to a one-man cell,” he said. 
The founder of the Yukos oil company arrived at the prison camp in October to begin serving an eight-year sentence for tax evasion and fraud. Yukos — once Russia’s largest oil company— has been all but carved up by the state. 
“Probably it didn’t seem enough for them; to give him eight years, to send him to the end of the world, to deprive him of normal human conditions ... they continue to be afraid of him,” Schmidt said. 
The lawyer also said the slashing — which left Khodorkovsky with a relatively deep cut on his face and required stitches — was orchestrated by prison authorities, and he alleged that prison officials later found the attacker in possession of three knives. 
A spokesman for the Federal Prison Service declined to comment on the allegations.

TITLE: City To Test New HIV Program
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: PreventAIDS, a new program aimed at combating the spread of HIV in the city by educating and raising awareness among vulnerable groups, run jointly by the U.S. non-profit organization Population Services International (PSI) and City Hall, was launched this week.
Human rights organizations are hoping the project will also help to increase the quality, scale and availability of health and social services for HIV-positive locals and high-risk groups.
PreventAIDS is scheduled to run for three years in selected clinics and social centers in the Kirovsky, Krasnogvardeisky and Vyborgsky districts, where staff will try to establish a network between medical, legal and social services that can potentially be of help to the target groups. If proved efficient, the system will be put forward for adoption in other districts.
Aza Rakhmanova, the chief HIV and AIDS specialist on City Hall’s Health Committee, said senior doctors in many state-funded district clinics turn a blind eye to the problem, refusing to assign staff or time for prevention programs for consultancy for HIV positive patients. Almost no clinics have staff specifically dedicated to dealing with these patients or those exposed to a high risk of getting infected, she added.
This year, Russia has increased funding for HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention programs from 130 million rubles ($4.5 million) in 2004 — enough to treat just 600 patients — to 3 billion rubles ($140 million). In January, City Hall announced that if the state funding is insufficient, local authorities will provide extra cash and officials promised that all locals diagnosed as being HIV-positive will receive treatment. 
But statistics show that most patients don’t rely on the state and don’t expect any help. According to the St. Petersburg Center For HIV Prevention, just half of the 30,000 HIV-positive locals officially registered by City Hall, actually contact the center, or similar organizations for any assistance.
Even when serious symptoms occur, some people prefer not to deal with doctors. 
“Very recently, a fifty-year-old woman was found to be HIV-positive only by chance, during a post-mortem examination at the Botkin hospital,” Rakhmanova said. “She died from cryptococcal encephalitis, which is a perfectly curable infection. Had she contacted the doctors in time, she would have lived.” 
Russians who are HIV-positive are afraid of the stigma attached to the virus: a number of human rights groups have reported cases of ambulance or hospital doctors refusing to provide help to HIV-positive patients and of employers firing staff and schools rejecting pupils solely on the grounds of their diagnosis, not to mention hostile attitudes from neighbors.
Yuliana Davydova, director of the St. Petersburg branch of PSI, said a comprehensive approach is crucial to the problem. “As part of the program, we will monitor the quality of medical or social assistance, and we are hoping to see an increase in contacts,” she said. “Getting help must become a much easier process, otherwise the trust will be hard to build.”
The initiative is part of a large project covering, apart from St. Petersburg, the Samara, Saratov and Orenburg regions.
Yelena Arutyunova, head of PSI-Russia, said target groups, which include drug-users, prostitutes and socially deprived youths will be contacted by outreach workers to provide them with useful tips and establish a permanent contact. “Our workers will look out for the most susceptible groups in their known hangouts: clubs, hotels, student hostels, private apartments or basements,” she said.
Gennady Onishchenko, Russia’s chief sanitary doctor, said at a recent news conference that strategies for limiting the spread of HIV/AIDS will be one of the topics at the forthcoming G8 summit in St. Petersburg in July.
In 2005, just 68 locals received antiretroviral therapy but this year the treatment is being given to almost one thousand patients, Onishchenko said.

TITLE: Gazprom Plans to Snap Up Country’s Top Paper
AUTHOR: By Maria Levitov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Gazprom’s media arm appears to be on the verge of adding to its newspaper portfolio by snapping up Komsomolskaya Pravda, the most widely read paper in the country. 
Prof-Media, the tabloid’s owner and a part of metal magnate Vladimir Potanin’s Interros holding, declined to discuss any negotiations on Wednesday, but confirmed that it was getting out of the newspaper business. 
“We have already said in the past that we do not plan further expansion in newspapers,” said Prof-Media spokesman Konstantin Vorontsov. He added that any of Prof-Media’s assets, including Komsomolskaya Pravda, could be sold at any time.
Gazprom-Media, which bought Izvestia from Prof-Media last year, said it was “too soon” to discuss a deal.
“We are an active company and we are in negotiations with many media companies,” said Gazprom-Media spokeswoman Irina Zenkova. She confirmed that this included newspapers, but declined further comment Wednesday.
Gazprom-Media, which is connected to the state-controlled natural gas monopoly through Gazprombank, has also been reported to be interested in acquiring Kommersant, another leading newspaper, which is owned by Badri Patarkatsishvili. Gazprom-Media also controls NTV, one of three national television channels. The other two are in state hands.
In an interview published in Vedomosti on Monday, Potanin said he did not exlude the possibility of selling Komsomolskaya Pravda. “We see other, more-effective sectors for capital inflows in the media,” he said.
Prof-Media rolled its newspaper assets — Komsomolskaya Pravda, the sports daily Sovetsky Sport, the weekly tabloid Express Gazeta and the television guide Teleprogramma — into the Komsomolskaya Pravda publishing house at the end of last year.

TITLE: United States Wants Belarus Put on G8 Agenda
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — A senior U.S. diplomat said Wednesday that the United States would press for discussion of political developments in Belarus as well as conflicts in Georgia, Moldova and Nagorno-Karabakh to be on the agenda of this year’s Group of Eight summit, hosted by Russia in St. Petersburg in July. 
Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said it would be the first time that the G8 had discussed “these ... conflicts very close to Russia’s borders” — underlining the stark political differences between Russia and the other G8 members. 
He said that most G8 members agreed that Belarus’ recent election, which returned President Alexander Lukashenko to a third term, were “anti-democratic.”

TITLE: City Takes Measures To Combat Tourism Crime
AUTHOR: By Yelena Andreyeva
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: As the tourist high season approaches, St. Petersburg is preparing a whole host of new measures to ensure its visitors are kept safe and comfortable.  
The new approach will include upgraded measures of security, five new tour bus car parks and more tourist information by way of an English-speaking telephone hotline and booklets, to be distributed in a wide range of languages to all tourists on their arrival through customs.
The security of foreign tourists is one of the city’s priorities, representatives from both City Hall and St. Petersburg’s main travel agencies said at a meeting of the North-West Division Office of the Russian Union of Travel Industry at Pulkovskaya Hotel on April 5. 
According to statistics, there is a steady growth in foreign tourist-related crime. 
“In 2005, 792 crimes were committed against foreign citizens from non-CIS countries, of which 79 cases were solved — 397 more crimes than in 2004,” said Alexander Irveshen, deputy chief at the criminal investigation unit #5 of St. Petersburg’s Department of Internal Affairs. 
However, Irveshen put special emphasis on the fact that the police only started to register all crimes against foreign tourists, even those as “trivial as the loss of documents and personal items,” this year, and this clearly affected the statistics. 
Most crimes against foreigners — mainly street theft — are committed in the historic center. The city’s police is warning tourists that after “mop-up” operations against pickpockets began in January, the criminals have moved from the streets to shopping malls, cafes, restaurants and night clubs. 
“34 thefts out of the 48 registered this year were committed in public places. We don’t suppose that this tendency will change during the course of the upcoming season,” said Irveshen.
The main factors that hinder police work are the language barrier and the limited period of time that foreign tourists spend in St. Petersburg (on average, from three to five days). Additionally, there is the fact that victims often only go to the police in order to later claim on the insurance, without wanting to spend time on the investigation.
Among the measures intended to lower tourist-related crime, the city will increase the number of police patrols, which will now begin at the very start of the high season. Also present on the city’s streets will be members of an information security agency, “The angels service,” alongside greater numbers of CCTV cameras and alarm buttons. 
“The angels service” will consist of volunteer students, who speak various foreign languages and will assist tourists who fall into trouble. 
“Of course, our ‘angels’ won’t be in charge of seizing criminals, they will just help tourists get to the police station. However, we strongly believe that their presence on the streets of the city will help lower the crime rate in St. Petersburg,” said Nikolai Isayev, chief of the tourism and external affairs department at City Hall. Although the project is only planned for launch in 2007, the first “angels” in uniform will start to patrol central tourist bus car parks this summer, and this summer will also see the launch of the tourist information hot line with English-speaking operators.
In addition, just after the G8 summit, which is to be held in St. Petersburg in July, direction signs in English will be set up on the streets of the city.
As well as these general security measures, additional precautions will be taken for the G8 summit itself. On July 13 to 15, Pulkovo Airport will be closed, receiving only planes with members of official delegations. 
The area around the river Neva and the eastern part of the Gulf of Finland will be closed to ships from July 13 to 17. 
For tourists an alternative will be to use the airports in Helsinki or Tallinn and cross the Russian border by land at Torfyanovka and Ivan-Gorod respectively. Authorities plan to introduce  “green corridors” at these border posts, with facilitated customs procedures for tourists.

TITLE: Technological Parks Lure Finns
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The construction of Russia’s first IT park, part of a government program to develop the nation’s high-tech industry, was officially begun this week in St. Petersburg. 
Occupying a total area of 44 hectares and using, as its base, the ‘Professor Bonch-Bruevich’ University of Telecommunications, the IT park will need around $1 billion worth of investment, a sum that will start to pay back between seven to 15 years. The IT park is due to start operating in 2008 or 2009.
The federal budget should cover 50 percent of construction costs, while the city budget and private investors will finance the rest, governor Valentina Matviyenko said at a ceremony on Monday to mark the start of construction, Interfax reported. 
A total of seven IT parks will be created across Russia, Leonid Reiman, minister for informational technologies and communications, said in St. Petersburg on Monday.
Besides St. Petersburg, three IT parks will be created in the Moscow Oblast, and the government is working on parks in Kazan and Novosibirsk, Reiman said.
Authorities have said that Siemens, Nokia and Intel have already shown interest in the St. Petersburg park.
The site will house about 5,000 specialists and consist of office, research and computer centers, conference rooms, production facilities, residential buildings and a sports center. A total of 500,000 square meters of real estate will also be developed.
Foreign companies have also shown interest in the idea of creating two technoparks in special economic zones at Noidorf and Novo-Orlovsky park. The Finnish company Technopolis expects to establish 20 large clients at the Noidorf technopark, Interfax cited Finnish prime minister Matti Vanhanen as saying Tuesday.
A number of other similar projects are currently underway in the city — they include technoparks and business incubators. This week St. Petersburg’s Polytechnical University announced investment of $50 million into the development of its own technopark, where, at present, 15 companies work. The complex will double in size, to 100,000 square meters, and include space for lectures and scientific research, as well as companies’ representative offices. 
Construction will start in the near future, University dean Mikhail Fyodorov said at an Interfax press conference on Tuesday.
“IT parks are good for small firms that quickly receive all the necessary infrastructure, and, as neighbors with similar companies, they can network and use the services of law firms and venture capitalists,” said Pyotr Vaikhansky, vice president of StarSoft company.
“IT parks are good for large companies with several thousand employees who can be easily located. Usually IT parks are based near large educational institutions, a good source of human resources,” he said.
Offering much that is similar in the way of infrastructure, IT parks and technoparks differ mainly in terms of the tax concessions made available to tenants, said Anatoly Sourkis, Vice President and CFO of Digital Design software company.
IT firms with a definite number of employees and definite structure of revenues receive unified social tax concessions and do not pay VAT, profit tax or property tax, Sourkis said. Technopark residents only get concessions from unified social tax and profit tax.
“If all the tax concessions are approved, IT parks should be attractive for IT firms. Though to make a final assessment we need to make a thorough assessment of all the benefits and expenses — the cost of rents, communication etc.,” he said.
Sourkis considered the IT park inconveniently located, its remoteness from the city center something that might put off potential employees.
“For StarSoft and many other IT companies it would be inconvenient to relocate to this IT park — the process is rather expensive. But it does not mean that not one large company will move there,” Vaikhansky said. It could be an option for companies looking for new office space, he explained.
Despite potentially high rates of rent in such parks, many companies may want to make the move, Vaikhansky said, particularly if tax concessions are applied not to the industry in general or to companies of a definite size, but to geographical zones.
“It is important to develop IT park concepts that would be useful to software developers. The various financial allowances should be considered with caution, because in Russia they often lead to industry criminalization,” said Evgeny Birialtsev, director of Auriga’s Software Development Center in Kazan.

TITLE: Russia’s Richest Getting Richer - Forbes Says
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The fortunes of Russia’s 100 richest businessmen increased by $107 billion up to $248 billion last year, according to Forbes magazine. For the second year in a row the entrepreneur and governor of the Chukotka region Roman Abramovich was named Russia’s wealthiest person. His fortune is estimated at $18.3 billion, Interfax reported Wednesday.
The list’s biggest mover was LUKoil president Vagit Alekperov, placed second in the rating, who more than doubled his fortune. This year 20 new names appeared on the list. The wealthiest newcomer was co-owner of metal giant Yevraz-Holding Alexander Frolov ($2.8 billion).  
Only 40 out of the 100 listed made their fortunes from the exporting of raw materials, compared to 64 last year. 
The youngest members of the list, all aged 34, made their money in the financial sphere — MDM Bank’s Andrei Melnichenko ($3.8 billion), Sergei Popov ($3.8 billion) and Rosgosstrakh’s Danil Khachaturov ($760 million). 
The number of billionaires on the Forbes list rose to 44 from 30 last year.

TITLE: Yukos Lawyer Gets 7 Year Term
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Judges at Moscow’s Simonovsky District Court on Wednesday sentenced Svetlana Bakhmina, a former deputy head of Yukos’ legal department, to seven years in prison after finding her guilty of embezzlement and tax evasion.
A mother of two young children, Bakhmina, 36, is the latest in a series of several senior Yukos officials to be jailed since the company came under attack three years ago. Last year, the company’s former CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev were handed sentences of eight years in prison on tax evasion and fraud charges.
The length of the prison term makes Bakhmina ineligible for release under a current amnesty for mothers sentenced to prison terms of six years or less. 
“They did it on purpose, so the amnesty would not apply,” said Pavel Ivlev, a friend of Bakhmina’s and a lawyer with ties to Yukos who left Russia for New York in the fall of 2004, citing fears of prosecution. “This means that as well as the 1 1/2 years she has already been in jail, she will have to serve a minimum of 2 1/2 years more in jail” before becoming eligible for parole, Ivlev said.
The judges found Bakhmina guilty of embezzling some 8 billion rubles ($290 million) of assets belonging to Yukos subsidiary Tomskneft in the late 1990s. Bakhmina has denied the charges since her arrest on Dec. 8, 2004. 
Judges on Wednesday refused to give Bakhmina a suspended sentence, which would have left her formally convicted but would free her from jail. Courts have the option of freeing mothers of young children on compassionate grounds. Bakhmina has two sons — Fyodor, 4, and Grigory, 8.
Ivlev said that he was sure that Bakhmina had done nothing wrong.
“Just because the system finds it unpleasant to acknowledge its mistakes, they decided that she should stay in jail,” Ivlev said.
Late Wednesday, there appeared to be some confusion regarding the kind of prison Bakhmina would be sent to. 
In reading the sentence, the chief judge said Bakhmina was to be sent to a maximum-security prison. Prosecutor Nikolai Vlasov, who represented the Prosecutor General’s Office in the case, said later, however, that the judge should have said Bakhmina would be sent to a standard prison.
“I think a technical mistake took place and the court in fact sentenced her to standard imprisonment. The judge must have made a slip of the tongue,” Vlasov said, Interfax reported. He did not explain how he knew the contents of the verdict.
Vlasov said prosecutors would not dispute Wednesday’s ruling.
“I think that the court was able to sort out a complicated criminal case and made a fair decision,” he said.
Bakhmina’s defense team said it would appeal the verdict and the sentence.
“Of course we will appeal the verdict,” Bakhmina’s lawyer Olga Kozyreva told reporters after the verdict and sentence were delivered Wednesday, Interfax reported.
Throughout her detention and trial, Bakhmina argued that her position at Yukos had not given her the powers to make it possible for her to commit the crimes she was accused of.
In her final address to the court before the verdict was read out, Bakhmina pleaded with the judges to deliver a fair verdict. She also said that whatever she did while working at Yukos, she did it at the request of her superiors.
“I was not empowered to make any decision on my own. ... I did not have the power of attorney,” she told the judges, Interfax reported.
Bakhmina is the first woman to be jailed in the series of prosecutions against Yukos employees and executives that began in 2003.
Since Bakhmina’s detention, investigators have appeared to show little regard for the plight of her children. Last year, Bakhmina went on a hunger strike after her custodians in a Moscow pre-trial detention center refused to allow her to make paid telephone calls to her sons. 
Ivlev on Wednesday called the authorities’ actions against Yukos and some of its employees a crime.
“All these people — people in the Kremlin, the judges, the investigators — are committing crimes. And it is they who should answer before the law,” Ivlev said by telephone. 
A total of 35 people — Yukos owners, employees and subcontractors — have so far been charged, arrested or convicted, according to Khodorkovsky’s online press center. In the most recent development, prosecutors earlier this month arrested Vasily Aleksanyan, Bakhmina’s former boss at Yukos’ legal department. At the time of his arrest, Aleksanyan had just been appointed executive vice president and was the company’s most senior employee in Moscow.

TITLE: Metals Magnate Potanin Eyes Uzbekistan Reserves
AUTHOR: By Yuriy Humber
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Metals magnate Vladimir Potanin’s Interros holding is looking to acquire mining assets in Uzbekistan and tap into the country’s vast uranium and gold reserves, an industry source said Wednesday.
Interros is considering buying out the stake of U.S.-based gold producer Newmont Mining in its joint venture with the Central Asian state’s major gold and uranium miner, said a manager at a major gold-mining firm operating in Russia.
“I think there’s almost no doubt the deal will go through soon,” the source said, adding that the acquisition would also involve Polyus, Potanin’s gold-producing unit.
Interros and Polyus on Wednesday refrained from commenting, although neither company denied a deal in Uzbekistan would take place.
“When our projects are finalized, we will announce them,” Nina Demetsova, a spokeswoman for Interros said Wednesday. Polyus’ expansion abroad is part of its long-term business strategy, Denis Davydov, a spokesman for the gold miner, said without elaborating.
While rich in gold, Uzbekistan has a great deal more to offer in terms of uranium, analysts said. Its uranium reserves are estimated to exceed those of Russia.
Kommersant reported Wednesday that Potanin was looking to acquire Newman’s 50 percent stake in Zeravshan-Newmont, a joint mining venture between the U.S. firm and Uzbekistan’s state-owned Navoisky plant. 
While Zeravshan-Newmont only mines gold, buying into the joint venture would provide an opportunity for Interros to get access to Navoisky, a major producer of both gold and uranium.
Navoisky accounts for 60 tons of Uzbekistan’s total annual gold output of 82 tons. It teamed up with Newmont in 1992 to form Zeravshan-Newmon but the venture’s output has dwindled gradually in recent years, falling from 16 tons in 2002 to 7.5 tons in 2004. 
The Uzbek government has recently sought to annul the tax breaks previously agreed on for the miner — a measure Newmont found unreasonable due to high costs of extraction — signaling that it wanted to push the Americans out of the venture. 
Newmont’s frustration may have further increased as the U.S. company in recent years failed to win any state tenders to develop other gold deposits in Uzbekistan.
Vladimir Zhukov, an analyst with Alfa Bank, said it was unlikely that Interrros would be interested in Uzbekistan solely for shares in Zeravshan-Newmont, making Interros’ interest in uranium the more credible explanation for the deal. Vladimir Katunin, a metals analyst with Aton, agreed.
“It’s not the kind of asset that Polyus usually buys or needs to buy, considering the size and potential of their Russian assets,” Zhukov said.
Polyus is Russia’s largest gold miner and is majority-controlled by Potanin through his Interros holding, of which he is the president and majority shareholder. Potanin also holds assets in media, real estate, banking and agriculture businesses through Interros.
Uzbekistan’s uranium reserves could offer greater gains than its gold, said Alexander Mikhailov, chief geologist at SRK Consulting.
“The Navoisky plant used to be the Soviet Union’s largest uranium miner and only started to branch out into gold production in the late 1960s, after the geological exploration of gold deposits in Uzbekistan was initiated,” Mikhailov said. Gold is often a byproduct of uranium mining, as it is often found near uranium deposits, he said.
Interros would have fewer obstacles in accessing Tashkent’s resources than would Western companies, Mikhailov said. “Uzbek state policy always used to be focused on the development of mineral deposits in joint ventures with Russian companies,” he said.
Russia has embarked on a major program to boost its nuclear energy output by building 40 nuclear reactors in the next two decades. The plan will require the country to increase its uranium supplies as current stocks dwindle.
President Vladimir Putin in January welcomed Uzbek President Islam Karimov into a CIS nuclear alliance.

TITLE: Gref Touts “Fund of Funds”
AUTHOR: By Maria Levitov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Economic Development and Trade Ministry is expected this week to unveil the companies selected to manage Russia’s new private-public venture funds, a ministry official said Wednesday.
The regional venture capital funds are being set up by the government to encourage innovation and help diversify the economy away from oil and gas.
Big names in asset management — including Troika Dialog, UralSib, Bank of Moscow and NIKoil — are competing for a chance to manage one or more of the five venture funds, said Konstantin Fokin, deputy chief of the ministry’s entrepreneurship department.
Five boards comprising Economic Development and Trade Ministry and regional government officials are to finish reviewing the asset managers’ bids this week, Fokin said.
The government has allocated 1.12 billion rubles ($40.43 million) from the federal and regional budgets for the funds, which are expected to begin investing in innovative companies in Moscow, Perm, Tomsk, Krasnoyarsk and the republic of Tatarstan by the end of 2006.
State support for the development of Russian technology companies is long overdue, market watchers said. 
Another private-public venture capital fund, expected to manage up to $500 million by 2007, is also in the works, Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref told reporters in Helsinki, Interfax reported Wednesday.
This government initiative is the so-called “fund of funds” — a wholly state-owned entity. The federal government, together with private partners, will invest in venture capital funds on a 50-50 basis, Fokin said. Details are still being worked out, he said.
Gref and other government officials accompanied Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov on his two-day visit to Finland, which began Tuesday. Technology cooperation between the countries was on the agenda for the trip, during which Gref said that special economic zones for technology also aimed to boost innovation in Russia, Interfax reported. 
“We will follow the Chinese proverb, ‘Let 100 flowers bloom,’” Gref said, Interfax reported. “Only time, only experience will show which flowers turn out to be stronger.”

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Finnish Terminals
ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — Containerships Ltd. Oy, a Finnish container shipping company, may build two Baltic Sea container terminals for 170 million euros ($210 million), the Vedomosti newspaper reported.
Containerships as early as this year may build a terminal in the Primorsk port with a capacity to ship 500,000 containers a year, the newspaper said, citing Grigory Dvas, the vice-governor of the Leningrad region, where the terminals will be located.

Neva Tunnel
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Smolny will announce by August a tender for the construction of a tunnel under the Neva river near Orlovskaya ulitsa, Interfax cited vice governor Alexander Vakhmistrov as saying Wednesday.
At the moment construction is estimated at $852 million. With a 50 to 75 cents toll, the investment should be returned within 10 years to 25 years.
The Investment Fund of Russia will cover 25 percent of costs, the city budget - 25 percent, and private investors – 50 percent, Vakhmistrov said.

TITLE: The Death of the Democratic Club
AUTHOR: By Andrei Illarionov
TEXT: The Rambouillet Declaration of 1975 defines what would become the Group of Eight as the club of the largest, industrially developed, democratic countries of the world. This definition is reasserted in the traditional communiques produced at each of the annual summits.
The organization’s 30-plus years of existence have confirmed the criteria required for membership: a democratic political regime; a large economy; a high level of economic and institutional development; a convertible national currency; membership in the WTO, OECD and IEA; and dedication to the goals and principles of international cooperation.
Meeting some, but not all, of these criteria is not enough to join — even if a country has additional special features. By the size of their populations, China and India surpass all the G8 members taken together. China’s gross domestic product, in purchasing power parity terms, is greater than that of all the club’s members except the United States. China, India and Pakistan have nuclear weapons. Saudi Arabia is the largest supplier of oil on world markets. But none of these features makes them members of the world’s most exclusive club.
Russia today meets only one of the G8’s criteria: the size of its economy. In 2005, its GDP in terms of purchasing power parity was 10th in the world. Although this ranking falls below that of China, India and Brazil, non-members of the group, it is still higher than 13th-ranked Canada, a member of the G8. Measured in exchange-rate terms, Russia’s GDP in 2005 was 13th in the world, 50 percent lower than Canada’s and lower than non-members China, Spain, Brazil, South Korea and India.
Russia does not meet any of the G8’s other criteria for membership. The Russian ruble is not freely convertible for capital operations. Russia is not a member of the WTO, OECD or IEA. This is why Russia does not participate in the group’s discussions of exchange rates and international trade issues.
Russia is not an economically advanced country. Russia’s per capita GDP in purchasing power parity terms is 33 percent of the G8 average, or 69th in the world. Calculating GDP with exchange rates reduces Russia’s GDP to 15 percent of the G8 average. Average annual inflation rates over the past five years place Russia 161st out of 180 countries. 
Since 2005, Russia has ceased to be a politically free country. According to Freedom House’s index of political rights, Russia is 168th out of 192 countries. Transparency International’s corruption index places Russia 126th out of 159 countries. The World Economic Forum calculates that Russia is 85th (among 108) in the use of favoritism in government decisions, 88th (also among 108) in its protection of property rights and 84th (among 102) when measured by the independence of the judicial system. 

A Different G8
If one were to form a group of countries whose levels of economic, institutional and political development corresponded most closely to those of Russia today, it would have a rather different list of members. By per capita GDP, Russia is closest to Saudi Arabia, Botswana, Venezuela, Uruguay, Thailand, Mexico and Oman. If one were to use average inflation rates over the past five years, Russia would find itself in the company of Mozambique, Guinea, Iran, Nigeria, Eritrea, Haiti and Venezuela. Partners in levels of political non-freedom would include Chad, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Oman, Rwanda and Somalia. Grouping together countries that destroyed fundamental governmental institutions and civil society as quickly as Russia did over the past 15 years would bring in Nepal, Belarus, Tajikistan, Gambia, the Solomon Islands, Zimbabwe and Venezuela.
The principal difference between the G7 countries and Russia lies in disparate approaches to nearly all the essential issues on the global agenda — in the goals pursued by governments and their behavior in the international arena. Russia pursues “wars” against its neighbors on matters relating to visas, poultry imports, electricity, natural gas, wine and now even mineral water.
Russia’s official media have whipped up propaganda against the hard-won democratic road chosen by Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia, and against the Baltic countries, Europe and the United States. They have become the enemies in a new “cold war” being waged by Russia’s authorities. At the same time, new friends have emerged in the leaders of Belarus, Uzbekistan, Iran, Algeria, Venezuela, Myanmar and Hamas.
The significant differences between the G7 countries and Russia along nearly all possible lines are perhaps not accidental. They reflect basic differences in understandings of how the contemporary world operates, of what constitutes acceptable and unacceptable government action, and most importantly, in fundamental values. Russia’s adoption of ideologies now known as the “vertical of power,” “the government as a corporation” and “energy superpower” reflect Russian authorities’ view of the world and the state, as does the campaign against human rights as they are defined by the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

To Participate or Not?
The question of whether Russia meets the G8 membership criteria is no longer a matter of serious discussion. The answer is obvious. The question now occupying minds in G7 capitals is whether or not to participate in the upcoming summit in St. Petersburg. Idealists have proposed a boycott. Pragmatists believe that a boycott would be too much of a slap in the face and recommend participation, “unless, of course, Russia does something like attack Ukraine.” 
In any case, no one is in a rush to get to St. Petersburg. Disgrace is inevitable: It would be a disgrace if the summit were canceled, and it will be a disgrace if it goes ahead as planned. In fact, the disgrace has already begun. It is hard to perceive current discussions on the appropriateness of Russia’s membership and chairmanship, and on the way in which other world leaders should participate, as anything but a mounting embarrassment. 
Attempts by the pragmatists to find reasons to attend the summit have produced fruit, though modest. The agenda will include a discussion of “energy security” and another attempt to convince the Russian government to accept universal democratic values. It would, however, be naive to expect substantial results on these two points.
The Russian authorities have already demonstrated how they understand energy security. Instead of liberalization and privatization of energy assets, they are doing the opposite both internally (nationalizing private companies, cementing state control over the electricity grid and pipeline system) and internationally (trying to use non-market methods to manage international energy resources). Is this something the G7 countries are ready to accept?
Trying to teach the Russian leadership the value of universal democratic values is unprofessional, ineffective and awkward, too. Who really thinks the Russian authorities will radically change after listening to G7 leaders? And will they cease destroying civil society? Reverse anti-democratic laws adopted in recent years? Or allow free and fair campaigns and elections in 2007 and 2008? Does anyone believe that the Kremlin will give up control over the judicial system or the mass media? And return fired journalists and editors to their posts? Or cease interfering in business? Compensate citizens and companies for confiscated property and levied fines? Return billions of dollars in state assets? Does anyone expect Russian authorities to open investigations into bureaucrats, judges and prosecutors who have made illegal decisions? 
Moreover, Russian leaders, dismissive of such attempts to “mentor” them, will be right to reject such an attitude. The G8 is not the place to clarify codes of conduct. The very suggestion that foreign leaders may feel the need to speak “frankly” about Russia’s domestic affairs confirms that Russia is not considered to be a full-fledged member of the G8 even by those who intend to come to St. Petersburg in July.

A Warm Welcome to Dictators
What will be the results of the 2006 summit?
Leaders of the G7 countries may give any number of reasons for their decision to come. The reasons are less important than the way in which the summit will be perceived in Russia and the rest of the world. And how it will be used.
The G8 summit can only be interpreted as the support of the world’s most powerful organization for Russia’s current leadership. As a stamp of approval of its violations of individual rights, the rule of law and freedom of speech, its discrimination against nongovernmental organizations, nationalization of private property, use of energy resources as a weapon and aggression toward democratically oriented neighbors.
By coming to St. Petersburg, leaders of the G7 will demonstrate their indifference to the fate of freedom and democracy in Russia. They will provide the best possible confirmation of what the Russian authorities never tire of repeating: that there are no fundamental differences between Western leaders and Russian leaders. Like us, Western leaders are interested only in appearing to care about the rights of individuals and market forces; like us, they only talk about freedom and democracy. The G8 summit will serve as an inspiring example for today’s dictators and tomorrow’s tyrants.
There should not be much doubt about whether there will be more or less freedom, more or less democracy, and more or less aggression in the world after the summit.
The G8 summit is hardly the only factor that will influence Russia’s fate. But it is not insignificant. That is why Russian patriots truly interested in the fate of their country are in favor of G8 membership for Russia, but for a Russia that is free, democratic and prosperous.
Regardless of how the St. Petersburg summit proceeds, one thing is clear. The Group of Eight, as a club of advanced democratic states, will cease to exist. The summit has only hastened its demise. Perhaps it will be reborn later as the G7, or G4 or G3 or some other entity — for Russia this question is academic. There won’t be a place for it in the new club.

Andrei Illarionov, former economic adviser to President Vladimir Putin, was Russia’s G8 sherpa from 2000 to 2004.

TITLE: Another Country
AUTHOR: By Angelina Davydova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: This week saw the release of a debut novel, “April Fool’s Day,” by a contemporary American author of Yugoslavian origin, Josip Novakovich. 
The author, currently residing in St. Petersburg, is a guest of St. Petersburg State University on a Fulbright fellowship, and on Tuesday, he gave a lecture at the American Corner Library, presenting the book and talking about fiction writing in general.
He also travelled to Murmansk and plans to travel to Archangelsk with even more lectures for literary students.   
Though few East-European titles are published on the Russian fiction market, some authors from the former Soviet block have managed to carve out a niche, Milorad Pavic and Milan Kundera being just two notable examples. Novakovich’s book, however, will certainly make a mark on the local literary scene. A historical tragic comedy set in the former Yugoslavia, it follows the history of the country through the Second World War, Tito’s dictatorship and, then, civil war, through the life of a single character, Ivan Dolinar, born on April 1. The novel is undoubtedly funny, yet it uses humour as an approach to traumatic events in the life of the common folk inhabiting what was once known as Yugoslavia. In addition, the book manages to bring an epic dimension to the private story of the life of a single citizen. 
Born in Yugoslavia (Daruvar, Croatia), Josip Novakovich studied psychology, philosophy and religion at Vassar, before going on to earn a divinity masters. “I came to New York when I was 21 out of sheer curiosity,” he says.  After earning a masters in fiction from the University of Texas, Novakovich began teaching at the Nebraska Indian Community College. In the early 90s his stories were published in journals such as Ploughshares and The Paris Review. He also published a book of essays, “Apricots from Chernobyl,” and two short story collections “Yolk” and “Salvation and Other Disasters.” The author often travelled to his native land and wrote a great deal about the Yugoslavian civil wars. 
His third story collection, “Infidelities: Stories of War and Lust,” was published in 2005. Novakovich’s first novel, “April Fool’s Day,” came out in the States in September, 2004, the paperback edition having been released just a month ago. It has also been published in England, Poland, Italy, Hungary, Turkey and Germany. He emphasizes that he is an American citizen, writing in English, but that he is also still a Croatian, “a hyphenated writer, a Croatian-American”.
As Novakovich will be in St. Petersburg until August and will be teaching at the Summer Literary Seminars organised annually for young Americans and this year, for the first time, Russian, authors, The St. Petersburg Times spoke to Novakovich about his experience of writing the book, perceptions of the Yugoslavian civil war in Russia and the current literary climate in Russia. 

How did April Fool’s Day appear? Why did you decide to write a novel after having written only short story collections?
It’s a very personal book for me. I wanted to write an obituary to Yugoslavia, in a personal form, so Ivan Dolinar, the main character, is Yugoslavia personified. The country was a strange one, and I play with the sensation of paranoia, the power obsession, and the sense of uniqueness that plagued the country. In addition to my memories of totalitarian socialism, I explore particularly the moment of dying there. The initial impulse for the novel came from my desire to write a good death story, having read “The Death of Ivan Ilych.” I witnessed my father’s death when I was eleven, and for a long time I found it too painful to recollect the details of his dying, and then, tired of that pain and fear of death, I took a different approach: comedy. 
Even so, after a while, I forgot that I had set out to joke and in a long stretch of Ivan Dolinar’s dying, I tried to imagine what it would feel like, where that moment of death is.

The book was published in quite a few countries worldwide. What reception did it get?
It had a good reception in Italy and Hungary, and decent reception in Turkey. It appeared in the German speaking countries as well, where I got mixed reviews, some excellent, others condemning me for my propensity to live in several countries, as though that disqualifies me from writing about the former Yugoslavia because of my “Global Village” perspective. Someone told me the novel was pirated in Iran, which I take as a compliment. If anyone reads the novel, of course, it’s a compliment. It’s hard to find enough time to read these days, and for someone to take a couple of evenings to listen to you, well, what a treat for a writer!
Why did you decide to come to Russia?
At the moment I am writing a novel about south Slavic immigrants in America, who toil in coalmines and steel mills as my grandfather did. When World War One breaks out, the immigrants from Austria-Hungary align differently—some believe Austria is their homeland, and others, that Serbia and a union of South Slavs is where they belong. One protagonist, returning from the States, joins the Serbian army, and another joins the Austrian forces, and they end up fighting on different sides in Galicia, in the siege of Przemysl. I will drag the protagonists to Petrograd as well, and my being here on a Fulbright helps me with the research for the novel and gives me a few tranquil mornings to write. 
Since I grew up in a small Slavic country, I was always naturally attracted to this huge country. I was even more attracted to America where my mother was born, but that is another story. As an adolescent I enjoyed reading Dostoevsky and Tolstoi and, later, Chekhov, Gogol and Leskov, and even Solzhenitzyn, who despite his highly politicized writing could still tell amazingly compassionate stories. 
I listen to a lot of classical music, and I grew up listening to Menuhin, Ashkenazy, Rostropovich, great Russian performers, and also, composers, particularly Shostakovich and Prokofiev. 
So when I got a chance I started visiting this country, and always had good experiences in St. Petersburg, unlike in Moscow, which I found chaotic and aggressive. 
There has been a long tradition of people from small Slavic countries coming here — for example, Tito, the president of Yugoslavia, spent nearly two decades here, and he spoke better Russian than Croatian. You see now how attracted Serbs are to Russia — they even wanted to bury Milosevic here, and most of Milosevic’s family is here in exile. 

What do you think the perception of the Yugoslavian civil wars is in Russia now?
Many Russians are very uncritical toward Serbia. The fact that under the influence of Milosevic and Karadzic, there were massacres and concentration camps, that nearly 250,000 people were killed in the civil war which they started, doesn’t seem to bother most Russians, who somehow managed to see a victim in Milosevic. 
During the wars in the 1990’s it was frustrating to see that Russians naturally supported the biggest nation in the break-up of Yugoslavia, since Yugoslavia was like a small Soviet Union. The support was unquestioning. Russians seem to have a high tolerance for aggressors, I suppose because of their own history of attacking smaller neighbors. When you come from a small country and a small ethnic group, you tend to be sensitive to this sort of mass insensitivity. 
Russia is a multicultural, multi-ethnic country, and it can thrive only if people truly appreciate the minorities. I see in this big Russian patriotism identified with the Russian ethnicity a threat to Russian stability. I am not a politician, but it seems to me that it would be wise to follow the American model of support for multiculturalism here. That Zenit fans make fun of black players, making monkey noises, is a symptom of a serious disease. Many peoples of the world admire and love Russia, and it shouldn’t be too difficult to reciprocate. 

While living here, you’ve engaged yourself in a number of literary events and got to know the contemporary St. Petersburg literary scene. What can you say about it?
I think there is a boom in publishing and the writing scene is growing rapidly. Overall, I also think that there are a lot of plotless, impressionistic and unstructured novels written partly because most people here seem to believe that writing is a god-given gift, something that doesn’t require study and method. At the same time, the Russian dedication to study and method in music and other art forms is totally maddening — why should writing be so radically different? 
On the other hand, in the States, we perhaps see the opposite — too many writing programs, too much attention to the craft, to much attention to plot. 
I am not a literary scholar, and my Russian is not good enough to pass judgments, but it is still pretty amazing to me that a country with such a huge literary tradition doesn’t seem to produce all that much literary excitement. That will, no doubt, change. It seems the poetry scene in particular is quite strong here — as can be witnessed in the Platforma reading series, for example.

TITLE: Alive and kicking
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The main event this weekend is St. Petersburg’s largest left-field music festival, SKIF, or the Sergei Kuryokhin International Festival, dedicated to the local musician who died in 1996.
SKIF was founded in 1997 in New York, originally as SKIIF, or the Sergei Kuryokhin International Interdisciplinary Festival by the late Russian emigre cellist Boris Raiskin. After the second festival, also in New York, the event was moved to St. Petersburg in 1999 by Kuryokhin’s widow, Anastasia Kuryokhina, who formed the Sergei Kuryokhin Foundation to promote it.
Though SKIF has acquired a reputation for being the city’s most chaotic event, with times and acts changing or canceling without a notice, the festival showcases a great number of experimental artists both local and international.
This year, the main attraction is the British-born, U.S.-based guitarist Fred Frith, the founder of legendary 70s progressive rock group Henry Cow, which spearheaded the Rock in Opposition (RIO) movement.
The 57-year-old experimenter will be joined by his former Henry Cow cohort (companion) Chris Cutler on drums. Both Frith and Cutler performed in the city in May 1989, each with his own band, Keep the Dog and Cassiber, respectively. The duo performs on Friday.
Saturday will see Acoustic Ladyland , the London-based quartet born out of the idea of playing punk rock on jazz instruments.
The other highlights include U.S. minimalist composer Phill Niblock, French electro-pop musician David Chazam’s Xtra Systols and German “sci-fi pop” performer Felix Kubin on Saturday.
Previously held in different local venues, last year the festival was moved into the former film theater Priboi, where Kuryokhina has set up the Modern Art Center. Some of the SKIF participants will also perform at local clubs. See gigs.

SKIF10 music program at 8 p.m. Fri. through Sun. at Modern Art Center (Priboi Cinema), 93 Sredny Pr. (Vasilyevsky Ostrov). M: Vasileostrovskaya/Primorskaya. Tel. 322-4223. 8 p.m.

TITLE: Chernov’s choice
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
TEXT: Nazi terror continued this week as one more anti-fascist punk activist was killed in a neo-Nazi-style attack strikingly similar to the killing of Timur Kacharava, the 20-year-old student, anti-Nazi activist and member of punk bands Sandinista! and Distress, who was stabbed to death in St. Petersburg in November.
21-year-old Alexander Ryukhin, a third-year student at the Moscow Electronics and Mathematics Institute, was attacked by a group of six to eight neo-Nazis near the Domodedovskaya metro station in Moscow as he was heading to a punk concert on Sunday. 
Local musical events this week are somewhat overshadowed by the SKIF10 festival that will run through Sunday, but some of the foreign acts taking part in SKIF can be caught at local clubs as well.
German electro-punk band The World Domination will perform on Saturday and French folk rockers Vialka on Sunday, both at Griboyedov, while the Austrian indie-rock band Valina will perform at Platforma on Sunday.
It’s become apparent that the much publicized duo of performances by British singer Marc Almond at the recently opened gay club Central Station will be, in reality, only brief appearances.
“There are no concerts. It will be a 20-minute disco and a 20-minute party [appearance],” said Almond’s manager Mark Langthorne by phone this week.
Almond is due to briefly appear at Central Station on Friday and Saturday. Call the venue for details on 312-3600.
Electric Light Orchestra and even Electric Light Orchestra Part II do not really exist, even if street posters are advertising the band’s concert in the city. ELO Part II, the band formed by ex-ELO violinist Mik Kaminsky, ended in 1999 for legal reasons as the former ELO main-man Jeff Lynne appears to disapprove of the enterprise.
From 2001, the band toured as The Orchestra but last year changed its name to the somewhat awkward Electric Light Orchestra Part II Former Members. There is no reliable independent information about what the band is called now. It will perform at Yubileiny on Thursday.
Check out Moldova’s folk punk band Zdob Si Zdub at Music Hall or local Russian folk punk band Skazy Lesa at Manhattan on Friday; alternatively, try the art-rock band Vermicelli Orchestra at Estrada Theater, the Moscow-based Armenian-folk tinged alt-rockers Deti Picasso at Manhattan or Poimanniye Muravyedy at Red Club on Saturday.
The Strokes will perform in Russia, though only in Moscow, promoter Tatyana Dalskaya of Tatiana Dalskaya Agency confirmed this week. The New York-based band, which released its third album, “First Impressions of Earth,” in January, will perform at the Gorbunov Palace of Culture on July 4. There is no information on The Strokes’ website as yet.
If you’re in Moscow this weekend, don’t miss the exciting Austin, Texas-based band that is …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead which will be performing at the Apelsin club on Saturday.

TITLE: The Return of the Screw
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: David McVicar directs an eerie new production at the Mariinsky, with Benjamin Britten’s operatic version of the Henry James classic novella “The Turn of the Screw.” A minimalist set and all-encompassing darkness create a suitably disturbing atmosphere.
David McVicar’s soul-numbing rendition of Benjamin Britten’s “The Turn of the Screw”, which premiered at the Mariinsky Theater on Monday, April 17, plunges audiences into a powerful gothic atmosphere where the borders between the rational and the emotional are blurred.
The darkness that descends on stage from the first minutes of the show is never really lifted until the finale. 
The singing and acting unfolds in a glimmering twilight sporadically dissected by lightning-like beams. The effect serves to captivate the spectators in a fragile equilibrium between the human and the surreal.
“The Turn of the Screw”, Britten’s eighth opera, composed in 1954, was inspired by Henry James’ 1898 mysterious neo-gothic novella of the same name and explores the transition from childhood into adulthood. 
The story evolves in a country estate in East Anglia where a governess, looking after two under-aged orphans — a boy, Miles, and his sister, Flora — who are haunted by the ghastly ghosts of former servants Peter Quint and Miss Jessel, struggles to rescue the children’s souls from their deadly embrace.
Frightened, the governess writes to the children’s guardian but Quint forces Miles to steal the letter. In the finale, when the governess convinces Miles to say Quint’s name out loud, the ghost disappears but the boy falls senseless.
This chamber opera involving only six performers has been beauatifully adapted to the Mariinsky’s spacious stage. Perhaps seeking to create a more mystical and intimate atmosphere, or to establish a stronger psychological tension, McVicar wrapped the stage in black thus making the edges dissolve into the darkness. Minimalist sets designed in black, white and sepia, greatly contribute to the show’s impact: transparent giant wall panels scattered with sand and pockmarked with holes swiftly shift around to enhance the production’s drafty chill and perhaps allude to the constant shifts of harmonies and rhythms in Britten’s score. 
A white square at the back of the stage suddenly shrinks and grows, fluctuating as if to reflect the children’s drifting consciousness and create a floating reality.
The facade of the estate is covered with ivy, yet its green color is sensed rather than seen. The director deliberately downplayed all scenes involving nature and surrounded the characters with lifeless furniture and heaps of dead leaves. Even the scenes in the garden, by the lake or outside on a sunny morning have been confined to the darkness.
Already having been nominated for the prestigious Laurence Olivier Award several times, McVicar is very much at home with Britten. The director’s previous engagements have included the composer’s “The Rape of Lucretia” at the English National Opera and his “Billy Budd” at the Chicago Lyric Opera. 
The soloists sang Britten’s haunting score with ease, spark and precision. Soprano Irina Vasilieva, dressed in black mourning garments, brought a stamina, gentleness, naivety and romantic flair to her interpretation of the governess. 
Vocally adroit, Vasilieva captured the prudish, somewhat puritanical yet heartfelt manner of her character.
Miss Jessel (Lyubov Sokolova) crouched and crawled about the stage as evil personified, singing out her sufferings with the required gloomy and haunting spirit.
Nikolai Irvi, a pupil at the Mikhail Glinka Choral College, found a convincing treatment to the role of Miles, torn between his vivacious, cheerful and naughty personality and Peter Quint’s cold-blooded, wayward interventions. 
Yekaterina Reimkho was a success as the romantic, innocent and easily influenced Flora, while Yelena Vitman created a perfect Mrs Grose: old-fashioned, clumsy and helpless.
Tenor Andrei Ilyushnikov sings the key role of the ghost of former servant Peter Quint with inspiration, gruesome passion and an impressively haunting tone.
Visually, the production had a twinkling, somnambulistic feel, deliciously contrasting with the breezy agitation of the orchestra.
The sight, mesmerizing and visually monotonous at once, eventually transfixes the audiences, rooting them to their seats.
Valery Gergiev flowingly conducted the Mariinsky symphony orchestra through Britten’s challenging tonal score.
“The Turn of the Screw” is McVicar’s second collaboration with the Mariinsky.
McVicar’s bold take on Verdi’s “Macbeth” premiered in April 2001. 
The director exposed the crumbling back wall of the stage to extend the Mariinsky’s performance space, while the singers’ rather static stage presence was enhanced by the smart use of what resembled a giant guillotine blade that periodically descended and ascended to create a fittingly chilly atmosphere.

TITLE: The Ruthless Truth
AUTHOR: By John Garrard
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The war on the Eastern Front remains largely “undiscovered country” for the Western reader despite the fact that the Red Army was responsible for nearly 75 percent of German military losses, including soldiers killed in battle, wounded, taken prisoner and otherwise unaccounted for. The best guide to this terrain is Vasily Grossman, who spent over 1,000 days at the front as a combat correspondent for Krasnaya Zvezda, the Soviet Army newspaper. A decorated lieutenant colonel by the end of the war, he fell afoul of the Soviet authorities and died in 1964 a non-person, his works swept from library shelves and bookshops. 
Grossman’s determination to tell the truth about how the war was actually experienced by both Red Army soldiers and civilians put him on a collision course with the Soviet propaganda machine. Josef Stalin’s pitiless wastage of soldiers was buried under grandiose memorials extolling how first he and subsequently the Communist Party had triumphantly led the united Soviet peoples to victory. The specifically Jewish nature of the civilian massacres was silenced with the scripted line, “Do not divide the dead. All Soviet nationalities suffered equally.” Grossman would accept neither Big Lie. 
With fellow correspondent Ilya Ehrenburg, he compiled and co-edited “The Black Book,” the first documentary record of the Holocaust on Soviet soil. It was never published inside the Soviet Union. Even his magnificent novel “Life and Fate,” which centered on the battle of Stalingrad but embraced the entire country, was seized in manuscript by the KGB. Grossman himself was summoned to the Kremlin to hear from Party ideologue Mikhail Suslov that his novel was far more dangerous to the Soviet state than Boris Pasternak’s “Doctor Zhivago.” It was in “Life and Fate” that Grossman arrived at the startling conclusion that the two warring socialist states, Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, were in fact mirror images of each other. Grossman’s comparison — called an “atomic bomb” by Suslov — led him to a profound reassessment and rejection of the Soviet experiment, and of Vladimir Lenin himself, a generation before his compatriots approached similar judgments.
Grossman began his journey of discovery in his war diaries, written in “real time” from 1941 to 1945. They were first published by his daughter Yekaterina Korotkova-Grossman in the collection “Gody Voiny” in 1989, when perestroika and glasnost had loosened the Party’s stranglehold. Now, the bulk of them have been translated by Antony Beevor and Luba Vinogradova for an important new book, “A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman With the Red Army, 1941-1945.” Here, with useful commentary, is a description of war as endured by the Red Army soldier, the “Ivan” so disastrously underestimated by the German high command and so callously expended by his own. Badly led, and sometimes not even led at all, his rugged courage changed the course of history.
Among the most politically sensitive of the themes Grossman confronted were desertion and collaboration in the Holocaust. He accompanied an army in full strategic retreat for six terrible months in 1941, from the invasion of June 22 to the magnificent stand in front of Moscow in December. The human tragedy was colossal. The entry “Interrogation of a Traitor” is a searing example of the kinds of choices individuals made. Grossman witnessed the summary court martial and execution of a young Ukrainian deserter, whose former commander, “shouting and crying at the same time,” sentenced him to death as a comrade told the traitor: “You’ve disgraced your son! He won’t be able to live with this shame!”
“A Writer at War” also juxtaposes “The Killing of Jews in Berdichev,” Grossman’s postwar article about his hometown, translations of the two letters Grossman wrote to his mother on the anniversary of her death in 1950 and 1961, and his fictional treatment in “Life and Fate” of life inside the Berdichev ghetto prior to the massacre. After the Red Army retook Berdichev’s shattered ruins, Grossman discovered that his mother and a female cousin had been among the approximately 20,000 Jews rounded up early on the morning of Sept. 15, 1941. They had been taken to the military airport, where German Einsatzgruppen had shot them and dumped their bodies into pits. (To this day, the victims’ bones lie under mounds still visible near the airport’s fence.)
Much of the material in “A Writer at War,” whether background notes or translations, was first covered in “The Bones of Berdichev: The Life and Fate of Vasily Grossman,” which I published with Carol Garrard in 1996. But Vinogradova and Beevor’s adaptation gives the reader a condensed and easily accessible version as well as more extensive selections of Grossman’s war diaries.
While “A Writer at War” is a welcome tribute to a neglected author, it contains several puzzling lacunae and imprecisions. For instance, it is of significance that Grossman died not sometime in “the summer of 1964,” but on Sept. 14 — the eve of the anniversary of his mother’s death in the Berdichev massacre 23 years earlier. Far more important is the fact that the authors’ discussion of the Soviet Union’s effort to suppress Grossman’s “ruthless truth of war” lacks any mention of the most calculated and brazen attempt: the giant World War II monument Leonid Brezhnev erected on Mamayev Kurgan, the scene of the fiercest firefights in the Battle of Stalingrad. 
Nowhere is the Party’s cynical campaign to co-opt the victory seen in starker relief than here, where Grossman interviewed the Siberians of the 308th Rifle Division for his most famous Krasnaya Zvezda piece, “Axis of the Main Attack.” Words from this piece are carved in granite nearly two meters high along the wall leading to the mausoleum. 
A German soldier questions: “They are attacking us again, can they be mortal?” Inside the mausoleum, a Red Army soldier answers in letters tooled in gold around the base of the dome: “Yes, we were mortal indeed, and few of us survived, but we all carried out our patriotic duty before holy Mother Russia.” Yet neither inside nor outside of the mausoleum is the source of these words or their author acknowledged. Ironically, by failing to draw attention to the Stalingrad memorial, Beevor and Vinogradova miss an opportunity to right the very wrong their book sets out to redress: the Soviet campaign to erase Grossman from the memory of his countrymen. 

John Garrard is professor of Russian studies at the University of Arizona and, together with Carol Garrard, a co-author of “The Bones of Berdichev: The Life and Fate of Vasily Grossman” and the forthcoming “From Party to Patriarch: Russian Orthodoxy Resurgent.”

TITLE: Chinese Leader In Bush Talks
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON — With pomp and pageantry, President Bush welcomed Chinese President Hu Jintao to the White House on Thursday as the two leaders embarked on talks aimed at cooling tensions over a yawning U.S.-China trade gap.
“The United states and China are two nations divided by a vast ocean yet connected through a global economy that is creating opportunities for both our people,” Bush said in welcoming Hu to his first visit to the White House as Chinese leader.
Demonstrators massed outside to protest Beijing’s human-rights policies.
Bush was quick to serve notice on the Chinese leader that he would continue to press for China to move “toward a flexible market exchange rate for its currency.” Hu stood stiffly, as if at attention, as Bush spoke.
Bush also called for more cooperation on addressing the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea.
Both stood, side by side, under bright sunshine on the South Lawn of the White House as the national anthems of both countries were played by a military band.
For his part, Hu pledged China’s help in working diplomatically to ease nuclear tensions with both North Korea and Iran. And he vowed in general terms to work to promote human rights.
“We should respect each other as equals and promote closer exchanges and cooperation,” Hu said.
He said that closer U.S.-Chinese cooperation would “bring more benefits to our two people and to the people of the world.”
A single woman on the camera stand interrupted the welcoming ceremony, shouting in English, “President Bush, stop him from persecuting the Falun Gong!” She also shouted in Chinese, “President Hu, your days are numbered,” according to reporters on the scene.

TITLE: Germany Behind Merkel Over Sun Photo
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BERLIN — An unflattering British tabloid photo of Chancellor Angela Merkel on vacation has set off an indignant response in Germany, where politicians’ private lives are largely off limits. 
The picture — billed as a shot of the 51-year-old pulling on her underwear after a swim during her Easter trip to Italy — appeared in Monday’s edition of The Sun. Germany’s Bild newspaper on Tuesday reprinted the page — with part of the offending photo blanked out — under the headline “The English Mock Our Chancellor.”
Merkel’s spokesman, Thomas Steg, said Wednesday the German leader has no intention of taking legal action over the photo, but he made plain Merkel’s displeasure.
“You can take it that the chancellor naturally has an interest in relaxing on vacation, spending time with her husband and not constantly moving under the voyeuristic gaze of lurking photographers,” he said.
Merkel’s predecessor, Gerhard Schroeder, successfully sued over published suggestions that he dyed his hair and that his marriage might be in trouble. 
The newspaper coverage fits a long tradition of German-British unpleasantries.
The Sun printed the photo under the headline “Big in the Bumdestag” — a pun on the Bundestag, or German parliament.
“You are rotten to the core,” Bild columnist Franz Josef Wagner replied Wednesday in a piece addressed to The Sun.
“We would never print pictures of your queen in support stockings,” he said. “We will sweep you away at the World Cup ... revenge is sweet, you will weep yet.”
The Berliner Zeitung daily said the article proved only “that the chancellor has a behind — information that is perhaps new to Sun readers.”
“The British are notorious for their thin knowledge of Germany after 1945,” its London correspondent added.

TITLE: Virtual Pet Bites Back
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: TOKYO — With straps loaded with tamagotchis around their necks, siblings Takumi and Ayaka Mochizuki travelled an hour to a Tokyo store so their virtual pets could interact with a giant tamagotchi that was on tour. 
“I love feeding my tamagotchi,” said Takumi, 5, looking disappointed because he didn’t have enough virtual money to buy anything for his “3-year-old” pet at the royal market, which is accessible only via the giant tamagotchi.
“I really messed up,” he said.
Ten years after the small egg-shaped devices first became a global fad, the digital pets have found homes again with a new generation of young children, who peer into the tiny screens several times a day to feed them, play with them and clean them. Unlike the original, which suddenly disappeared after a brief run, Japanese toymaker Bandai Co., a unit of Namco Bandai Holdings Inc., is hoping a richer world of characters and cautious marketing will give it the staying power that its creators had always envisioned.
“We’ve always wanted to try to revive the tamagotchi because the craze ended so fast,” said Takeiuchi Hongo, Bandai’s 51-year-old chief tamagotchi officer, admitting that the company was caught off guard when the toy became a sudden phenomenon in the 1990s, particularly among high school girls and young women.
A badly brought up tamagotchi pet could turn into a snake or a thief, but a diligent owner can raise up to 999 generations.

TITLE: Queen to Have Joint Eightieth
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON — Queen Elizabeth II has invited 99 guests to Buckingham Palace Wednesday, and she won’t need to ask anyone’s age. All share the queen’s birth date — April 21, 1926. The queen has laid on a three-course meal for 70 women and 29 men who, like her, will celebrate their 80th birthday on Friday. 
“It has always been a standing joke in the family that I’ve never been invited to the queen’s birthday party, what with us being born on the same day, never thinking it would actually come true,” said Betty Kay of Doncaster in northern England, one of the invited guests.
Prospective banquet guests were nominated by themselves or relatives, and 99 were chosen to represent all parts of the country.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Gitmo List Released
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — The U.S. government released the most extensive list yet of the hundreds of detainees who have been held at the Guantanamo Bay prison — nearly all labeled enemy combatants, but only a handful of whom have faced formal charges. 
In all, 558 people were named in the list provided by the Pentagon on Wednesday in response to a Freedom of Information lawsuit by The Associated Press. They were among the first swept up in the U.S. global war on terrorism for suspected links to al-Qaida or the Taliban. 
The list is the first official roster of Guantanamo detainees who passed through the Combatant Status Review Tribunal process in 2004 and 2005 to determine whether they should be deemed “enemy combatants.” Those named are from Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and 39 other countries. Many have been held at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay for more than four years.

TomKat Baby Girl
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Word of the world’s most famous silent birth has finally been heard. 
Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, the public lovebirds dubbed TomKat by the media, “joyously welcomed the arrival” of a baby girl Tuesday, said Cruise spokesman Arnold Robinson. 
The girl, named Suri, came into the world at 7 pounds, 7 ounces and 20 inches long. Her name has its origins in Hebrew, meaning “princess,” or in Persian, meaning “red rose,” Robinson said in a statement.
“Both mother and daughter are doing well,” the publicist said.
Details about the birth weren’t disclosed, but it had been planned to take place as a silent procedure under the tenets of the Church of Scientology, to which both Cruise and Holmes belong.
Scientologists believe words spoken during times of pain are recorded by the “reactive mind” and can cause potential problems for both mother and child.

Finns’ Eurovision Fear
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Finnish Eurovision Song Contest enthusiasts have voiced alarm over their country’s entry to the Eurovision Song Contest, which is to be held in Athens this year.
The band ‘Lordi’ won the Finnish national selection in a fair vote, but now some think the group — comprised of five masked musicians dressed as a ghost, a mummy, a zombie, a beast and a demon — should be banned.
In Finland, rumors are spreading that the masked freaks are in fact a Russian delegation of KGB agents sent by Vladimir Putin to destabilize Finland and launch a coup.
Christian leaders have warned against listening to the band’s music as it can lead to the worship of Satan. 
A massive resistance movement has been created to stop the band from representing Finland in Athens. Their aim is to have Finnish President Tarja Halonen outlaw the band.

TITLE: Detroit Motoring On Court and on the Ice
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: DETROIT,  Michigan — Hockeytown or Hoopstown? Detroit is both. The top teams at the end of the NBA and NHL regular seasons are in the same city for the first time, with the Pistons and Red Wings combining to pull off the feat for the Motor City.
“It’s always cool to be a part of anything that hasn’t happened before,” Joe Dumars, the Pistons’ president of basketball operations, said Wednesday in an interview with The Associated Press. 
“This is a great sports town, and the fans around here are about to really have some fun following both teams.”
The Red Wings ended the regular season Tuesday with an NHL-best 58 wins, and the Pistons closed Wednesday night with a 96-80 loss to Washington, finishing the season with an NBA-best 64 wins.
“We both established ourselves at home with great crowds, and both have been the best teams on the road,” Pistons coach Flip Saunders said. “Different sports, but it’s like we’ve been looking at each other in the mirror.”
The Red Wings will face the Edmonton Oilers in Game 1 of the first-round playoffs Friday night, and the Pistons will open the postseason Sunday night against the Milwaukee Bucks. 
If the Red Wings and Pistons win titles in two months, Detroit will be the first city to have NBA and NHL teams win championships in the same year.
Anything less will be a disappointment for both teams — and their fans — because of a championship-or-bust mentality that has been cultivated with sustained success.
The Pistons won it all two years ago, came just short of repeating last season and have won 50-plus games five straight years. The Red Wings, easily the NHL’s most successful team the past 15 seasons, won three titles in a six-year span before two straight early exits in the playoffs before the lockout that canceled last season.
Red Wings coach Mike Babcock said his players did not want to touch the Presidents’ Trophy — awarded to the NHL team with the best record — because they want to hoist the Stanley Cup.
“We all know what it’s about here,” Babcock said.
For Detroit fans, they know it’s wise to enjoy the Pistons and Red Wings while they’re in season because the other two pro teams in town — the Tigers and Lions — will likely let them down.
Detroit hasn’t had a baseball team with a winning record since 1993 and hasn’t won a World Series since 1984. The Lions have been the NFL’s worst team since 2001, and they have had one playoff victory since their last title in 1957. 
For the Motor City’s Big Four, success — or lack of it — seems to come from the top.
Mike Ilitch owns the Red Wings and Tigers, and his hockey team’s reign atop the league was established when he hired general manager Jim Devellano in 1982.
“Hockey wasn’t on the map when Mike Ilitch bought the team, but Jimmy D. did a great job by changing that,” said Red Wings GM Ken Holland, who has kept Devellano’s momentum going since being promoted in 1997. 
“We would not be the franchise we are today without Jimmy D.’s moves and vision.”

TITLE: Bubka Jr. Serves Up A Legacy
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: NEW DELHI -— Sergei Bubka, the greatest pole vaulter of all time, has tennis on his mind these days. 
The legendary athlete’s son, named Sergei Bubka Junior, prefers tennis after a brief flirtation with pole vault and is now a regular on the ATP’s second-string Challenger circuit.
The 19-year-old, now in India to play tournaments, says he likes his name. “It is an interesting name and does not put any pressure on me because I grew up with it and am used to it.”
Bubka senior set 35 world records in pole vault – his current mark of 6.14 meters in 1994 remains unsurpassed – before he quit competitive sport in 2000.
The Ukrainian is a member of the International Olympic Committee’s executive board and is also chairman of the IOC’s Athletes’ Commission. 
Bubka junior says he took up pole vault as a toddler – “might have scaled around 2.5 meters” – before deciding his career lay in tennis.
“I have a good technique though I need to work on my baseline game and need to get comfortable with playing on grass. I have got the right genes and I am physically very fit.”
The Monaco-based Bubka junior, currently ranked 698 in the world, said his father was not the only sportsman in the family.
“My mother was a gymnast and my elder brother briefly toyed with tennis before switching over to academics.
“I am fortunate. In my country there are so many talented players but they don’t have the facilities to travel and play. Having a champion sportsman like my father is a big help.”
His father’s advice to stay determined rings in Bubka junior’s ears all the time.
“He told me that if you can beat yourself you can beat anyone else. He said that you have to do all that is possible to achieve what you want.”

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Golden Ball Final
BERLIN (Reuters) — A golden ball will be used at the World Cup final on July 9, organizing committee president Franz Beckenbauer said on Tuesday. 
“It only surprises me that no one thought of it before,” Beckenbauer said at a bizarre ceremony at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, where he removed a golden wrap off a 2.2-meter diameter version of the ball with help from gold-painted Greek warriors.
“The final is such a special occasion for the players, the coaches and the fans around the world.
“Creating a special ball for this match, the most important match every four years, was a great idea.”
Adidas chairman Herbert Hainer said the golden ball would be identical to those used throughout the month-long tournament in Germany except six of the 14 panels would be colored gold.

Hendry Eliminated
SHEFFIELD, England (Reuters) — Seven-times former winner Stephen Hendry was eliminated 10-9 by fellow Briton Nigel Bond in a thrilling first-round match at the snooker world championship on Wednesday. 
Third seed Hendry fought back from 6-3 down overnight to edge ahead 9-8 before Bond won the 18th frame to set up a tense decider which lasted 48 minutes. 
Bond looked to have clinched victory when he potted the black, only to go in-off. He then atoned for his error by sinking the re-spotted black. 
Bond, who failed to qualify for the tournament in 2004 and 2005, told reporters: “It was one of those incredible Crucible matches and I’m just delighted to win. 
“He’s given me some pastings here in the past so it was pay-back time. It’s definitely up there with the greatest matches I’ve won.” 
Hendry took the defeat badly, uttering only six words in the post-match news conference. Twice former winner and world number one Ronnie O’Sullivan comfortably beat Dave Harold 10-4 to reach the second round. 
“He was always going to be a tough opponent so I’m relieved to get through,” O’Sullivan told reporters. “I’m pleased with the way I played.” 
Former champion Peter Ebdon came through a tough test against Michael Holt, winning 10-8, while Ryan Day posted a 7-2 lead over Joe Perry at the end of their opening session. 
Crowd favourite Jimmy White, who has been a losing finalist on six occasions, was 6-3 down against David Grey.

Ballack in Chelsea Talks
BERLIN (Reuters) — Bayern Munich midfielder Michael Ballack has agreed to sign a four-year contract with Chelsea, the German public broadcaster ZDF said on Wednesday.
The network reported on its website that Germany captain Ballack and the English champions had agreed terms and the only thing that remained was for the two sides to sign a contract. 
The 29-year-old midfielder, who has played for Bayern for the last four years and will be free to leave the German champions at the end of June, said earlier this month that he was in advanced talks with Chelsea. 
“ZDF has learnt that Michael Ballack and the English champions have agreed to a four-year contract,” the German broadcaster said. “The Germany captain and London club only have to sign the contract now.” 
There was no immediate comment from Ballack or Bayern while a Chelsea spokesman said: “There is no further comment from the club at this time.” 
Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho was quoted in the Bild am Sonntag newspaper last Sunday saying: 
“He (Ballack) has got everything. His intelligence on the pitch impresses me. I’ve been watching him for a long time. I like him as a person. But he has to make a decision before the World Cup.” 
The finals being hosted by Germany kick off on June 9.

Real Target Gerrard 
MADRID (Reuters) — Real Madrid’s director of football Benito Floro has proposed the club buy Liverpool’s Steven Gerrard and Inter Milan’s Adriano, and suggested Bernd Schuster as the next Real coach. 
Floro, who replaced Arrigo Sacchi in December, said he had presented his proposals to new president Fernando Martin and the board. 
“As a priority I recommended the signing of a powerful center forward like Adriano, and a quality midfielder should Zinedine Zidane leave,” Floro told radio station Cadena Ser. 
“Gerrard is a player I included on the list and is someone the club have wanted to sign in previous seasons.” 
Zidane, 33, has hinted he may retire after the World Cup finals in Germany though he has a contract with Real until 2007.

TITLE: Victorious Arsenal Close In on Euro Final
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON — Kolo Toure scored his first goal of the season in the 41st minute Wednesday night, giving Arsenal a 1-0 win over Villarreal in the first leg of the European Champions League semifinals. 
After dominating with a half-dozen chances, Arsenal took the lead after Thierry Henry’s corner kick was deflected out of the penalty area. He regained the ball and passed to Alexander Hleb, who chipped the ball to Toure.
Toure then slipped it behind goalkeeper Mariano Barbosa from close range.
“The next six days really define our season,” Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger said. “We are confident we can do it.”
Arsenal plays at Villarreal next Tuesday in the second leg of the home-and-home, total-goals series. In the other semifinal, Barcelona is home next Wednesday against AC Milan after winning the first leg 1-0 in Italy.
“We didn’t play well and that’s why we lost,” Villarreal forward Diego Forlan said. “We need to score and not let them score — and it’s not going to be very easy. We tried to do our best and we could not get forward.”
Arsenal is trying to advance to the final of Europe’s top club competition for the first time.
“We have nothing so far,” Henry said. “We are 1-nil up, but they really made it difficult for us.”
Arsenal has not allowed a goal in nine straight Champions League games, one more than the previous mark set by AC Milan. It was the last European game at Highbury — Arsenal is moving next season to a new 60,000-seat stadium a few blocks away in north London.
Arsenal escaped a penalty late in the first half when Gilberto brought down Villarreal’s Josi Mari in the penalty area.
“I wasn’t happy, because there was a penalty today that we should have had,” Villarreal coach Manuel Pellegrini said.

TITLE: Russia Faces Tough Start In Fed Cup
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Russia could not have a harder start to the defense of their Fed Cup title than this weekend’s tie in Liege against a Belgian team featuring Kim Clijsters and Justine Henin-Hardenne. 
U.S. Open champion Clijsters, the world number two, and French Open champion Henin-Hardenne, ranked four, are competing together in the team event for the first time since July 2003. 
Anastasia Myskina, Svetlana Kuznetsova and Maria Sharapova are all unavailable, so in-form world number five Nadia Petrova and number nine Elena Dementyeva front the Russian challenge.
Clijsters has been in training for the tie since her disappointing second-round defeat by American Jill Craybas in her last outing in Miami on March 25.
“With Dementyeva and Petrova the matches will be difficult, so training has to be hard!” Clijsters said on her web site.
She did, though, take time out earlier this month to announce her engagement to American boyfriend Brian Lynch.
Petrova, returning to the Russian team for the first time since 2003 and fresh from winning back-to-back titles at Amelia Island and Charleston, has a poor 1-7 win-loss record against Henin-Hardenne.
But she can take heart from the fact that the Belgian lost her first match on clay for almost two years when she was beaten by Swiss Patty Schnyder in the semi-finals at Charleston last week.
“It seems she isn’t completely used to the surface and that’s why she’s not showing her best game,” Petrova told Russian newspaper Sport Express.
“Kim Clijsters hasn’t played a match on clay this year. Hopefully we can exploit this and leave Belgium with a victory.” 
France, who have lost to Russia in each of the last two Fed Cup finals, will expect world number one and Australian Open champion Amelie Mauresmo to inspire them in Nancy against Italy.
In the two other ties Germany host a weakened U.S. team in Ettenheim while Austria visit Valencia to face Spain.

TITLE: Season Ends in Upsets as Ottawa, New Jersey Make Playoffs
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: OTTAWA, Canada — Ottawa jumped past Carolina on Tuesday for the best record in the Eastern Conference, and New Jersey capped a sensational late-season run to win the Atlantic Division on the final night of the NHL’s regular season. 	
That set up some unforeseen matchups for the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs, beginning Friday night.
The Senators’ reward for beating the New York Rangers 5-1 was an opening-round series with defending Cup champion Tampa Bay. Ottawa finished 21 points ahead of the Lightning this season. 
“We’ll be ready to play,” Lightning coach John Tortorella said. “We’re right where we want to be.”
Perhaps. But top-seeded Ottawa won all four regular-season meetings between the teams and is 17-2-1 against the Lightning over the past five seasons.
Carolina, which led Ottawa by a point heading into the final game, lost 4-0 at home to Buffalo to sink to second in the conference. The Hurricanes will play Montreal, which blew a three-goal lead at home and fell to New Jersey 4-3, giving the Devils their 11th straight victory — and the Atlantic crown.
Carolina was 4-0 against the Canadiens this season.
New Jersey set an NHL mark after it trailed the division-leading Flyers by 19 points on Jan. 6. The Devils registered the biggest comeback to claim a division title since the league divided into two conferences with the 1974-75 expansion. Detroit held the previous record, overcoming an 18-point deficit in 1993-94.
The Devils went 4-3-1 against the Rangers, who led the Atlantic nearly all season, only to fall apart down the stretch. New York didn’t get a point in its last five games, its longest skid of the season.
“I don’t think it’s sunk in,” said Jamie Langenbrunner, whose goal gave New Jersey the division. 
“We were basically so far out of it even three weeks ago that somehow we won this division and have home ice is — I think we’re all a little bit in shock about that. But we definitely earned it.”
The other East matchup has Philadelphia opening at Buffalo. The Flyers thought they had the Atlantic crown after beating the Islanders 4-1. Then New Jersey rallied.
The Flyers went 1-3 against the Sabres.
In the West, it will be Detroit vs. Edmonton, Dallas vs. Colorado, Nashville vs. San Jose, and Calgary vs. Anaheim.
The Red Wings, with the most points in the NHL (124), had a 2-0-2 mark against the Oilers. Dallas was 3-1 with Colorado.
San Jose, one of the league’s hottest teams, was 0-2-2 against the Predators, while the Flames went 2-2 against Anaheim.

TITLE: Popovych Claims Yellow After Breakaway Stage Win in Georgia
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: ROME, Georgia — Discovery Channel’s rising young Ukrainian Yaroslav Popovych won the second stage of the Tour of Georgia and seized the overall lead in the six-day race. 
With seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong, now a Discovery Channel team adviser, looking on, Popovych parlayed a late break into the stage win.
He made his move in the final 100 meters of the rain-lashed 186.9km stage from Fayetteville, Georgia, to beat Argentina’s Juan Haedo of the U.S.-based Toyota team and American Fred Rodriguez, who rides for Davitamon.
The win, in 4hr 47min 39sec means Popovych — who earned the Tour de France white jersey for best young rider last year — will draw the favorable final spot in Thursday’s 39.9km time-trial from Chickamauga to Chattanooga, Tennessee.
“I felt I could do what I did,” he said of his surge at the finish. “And I talked to my teammates, and I said I was going to go. They said go for it,’” Popovych said.
Until Popovych took control, Argentina’s Alejandro Acton dominated the day, spending nearly 150km on a solo break before he was reeled in with less than 20km to go.
Phonak’s Floyd Landis of the United States, who won the inaugural Tour of California earlier this year as well as the Paris-Nice, finished seventh and was ninth in the overall classification.