SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1170 (36), Friday, May 19, 2006
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TITLE: Murdered Politician Honored
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: It has been seven and a half years since Galina Starovoitova, a liberal State Duma Deputy, who was often described as the conscience of Russian democracy, was gunned down on the stairwell of her building on Nov. 20, 1998. 
To mark the anniversary of her birthday — Starovoitova would have turned 60 on Wednesday — the late politician was honored with a monument erected on a green courtyard at the intersection of Suvorovsky Prospekt and Ulitsa Moiseyenko in central St. Petersburg.
Designed by sculptor Arkady Yastrebenetsky, the monument comprises a pillar with a relief depicting Starovoitova’s profile and an inscription giving details of the politician’s life and achievements.
“Galina Starovoitova, a scientist, human rights advocate and politician, a people’s deputy of the USSR and Russian Federation and chairman of the Democratic Russia party was killed by a terrorist attack on Nov 20, 1998,” reads the inscription.
Although her killers — Valery Akishin and Yury Kolchin — have been caught and sentenced, those who ordered her murder have not been found, despite promises from those in power, including former president Boris Yeltsin, that law enforcement officers would not rest until those behind the killing were convicted.
The unveiling ceremony drew hundreds of local supporters of the former Duma deputy, who was one of Russia’s most visible and outspoken female politicians. 
Governor Valentina Matviyenko attended the ceremony, although the event did not attract politicians from Moscow. 
“Galina loved this place, she made appointments and dates here, and I hope that people will now start arranging to meet ‘by Galina’s monument’,” said Galina Starovoitova’s sister Olga, a historian and human rights advocate.
Platon Barshchevsky, the son of the assassinated politician, who currently resides in London, attended the opening ceremony on Wednesday. 
“This monument comes to the city at the right time: ethnic relations, which was the very subject of her research, are going through a challenging period.”
Writer Daniil Granin compared Starovoitova’s murder to the death of a soldier on the battlefield. “The monument in a public place, where people can meet, does justice to this true people’s deputy,” he said.
Galina’s murder came as a shock to a nation that deeply mourned a charismatic and compassionate woman who was widely regarded as Russia’s brightest female politician. The renowned film-director Alexander Sokurov, who never met Starovoitova in person, has often repeated that Starovoitova would have made an ideal president of Russia and called her a politician whose voice was impossible to ignore.
Olga Starovoitova said that the family has been pondering the question of why Galina was murdered for a very long time.
“It is very complicated,” Olga Starovoitova said. “She tried hard to make the country’s budget transparent and believed legislators should be able to trace where state money goes. This, of course, was rather irritating for those on the receiving end of improperly directed budgetary funds.”
After she was murdered, literary historian Dmitry Likhachyov said of her: “She would never compromise with rascals. And that is why she was destined to die.”
“There are enough corrupt people here — I wouldn’t even try to guess who ordered the crime,” Olga Starovoitova said. “I am also quite sure it is very easy to hire people who are ready to kill anyone.”

TITLE: Kremlin: WTO Entry Affects Energy Investors
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Kremlin said Thursday that any attempts to “discriminate” against Moscow in its negotiations to join the World Trade Organization would bring tougher terms for foreign companies seeking access to Russian markets — a policy that could affect U.S. oil companies hoping to develop a massive natural gas field. 
“In general, if you discriminate against us in the WTO, you can’t expect us to welcome you with open arms,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to Dow Jones Newswires. 
But Peskov denied that the Kremlin was announcing a direct link between American companies’ potential participation in development of the Shtokman gas field and talks with the United States on Russia’s WTO entry. The statement was intended to reflect Kremlin policy “in general,” he said. 
Russian natural gas monopoly OAO Gazprom is currently examining offers from five companies, including U.S. giants Chevron Corp. and ConocoPhillips, on joining in developing the 3.7-trillion cubic-meter (130 trillion cubic-foot) gas field in the Barents Sea. 
Gazprom has said it would choose two to three partners in the coming days, but the Interfax news agency quoted Industry and Energy Minister Viktor Khristenko as saying the company would announce the partners in the summer. 
Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov denied any link between Shtokman and the WTO talks. He said the company would choose partners based on the best offers from foreign companies. “Nothing has changed here,” he said, according to Dow Jones. 
Gazprom is also considering the involvement of France’s Total SA, and Norway’s Statoil ASA and Norsk Hydro ASA. 
Reaching an agreement with the U.S. on joining the WTO is among the final major hurdles for Russian WTO membership. In March, Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed frustration at the pace of negotiations, charging the U.S. with coming up with groundless demands that were hindering talks. Russia first applied for membership of the WTO in 1994. 
With Putin’s Kremlin increasing state control over Russia’s vast oil and gas reserves and ties between Russia and the United States strained by American concerns that he is backtracking on democracy and human rights, U.S. hopes for a major increase in energy cooperation with Russia have not been realized. 
Senior Kremlin aide Igor Shuvalov linked progress in WTO talks with foreign access to Russian markets during a closed-door briefing in Washington in April, Peskov said, according to Dow Jones Newswires. 
Shortly after Shuvalov’s trip to the United States, the U.S. ambassador to Russia, William Burns, met with Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller to discuss U.S. companies’ potential role in Shtokman, according to a Gazprom statement at the time. 
Shuvalov’s comments came at a time when a series of “new demands which haven’t been made to other countries” were being made against Russia by the U.S. in WTO talks, Peskov said, but he indicated the sides had moved closer toward an agreement since April. 
“Negotiations are now going well,” he said.

TITLE: Russia Flunks Education Report
AUTHOR: By Evgenia Ivanova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Russia’s secondary education students have one of the lowest performance rates in mathematics and reading comprehension compared with students from most European countries, according to an international report published Monday.
The main aim of the new study from the Paris-based Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation, or OECD, which tested 15-year-olds in 41 countries in mathematics, reading comprehension, science and problem-solving skills, was to determine how well children from immigrant families integrate into society through education.
But the secondary school student performance of the overall population was also measured as a part of the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA.
It focused on 17 territories with the largest immigrant populations — Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the U.S., among OECD countries; and three non-OECD-member countries — the Russian Federation, Hong Kong-China and Macao-China.
According to the findings, Russia has no significant gap between the school performance of children from immigrant families  and the rest of society .
“Currently, Russia is doing well here. The impact of socio-economic factors on children’s academic outcomes is lower than in other systems and is in fact at a similar level to Finland and Canada — two of the top performing countries in the PISA study,” Claire Shewbridge, the program’s analyst said in an emailed statement Thursday.
However, the overall performance results of the country’s students are less encouraging. 
Around one third of secondary school students tested in Russia (30 percent) failed to demonstrate essential levels of mathematics skills, researchers say. This compares to 21 percent on average in the OECD countries. 
The survey’s authors say their findings show that these students do not demonstrate skills that would allow them to actively use mathematics in real-life situations. 
Seven percent of Russian 15-year-olds completed the most difficult questions on the PISA mathematics test and are therefore among the top performers on the PISA test. But this, however, does not compare favorably with the OECD average of 15 percent.
Although Russian 15-year-olds performed nearer to the OECD average level (500 score points) in science with an average of 489 points, their performance of 442 PISA score points in reading comprehension is comparatively weak, the findings showed.
“The results indicate that it would be important to both improve the level of basic mathematics skills in Russian secondary schools, as well as increase the opportunities for bright students to excel and learn more demanding mathematics,” Shewbridge said.
Shewbridge also pointed out that ,“In terms of areas of the mathematics curriculum, Russian students found the questions on statistics and probability the most difficult.”
Commenting on the survey’s results, Igor Karachevtsev, a principal of one of the city’s secondary schools and winner of “Russia’s Teacher of the Year” award in 2003, said, “The approaches to education vary greatly from country to country. The main difference is that our educational system traditionally focuses on theoretical, fundamental knowledge, whereas the Western models involve training students in how to apply their knowledge in everyday situations.” 
“Russia’s educational model still resists change, thinking that without fundamental theoretical knowledge students will fail to adapt in future. As with everything, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle,” Karachevtsev added.

TITLE: New Missile System Tested
AUTHOR: By Henry Meyer
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia has recently successfully tested a new missile system that can penetrate all anti-missile defenses and is close to deploying it, the chief of the Russian military’s General Staff said Thursday. 
In his state-of-the-nation address last week, President Vladimir Putin said the new high-precision weapons would have an unpredictable trajectory, making them very difficult to neutralize and allowing Russia to maintain a strategic balance of forces with the United States even with a smaller arsenal. 
“A test was conducted in February this year which showed that Russia is close to building a combat system on our intercontinental ballistic missiles which will be capable of penetrating all existing and planned anti-missile defenses,” Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky told reporters.

TITLE: Developing Crisis in Iran Plays Into Russian Hands
AUTHOR: By Stephen Boykewich
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Editor’s note: This is the first of two reports about the energy implications for Russia of the standoff over Iran’s nuclear program.

MOSCOW — If ever there were a sign of a diplomatic breakdown, this seemed to be it: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rejecting a European proposal before it had even been made.
Ahmadinejad’s preemptive rejection this week of Europe’s latest diplomatic overture showed why nerves are fraying as the United States and EU push Iran to abandon uranium enrichment — suspecting its ultimate goal is a bomb — and Iran continues to announce new nuclear landmarks.
The stakes of the conflict are rising. Beyond concerns about global nuclear security, fears abound that an escalation in Iran could send oil over $100 per barrel, potentially triggering a world energy crisis.
Amid all the uncertainty — and at least for the moment — one country has come out a winner.
“Quite frankly, Russia is benefiting from the high price of oil right now,” a senior U.S. official said by telephone, speaking on condition of anonymity. “I’m not saying it’s driving their policy, ... but the Russians are certainly benefiting.”
Russia has stood firmly between Iran and the West in recent months. Russian officials insist they share the West’s concerns about a nuclear weapon-armed Iran, but have simultaneously blocked a U.S.-backed push for sanctions in the United Nations — which Iran has characterized as a vote of confidence.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reaffirmed on Wednesday Russia’s opposition to sanctions or the use of force against Iran. “Before thinking of how to punish Iran ... we need to concentrate on searching for those solutions which would bring Iran into dialogue,” Lavrov told journalists.
Analysts said Russia’s independent line on Iran was one of the key reasons its relations with the United States had soured. Several added their belief that U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney’s recent tongue-lashing of Russia had more to do with Iran than with democratization.
Patrick Clawson, deputy director for research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said many in Washington believed Russia was thinking more about profit than security when it came to Iran.
“There’s the sense in Washington that Russia’s policy toward Iran is dictated by Russia’s energy concerns,” Clawson said.
State nuclear construction monopoly Atomstroiexport has nearly completed its work on Iran’s $800 million Bushehr nuclear power plant — in spite of U.S. protests — and Iran’s deputy nuclear minister said last week that Russia was ready to help it build two more.
More worrying, the senior U.S. official said, is Russia’s planned $1 billion arms sale to Iran, including 30 anti-aircraft batteries that could be used to counter U.S. air attacks.
“We think having a sale like this is inappropriate and destabilizing,” the official said. “It is our strong view that Russia should not go ahead with this deal.”
Russia and Iran have a total trade turnover of $2.2 billion per year, according to Yevgeny Yevseyev of the Institute for World Economy and International Relations, a Moscow think tank.
“We have huge economic interests in Iran,” said Konstantin Kosachyov, head of the State Duma’s International Relations Committee, in a recent interview on Ekho Moskvy radio. “For us, that’s unquestionably an important theme, but a theme that’s subordinate to ensuring the UN’s system of collective security.”
Curiously, military action in Iran could also bring Russia financial and strategic advantage, said Brenda Shaffer, head of the Caspian Studies Program at Harvard University.
“If the crisis continues and brings military action, oil prices are going to continue to soar ... and Russia is going to emerge as the most important energy player even more clearly than it is now,” Shaffer said by telephone from Jerusalem.
Military action would not only threaten Iran’s 2.7 million barrels of oil exports per year — most of which goes to Japan and China — but could provoke Iran to block oil shipments though the Strait of Hormuz. About 25 percent of the world’s oil supplies pass through the Persian Gulf strait.
A resulting super-spike in oil prices would hold a hidden pitfall for most major oil producers. 
“A producer like Saudi Arabia has reason to fear very high oil prices, because countries and industries would then move to natural gas and nuclear energy,” Shaffer said.
But with Russia holding the world’s largest natural gas reserves — and planning to develop a bank of enriched uranium for developing nations’ nuclear energy programs — a shift in the world’s energy balance would still allow it to profit, Shaffer said.
If, on the other hand, Russian diplomatic initiatives help end the standoff, “you can imagine the atmosphere,” Shaffer said. 
“Russia’s in a win-win situation with this crisis.”
Other analysts said the dangers of a war on Russia’s southern doorstep would likely outweigh any potential benefits.
“In terms of energy supplies, Russia will clearly become more important if there’s greater instability in the Middle East — there’s no question,” said Julia Nanay, head of PFC Energy, by telephone from Washington. 
“But if there’s a military solution to the conflict, everyone in the region loses.”
Still, a war in Iran could offer Russia a rallying point in opposing a unipolar, U.S.-dominated world, said Dmitry Trenin, deputy director of the Carnegie Moscow Center. 
“If there were a war in Iran, Russia would try to gain the strongest possible advantage from the rise in oil and gas prices,” Trenin said. 
“It would take advantage of the weakened position of the United States throughout the world as a result of the war.”
Russia would likely cast itself as a friend of the Muslim world — mindful of the reactions of its own 20 million-strong Muslim population — as well as “closely coordinating its position with China,” Trenin said. Russia’s growing energy and military partnership with China has already raised hackles in the West, particularly in light of recent Gazprom threats to redirect gas supplies from Europe to Asia.
Among the many remaining questions about how the conflict will play out, Trenin said, one thing was clear. 
“We’re at the beginning of a new period in relations between Russia and the West — especially the United States,” he said. 
“Now, it’s going to be about competition.”

TITLE: Judge Lambastes Sole Defendant In Beslan Hostage Seizure Legal Case
AUTHOR: By Yuras Karmanau
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: VLADIKAVKAZ — The judge reading the verdict against the sole surviving alleged militant in the Beslan school hostage seizure said Wednesday that the defendant was one of the cruelest of the attackers.
North Ossetian regional Supreme Court Judge Tamerlan Aguzarov recounted witness testimony from the trial, and said it proved Nurpashi Kulayev was “one of the most ferocious bandits” involved in the three-day school siege in September 2004 that left 331 people dead, more than half of them children.
Yet, on the second day of the verdict reading, which is sure to find Kulayev guilty on all counts, many survivors and their relatives still had doubts about who was responsible.
“Who killed more people — the terrorists or government troops?” asked Elvira Tuayeva, who had been held hostage in the school and lost her son and daughter. 
Aguzarov said witnesses recalled that Kulayev had beaten them and the children, and had not allowed them to drink during the ordeal.
But Ella Kesayeva, head of the Voice of Beslan group, said she had not heard direct testimony “that Kulayev had shot at someone or killed someone.”
Relatives of the 331 victims allege authorities are covering up information about the siege, when some 30 attackers seized the school and demanded that Russian forces end their fight against Chechen rebels.

TITLE: Top Cop: Juvenile Crime Up
AUTHOR: By Francesca Mereu
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — More minors are breaking the law, and their crimes are growing crueler, Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev told Duma deputies on Wednesday.
Nurgaliyev said that last year, 150,000 youths under 16 committed crimes, including 1,200 murders, 3,300 assaults and 18,000 robberies. The number of girls who broke the law increased to 13,000, he said, without providing comparative figures.
“All serious crimes are committed, as a rule, in a group, and are noticeable for their high level of cruelty,” he said. “This dangerous tendency has in no way changed for the better in the past few years.”
Many minors committed crimes to obtain money to gamble, he said.
Nurgaliyev said 6,000 teenagers had criminal records connected to extremist activities and most of them lived near the cities of Moscow, St. Petersburg, Rostov, Samara, Voronezh, Murmansk and Nizhny Novgorod.
Nurgaliyev called for stiffer penalties for those convicted of promoting extremist ideas among minors.
Extremism has drawn the attention of leading government officials. “You can easily find cassettes, documents and Internet sites that spread extremist ideas,” he said.
The interior minister also said that about 100,000 minors were alcoholics or drug users and urged deputies to pass legislation to limit the sale of alcohol to minors. 
Last year, he said, police registered 175,000 crimes against minors, and 3,000 children went missing. 
Some 24,000 runaways were detained, and 11,000 were sent home. About 2,500 of the runaways came from former Soviet republics, he said.
The Duma is to consider legislation on May 26 to improve cooperation with other former Soviet republics in dealing with runaways.

TITLE: Bomb Kills 7 In Ingushetia
AUTHOR: By Sergei Venyavsky
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ROSTOV-ON-DON — A car packed with powerful explosives blew up on a road in Ingushetia on Wednesday, killing seven people including a high-level regional police official in what authorities said may have been a suicide bombing.
Ingushetia’s Deputy Interior Minister Dzhabrail Kostoyev, two bodyguards and four civilians were killed when a hatchback exploded on a roadside on the outskirts of the region’s main city of Nazran, local police officials and a regional Interior Ministry spokesman said.
Ministry spokesman Roman Shchekotin said that preliminary information indicated a suicide attacker had been in the car that exploded. However, Ingushetia’s Security Council chief, Bashir Aushev, said it was also possible the car bomb was detonated by remote control.
Kostoyev, a target of previous attacks, had been traveling in an armored vehicle to work in Nazran in a convoy of three cars, Shchekotin said.

TITLE: Lock Giant Hunts For Key to Russian Market
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: One of the world’s largest lock producers, Finnish company Abloy, has announced that it will significantly expand its dealership network in Russia over the coming years. Last year Abloy sales in Russia increased by 30 percent up to five million euros ($6 million), as opposed to 17 percent net growth in worldwide sales.
Russia is the largest market for Abloy after the United States and Sweden, said Jaakko Merilainen, vice president for door automatics at Abloy in Joensuu, Finland.
“The construction business is developing rapidly in Russia and there is increasing demand for locks but it is difficult to tell exactly how much. On the other hand, we face strong competition,” Merilainen said.
He said that the Finnish construction companies operating in Russia, for example YIT and Skanska, mostly order Abloy locks and security systems for their projects but it’s not a universal rule. In middle class residential projects Finnish constructors could use cheaper alternatives, Merilainen said.
In St. Petersburg Abloy locks were installed in the Stockmann store, the Ice Stadium, the Hermitage and in the Phillip Morris and Coca-Cola plants, he said.
The general trend is one whereby “Russian buyers switch to electronic locks and security systems from simple mechanical products,” Merilainen said.
“Finnish producers have established a reputation as suppliers of high-quality products to the Russian market, though they fall behind the Italians when it comes to design,” said Ruslan Zhuikov, manager of Pyotr Veliky, a company that distributes construction materials in St. Petersburg.
“However Abloy also develops its models. They offer products in a wide range of colors which are not simply covered with paint like Chinese locks and components, something that becomes evident after a year of use,” he said.
One of the major advantages of Abloy locks, according to Zhuikov, is the protection they give from burglary. 
“You could not force these locks quietly,” he said.
Zhuikov confirmed that electronic locks are becoming more popular in Russia and are reliable even outdoors, at a dacha for example.
Abloy locks are bought both by private and corporate clients. Expensive motor locks are mainly ordered for plants, he said.
At the moment Abloy has 16 dealers in Russia and three access control partners, Merilainen said. In Finland 150 dealers serve a population of about five million people.
Merilainen said that the company’s strategic target was to increase the number of Russian dealers up to 100 over the next five years. Up until now the company network has grown by five to six new dealers a year.
Abloy is a part of ASSA Abloy Group. Last year the group’s sales reached three billion euros ($3.8 billion).
Abloy exports to 60 countries. According to Petri Lempiainen, managing director of Abloy factory in Joensuu, Russia accounts for about five percent of the company’s products, while the largest consumer, the USA, accounts for two thirds.
As for suppliers, Abloy orders most of its parts from European and Asian companies. Only 12 out of 50 lock components are produced by Abloy itself. 
Although Abloy has moved much of its production to other countries, currently it does not have plans to establish production in St. Petersburg simply because of its market proximity to Finland, Merilainen said.

TITLE: Arms Trader Wants Shipyards
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: ST. PETERSBURG — The owner of the country’s two largest military shipyards has said the government wants to acquire both firms, and local media said on Wednesday that state arms trader Rosoboronexport was in talks to buy them. 
The Severnaya Verf and Baltiysky Zavod shipyards in St. Petersburg are estimated to hold shipbuilding contracts worth about $2 billion. 
The yards are owned by the United Industrial Corporation, or UIC, which was established in 2004 to consolidate noncore assets of International Industrial Bank. 
“The state has displayed interest in our Severnaya Verf and Baltiysky Zavod, as well as in the Iceberg design bureau creating icebreakers,” UIC director general Alexander Gnusarev told reporters late Tuesday. 
President Vladimir Putin called in his state-of-the-nation address last week for the establishment of a national shipbuilding corporation. 
“As we understand, the state plans to establish a concern building surface ships. The idea is being actively discussed by the [Federal Industry Agency],” Gnusarev said. 
“We hold the very promising shipyards, while the state has the best design bureaus.” 
Gnusarev did not say which state entities might buy the shipyards. He added the government had not yet made an official offer to buy them or merge them with state-controlled design bureaus. 
He said the assets of the two shipyards would have to be evaluated before detailed talks started, and said he expected the industry agency to outline its vision for the future shipbuilding concern within a month. 
Kommersant quoted unidentified sources on Wednesday as saying Rosoboronexport had contacted International Industrial Bank to discuss the potential purchase of the yards. 
A Rosoboronexport spokeswoman said the company would not comment on the report. 
Kommersant quoted bank officials as saying the arms trader was keen to buy the shipyards, which are capable of building all types of military surface ships. 
Rosoboronexport last year exported weapons and ammunition worth over $5 billion. Russian media have speculated the company is a Kremlin vehicle aimed at establishing government control over certain sectors that the state sees as strategic. 
Last December, Rosoboronexport gained control of Russia’s largest carmaker, AvtoVAZ. The arms trader is now in talks with the world’s largest producer of titanium products, VSMPO-Avisma, on buying a stake. 
Rosoboronexport wants to change its legal status to allow it to operate with less oversight from the government, Vedomosti said, citing an unidentified government official.
Rosoboronexport wants to be classified a state corporation, a special status used only twice since it was created in 1999, the newspaper said. State corporations don’t have to pay a share of their profit to the government and can use all their income on development, Vedomosti said.
Rosoboronexport, which had sales last year of $5.2 billion, is currently a federal state unitary enterprise, which means it needs government approval for any transaction worth more than 5 million rubles ($186,000) and must pay the state a portion of its income. 
Rosoboronexport chief Sergei Chemezov told Vedomosti last year that the unitary enterprise status had “outlived its usefulness.”

(Reuters, Bloomberg)

TITLE: Kiriyenko: Nuclear Program Starts in St. Pete
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ST. PETERSBURG — Russia will commission at least two nuclear reactors a year beginning in 2010 as part of a massive effort to expand the nation’s nuclear energy sector, Russia’s top nuclear official said Wednesday, according to news reports. 
Sergei Kiriyenko, head of the Federal Atomic Energy Agency, said that the ambitious program would kick off with the launch of construction next year of a new nuclear power plant near St. Petersburg, Itar-Tass and RIA-Novosti reported. The new plant with four nuclear reactors would cost $6 billion, Kiriyenko said. 
He said the new plant would be located next to the existing nuclear plant in Sosnovy Bor, near St. Petersburg. 
Nuclear power now accounts for 16 percent to 17 percent of Russia’s electricity generation, and the Kremlin has set a target to raise its share to one-quarter by 2030. Kiriyenko said recently that Russia would have to build a total of 40 new reactors to fulfill the goal. 
In recent years, Russia has overcome a public backlash against nuclear power that followed the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, and the government has supported an ambitious program to develop its nuclear industry. 
Kiriyenko said his agency also hoped to build more reactors abroad. He said that China, in particular, was likely to place orders for more reactors after the successful launch of the first Russia-built nuclear reactor.

TITLE: Diplomatic Smuggling Ring Exposed
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian authorities have uncovered a smuggling ring that used African embassies as a cover to import electronic and other consumer goods without paying full customs fees, the Interfax news agency reported Thursday.
The report came a week after the dismissal of senior officials in the Federal Customs Service and other government agencies in a shake-up that analysts said may have been a strike against corrupt officials linked to illegal customs schemes.
Customs officials said an alleged criminal group that included foreigners imported large amounts of goods at a low cost by marking them as shipments to embassies or diplomats, which are not subject to the same customs duties as regular imports, Interfax reported. The goods were then presumably sold at market prices.
The report did not say which embassies were used as cover or specify the amount of money involved or the nationality of any of the foreigners allegedly involved in the scheme. 
The smuggling operation involved a participant who knew many embassy employees he had met while studying at a Moscow university, Interfax reported, citing the Customs Service’s anti-smuggling department.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Passazh Sold
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Divieto Limited, a company registered in Egypt and linked with Moscow-based developer Shalva Chigirinsky, has acquired the Passazh department store for $50.5 million, Vedomosti reported Thursday.
15 companies took part in Wednesday’s auction to buy the building from the St. Petersburg property fund.
Earlier Chigirinsky’s company, the STT Group, acquired an 84 percent stake at the TPF Passazh closed joint-stock company that is renting the building until December 2023.
Within the next three years Divieto will invest over $60 million into the building’s reconstruction. The department store will be operated by the Moscow-based GUM.

MTS Loan
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Mobile TeleSystems, eastern Europe’s biggest mobile-phone company, agreed to borrow $112 million from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to help it expand in the Russian regions as well as the former Soviet Union.
The EBRD, funded by the U.S. and other governments, also extended the maturity of $138 million that Mobile TeleSytems, or MTS, still owes on a loan from 2004, taking the total funding package to $250 million, the EBRD said in an e-mail on Thursday.

TITLE: Sistema Shooting on all Fronts
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: As part of its strategy to create the largest multimedia firm in Russia, AFK Sistema this week started construction of a film production studio in St. Petersburg. The $20 million project is due for completion by March 2007, company managers said Wednesday at a press briefing.
AFK Sistema’s subsidiaries — Thema Production and the developer Sistema Gals Northwest — will reconstruct a dilapidated building on Ulitsa Generala Khrulyova, in the north of the city.
The three-story production studio will occupy 17,526 square meters, which includes 4,240 square meters of sound stage.
“Sistema is very well represented in the multimedia business. We produce many films and serials and we own a cable television network, which was a timely acquisition. I think the studio will always be at full capacity,” said Vladimir Yevtushenkov, AFK Sistema chairman.
Yevtushenkov did not exclude the possibility of acquiring regional cable networks.
“St. Petersburg is the only strategic location not covered by our network. We are looking for ways to come here, no matter what the means of transmission,” Yevtushenkov said, suggesting cable, satellite or broadband as possible solutions.
Sistema Mass-Media manages subscription television channels and develops digital and mobile broadcasting. The company owns 75 percent of Thema Production — a production company based in Luxembourg that mainly produces films for foreign markets.
“We make high-budget films as are made in the West,” said Mikhail Dunayev, Sistema Mass-Media CEO and general director and founder of Thema Production.
During its two years of operations, Thema Production has made 12 films including “Match Point” directed by Woody Allen. This year the company expects to produce seven to nine films, Dunayev said.
Thema Production has already invested over 10 million euros ($12 million) into film production covering 15 percent to 30 percent of all production costs.
The company could invest up to 20 million euros ($24 million) into production annually. Between 30 percent and 40 percent of those resources are provided by AFK Sistema.
Speaking about the new studio, city vice governor Alexander Vakhmistrov said that apart from developing film production and bringing investment, the project will remove a dilapidated building and contribute to the city’s reputation as a cultural capital.
At the same time, the professional community praised the studio’s modern equipment and western production technologies.
“Previously our cinematographers enviously looked to the West and later to Japan — concerning the equipment they use for shooting. This new studio will be a production site not only for Thema Production but also for other companies,” St. Petersburg actor Andrei Tolubeyev said.
Underwater filming will be possible at the studio as well as the creation of a variety of sets, Dunayev said. Thema’s European partners are participating in the development of the architecture. Thema is in negotiations with Bueno Vista and Sony, Dunayev said.
In St. Petersburg, Thema Production has completed two films: “Rasplata” (Requital) and “Po etapu” (To Deport).
At the new studio it plans to make mid-budget European films and high- budget commercial films to be distributed in Russia and abroad. 
The studio facilities will also be leased to Russian and foreign production companies.
As for expanding its broadcast catchment area, Dunayev indicated DVB-H technology as their probable method of delivering television signals to Russian regions that remain without coverage.
In February Sistema Mass Media acquired United Cable Networks becoming the largest subscription television operator in Russia. It serves over 1.2 million people in 25 regions. In April the company started the project of digital mobile television (DVB-H).
Ilya Fedotov, telecom analyst at Veles Capital investment company, said that a $20 million investment is rather modest compared, for example, to the capitalization of the MTS mobile operator, owned by AFK Sistema.
“I don’t think that this project will have a significant effect on Sistema’s performance,” Fedotov said.
“Studio performance will depend on Sistema’s sponsorship. If this project is interesting for Sistema, the studio can become a competitor to Lenfilm and Mosfilm. But anyway we are not yet Hollywood, and competition is not that strong,” Fedotov said.
As for creating a national television network, Fedotov said that the Rambler and RBC channels have not yet been very profitable.
Last year AFK Sistema’s revenue reached $7.59 billion, a 32.4 percent increase on the previous year. Total assets exceeded $13.09 billion.
Apart from the studio, Sistema Gals Northwest is realizing three other projects in the city. The total volume of investment is about $230 million.
The company is constructing a shopping center of around 100,000 to 150,000 square meters and a series of residential buildings, which altogether amounts to 500,000 square meters of construction, Yevtushenkov said. 
Sistema Gals is also working on the Orlovsky tunnel project.

TITLE: Tide Out On Naked Swimmers
AUTHOR: By Anna Smolchenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Many companies in Russia live like there is no tomorrow and pay little attention to contingency planning and cost reduction, a new study by KPMG suggests.
Because the current economic situation is so favorable and companies here are generally more profitable than their Western counterparts, many do not bother to have contingency plans — leaving themselves vulnerable to sudden economic changes, Tony Thompson, head of advisory at KPMG’s Moscow office and one of the authors of the study, said in presenting the report Wednesday.
“Some Russian businesses are swimming naked,” Thompson said, citing U.S. billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who once famously said: “It’s only when the tide goes out that you learn who’s been swimming naked.”
While more than half of the surveyed companies regularly restructure to become more efficient, only 5 percent said they conducted reorganization because of a worsening economic situation or tighter regulation, according to the firm’s six-month study of more than 30 companies, including Vneshtorgbank, VSMPO-Avisma, Unified Energy Systems, Irkut, Basic Element and Delta Capital Management. 
Acute vulnerability in the face of unfavorable economic changes was never mentioned as a reason for reorganization, the study said. 
The top three motives for restructuring mentioned by companies were to better business practices (67 percent of respondents), to raise capital or attract investors (52 percent), and to integrate newly acquired companies or improve lax control over subsidiaries (52 percent), the study said.
Sergei Bazoyev, head of business restructuring at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Moscow, said he had also noticed a similar tendency. Companies based in Russia primarily restructure to increase efficiency and make the company more attractive prior to initial public offerings, Bazoyev said by e-mail Wednesday. 
Bazoyev added that “we have seen a sharp increase in Russian businesses’ interest in restructuring recently,” and that the trend was expanding from “large corporations to mid-level enterprises.”
Types of restructuring in Russia differ from those in the West as the companies are pursuing different goals, KPMG’s Thompson said. “In Germany, most restructuring is about cost reduction and the need to raise profitability, whereas most restructuring in Russia is about strategic and organizational measures, often in the run-up to initial public offerings,” he said. 
Another author of the report, Alexander Yerofeyev, head of restructuring at KPMG’s Moscow office, said: “Even when Russian companies declare strategic restructuring goals, in practical terms they often limit their restructuring activities to quick fixes.” 
According to the study, the surveyed companies were only thinking long-term in 37 percent of restructuring cases.

TITLE: Foreign Banks Tipped to Acquire More Assets
AUTHOR: By William Mauldin
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Executives at Raiffesen International, one of the leading foreign banks in Russia, predicted Wednesday that Western financial institutions would snap up Russian banks in the next year or so to take advantage of the rapid growth in consumer banking here.
Speaking at a presentation about Raiffesen’s recent acquisition of Impexbank, Herbert Stepic, CEO of Austria-based Raiffeisen International, said he expected other foreign banks to follow Raiffesen’s lead in buying Russian banks in the same way that international banks snapped up Ukrainian banks after Raiffeisen’s purchase of Bank Aval there.
Stepic said his bank was not currently planning any further acquisitions in Russia, but he left the door open for future purchases. “If a very nice bride passes by, we will definitely take a look. That goes without saying,” he said.
Earlier this week Rair Simonyan, head of Morgan Stanley in Russia, said the U.S. financial giant would be interested in buying Russian mortgage banking assets, Bloomberg reported. 
The ideal targets for a foreign bank would be among the 50 Russian banks with the largest branch networks, said Jeff Millikan, who oversees Raiffeisen’s CIS operations. He identified Alfa Bank, Rosbank, and Promvsvyazbank as fitting this mold.
A spokeswoman for Alfa Bank said Wednesday it was not for sale but that it would consider a “strategic partnership with a leading international financial institution.”
Rosbank, which is planning an IPO this year, declined to comment about any possible sale to a foreign bank. A spokeswoman said the bank had a presence in 66 regions in Russia, as well as 58 offices in Moscow. 
Promsvyazbank, which has a presence in 30 Russian cities, said it would consider a partnership with a Western bank but had no specific plans to be sold.
A large branch network would be extremely valuable for a Western bank seeking quick access to Russian consumer lending, said Sergei Donskoi, a banking analyst at Troika Dialog.
“If you want to expand quickly, you need to have your branch network in place and not have to build it from scratch. It helps jump-start your business,” he said. “If you value time more than money, it makes sense.”
Vladlen Kuznetsov, a banking analyst with Moody’s Investors Service, said Russian banks bought by Western banks would likely benefit from advanced technology and access to more capital, an expensive commodity in Russia. 
In general, Western banks would benefit from acquisitions, too, because they would have a more diversified stream of earnings, he said.
“But on the other hand, if the bank has an increased concentration on the Russian market, it could theoretically weaken its credit profile,” Kuznetsov said.

TITLE: Serving as a Role Model Against Corruption
AUTHOR: By Brook Horowitz
TEXT: Anyone who has lived and worked in Russia will recognize the lack of trust referred to by President Vladimir Putin in his state-of-the-nation address last week: “I note that one of the most significant traits of our internal political life is the low level of trust of citizens towards specific institutions of government and big business. ... Despite our efforts, we have not succeeded in eliminating one of the most serious obstacles to our development, namely corruption.” 
For a growing number of leaders of multinational and Russian companies, corrupt business practices are anathema. For companies wanting to operate according to international standards and rules, the business case for behaving responsibly is compulsive: As a general rule, corruption is understood not to pay. Going outside the law is inefficient, unpredictable, unprofessional and dangerous. For individual executives, as well as for their companies, the risks are still substantial, and perhaps greater than the benefits. In Russia, where civil servants may have a vested interest, where the law is often applied selectively and where public opinion and civil society are weak, many believe that the business case against corruption does not stand up. This line of argument would suggest that companies are making plenty of money, even with the bribes they have to pay. The market, however imperfect, seems to work, for the companies, as well as the government. 
So what can the business community do about corruption in an environment so apparently not ready for change? 
In fact, Russia is not so unique in having a problem with corruption — indeed, most countries of the world operate in similar conditions. A report published last month by the United Nation’s Global Compact, “Business Against Corruption,” details a number of examples of companies working together to fight corruption in environments no less aggressive than Russia’s, including in China, Brazil, Mexico and Vietnam. 
Companies do not have to stand by waiting for change. There are a number of things companies can do right away to begin changing the culture of corruption, and they can start this process by getting their own houses in order. After all, if a company that has authority over the salaries, the terms and conditions of work of thousands of people cannot influence the behavior of its employees within its own confines, what chances are there of making improvements in society at large?
More and more Russian companies are seeking to attract foreign investment through initial public offerings. To do this, they need to show three years of accounts under international standards and certain minimum standards of corporate governance. Other companies, hoping to attract strategic investors and increase their asset value, need to become more transparent. International law and accounting firms, and lending or investment banks, are playing a critical role in working with these companies to adapt to international business standards and regulations. Companies that have audited accounts or gone through an IPO can serve as role models to others. Some of these companies are instituting integrity policies within their own companies, appointing independent nonexecutive directors to their boards, and introducing new management systems to make sure that all employees are fully conscious of the rules and conditions of employment. 
While it is too early to say to what extent these companies have been successful in improving the integrity of their operations, the institutionalization of management tools is the first step toward creating what might be called corruption-free zones within the structure of companies.
A larger number of Russian companies are now coming into contact with multinationals. Many act as distributors or agents for imported brands, but others are now becoming suppliers, especially to some of the large investors in the Russian market — companies such as Shell, BP, Nestle, IKEA, Boeing, Metro and Auchan are all to varying degrees purchasing Russian goods and services. The multinationals have to operate, even in Russia, according to international standards, and in many cases they have to comply with U.S. law. These companies have a responsibility toward their shareholders to prove that they are purchasing and selling in an ethical manner. As their presence in the market increases, they will insist that their suppliers and distributors also prove they can manage their commercial relations according to international standards. This is not limited to the problem of corruption — it is also a question of work conditions, human rights, health, safety and environment, and overall quality control.
Finally, there is the question of how companies can resist when subjected to corrupt practices, especially by government agencies. Surprisingly, despite the overall negative trend, it’s not all bad news. There are a number of cases that show that when companies are determined to fight back, they can do so. There was a recently victory for justice in the Russian courts — Japan Tobacco Inc. is challenging a retrospective $100 million tax bill in the courts. Two years ago, IKEA went public on an attempt by a local authority to delay permissions for opening a new store. And a month ago, Motorola and Yevroset brought to public attention the apparently gratuitous confiscation of a shipment of mobile telephones. These exceptions show individual action in the courts and the press can sometimes work.
It can be even more effective when companies work together. Industry-specific groups in electronics and pharmaceuticals are trying to institute codes of practice and lobby together as a sector when one or more of their members are “attacked.” In Tomsk and Novosibirsk, where there is a strong concentration of small and mid-sized businesses that are particularly prone to corruption, there are grassroots attempts to bring the business community and the local governments together around this issue. 
In the end, companies have a critical role to play in changing the culture of corruption in Russia. It is a question of leadership, professionalism and good management. Just because these are not the values that are prevalent in this society does not mean that they do not exist and that they will not be present in the future. Business leaders can and should take a role in educating their peers, their partners and future generations of managers and employees in new ways of doing business that in the long term will be more honest, more open and above all more rewarding for the individuals concerned, the companies they work for and, ultimately, society as a whole.

Brook Horowitz is the executive director of the Russia Partnership for Responsible Business Practices and representative of the International Business Leaders Forum (www.iblf.ru) in Russia.

TITLE: Raising Birthrates or Ratings?
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: In his annual address, President Vladimir Putin proposed a way to resolve the country’s demographic crisis: give mothers 1,500 rubles ($56) per month for the first child and 3,000 rubles a month plus 250,000 rubles in “maternal capital” for the second. That adds up to more than $1 billion per year.
The demographic crisis is Russia’s biggest problem. Yukos and the Caucasus pale in comparison. But the question remains: Does Putin want to improve the demographic situation or raise his ratings?
Every year the population decreases by 700,000 people. This figure is well known. But it’s less well known that this decline is caused not so much by a low birth rate — which is similar to that in Western countries — but rather by a fantastically high mortality rate. Outside Russia, such high mortality rates can only be found in HIV-infected African countries. The problem is not that women aren’t having many children or the poor quality of life of the children they give birth to. The problem is that we give birth like Europeans and die like Africans.
I won’t argue that we need to raise the standard of living more than decrease the mortality rate for one reason: We aren’t dying from a lack of democracy. Experts are in total agreement on this. The main reason for the high mortality rate is not the economy, the medical system or authoritarianism. The main reason is alcohol.
When Mikhail Gorbachev kicked off his campaign against drunkenness, alcohol consumption dropped by 27 percent and male mortality by 12 percent. 
A leading Russian demographer, A.V. Nemtsov, estimated that 1.22 million lives were saved by the 1986-91 campaign.
Take two of the poorest regions of the country, Dagestan and Ingushetia. Residents there have the longest life spans in Russia. The reason for this is simple: they don’t drink. 
In other words, the most obvious way to prevent the extinction of the nation is not to raise the birth rate but to fight alcohol consumption. 
But as the experience of Gorbachev’s campaign shows, fighting alcohol is not a popular measure. It would take votes away from Putin and would be a serious blow to the class of lumpen bureaucrats that make up his political base. After all, any dirty business in the country (including the production and sale of vodka) is protected by men at the top.
So instead of fighting against the main cause of mortality, which might hurt the president’s popularity, we see money being handed out to voters. And we can conclude that the main goal is not to raise the birth rate. It’s to raise ratings.
But this isn’t just populism. There is a far more serious consequence of the president’s decision. We all know the kind of women who will respond to the call to “have a baby and get $100.” In Czechoslovakia they tried this in the 1970s and the main beneficiaries were Gypsy women, who gave birth to seven to 10 children.
This is the classic way to form a lumpen class of voters who are dependent on the authorities. The French socialists took this path when they provided citizenship and welfare to Arabs who had emigrated to the country while they cut off their career development and integration into society. With the best intentions, they created citizens who would vote for a free ride. And then they paid for it with last year’s Paris riots.
Mothers who give birth to get 700 rubles to spend on vodka are not a rarity in Russia today. Soon they will get 3,000 rubles. I don’t know what kind of mothers they will be, but one thing is for sure. They will be good voters for Putin.
But the population of Russia is still declining by 700,000 people per year. Demography is too serious a matter to be used as a card in electoral games.

Yulia Latynina hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.

TITLE: Absurdist man
AUTHOR: By Todd Shy
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Speed is both midwife and temptress of literary comedy. To achieve lightness, prose must skate rather than amble, dart and not brood. It must be swift. And yet comedy that is nothing but speed and excess risks becoming frivolous. At its literary best comedy is promiscuous and open, but scored throughout with real human pain. This is true from Shakespeare and “Don Quixote” to Gogol and “Candide.” Something important is at stake. We are moved as well as delighted.
In the space of two novels, “The Russian Debutante’s Handbook” (2002), and now “Absurdistan,” the St. Petersburg-born American author Gary Shteyngart has established himself as a formidable comic novelist.
Shteyngart abandons his characters to the machinery of modern life and invites us to laugh as they negotiate, Chaplin-style, with the gears. “Absurdistan” introduces 30-year-old Russian ÎmigrÎ Misha Vainberg, a gangster’s son educated at a liberal arts college in the American Midwest (Shteyngart himself is an Oberlin grad). For the first third of the novel, Misha is stranded in St. Petersburg, which he dubs St. Leninsburg. His oligarch father is flush, so Misha lives the high life, riding around the city in a Land Rover, with a manservant at his side and Vegas folds of cash in his pocket. But when his father murders an Oklahoma businessman, and is, in turn, assassinated on Palace Bridge, the United States refuses to readmit the son. To escape Russia, Misha schemes to obtain a Belgian passport, which requires him to fly to Absurdistan, “the Norway of the Caspian,” a former Central Asian Soviet republic richly endowed with oil.
Weighing more than 300 pounds and with a warrior’s appetite, Misha Vainberg has an adolescent fascination with his body, from his “big squishy hands” to the folds of his neck to a purple penis scarred by an adult circumcision. His flesh is the embodiment of American abundance, as well as of the country’s simplistic joie de vivre. If the Russian famously cultivates soul, his American counterpart here attends to the belly. Misha’s college nickname was Snack Daddy; he announces a meal as “feeding time;” four dozen Buffalo wings in the penthouse of a Hyatt make for a nice afternoon snack; taxi drivers in New York, witnessing his table exploits, “[broadcast] news of my gluttony to their relatives in Lahore.” Misha’s obesity is not a problem but a kind of monument to the good life. The heroes in both “Russian Debutante’s Handbook” and “Absurdistan” have the immigrant’s blend of cynicism and idealism, but these are privileged innocents, lucking into cash, sex, and cinematic adventures abroad.
Shteyngart describes fleshiness with the gusto of Saul Bellow, whose own parents emigrated from St. Petersburg shortly before he was born. Misha recalls leaning against the “worsted bristles” of his father’s mustache, for example, and his “swollen Aramaic face.” 
Even more Bellovian is a quick portrait in “Russian Debutante’s Handbook” of a man lying in swimming trunks: “His body was loosely organized like a booming Sunbelt city, suburban rivulets of fat spilling out in all directions.” Flesh in “Absurdistan” is not a substitute for intellect — Misha is plenty smart — but a kind of compensation for the absent soul, the arena of our worldly bliss.
Indeed, Misha’s utopia is uncomplicated by older questions of transcendence. Give him New York City, a lover with a strong appetite for sex (preferably in a Chelsea loft), some East Coast rap, and a good restaurant meal (also preferably in New York), and he insists he will be happy. At the end of the novel, he summarizes these “essential desires” as “a girl, a city, a libertine but tender way of life.” Philip Roth meets F. Scott Fitzgerald. Raised in St. Petersburg, Shteyngart’s hero presents a baldly Americanized vision of the world: “We must all strive to be as Western as possible,” Misha observes. And “that old argument between the Westernizers and the Slavophiles,” the old tension between tradition and European-style progress? “It’s not much of an argument at all, is it?” 
And so, while Ladas go on rusting, children in the Caucasus divide their first McDonald’s hamburger, and hookers fawn on employees of Halliburton, or “Golly Burton,” as they chant over and over, like Pentecostals on the brink of reverie. Part of what makes Shteyngart interesting is that he is ambivalent toward both his Russian heritage and his American inheritance. “I am an American,” Misha declares, echoing Bellow’s Augie March, but he is an American “impounded in a Russian’s body.” The ambivalence, Shteyngart asserts, is not resolvable: “when a Russian moves between two universes, this feeling of finality persists, the logical impossibility of a place like Russia existing alongside the civilized world, of Ann Arbor, Michigan, sharing the same atmosphere with, say, Vladivostok. It was like those mathematical concepts I could never understand in high school: if, then. If Russia exists, then the West is a mirage; conversely, if Russia does not exist, then and only then is the West real and tangible.”
When Misha flees to Absurdistan, the personal comedy of an overweight ÎmigrÎ becomes the global farce of oil-mad Americans and the political chaos they create. The country collapses into civil war, American diplomats and oil executives flee in Chinook helicopters from an updated Saigon embassy, but Misha stays behind. Meanwhile, Absurdistani leaders hope for coverage of their conflict on CNN. The attention of the West, of course, means the prospect of U.S. aid.
The abruptness of the narrative shift is jolting. We are following Misha’s quest to get a passport, and suddenly democracy advocates are lined up in a parking lot and executed at close range. The novel staggers a little between political/cultural commentary and farce. It works better as farce. Shteyngart’s satire too often collapses into contempt. Of an American diplomat whom he views as a sell-out, Misha muses, “The look I gave him indicated that he was not worthy of sharing the planet with me.” Observing a family in McDonald’s splitting a single hamburger into six pieces “so that each family member savored a little taste,” of this American dream, Misha’s comment is dismissive: “Poor souls.” Isn’t there at least a trace of pathos in this scene? On the phone with his psychiatrist, who is kind of a cartoon whenever he appears in the novel, Misha notes, “I could hear him slurping on his beloved citrus shake with vitamin boost, the modern equivalent of the analyst’s cigar.” 
The farce is so much more effective. In that same McDonald’s, when gunfire breaks out in the streets, customers crouch behind cardboard cutouts of the food chain’s mascots, “commandeering them as ‘human shields.” Or when a companion hyperventilates in the attack, Misha breaks into a song about child abuse: “Breathe, Mr. Sakha, breathe. Would you like me to sing a calming Western song? ‘My name is Luka,’ I sang. ‘I live on the second floor.’” Both moments play on the globalization of Western culture, but they avoid the heavy-handedness of a line like, “I was trying to stay positive, as they do in the States all the time.” It’s not that Shteyngart is straining to make the novel weighty or serious with political commentary, but that these moments of bitterness seem untuned. We need novelists to have discernment and to expose hypocrisy and shallowness, but we also need them to be more generous than we are. Gratuitous empathy is one of the things we learn from art. Contempt usually seems too obvious. Misha styles himself a “depressed and immobile…twenty-first century Oblomov.” But the hero of Ivan Goncharov’s nineteenth-century novel is more generous: “Depict a thief, a fallen woman, a stuck-up fool, but don’t forget they are human beings,” Oblomov says. “Yes, thought is made fruitful by love. Stretch a helping hand to the fallen man or weep over him, but don’t jeer! Love him, try to see yourself in him, and heal him as you would yourself — then I will read you and bow down before you.” Misha Vainberg is much funnier than Oblomov, but his humanity is less expansive.
The other humorous trope that will test the reader’s patience is the character Jerry Shteynfarb, an undisguised version of the author, who, in “Absurdistan,” is credited with writing a novel called “The Russian Arriviste’s Hand Job,” a “sad little dirge about his immigrant life,” which the Americans, “naturally,” lapped up. Naturally. Put Russia in your title and make a million bucks. Shteynfarb steals Misha’s girlfriend Rouenna, and Misha’s quest for her and desire for her shape the novel to its end. But the Shteyngart-Shteynfarb sub-drama, while briefly funny, never gains momentum. Still, it gives the real author the chance to show he doesn’t take his success too seriously. Even Jerry Shteynfarb could do it, and look at what a schmuck he is. Gary Shteyngart’s prose is bold and rollicking, but it has the modesty of effective comedy. The fiction writer, he knows, is not running for office. 
And yet… “Absurdistan” is high comedy, but beneath the fleshy fun of the novel, beneath the global satire, is a skeleton of somber grief. The prologue warned us that the story would hurl forward toward cataclysm: “Grief for Russia, the distant land of my birth, and for Absurdistan, where the calendar will never pass the second week of September 2001.” Misha flees war-torn Absurdistan on a luxury train and finds refuge among a group of Mountain Jews on Sept. 10, 2001. The novel ends here, with his plan of returning to New York to find bliss with Rouenna. He will arrive, one assumes, on 9/11. Shteyngart takes an obvious risk ending his novel on the brink of the hijacked flights, but Misha’s convincing love for New York, the immigrant’s love, lets this conclusion work. Shteyngart’s lyricism describing the city is so charged it almost runs away from him. We are in Gatsby’s world before the disillusionment sets in: “the carpeted grid of Manhattan sinking into the flat horizon, the garlands of yellow light — sharp, overreaching — that form the facades of skyscrapers, the garlands of yellow light — diffuse, flickering — that form the sprawl of tenements, the garlands of yellow light — swerving, opportunistic — that form the headlights of taxi caravans: the garlands of yellow light, aye, in their horizontal and vertical arrangements that form a final resting place for the collected hopes of our civilization.” 
The shadow of 9/11 draws a kind of curtain on the novel’s “hard-won ascent brokered by the possibility of a sharp fall into nothingness.” Early in “Absurdistan,” the Twin Towers had had a kind of religious effect on Misha, who had imagined he could rent an apartment inside. Glowing “white in the afternoon sun,” the World Trade Center, he notes, “looked to me like the promise of socialist realism fulfilled.” The hijackers saw them as emblems of western capitalism. This novel suggests that both visions are absurd.
Shteyngart’s comic sensibility traces the weighty concerns of literature with a deft touch. He skims rather than analyzes the cultural issues American novelists often fret over. His characters are not sure enough of themselves to be sure about global problems. But because they remain on the move, they don’t seem introspective and romantic. They are comic figures who work hard to maintain some kind of dignity. Another American novelist, David Foster Wallace, bemoaning the narcissism of post-war fiction, has called for a recovery of earnestness, for writing that is about “the stuff that’s really important.” Shteyngart shows that this can be done with both lightness and tenderness. 
What elevates Shteyngart’s comedy in the end is that it both indulges in cynicism and transcends it. “For I wanted, more than anything, to be saved,” Misha says. “To shed my weight and to be born anew.” To fly “the way I do everything else—in fits and starts.” But still to fly. He does.

Todd Shy, a writer based in Raleigh, North Carolina, attended the 2005 Summer Literary Seminar in St. Petersburg.

TITLE: Zhivago lives
AUTHOR: By Olga Petrova
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Repressed by the Soviet Union, feted by Nobel judges, glammed up by Hollywood — “Doctor Zhivago” is one of Russia’s stand-out 20th-century novels. On May 10, Russian audiences sized up the first homegrown screen version of Boris Pasternak’s classic with the launch of a television series starring some of the country’s best-known actors.
The story follows Yury Zhivago, the poetically-minded doctor, as he struggles through the 1917 Russian revolution and on into the strange new world that followed — tortured by his conflicting feelings for two very different women. It is a potent tale that got the full Hollywood treatment in David Lean’s 1965 hit, a study in snowflakes and sleighbells, immortalized by Maurice Jarre’s score and Omar Sharif’s brooding, markedly un-Slavic, good looks.
Russians are inclined to dismiss that film as an exotic melodrama, a romanticized outsider’s view.
It remains to be seen whether they will warm to the latest adaptation of a book once denounced by the Communist Party establishment as unfit to print. 
For Zhivago is both bourgeois and intellectual — a moral man but no Marxist dialectician. The birth of the Soviet Union, for him, was not a glorious chance to cast off his chains. Instead it shattered any chance he might have had of happiness.
“I became acquainted with ‘Doctor Zhivago’ when I read 900 pages of flimsy paper in one day,” said the series director, Alexander Proshkin, recalling the time when unapproved books had to be passed round secretly in homemade samizdat copies.
“I got given it on one condition: that I didn’t leave the house. I had to read it all and bring it straight back.”
Doctor Zhivago was eventually published abroad in 1957 and won the Nobel Prize a year later. Pasternak turned it down, fearing repercussions. By 1960 he was dead.
But despite the chaos that dogged the lives of the generation that came of age in 1917, there was also room for dreams of a better future, Proshkin said. 
“There was hope that the old way of life would be broken and that things would be new and good. That is exactly the state we find ourselves in at the start of the 21st century. It is all the same. People don’t change. Mentally we haven’t changed at all.” 
This is only the latest in a series of Soviet-era classics to hit the small screen. In the last six months Russia’s newly-confident television industry has offered up Mikhail Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita” and Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s “The First Circle” to sizeable audiences and largely positive reviews.
Despite the totally different genres  both stories ask how people should confront abusive power. Pasternak’s heroes and heroines face similar problems but his son, Yevgeny, does not think the television series manages to capture his father’s voice.
“The author’s main thought was that even in the most terrible of circumstances, mankind holds onto its faith, its love of life,” he said.“In this film, that atmosphere of love has disappeared.”

TITLE: Chernov’s choice
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
TEXT: New York-based composer and saxophonist John Zorn will come to the city with his band Painkiller this week. 
Zorn, 52, originally started the band, which combines experimental jazz and death metal, in 1991 with bassist Bill Laswell and drummer Mick Harris, formerly of Napalm Death and Scorn. While Harris quit in 1995, Zorn and Laswell have recently reformed the band with Japanese drummer Yoshida Tatsuya. Laswell is a renowned musician and producer in his own right, while Tatsuya, who also leads his own band Ruins, is known as the “grandfather of Japanese punk.”
According to the Guardian newspaper, the late avant-rock guitarist Derek Bailey once described Zorn as “a Diaghilev of contemporary music.” Painkiller  perform at PORT on Monday.
This week will also see another, younger experimental U.S. act, So Percussion, performing in the city. So Percussion (so being a form of the Japanese verb meaning “to play,”  according to the band’s web site) is a quartet of percussionists formed in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1999.
“So Percussion’s goal is to challenge and enable the creation of new music that combines musical, theatrical and artistic elements,” wrote the band on its web site. “From the pure joy of drumming to the strange beauty of everyday objects, audiences are uniquely moved and entertained by this total immersion in sound and imagination.” So Percussion will perform at JFC Jazz Club on Friday.
On the local scene, Anton Belyankin, a singer and bass player with the ska band Dva Samaliota, who co-founded the popular bar  Datscha two years ago, will launch a new bar this week. Called Fidel, the place will open with a concert by the fun Moscow band Korabl on Saturday. 
The members of Korabl are long-time friends of Dva Samaliota and often played at Griboyedov, the bunker club that the band manages.
Korabl grew out of a late-1980s band called Samosval (“Dump Truck”), a collection of high-school students (including Voznesensky), who lived in Moscow’s famed “House of Artists” on Verkhnyaya Maslovka. 
“Korabl is an artistic project, not a musical one,” said guitarist Ilya Voznesensky in an interview with The St. Petersburg Times in 2002.
“In the beginning, because we were all artists, we used to pretend that we played in a band,” he said. “We performed at one-time art shows. As time went on, it turned into a musical project in its own right, but we still get invited to play at galleries.” See article, page iv.
The soul-funk  group J.D. and the Blenders, formed by The St. Petersburg Ska-Jazz Review vocalist Jennifer Davis and musicians from the band FrogLegs last year, appear at Platforma on Friday. The band which now performs with new percussionist Mikhail Nikolayev, formerly of Markscheider Kunst, will feature local musician Alexei Chizhik on vibraphone.

TITLE: Piano man
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Innovative pianist Karol Beffa in concert at the Hermitage Theater.
If you have ever wanted to hear original musical interpretations of visual art, say Kazimir Malevich’s futurist masterpiece “The Black Square” or portraits in sound of literary chracters such as Charles Dickens’ Mr. Pickwick, now is your chance.
The talented French composer and pianist Karol Beffa, who will come to town for a single concert at the Hermitage Theater on Monday and a series of events Tuesday, specializes in improvising to themes suggested by members of his audiences.
Beffa, who begins a two-year term as composer in residence for the National Orchestre de Toulouse in September, thrives on such bold, adrenaline-driven improvisations. “The crucial thing is not to wait too long before starting; I usually don’t give the idea more than three or four seconds thought,” Beffa reveals. 
“What I find fascinating about this is the chance to create compositions at the very moment of performing them.”
The themes could be musical or have a literary or artistic connection: the composer has not yet been asked to improvise on Leonardo Da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” but has already created two musical versions of Pablo Picasso’s “Guernica.”
“Whatever the subject, it has to strongly relate to music,” Beffa explains. “I could play a national anthem in the minor key instead of the major. The themes could be striking, both bizarre and exciting. Once someone asked me to invent a jolly tune with my right hand and a sad melody with my left hand at the same time.”
Beffa studied composition at the Paris National Conservatory, philosophy at Cambridge and history at L’Ecole Normale Superieure, France’s most prestigious university, where he currently teaches. On top of that Beffa holds a diploma in statistics and economic administration from France’s L’Ecole Nationale de la Statistique.
“I was interested in economics but certainly not to the extent that I would spend time doing it, and I never really saw myself in the field of statistics,” Beffa admits. 
“Those two years may even have been a waste of time really... but at least it didn’t last long.”
At the age of eight the musician — with about two years of theory and piano lessons under his belt at the time — played the young Mozart in Marcel Bluwal’s 1982 television mini-series “Mozart,” recently shown on Russia’s Culture TV channel.
“The fun part — and most vivid memory still — was scribbling the notes in front of the camera, pretending to be a composer,” Beffa recalls. 
“It was merely a mechanical thing but there was something greatly exciting about it. Even after the filming was over I often had an itch to do it again, just for myself. I am inclined to think that early experience served to inspire my own excercises in composition.”
Beffa went on to write his own score at the age of eight, almost immediately after portraying Mozart, one of the composers he most admires along with Bach and Ravel.
“There is a fascinating paradox about Mozart’s music: it is incredible how much a minor Mozart theme can convey happiness, while a major theme can bring you to tears,” Beffa said. “Bach’s art of counterpoints is unrivaled, and I admire Ravel’s fine harmonies.”
The musician entered the conservatory at the age of 14 but his youth didn’t alienate him from the rest of his class, where the students were on average ten years older. 
“I wasn’t isolated, on the contrary, it gave me the opportunity to discuss new, deeper, more sophisticated issues than I would have done with pupils of my own age,” he said. “It only did me good.”
The performance at the Hermitage Theater on Monday will feature Mozart’s Adagio B-minor KV 540, the world premiere of Beffa’s own work “Hermitage,” exerpts from Charles Koechlin’s “The Persian Hours,” a series of improvisations on themes proposed by the audience and musical illustrations to Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau’s 1927 film masterpiece “Sunrise,” which will be screened as part of the show.
Improvisation comes naturally to the musician, who often plays the piano at home, seeking distraction or a shift of mood. These impromptu excersies have a somewhat therapeutic effect, “being an attempt at releasing the thoughts and emotions that may have haunted me during the day,” as he puts it.
As a composer, Beffa often finds sad and adverse experiences more stimulating and inspiring than positive ones.
“Oddly enough, darker moods are more productive for me,” he said. “Composing is a very solitary experience in principle, and it may be quite depressing at times. But there are moments when I rework the same theme in a different state of mind, and it gets better. What I really don’t want to happen to me — what I am afraid of? — is if I hear my own work in twenty years’ time and realize it was a waste of time writing it...”

On Tuesday Karol Beffa holds a public meeting at the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory (2 p.m.), followed by a lecture on 20th century French music at 7 p.m. at the French Institute, Moika 20.

TITLE: Northern soul
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Third Nordic Music Festival is in full swing.
The Third Nordic Music Festival — running through May 28 this year — thrives on the edges of both high brow and street-level entertainment.
This time round, the event juxtaposes a performance of the Violinkonzert by Finnish-born Paris-based composer Kaja Saariaho at the Hermitage Theater (May 28, 7 p.m.) with a concert of the amateur “Logreglukor Reykjavikur,” the Icelandic Policemen Choir at the State Cappella courtyard (Tuesday, 4 p.m.). Predictably, there will also be performances of works by Jean Sibelius and Edvard Grieg.
The festival was established in 2004 by Swedish conductor Kristofer Wahlander, who is artistic director and principal conductor of the St. Petersburg Festival Orchestra. Its mission is to showcase an array of classical masterpieces by Nordic composers performed by distinguished musicians. The festival doesn’t confine itself to the already famous names, for example Grieg, whose work is featured prominently in repertoires of Russian orchestras. Neither does it follow the footsteps of Finland’s Musica Nova festival to devote its concerts solely to experimental contemporary music.
The Nordic Music Festival brings to St. Petersburg music from various eras.
“We don’t make a point of digging out and performing a long-lost score that everybody has forgotten about because it was no good,” Wahlander smiles. “On the contrary, we give our audiences what we like ourselves and what is admired in the Nordic states.”
The festival opened on Monday with Wahlander conducting the St. Petersburg Festival Orchestra in the program of Grieg and Hugo Alven.
Traditionally, the festival’s program reflects anniversaries of Nordic cultural icons. Last year’s program made reference to the 200th anniversary of the birth of Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen and 140 years since the birth of Finnish composer Jean Sibelius. 
This year Norwegian notables are in focus. Paying tribute to the 100th anniversary of the death of the renowned Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, a concert at St. Petersburg State University on Friday (7 p.m.) features an internationally acclaimed trio — the soprano Isa Katharina Gericke, the violinist Annar Folleso and the pianist Wolfgang Plagge — which will perform a program of works by Per Norgard, Toivo Kuula, and Wolfgang Plagge, as well as by Grieg.
Perhaps the festival’s biggest international star is the Danish soprano Gitta-Maria SjÚberg, renowned for her Mozart, Bizet and Puccini repertoire and who has performed with the world’s most acclaimed singers, including Placido Domingo. SjÚberg, accompanied by pianist Irene Hasager, gives a solo recital — fusing Nordic music with popular Italian opera arias— at the White Hall of Peterhof’s Grand Palace on Sunday at 6 p.m.
Wahlander feels rewarded by the attention the festival receives in St. Petersburg. “It is all the more encouraging to see the attention if you consider how much classical music means for people in this city, and how much the audiences know about it,” he said. “In Sweden, if you stop someone at random and ask who is the chief conductor at Stockholm Philharmonic, what you are most likely to get is a strange look. But here, almost everyone seems to have a certain relation to classical music.” 
Natalya Entelis, a prominent music historian and one of the festival’s organizers, draws attention to choral concerts. She said the performance of Stockholm’s St. Clara Church Choir at 7 p.m. on Saturday, May 27, at St. Catherine’s Swedish Church is not to be missed. 
“Choral culture in Sweden has a long and venerable tradition, and even amateur church choirs would surpass many professional Russian ensembles,” she said. “What I am trying to say, is don’t try to pick the concerts like raisins from a bun. A church choir can give you a highlight, however humble its name may have sounded.”

www.nordicmusic.spb.ru 
www.norden.spb.ru

TITLE: Island of freedom
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A new bar named after Fidel Castro looks set to become a popular hangout.
Fidel, the new bar that musician Anton Belyankin is opening this week, is likely to repeat the extraordinary success of Datscha, the local favorite with expats, the artsy crowd and students that he co-founded two years earlier.
Located right next door to Datscha, which Belyankin quit early last year, in the premises formerly occupied by a sports store, the new bar will follow the formula that has proved to be successful with a bunch of recently-opened, youth-oriented indie-disco bars — a charismatic host, friendly staff and good music.
Named after Fidel Castro, the Cuban tyrant, the bar will be partly slanted toward “left-wing, anti-fascist” youth, according to Belyankin, 38, who picked up the idea from Western European alternative bars that he has visited and performed at when touring with the local ska-pop band Dva Samaliota.
“There is no bar in the city where an alternative crowd and anti-fascists could gather which could be kind of a center for them,” he said.
Although the bar’s name honors Cuba’s aging dictator, Belyankin links the name to the “Island of Freedom,” as Cuba was known in Soviet propaganda.
“Of course, in a certain sense Castro is a dictator. But on the other hand, what about the romanticism of that period? ‘Cuba is an Island of Freedom’,” he said.
“Propaganda may look very attractive from outside. It was well presented and well-worded. I wanted this romanticism, the romanticism of revolution. Not a bloody mess and this scary dictatorship.”
The venue, still being kitted out earlier this week, is decorated by wall paintings by artist Konstantin Fyodorov representing his vision of Fidel, according to Belyankin.
“We wanted to make a sunny place, a bar not about Cuba but a bar with the feeling that sun shines through the windows all the time,” Belyankin said.
Music will be central to Fidel’s atmosphere. 
Belyankin, who performed as a DJ at Griboyedov and Datscha under the moniker M. Atom (which stands for Mirny Atom, or Peaceful Atom), is decisive about continuing DJing at Fidel. With an impressive collection of vinyl records, he concentrates on rock — from 1970s hard rock to The Sex Pistols and the Violent Femmes.
“I’d like to have as much rock as possible,” said Belyankin, adding that other DJs will  perform at the bar as well such as Alexander Korbukov, also known as DJ Mono, who specializes in the 1960s and early 1970s rock and Motown artists. 
Apart from DJs and background music, Fidel is set to hold live concerts, with a gig by Korabl, the cult band formed by Moscow artists and architects that influenced the now hugely popular local band Leningrad when it started in the late 1990s. 
“We don’t want to do concerts for concerts’ sake, just to draw people here, but to try to make each concert a major event in the city,” said Belyankin.
“To have a young interesting band or a renowned band that rarely performs — something that would be interesting to listen to and to look at. If we don’t find anything interesting for a particular night, there simply will be no concert.”
Bands will perform at 9 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, while DJs will perform from 10 p.m. until the early morning. Belyankin said a minimum cover (between 100 and 150 rubles) will be taken when a band is playing.
“The payment is for musicians to make some money, because we’ll give 100 percent of it to the musicians,” he said.
Both Fidel and Datscha are located in the massive building of Maly Gostiny Dvor, the 18th century trade quarter  built by Italian architect Giacomo Quarenghi, now in need of repair.
“When we were launching Datscha, we hoped this whole street would turn into kind of a entertainment center — not restaurants and casinos, but bars and clubs with good music, where a good crowd can come to. Sort of egalitarian, human-like places.”
Belyankin has impressive experience as a club art director, first at the now-defunct nightclub Nora and then at Griboyedov, the legendary bunker club which will turn 10 later this year. He launched Datscha with his former partner Anna-Christin Albers, who continues to run the place, in May 2004.
“I simply wanted to try and open a bar because all my friends said how difficult, almost impossible, it would be,” said Belyankin.
“And here you are — here’s Datscha: great new DJs, great music, great atmosphere, everything is wonderful, and all is done on the cheap and very quickly. It worked just great, it’s a good example.”
Although Datscha is apparently a financial success, Belyankin said he did not have great commercial ambitions.
“I didn’t have the goal of making as much money as possible,” he said. 
“My demands are rather limited. I already have a good guitar and I have a great amp as well. To make money in such a manner is good, but it’s boring.”
“To me it’s not business, it’s rather a way of spending time. Like musicians — they record a new album. It’s something new.” 
Belyankin also co-manages Hotel California, a hostel for foreign musicians and visitors that he launched with Dva Samaliota drummer Mikhail Sindalovsky last year. According to him, the hostel has become popular after being listed in the Lonely Planet guidebook. 
“It was the same idea — not to make lots of money or develop the hospitality industry or whatever, but just to prove that it is possible,” he said.
“If you want to do something for people, rather for making money, then it turns out very well. The same is true for Fidel.”
Dva Samaliota, the seminal local 1990s band which Belyankin co-founded in 1990, is also active, having performed at Platforma earlier this month. The band’s guitarist Andrei Gradovich, who co-owns Fidel with Belyankin, will also work as a bartender.
Belyankin said he would like Fidel, which can hold around 100 people, to occupy a place similar to Saigon, the now-defunct cafe on the corner of Nevsky Prospekt and Liteiny Prospekt that became, unofficially, a home for underground artists, writers and musicians in the 1960s through the 1980s.
“It’s something that we miss now — a bar where you come to and meet some people you know, chat with them, discuss something,” he said.
“But not in such an underground, marginal way like Saigon, although nobody broke plates or pissed on the walls there. I don’t know — you just want sometimes to sit in a good bar. It is convenient, it’s in the center. And sometimes there is good music too.”
Unlike the other similar bars, Fidel boasts spacious and clean toilets with mirrors which it hopes to keep in a perfect state. And, according to Belyankin, there will not be teenage entertainments such as table football.
Even if the bar has a success similar to Datscha’s overnight popularity, Belyankin said he wants to keep things quiet.
“We want to have an administrator at the entrance so that he will not let anybody whom we don’t know in. Or don’t let the people with unpleasant faces in. It is not designed to be a hullabaloo just as Datscha was not. The idea of Datscha was to have a house party every night.”

Fidel bar, at 9 Dumskaya Ulitsa, opens with a concert by Korabl at 8 p.m. on Saturday.

TITLE: Howard Lauds China, Writer Gets 12 Years
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: The economic expansion and growing political influence of China and India is a benefit, not a threat to American leadership and the global system, Australian Prime Minister John Howard said on Wednesday a day after China sentenced a journalist to a 12 year prison term.
The economic expansion of both nations is swelling the ranks of the global middle class and will lead to greater political participation and environmental stewardship, he said.
“China’s rise is one of the defining phenomenon of our age,” Howard said in a speech to the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations. “We see it as good for China, good for Australia, good for the world.”
However, China must contribute more to the institutions that underpin global prosperity and security and the international community must work to build on shared interests and widen the circle of cooperation if China is to be a “constructive member of the international system,” Howard said.
“It is not only China that needs to adjust to changing realities. The international community must also acknowledge that China is determined to succeed and to reclaim its place in the global order,” Howard said.
“A constructive dialogue between the United States and China, which allows frank and open discussions, will contribute greatly to regional peace and stability.”
In China on Tuesday freelance writer Yang Tianshui was sentenced to 12 years in prison, receiving an unusually harsh penalty amid one of China’s most severe media crackdowns since the 1980s. 
The sentencing of Yang on subversion charges was one of a flurry of court actions Tuesday against Chinese reporters. In Beijing, prosecutors filed a new indictment against a Chinese researcher for The New York Times who has been in custody since 2004 on state secrets charges. In southern China, a journalist went on trial and pleaded innocent to extortion charges.
Yang was convicted after being accused of posting articles on foreign web sites, receiving money from abroad and helping a would-be opposition party, according to his lawyer, Li Jianqiang.
“We think Yang is innocent and should be released immediately,” Li said.
The cases come amid a campaign by President Hu Jintao’s government to tighten control over newspapers, web sites and other media. 
“Fearing that news of land disputes and other civil discontent could fuel a united threat to its authority, the Communist Party government has undertaken one of the biggest media crackdowns since the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy demonstrations,” the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said in a report issued Tuesday.
(AFP, AP)

TITLE: EU Says Romania, Bulgaria Must Deliver
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: STRASBOURG, France — Romania and Bulgaria are still on track to join the European Union on Jan. 1, but Bulgaria must first do more to fight organized crime and corruption and Romania must address agricultural and tax issues, the European Commission said Tuesday. 
The two countries’ progress will be evaluated again in early October, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said.
“The possibility of being ready in 2007 is doable, but it is for the two countries to deliver. At the same time, the European Union needs to deliver a clear signal that it stands ready to honor its commitments,” Barroso said.
Bulgaria, the less prepared of the two countries, must show clear results in investigating and prosecuting organized crime networks; implement laws for fighting fraud and corruption; do more to prevent money laundering; prevent embezzlement of EU aid; and complete agriculture reforms, the commission said in a progress report.
Romania must finish setting up agencies for disbursing EU aid to farmers; raise veterinary standards for livestock and other agricultural reforms; and make its electronic tax administration system interoperable with the EU to allow proper collection of VAT, the report said.
Romanian Prime Minister Calin Popescu Tariceanu welcomed the commission’s report.
“The report sends two messages. Joining the EU in 2007 is completely doable, and that Romania has made progress in the last seven months and has to continue in the same rhythm and same direction,” he said.

TITLE: Gallery of Stars Gives Cannes Glittering Start
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: CANNES, France — Cannes Film Festival got off to a glittering start Wednesday with a galaxy of stars led by the cast of “The Da Vinci Code” bringing Hollywood razzle-dazzle to the French resort. 
Thousands of people pressed at the barriers around the famous red-carpeted steps on the resort’s seafront Croisette to glimpse the stars as they arrived for the official opening of the world’s premier international movie showcase.
The 79-year-old U.S. actor Sidney Poitier officially opened the festival in the Palais des Festivals saying he was honored and privileged to be there “where the genuis of so many of the world’s great cinema auteurs still lingers.”
“Da Vinci” director Ron Howard and leading actors Tom Hanks of the United States and Audrey Tautou of France shook off a slew of early bad reviews of their film, and were all smiles as they posed on the red carpet with their co-stars.

TITLE: Lawmaker Stripped of Citizenship
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: THE HAGUE, Netherlands — A Somali-born lawmaker and fierce critic of radical Islam tearfully announced Tuesday that she is leaving the Netherlands, reportedly for the U.S., after the government threatened to revoke her citizenship for lying on her asylum application. 
The threat to strip Ayaan Hirsi Ali of Dutch citizenship unleashed a fierce debate in parliament at a time of heightened anti-immigrant sentiment in the country.
Hirsi Ali, 36, has been under police guard since a short film she wrote criticizing the treatment of women under Islam provoked the murder of its director, Theo van Gogh, by an Islamic radical.
She said she decided Monday night to resign from parliament after Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk told her “she would strip me of my Dutch citizenship.”
“I am therefore preparing to leave Holland,” Hirsi Ali told reporters in The Hague, her voice choking with emotion. 
She declined to say what she will do next, or to comment on Dutch media reports that she will join the American Enterprise Institute in the United States. A spokesman for the institute refused to comment. The U.S. Embassy in The Hague declined to comment on reports that the government has offered to accept Hirsi Ali.
The decision to revoke Hirsi Ali’s citizenship appeared driven by domestic Dutch politics — and drew criticism from Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Brazil Killings
SAO PAULO, Brazil (AP) — The body count grew in South America’s largest city Wednesday as police — who lost 41 comrades in gang attacks — killed 22 more suspected criminals. Authorities said little about the latest deaths, generating criticism from rights groups. 
Police did not identify any of those they killed, say where they were killed or in what circumstances, Sao Paulo’s leading newspapers reported Wednesday.
Human rights activists said they feared innocent people may have been hurt in the strikes by police enraged by a notorious gang’s attacks on officers on the streets, at their stations, in their homes and at afterwork hangouts.
The latest deaths boosted the overall death toll to 156 since a wave of violence enveloped Sao Paulo last Friday, and came after officers shot 33 presumed gang members dead only a day earlier.

Independent Bono
LONDON (AFP) — Irish rock star Bono added journalism to his resume with a turn as guest editor of the newspaper The Independent which he dedicated to combating AIDS and the poverty it inflicts in Africa.
“No News Today” ran his front-page headline on a red background, but with a small line of print at the bottom reading “Just 6,500 Africans died today as a result of a preventable, treatable disease.”
The poster-style front page was designed by artist Damien Hirst.
Stories about Africa dominated the inside pages, tackling the impact of AIDS, climate change, EU farm subsidies and even mobile phones on a continent largely neglected in the Western news media.

Capital Car Crime
BERLIN (Reuters) — Officers were dumbfounded when they stopped a Polish woman drunk at the wheel of a stolen car, driving on the wrong side of a motorway and without a license, German police said Tuesday. 
“I don’t think I’ve ever encountered such an accumulation of traffic offences,” said Helmuth Klinger, a police spokesman in the western city of Wiesbaden.
“The normal combination would be to drink and then drive against the traffic, but people who steal a car tend to be a bit more discreet as a rule,” he added.
The 28-year-old woman was four times over the legal alcohol limit when she was stopped on the highway between Frankfurt and Wiesbaden, having driven about five miles against the traffic.

Beslan in Hollywood
LOS ANGELES (AFP) — Universal Studios has reportedly bought the rights to an article about the 2004 massacre at a school in Beslan, Russia, near the border with Chechnya, which left more than 300 people dead. 
According to Daily Variety, “The School,” an article by The New York Times’ Moscow correspondent, C.J. Chivers, set to appear in next month’s issue of Esquire magazine, covers the hostage-taking that led to the deaths of 331 people, including 186 children.

TITLE: Cavaliers and Spurs Secure Playoff Victories
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: NEW YORK — Drew Gooden took a pass from LeBron James and sank the winning basket with 27 seconds left to lift the Cleveland Cavaliers to a stunning 86-84 victory over the Detroit Pistons in Auburn Hills on Wednesday. 
James scored 32 points and had five rebounds and five assists, including his pass under the basket to Gooden, who converted to give Cleveland a 3-2 lead over the Eastern Conference champions in the best-of-seven semi-final series.
In the day’s other playoff game, Tim Duncan had a season-high 36 points and 12 rebounds as the defending NBA champions San Antonio Spurs kept their campaign alive with a 98-97 home win over the Dallas Mavericks. 
The Mavericks lead the best-of-seven Western Conference series 3-2 with Game Six in Dallas on Friday.
The Cavaliers now head home for Game Six on Friday with a chance to eliminate the Pistons, who have lost three games in a row for the first time this season.
“Once again tonight we found a way to win,” James told reporters.
“This (the Pistons) is a great team, we knew they were going to make runs especially on their court but we won the ball game.”
James says the Cavaliers will take nothing for granted, noting that the Pistons have overcome series deficits the past two years on the way to winning back-to-back East titles.
“They’ve been down before, we have to continue with a great effort back in our house on Friday and try to win a game,” James said.
“It doesn’t mean anything if we don’t win the last two games. It doesn’t mean anything at all. One thing we have to do now is protect home.”
Detroit’s Ben Wallace missed two free throws in the final minute with the score tied 84-84 and was 0-for-7 from the line in the game. Making one of the shots would have given Detroit the lead for the first time since the second quarter. 
It was Detroit’s first loss at home this post-season but coach Flip Saunders remains confident his team can bounce back.
“It doesn’t mean the series is over,” Saunders told reporters.
Cleveland coach Mike Brown was just relieved to get the victory and the series lead. “What a game,” he said.

TITLE: Zenit Loses More Ground on Leaders as Club Mascot Dies
AUTHOR: By Martin Burlund
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: FC Zenit St. Petersburg drew with Rostov Na Donu 1-1 Wednesday at Petrovsky Stadium in the Russian Premier League and missed a crucial opportunity to turn around a disappointing start to the season.
Zenit had the chance to gain three points on the current leaders (CSKA Moscow in first place with 19 points — seven points more than Zenit) because the match against Rostov was a postponed fixture from earlier in the season. All 16 Premier League teams have now played nine games each.
Norwegian defender Erik Hagen scored Zenit’s goal in the 37th minute from a corner.
Zenit’s joy lasted until shortly after halftime, when Rostov’s Iso Boxer Kanenda headed the ball into the bottom corner, leaving hapless Zenit keeper Vyacheslav Malafeyev stranded.
In the last 15 minutes, Zenit stepped up the pressure in search of a matchwinner, only for the ball to slip the wrong side of the woodwork on several occasions. 
At the news conference after the game, Zenit caretaker coach Vladimir Borovicka provided some light relief when he was asked about his viewing habits in football and other sports in the week of the Champions League final and the World Ice Hockey Championship.
“I am not going to watch any of it. As a matter of fact I’m going to Prague on vacation, spending time with my wife and kids — and my dog,” The Czech replied to a laughing press corps.
Before the start of the game, the stadium announcer delivered the sad news  that  Zenit’s oldest fan, Sofia Aranovich, died on Tuesday aged 91. 
Fans stood for a minute’s silence in memory of the team’s so-called mascot who’d supported Zenit since 1944.

TITLE: Dynamo Two Wins From Final
AUTHOR: By Martin Burland
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Dynamo St. Petersburg fell under the spell of Khimki from the Moscow Oblast in the last two games of their semifinal series in the Russian Basketball League and will now have to win the last two games in order to advance to the final.
Khimki now leads the series 2-1 and only had to win in front of its crowd late Thursday in order to progress to the final.  
Things had started according to plan for Dynamo, having won the first game of the series in their own Yubeleni Arena 69-61, but Khimki were quick to respond, winning the next match 72-62.
In the third game, played in Moscow on Wednesday, Khimki had Dynamo down 49-30, and despite the St. Petersburg side’s spirited  fight back in the second half, getting to 74-73 at one point,  held on to win  77-73.
Kelly McCarty scored a mere eight points, as he was fouled out and played little more than half the match. Center Vladimir Veremeyenko led Dynamo with 24 points.
A Dynamo win on Thursday would mean the two teams meet for a decider in St. Petersburg on Saturday.

TITLE: Zenit Loses More Ground on Leaders as Club Mascot Dies
AUTHOR: By Martin Burlund
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: FC Zenit St. Petersburg drew with Rostov Na Donu 1-1 Wednesday at Petrovsky Stadium in the Russian Premier League and missed a crucial opportunity to turn around a disappointing start to the season.
Zenit had the chance to gain three points on the current leaders (CSKA Moscow in first place with 19 points — seven points more than Zenit) because the match against Rostov was a postponed fixture from earlier in the season. All 16 Premier League teams have now played nine games each.
Norwegian defender Erik Hagen scored Zenit’s goal in the 37th minute from a corner.
Zenit’s joy lasted until shortly after halftime, when Rostov’s Iso Boxer Kanenda headed the ball into the bottom corner, leaving hapless Zenit keeper Vyacheslav Malafeyev stranded.
In the last 15 minutes, Zenit stepped up the pressure in search of a matchwinner, only for the ball to slip the wrong side of the woodwork on several occasions. 
At the news conference after the game, Zenit caretaker coach Vladimir Borovicka provided some light relief when he was asked about his viewing habits in football and other sports in the week of the Champions League final and the World Ice Hockey Championship.
“I am not going to watch any of it. As a matter of fact I’m going to Prague on vacation, spending time with my wife and kids — and my dog,” The Czech replied to a laughing press corps.
Before the start of the game, the stadium announcer delivered the sad news  that  Zenit’s oldest fan, Sofia Aranovich, died on Tuesday aged 91. 
Fans stood for a minute’s silence in memory of the team’s so-called mascot who’d supported Zenit since 1944.

TITLE: Henry Slams Cup Final Ref
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Ten-man Arsenal’s gallant 2-1 defeat by Barcelona in a controversial Champions League final was lamented by the British media on Thursday. 
“So Brave, So Close” was the back page headline in the tabloid Daily Express, while the front page of The Guardian sports section read “Valiant Arsenal fall at the last”. 
“Lost in France” was the Daily Telegraph’s poetic headline on Wednesday’s match in Paris in which Arsenal goalkeeper Jens Lehmann was sent off after 18 minutes for bringing down Barca striker Samuel Eto’o. The Daily Mirror back page read: “Henry accuses ref as Arsenal dream is shattered” in reference to striker Thierry Henry’s claim that the referee was “horrendous”. 
Arsenal took the lead through England defender Sol Campbell after 37 minutes but goals by Eto’o and Juliano Belletti in the last 15 minutes condemned the London side to defeat. 
Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger was furious that Eto’o’s equalizer was allowed, claiming he was offside.

TITLE: Ullrich Responds To His Critics
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: PONTEDERA, Italy — Germany’s Jan Ullrich won the 50-km individual time trial stage of the Giro d’Italia around Pontedera on Thursday and hereby answered the criticism that has been plaguing him throughout the spring that he is overweight and totally unfit.
The T-Mobile rider set a time of 58 minutes and 48 seconds, 28 seconds faster than Italy’s Ivan Basso with another Italian, Marco Pinotti, third at 1:01 adrift. 
Basso’s performance was enough to extend his overall race lead to 2:48 over Spain’s Jose Enrique Gutierrez with Ukrainian Sergei Gonchar and Italian Paolo Salvoldelli in the following places.
Jan Ullrich does not pose a threat  to Basso in the overall standings, but the two are expected to battle it out in this year’s Tour de France, following Lance Armstrong’s retirement after 7 straight wins.
Friday’s 171-km 12th stage is from Livorno to Sestri Levante.