SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1178 (44), Friday, June 16, 2006
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TITLE: UN Racism Expert Starts Investigation
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Does the image of Russia as a hotbed of racism correspond with reality? Following a series of internationally reported killings of people with non-Slavic appearance, Doudou Diene, UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination and xenophobia held a series of meetings in St. Petersburg and Moscow this week to investigate the state of tolerance and presence of racism in the country. 
Diene’s visit, which concludes in Moscow on Friday, will be followed by an extensive analytical report, with the preliminary results to be presented to the UN’s General Assembly later this year.
During his visit, the UN official met with top city officials, local non-governmental organizations, human rights groups and ethnic communities.
Tunkara Aliu, president of the African Union in St. Petersburg describes the state of ethnic tolerance in the city as “disastrous.”
Since September 2005, five people of African origin have been killed in the city.
“This wave of hostility is enormous,” Aliu said. “Beatings have become commonplace and verbal insults follow us wherever we go, be it on the street or on public transport.”
Sofia Kodzova, a representative of the North Caucasus community, called for all ethnic communities represented locally to form an umbrella group and join forces to combat the problem.
“The authorities ignore us and we requested a meeting with Governor Valentina Matviyenko — there was no response, no reaction at all,” Kodzova said. “But the aggression to non-Russians has reached such an alarming level over the past five years that virtually nobody can say they feel safe here if they have dark skin.”
Stefania Kulayeva, head of the Northwest Center for Social and Judicial Assistance to the Roma Community, which is part of the Memorial human rights group, said the wave of terrorist attacks that swept over the country between 2001 and 2004 and shocked the nation has left a bitter side-effect: a vicious stereotype has formed in Russian society.
“A typical visual description of a terrorist in Russia is that of a person ‘with dark skin, dark hair and black eyes’,” she said. “Ordinary Russians have seen and heard that description so many times that this frightening and hated image has become deeply rooted.”
Diene said the Russian authorities were open and unrestrained in their dealings with him. “I have been received by top-level officials, and have had no obstacles or restrictions on this trip,” he said.
Diene’s meeting with city prosecutor Sergei Zaitsev and high-ranking members of the city government was closed to the media. In an interview with the BBC World Service after the event, Sergei Markov, deputy head of the City Hall’s External Relations Committee, described the meeting as constructive, but said the different sides put forward different views of the problem.
“We have provided Mr. Diene with official statistics proving that only 0.8 percent of all crimes registered in town in 2005 were committed against foreigners,” he said. 
“Four crimes can be classified as hate murders. The most recent killing — the murder of a Senegalese student — is still being investigated, but all the other extremist crimes have been solved and two cases have already reached court,” he added. “That shows that the city government and its law enforcement forces are tackling the problem. Human rights groups tend to exaggerate the danger.”
Vatanyar Yagya, a veteran member of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly who chairs the World Politics Department at the Faculty of International Relations at St. Petersburg State University offered a similar view.
“Some of my students are Chechens, and there are no tensions in the class,” he said. “As in every big city, there are different circles in society. A lot of members of ethnic minorities hold high positions in the city’s art, business and political institutions and the city, in general, is very friendly, except for some aggressive, marginalized groups. In that respect, however, St. Petersburg is not unique.”
Diene said he will very carefully study all the information gathered to prepare a thorough an unbiased report. He expressed hope that the preliminary results will be presented to the UN’s National Assembly by the end of the year.
Diene spoke with fascination about the city.
“The image of St. Petersburg has been tarnished by the recent attacks and the city needs to recuperate its international reputation,” Diene said. “Enormously charming, St. Petersburg will become more vibrant and internationally attractive if all foreign visitors, regardless of their race, will be equally welcome and the world hears no more reports of violent attacks on non-Russians.” 
Kulayeva is hopeful that the report will make a difference. 
“Every report makes a difference because it raises awareness and gives the issue higher visibility,” she said. “The United Nations, being a respected international organization, will be able to use its authority to urge the Russian government to develop more efficient strategies.”

TITLE: GM Head Hails City as ‘Detroit of the North’
AUTHOR: By Anna Smolchenko and Yuriy Humber
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner on Tuesday broke ground at the company’s first Russian factory at Shushary, near St. Petersburg, while at the city’s economic forum Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn was signing an investment deal to build another plant nearby.
GM and Nissan will invest $115 million and $200 million, respectively, into their St. Petersburg plants.
“St. Petersburg is often called the Venice of the North,” Wagoner said at the Shushary ceremony. “It may soon be called the Detroit of the North — and believe me, I know Detroit.”
Wagoner, whose last visit to Russia was in 2001, when he signed up for a $300 million venture with AvtoVAZ, delivered a short speech, answered a few questions and then dashed off to meet with President Vladimir Putin.
Wagoner said that he had listened to Putin’s comments at the economic forum earlier Tuesday and said he “shared his vision of a strong and growing economy for Russia and the Russian people.”
Carl-Peter Forster, president for GM in Europe, said after the ceremony that GM hoped to grow its partnership with AvtoVAZ and that the introduction of new models was “possible.” But he added that GM had not received any “immediate answers” on its proposals. 
Flanked by First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko said at the ceremony that the GM project was “a good indicator of Russian-U.S. relations,” and that it was bound to succeed now that Medvedev had become its “godfather.”
Shushary is also the site for a Toyota factory due to open next year, while a Ford plant in Vsevolozhsk, also near St. Petersburg, opened in 2002.
GM’s Shushary plant is expected to go into production in late 2008. The plant will initially produce 25,000 Chevrolet Captiva sport utility vehicles per year and will later begin producing a next-generation compact car. 
While the plant is being built, GM has rented a factory in northern St. Petersburg at which it will initially produce more than 4,000 cars from kits beginning this September. 
GM is already assembling some of its brands, including Hummers and Cadillacs, at a private Russian carmaker’s factory in Kaliningrad and is making Chevy Nivas and Vivas at Tolyatti with AvtoVAZ. Earlier this year, GM-AvtoVAZ halted production amid a pricing dispute between the partners.
Asked whether the joint venture was more of a liability than an asset for GM, Forster said: “I don’t see the liability there yet.” Forster said he had met with AvtoVAZ’s new general director, Igor Yesipovsky, for the first time two weeks ago. Late last year, the Kremlin sent in a team of managers from state arms trader Rosoboronexport to turn around the ailing carmaker.
Forster praised the new managers, calling them “good businessmen.” But he said that since the new team had little experience in the car industry “it takes a bit longer” to negotiate.
At the Nissan signing ceremony, Ghosn said the firm would start building its factory in spring 2007, with the first cars expected by early 2009. 
At the forum, Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref said he was in talks with five other carmakers on building new factories in Russia. By the end of the year, “I think that three out of five will be more than possible,” he said.

TITLE: G8 Law Enforcers Gather to Tackle Terrorism
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Senior law enforcement officials from G8 countries convened Thursday in Moscow for two days of talks on combating terrorism and organized crime.
Protection of transportation and communication networks should top the list of security concerns, Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev said.
Sergei Sobyanin, head of President Vladimir Putin’s administration, said Russian authorities had devised new strategies for shielding railways and metros from attack.
Nurgaliyev also called for fighting illegal immigration and Internet-based extremists and terrorists.
“The Internet is increasingly used by terrorists as a means to disseminate information containing detailed instructions for building bombs, other weapons and methods for their deployment,” Nurgaliyev said.
Terrorists are routinely recruited online and propaganda and video-taped recordings of terrorist activities are widely distributed, he added.
Illegal immigrants offer extremists and terrorists fertile recruiting ground, Nurgaliyev said.
Sobyanin agreed, adding that illegal immigration corrupted the labor market and stoked ethnic tensions. He called on foreign governments to deny asylum to wanted terrorists and other criminals.
The comment appeared aimed at Britain and the United States, which have granted asylum to Chechen separatists.
Britain’s attorney general, Peter Goldsmith, praised Russian law enforcement efforts to fight terrorism and organized crime. He also called for the drug war to be included in the G8 summit agenda. The summit takes place next month in St. Petersburg.
Interpol’s general secretary, Ronald Noble, said the creation of a huge database of criminal records compiled by police in different countries had helped fight terrorism and identity theft. 
Established in 2003, the database includes profiles of 10,192 suspected terrorists and data on more than 11 million stolen passports, Noble said. The database has helped many police investigations — most recently in Britain, Noble said.
The meeting also drew Lise Prokop, the interior minister of Austria, which now chairs the European Union, and Franco Frattini, the EU’s justice and home affairs commissioner.
The EU has approved “in principle” plans for tracing financial transactions tied to terrorists, Frattini said. Within one year, he said, the EU would impose a 10,000-euro ($12,000) cap on international cash transfers that can be moved through Europe.
Russia’s Interior Ministry said in a statement Thursday that the Russian delegation at the meeting had proposed a global forum on public-private cooperation in battling terrorism. The forum would be held in November in Moscow.

TITLE: University Heads See Hope In Falling Student Numbers
AUTHOR: By Evgenia Ivanova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: While the government attempts to conquer the demographic crisis in St. Petersburg, local university heads say they plan to use the situation to improve education standards. 
In five years’ time, the city’s graduate numbers are expected to fall by about 75 percent, leaving the city with 10,000 graduates in 2011, said Konstantin Borisenko, the Rector of the State Marine Technical University of St. Petersburg on Wednesday, as reported by Interfax.
While the problems confronting higher education in St. Petersburg and Russia in general are described by many experts in the field as being daunting, some argue that universities can capitalize on the developing socio-demographic situation in the region.
“We ought to take advantage of the situation to solve [universities’] staff problems, to increase salaries and also to solve problems surrounding the optimization of the universities’ network,” Borisenko said at a news conference.  
According to Oleg Ipatov, rector at the St. Petersburg-based Baltic State Technical University, as quoted by the news conference organizer Rosbalt, the average age of university staff is 60 or above. 
“Young people avoid teaching careers due to the very low salaries,” Ipatov said. Professors’ salaries can be as low as 3,000 rubles ($110) a month. 
Borisenko said that at his university there is a faculty where all the staff are over 60 years of age. 
“If they suddenly decide to leave and not to carry on working for kopeks, the faculty will be shut down. The country will loose its only opportunity to train students to get much needed engineering specializations,” Borisenko said.
Andrei Berezhnoi, a student at the St. Petersburg State Polytechnical University also said that the majority of his professors at the university are elderly. According to Berezhnoi, at least 70 percent of the professors are of a pensionable age.
When asked if he has ever considered choosing an academic career, Berezhnoi said “It’s not a profession I’d like to work in, but even if I did I doubt it — they’re just not paid enough,” he said.
A professor at the St. Petersburg-based Baltic State Technical University, who wished to remain anonymous, believes the problem does not concern all higher education institutions and that it is particularly acute in technical fields.
“It’s not the entire education system that’s in crisis, it’s education in the field of creating new products that is in crisis,” the 70-year-old professor who has been working at the university for more then 20 years said in a telephone interview Thursday.
“Redistributing money as a result of the demographic crisis is a very primitive attempt to solve the problem,” he said.
Despite the falling number of students and the extra resources being made available as a result of this fall, the government must increase the financing of these key fields. 
Borisenko was quoted by the Interfax as saying that the state spends $700 per student per year, but the Baltic State Technical University estimated that “at least $3,000 a year is needed to educate one student on any technical course.”

TITLE: Hackers Eye State Computers
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The number of assaults launched by hackers on government computers — especially high-intensity mass campaigns involving thousands of attacks — has been steadily rising in recent years, a senior security official said Wednesday.
While all major attacks have been repelled by the ministries’ and agencies’ security systems, the Federal Security Service, or FSB, must now combat about 1 million attacks yearly on government computers, said Viktor Gorbachev, head of the FSB’s communication security department, RIA-Novosti reported. 
The attacks, Gorbachev said, come from across the globe.
“It is not only the continents with inadequate [state] resources to regulate the Internet, like Africa and Latin America, but also countries with considerable resources to respond to computer attacks, like the United States,” Gorbachev said.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Warlord Makes Claim
MOSCOW (SPT) — Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev says in a newly released video that he paid $50,000 to organize the assassination of former Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov in May 2004, Newsru.com reported Thursday.
The video, filmed with a cell phone camera, shows Basayev talking with warlord Doku Umarov and saying he would pay a similar amount for the assassination of Kadyrov’s son, Ramzan, who is now Chechnya’s prime minister, Newsru.com said.
The video was posted on a rebel web site, Kavkaz Center, the report said. 
The video could not be immediately accessed due to its size.
Authorities placed a $10 million bounty on Basayev’s head after he claimed responsibility for the Beslan school attack in September 2004.

Bureaucrat Charged
MOSCOW (SPT) — A Foreign Ministry official based in Irkutsk has been arrested and charged with corruption for allegedly trying to extract a bribe from a travel agency, Itar-Tass reported Thursday.
FSB officers arrested Sergei Kulik, head of the Foreign Ministry’s representative office in Irkutsk, on June 7 after a sting operation in which he purportedly demanded a bribe from a travel agency director in exchange for issuing foreign passports to the company’s employees.

Acquittal Overturned
MOSCOW (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday overturned the acquittal of a man convicted in a 1999 apartment bombing that killed 64 people and helped spark the second war in Chechnya. 
Dagestan’s high court in February acquitted Magomed Salikhov of organizing the explosion that destroyed a building housing federal military officers and their families in the Caspian Sea town of Buinaksk. The court sentenced him to more than four years in prison for membership in a rebel group and falsifying documents. 
The Supreme Court, however, on Thursday overturned his acquittal on the bombing charges, and ordered the investigation reopened. 

Satellite Launched 
MOSCOW (AP) — Russia sent a satellite into a low-Earth orbit Thursday, a Federal Space Agency official said. 
The Resource-DK satellite was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan aboard a Soyuz-U rocket at 12:09 p.m. and reached orbit about 10 minutes later, space agency spokeswoman Vera Medvedkova said. 
The probe will spend three years mapping Russia’s land mass and other areas for natural-resource management and environmental monitoring. 

Killed in Ingush Sweep
ROSTOV-ON-DON (AP) — Federal forces killed three rebels in a security sweep Thursday in Ingushetia, the regional Interior Ministry said. 
The three were among a band believed to be hiding out in a wooded area of the region, which helicopters rocketed Wednesday in an attempt to wipe out the men. 
The Interior Ministry identified one of the dead as Adam Nalgiyev, whom it blamed for police killings and leading a group in a brazen 2004 rebel attack on Ingushetia’s largest city, Nazran, in which some 90 police and security officials were killed in a single night.

TITLE: Conference to Highlight Role of Charity in Russia
AUTHOR: By Gregory Sandstrom
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A “revival of the spirit of charity in Russia” is the focus of an international conference running Friday through Sunday, organized by the St. Petersburg School of Religion and Philosophy.
The conference entitled “Charity in Russia: Concepts and Experiences of Charity Investment and Sponsorship” will be held at and sponsored by the Hotel Angleterre.
Speakers at the conference will include local government administrators, business people, welfare practitioners, managers of charities, investment organizations and others connected with charitable work. They will discuss American, Asian and Islamic ways of charity, along with what kind of charity Russia needs today and potential legislation regarding charity.
The goal of the conference organizers is “to begin a public discussion about aims and kinds of charity in modern Russian society.” By creating an exchange of experiences and opinions of professionals, scientists and representatives of different religions, the organizers hope that solutions can be found for some of the problems associated with charities and their public image in Russian society. 
Natalia Pecherskaya, Rector of the St. Petersburg School of Religion and Philosophy, saw a need for promoting charity in Russia, where charity was forbidden in the Soviet period. 
Dr. Pecherskaya’s non-Church, non-State Institute opened in 1990, with the help of small donations from local people. In 1996, the School published a book on Russian Orthodoxy and philanthropy, and the upcoming conference on “Charity in Russia” is the next step. 
Its focus is on training those who have experience, but who do not know how to act. It is meant to stimulate local people who will benefit from improved knowledge about charity. Dr. Pecherskaya is interested in the possibility of “a revival of the spirit of charity in Russia.”
Working on the logistics of the conference and with foreign participation is Stephanie Tsomakaeva-Weber, Director of the Ost-West Kontaktservice. Tsomakaeva-Weber came to St. Petersburg in 1988 and has been running a travel agency since 1992. She has been involved with various charity projects, including delivery of food, oil and household products to elderly women and handicapped children during the financial crisis of 1998. 
Tsomakaeva-Weber believes that “a platform is needed, so that experiences can be shared, and people brought together for dialogue, in order to learn from others.” 
The conference will provide an opportunity to show that there are legitimate organizations functioning in Russia, and to learn about issues of access, security and legal matters.
The Rotary Club St. Petersburg International, which assists with social development projects in the city, has given their support for the conference. 
Dr. Joanne Thompson, a member of the Club, believes that the conference will help to “generate new ideas, based on the wealth of experience of local charity workers, businesses and government, focusing on the unique needs and values of contemporary Russian society.” 
It will educate, facilitate networking and, it is hoped, lead to more active participation in Russian society, which is necessary to provide for the increasingly neglected needs of the least fortunate.
Bringing together current ideas in politics, education, science and social work may help to provide new possibilities for the lives of needy persons in St. Petersburg.

Call 326 8603 
or e-mail: charity-rus@mail.ru for more information.

TITLE: Putin to Meet Iranian President
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SHANGHAI — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad plans to meet this week with President Vladimir Putin after a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
The meeting was expected to take place Friday, a day after the summit, although host China has said the Iranian nuclear issue will not be on the summit’s agenda. 
However, Interfax reported Putin would meet the Iranian leader for talks on the nuclear issue. 
Ahmadinejad and Putin will also discuss Caspian Sea energy exploration and other areas of cooperation between the two states, it was reported.

TITLE: Duma May Ban Racist Candidates
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — The State Duma is considering plans to ban candidates deemed racist from running for office and to increase early voting.
 These measures could further marginalize government critics and lead to widespread vote-rigging, critics said.
The proposals, posted on the Duma web site Tuesday, were introduced by seven Duma deputies from United Russia, the Rodina party and the Liberal Democratic Party. 
One amendment would allow courts to ban people or parties from running in local or federal elections if they incite racism or religious hatred or fuel other views considered extremist.
Punishable actions would include not only campaign-related activity but also anything that took place years before.
To take part in elections, candidates and parties would have to have a clean record for as long as the political term they seek. 
The Public Chamber, last week, called for similar legislation barring “extremists” from elections.
Another amendment under consideration would reinstate a provision permitting more people to cast ballots ahead of election day.
Early voting was widespread until 2002, when the current elections law was passed. 
Many political leaders, including Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov, attacked early voting at the time as a means of election-rigging.

TITLE: Chechen Supporters Convicted
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PARIS — A court on Wednesday convicted 25 people for their roles in preparing an attack in France in support of Islamic fighters in Chechnya. 
The five top defendants received prison terms of eight to 10 years, while the others received lesser sentences. Two were acquitted. All but one defendant had been accused of helping Islamic fighters in Chechnya in what prosecutors said underscored the “globalization of the jihad movement.” 
Prosecutors were unable to prove strong suspicions that the attack was to have involved chemicals, even though investigators found equipment, including a protective suit, and chemicals, including the highly toxic ricin. 
In handing down sentences, the court followed the prosecutor’s office by giving the maximum 10-year term to the group’s suspected chemicals expert, Menad Benchellali. His father, Chellali Benchellali, an imam, or prayer leader, near Lyon, received only an 18-month suspended prison term — far lower than the prosecution’s demand for six years behind bars. 
The court convicted 24 defendants of criminal association in relation with a terrorist enterprise, a broad charge used by France to sweep wide in bringing terror suspects to justice. One other was convicted of using false papers. 
The Benchellali family was at the center of the case, with Menad Benchellali’s mother, Hafsa, and brother, Hafed, also on trial for roles in the plot to carry out an attack in France.

TITLE: Forum Evokes Russian Resourcefulness
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The same features that characterize Russian economic strength could be its downfall, participants were told this week at the 10th St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. 
The impact of globalization on developing countries and factors of economic competitiveness were the main issues on the agenda. Participants discussed the strengths and weaknesses of the Russian economy.
“By the end of the year Russia’s money and gold reserves will exceed its total external debt. Last year capital inflow for the first time exceeded capital outflow,” President Vladimir Putin said.
Total foreign investment in Russia exceeded $112 billion. Consumer purchasing power was estimated by Putin at $1.5 trillion.
He reiterated that inflation, the monopolization of some sectors of the economy and corruption were the main problems facing the country.
Defining his strategy Putin said that “competing in the world market is impossible without creating a competitive environment inside the country.” 
Russia is taking steps toward transparency, but “when national security is at stake, even developed economies do not always succeed in creating transparent mechanisms for the luring of foreign investors,” Putin said.
First deputy prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, also spoke of a more open economy, suggesting the removal of hindrances to capital operations in Russia, the creation of an oil exchange and making the ruble a convertible currency.
Medvedev indicated that, as well as natural resources, “intellectual potential and natural creativity” constituted Russia’s competitive advantage. Russia owns 65 percent of the world apatite reserves, 35 percent of gas, 30 percent of all iron ore, nickel and tin and 13 percent of oil.
Medvedev pointed out Russia’s unique geopolitical location, which allows for the creation of transport corridors.
“Russia can aspire to leading positions in a number of sectors in the world economy, guided by these advantages,” Medvedev said.
To ensure such advantages he suggested stimulating the emergence of large Russian companies, developing infrastructure for innovative uses, increasing labor and energy efficiency and long-term investment into the social sphere.
“The strengths and weaknesses of the Russian economy coincide,” said Alexei Kudrin, minister of finance. Despite the growth in oil prices and increasing profits from oil exports, economic growth will fall to 6.1 percent this year and then to 5.7 percent in 2009, compared to growth of 10 percent recorded in 2000.
“The main idea is not to get too dependent on natural resources, which are not related to labor efficiency,” said Vladimir Mau, Rector of the Russian State Academy of the National Economy.
He indicated problems in political, legislative and social spheres as being the main handicaps for economic growth. Mau gave an example of companies who pay 20 percent of their contracts to court to ensure they are realized — in Europe companies usually pay about nine percent.
The World Bank’s Itzhak Goldberg pointed to management, labor, taxes and administrative barriers as the main difficulties facing private companies.
Only half of economic growth comes from investment, the other half being coming through innovation and human capital, Goldberg said.
The formal R&D sector in Russia is 1.17 percent of GDP, which compares favorably to Brazil (0.98 percent) and India (0.85 percent). However Russia’s productivity in manufacturing is lower and private investment into R&D is also considerably less.
Over 70 percent of scientific products in Russia come from the military-industrial complex, which employs over 50 percent of all the country’s scientists, said Sergei Ivanov, minister of defence. The growth of production in this sector is 8.7 percent, exceeding Russia’s GDP.
The government will increase the share of Russian products in the fuel and energy complex, currently standing at 30 percent. In the communications sector Russian products amount to 70 percent of the market, in medical equipment — 60 percent. 
By 2012 consumer products should exceed 70 percent of production in the military-industrial complex, Ivanov said.
As for private investment in R&D, Kudrin noted that “discussions about stimulating innovations while having 11 percent inflation was idle talk. You could not run a three year innovation project while annually paying 15 percent interest,” he said
Only 6.5 percent of investment in Russia in funded by credit resources at the moment, said Kudrin, who proposed reducing bank interest rates.
Running from Tuesday till Thursday at the Lenexpo exhibition center, it attracted over 3,000 guests.
This year the forum had a rather modern aspect, in the form of interactive discussions.
The most memorable speakers on the opening day were two professors from the Stockholm School of Economics Kiel Nordstrem and Jonas Ridderstrale, known for their bestsellers “Funky Business” and “Karaoke Capitalism.”
“For any country competitiveness is not a question of being better. It’s a question of being different,” Ridderstrale said.
Opposed to the old-fashioned idea of educating available people, the Swedish professors proposed attracting and hiring talent from everywhere.
“For the last 40 to 50 years the United States has been the largest talent magnet in the world. The U.S.A is not a nation state. It’s an idea, like Singapore is increasingly an idea,” Ridderstrale said.
“Successful business is based on temporary monopoly. Behind any temporary monopoly we usually find technological innovation,” Nordstrem said.
To remain competitive the country must stimulate a continuous flow of innovations, he concluded.
They also criticized the education system, which aims at filling gaps and removing weakness rather than developing strengths.

TITLE: Clubbing Together On Energy
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: SHANGHAI — Russia and Iran, two of the world’s largest oil and gas producers, propose setting up an “energy club” with China and four central Asian states to strengthen regional corporation and development.
“It’s useful for us to establish an energy club and study the strengthening of cooperation in the field of transportation,” President Vladimir Putin said in a speech to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s annual summit Thursday.
The group, which includes four central Asian nations, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan,  gathered in Shanghai’s financial district to talk about economic prospects. The six member and four observer countries in the group account for 23 percent of the world’s oil reserves.
Observers include Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is engaged in a standoff with the U.S. and European Union over the country’s nuclear program. Ahmadinejad called on the group’s energy ministers to meet and discuss issues including exploration and transportation of fuel-products, and the “optimal utilization” of resources. He offered to host such a meeting in Iran.
“The increasing role of energy, and the presence of oil consumers and producers among member states have provided conducive grounds for cooperation,” Ahmadinejad said.

TITLE: Gazprom Tapped For Big Role in Electricity
AUTHOR: By Conor Humphries
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Industry and Energy Minister Viktor Khristenko told the State Duma on Wednesday that he expected gas companies to play a big role in the restructuring of Russia’s electricity market, saying they were in a key position to increase the notoriously low efficiency of the sector. 
The statement came a day after Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller said his company saw electricity as a “core business” that was central to its efforts of reducing the inefficient use of gas. 
While Gazprom’s desire to play a role in the downstream use of gas is not unusual, analysts say, there are fears on the market that a significant presence by the state-controlled company could undermine some of the key planks of the electricity reform. For the government, however, Gazprom’s participation looks like a chance to create synergies that other investors could not. 
“Nobody else would feel the [beneficial] effects more quickly,” than gas companies, Khristenko told the Duma, Interfax reported. Only gas companies working in gas generation would be able to increase the efficiency of fuel use and sell the saved gas, he said.
He said the only company capable of doing that right now was Gazprom, which already owns 10.5 percent of Unified Energy Systems, or UES, and more than 25 percent of Moscow’s biggest utility, Mosenergo. 
On Tuesday, Miller told the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum that he saw electricity as a core business, saying he would be interested in investing in non-gas generating plants to reduce gas used elsewhere. 
“This frees up for us our most valuable resource: gas. From this point of view, Gazprom is the most effective investor in Russian electricity,” Miller told the forum, Interfax reported. Gazprom plans to take part in investment projects to build electricity-generating facilities both in Russia and abroad, he said. 
However, the position of the government and Gazprom on electricity appears to be worrying many on the market. 
“The presence of Gazprom is a serious risk for investors. There is a risk that Gazprom will get preferential treatment in the spin-off of generating assets,” said Alexander Kornilov, an analyst at Alfa Bank. Its presence could also lead to a situation in which a government-controlled company could have the dominant position in electricity generation, he said. “An excessive presence from Gazprom could undermine the main point of the reform,” he said. 
Analysts fear that Gazprom will get into a position where it controls generating stations, supplies gas to them and distributes the resulting electricity. Limitations in the gas supply could theoretically cause Gazprom to give favorable terms to its own stations.

TITLE: Russia to Float Atomic Reactor
AUTHOR: By Judith Ingram
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — An Arctic military shipbuilding plant and the Federal Atomic Energy Agency signed a contract Wednesday to build the world’s first floating nuclear reactor. 
The 9.1 billion ruble ($330 million) reactor will be built by the Sevmash plant in the Arctic port of Severodvinsk beginning next year, and will be commissioned in October 2010, said Sergei Obozov, head of Rosenergoatom, the state-controlled consortium in charge of nuclear power plants. 
He said the reactor — to provide heating and electricity to Sevmash — was the perfect solution for supplying energy to remote Arctic sites, and that authorities were looking at 11 other possible sites for such reactors. 
Federal Atomic Energy Agency chief Sergei Kiriyenko denied that the reactor would pose a security or safety risk, saying that the Sevmash plant — the only Russian plant where atomic submarines are manufactured — was sufficiently well-guarded. 
“There will be no floating Chernobyl,” Kiriyenko said, Itar-Tass reported. 
“It is no secret that the question has arisen repeatedly: ‘Is such a thing at all possible?’” Kiriyenko was quoted as saying by his ministry’s press service. 
“But today, the government’s position is such ... that we are obliged to use our experience. ... No one else in the world has such experience as we have accumulated over the years in our atomic fleet of safely operating small-capacity reactors.” 
Environmental groups have sharply criticized the proposed floating reactors. 
“Floating nuclear power plants are absolutely unsafe, inherently so. There are risks of the unit itself sinking, there are risks in towing the units to where they need to be,” said Charles Digges, editor of the Norway-based Bellona web site. 
The Russians “are sitting on so much oil and have so many other avenues to alternative sources of energy for these particular regions where they would use floating nuclear power plants, which are cheaper to build, cheaper to research,” he said. 
Russia has in recent years overcome a public backlash against nuclear power that followed the April 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, and the government has supported efforts to revive the nuclear power industry. 
The country currently has 31 reactors at 10 nuclear power plants, accounting for 17 percent of the country’s electricity generation, and President Vladimir Putin has called for raising the share to 25 percent.

TITLE: Naftogaz to Cut Off Gas
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: KIEV — Ukraine’s state oil and gas company NAK Naftogaz Ukrayny will cut off natural gas supplies to 67 state-funded agencies that haven’t paid their gas bills.
“The state agencies owe us more than 426 million hryvnias ($85 million) since the beginning of the year, so we will cut their supply off,’’ Naftogaz’s press service said Thursday in an e-mail.
Naftogaz has pushed the government to raise prices for natural gas. The company said May 19 it could lose $1.5 billion without an increase. The government had already raised household gas prices 25 percent beginning May 1 and will double them starting July 1. The increase comes after Russia doubled the price of gas it sells to Ukraine, in January.
Households will pay 444 hryvnia ($88.6) per 1,000 cubic meters, up from 240 hryvnia now. 
State-funded agencies and companies will pay 648 hryvnia per 1,000 cubic meters of gas from 360 hryvnia now, and power generators 686 hryvnia, compared with 383.4 hryvnia currently.
Ukraine depends on fuel imports for about 80 percent of its energy, mostly from Russia. The country agreed Jan. 4 to pay an average $95 per 1,000 cubic meters of Russian gas in the first half of 2006, compared with the $50 it paid previously.

TITLE: Surgut Buys Back 5% of Its Shares, Keeps Options Open
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: ST. PETERSBURG — Surgutneftegaz, the country’s fourth-largest oil company, has launched a buyback of 5 percent of its shares from the market in line with a share option program, the company’s head said Wednesday. 
“It is under way right now,” Surgut director general Vladimir Bogdanov said on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.
Surgut shares rose over 5 percent after the announcement.
Bogdanov did not say when the buyback would be completed, which would depend “on the condition of the market.” He declined to say how much stock Surgut had bought back to date.
Under Surgut’s complicated shareholding structure, the company controls affiliates and pension funds, which in turn control Surgut, giving the management influence at board level but little incentive to improve financial efficiency. 
After announcing its option program in April, Surgut said it might buy back up to 5 percent of its shares from the market in the long term.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Baltic Oil License 
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Baltic Oil Terminals, a new company that plans to build terminals for Russian oil exports, said its Zauralneftegaz unit won a 25-year license to develop petroleum fields in Western Siberia.
Zauralneftegaz, which is 50 percent owned by Baltic Oil Terminals, was chosen to explore and produce oil in the Lebyazhevsky block in the Kurgan region, Baltic Oil Terminals said in a Regulatory News Service statement Thursday.
The block is Zauralneftegaz’s third in the region and has a surface area of about 42,000 acres, according to the statement.
The company now holds seven licenses in Kurgan.
Baltic Oil Terminals listed its stock on London Stock Exchange’s Alternative Investment Market in April. It plans to build a terminal in Kaliningrad, the only Russian port on the Baltic Sea which is ice-free all year, an advantage when competing for rising exports of Russian crude and oil products.
“Good progress” is being made at the terminal in Kaliningrad, Chief Executive Officer Simon Escott said in the statement. Construction will start mid-July and the project is on schedule to ship oil in January, he said.

Tatneft Approval
ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — Tatneft’s 130 billion ruble ($4.8 billion) refinery is among four projects to have received approval by Russian ministries for financing from the country’s investment fund made up of windfall oil revenue, Interfax said.
The ministerial commission approved investment of 16.5 billion rubles in construction of the Nizhnekamsk Oil Refinery by Tatneft, Interfax cited Deputy Economy Minister Kirill Androsov as saying at the economic forum in St. Petersburg.
The commission also approved the spending of 34 billion rubles on construction of an industrial complex in Siberian region of Priangarye, 25.8 billion rubles on a highway between Moscow and St. Petersburg and 28 billion rubles on a toll highway in St. Petersburg, Interfax cited Androsov as saying.

TITLE: The Civil Society Paradox
AUTHOR: By Alexey Bessudnov
TEXT: A few months ago, I attended a lecture given at St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford, by Irina Yasina, the deputy chair of the Open Russia foundation, whose mission is to support nongovernmental agencies in Russia. Yasina was talking about civil society and the Putin regime. Her main argument was anything but new. She claimed that President Vladimir Putin’s Russia was moving toward authoritarianism, that Putin was suspicious of civil society, and so trying to get rid of it, and that the Leviathan, led by former KGB officers, was regaining its power and was not going to tolerate competitors.
Russian liberals all agree that civil society under Putin is facing difficult times. Actually, no one is happy with the progress of civic associations and movements in Russia. This is not a particularly new problem. According to the logic of the liberals, the 1990s, which are sometimes considered to have been the glory days of freedom and democracy, would have been the best time to set up a strong, independent and efficient civil society. But this did not happen. However widespread the social disappointment with former-President Boris Yeltsin’s reforms was and however serious the problems people faced in their everyday lives became, the conditions did not lead to the formation of well-organized and active civic associations. Civil society in post-Soviet Russia, with few exceptions, appeared in the form of sluggish remnants of Soviet institutions and new creations in the form of small NGOs that had relatively low profiles and owed their existence solely to Western financial help.
Paradoxically, in the last few years, when the authorities have appeared absolutely unenthusiastic about independent social activity, we have witnessed some organizational efforts aimed at the creation of efficient policy issue groups. Those who rallied to the support of Oleg Shcherbinsky, the luckless driver who was involved in the car accident in which Altai Governor Mikhail Yevdokimov was killed, managed to organize a national campaign and get him released from jail. The environmentalists protesting against the construction of a pipeline along the Lake Baikal shoreline eventually won. Independent trade unions are becoming more vigorous and zealous in defending employees’ rights. These are just a few of many examples.
Social scientists have long studied the problem of collective action, which was first formulated by Mancur Olson, an American economist. Olson’s simple argument merely described the behavior of a rational actor. First, people or firms do not tend to create organizations to solve their problems if they can solve them individually. Second, even if there is a collective interest that requires joint action, people in large groups will not act to achieve their common goals in the absence of coercion or individual interests. In fact, the impact of each member of a large group would be so small that a rational individual does not have any incentive to contribute to the common cause, even if the members know that final success ultimately depends on their joint efforts. Most people in Moscow, for example, would prefer to live in a clean city, but they continue to throw garbage on the streets. To get people to act collectively, you need to use compulsion (often applied by the state) or create additional membership rewards (to paraphrase a popular Russian novel, the beer has to be for union members only if the union is to continue to exist).
So, instead of complaining that civil society does not exist, it might be more reasonable to ask why it should. Russians have invented a lot of ways to cope with inefficient institutions in order to solve their everyday problems. Businesspeople dealing with rank-and-file tax officials do not need to act through business associations to avoid excessive tax payments. They know from past experience what tax officers want from them. There are many ways to be exempted from military service without joining civil rights organizations or campaigning for changes in conscription rules. Every driver knows it is easier to pay a small bribe to a cop and keep breaking traffic regulations than to join with other drivers to pressure the authorities to tackle the traffic problem. There is no need for civic organizations when you can easily find an informal way to deal with your problems.
Simon Kordonsky, former head of the expert department in Putin’s administration, argued in a recent article in Otechestvenniye Zapiski magazine that informal networks and the patronage system (read: corruption) represent a specific Russian type of civil society. There is no way to introduce Western-type civic associations in Russia, Kordonsky claims, because they would be artificial.
The problem with this argument is that our corrupt version of civil society is inefficient. First, it does not produce public goods, since everyone looks for an informal solution that deals only with their own, individual problems. People with sufficient financial resources or connections are usually able to get their problem fixed, whereas the poor and disadvantaged, who still constitute the majority of Russians, often fail to overcome their difficulties. Second, informal solutions are costly in terms of the time and effort required. Third, in many cases this is simply harmful to society. People do have to pay taxes and comply with traffic regulations instead of bribing tax officers and traffic cops. At the end of the day, the informal civil society increases transaction costs in the economy and impedes economic growth.
Is the transition from corrupt, informal social structures to the proper institutions of civil society possible? The answer is yes, but the role of the state will be crucial in this development. It may sound paradoxical, but a strong state is a prerequisite for an efficient civil society. A strong state, though, does not mean aggressive, statist rhetoric or bureaucratic omnipotence but, instead, the rule of law and the ability on the part of the government to control its own officials. If corruption was eliminated — or at least reduced — people would have an incentive to tackle social problems in an organized way rather than look for individual solutions.
According to Olson’s argument, even then people will still need separate incentives to join large organizations. The creation of these incentives for the formation of trade unions, consumer associations and other types of civic organizations will to a large extent depend on legislation and state policy toward them. Thus, contrary to popular wisdom, the state not only can, but must play an important role in the creation of civil society in Russia.

Alexey Bessudnov is a doctoral student in sociology at St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford.

TITLE: Strong Hand, Short Reach
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: The State Duma passed in a first reading Friday a bill that would strike the “against all” option from the ballot in national elections. When the measure is signed into law it will remove another avenue for public dissatisfaction with managed democracy and the so-called power vertical, or executive chain of command.
On the same day in the republic of Ingushetia, Musa Nalgiyev, commander of the region’s OMON riot police, was gunned down together with his three children, a brother and a guard. Galina Gubina, deputy head of the administration in Ingushetia’s Sunzhensky district, was murdered in a separate attack.
Friday’s events in Moscow and Ingushetia revealed the full spectrum of Russian reality: The Kremlin has complete control of the Duma and the national television stations but is steadily losing control of everything else.
There’s no question that President Vladimir Putin has the Duma under his thumb. But what does he control in Ingushetia, where in addition to Friday’s attacks the regional deputy interior minister, Dzhabrail Kostoyev, was killed by a car bomb in mid-May and Ingush President Murat Zyazikov’s father-in-law was kidnapped in late April? Not to mention the routine killing of police officers and Federal Security Service, or FSB, agents in the region. This sort of thing doesn’t even happen in Chechnya or Dagestan. But the Kremlin seems completely unconcerned. 
The Kremlin may have unconsciously written off the North Caucasus, but similar events are taking place across the country. Sergei Korolko, former head of the Federal Property Management Agency’s department responsible for selling off property confiscated in criminal investigations, was sent to Novosibirsk to investigate privatization in the region. In mid-April he was stabbed to death. Not only is the murder unsolved, it didn’t even make the national news.
As a rule, the killers of top government officials are never brought to justice. Colonel General Anatoly Trofimov, a former chief of the Moscow branch of the FSB, was murdered in April 2005. Magadan Governor Valentin Tsvetkov was gunned down in broad daylight on Novy Arbat in October 2002. No one has been convicted of either crime. 
Two men were arrested for the June 2003 murder of Igor Klimov, acting general director of the Almaz-Antei consortium, which produces air-defense weapons. But the breakthrough only came when a petty thug in a Ryazan prison spilled the beans. It emerged that Klimov had been whacked as part of a battle between criminal organizations for a bankrupt factory. Just the kind of person we want helping strengthen our national defense.
Another example of the power vertical at work involves the new oil pipeline that Transneft wanted to build along Lake Baikal. The pipeline was one of Putin’s top priorities, but it potentially threatened the interests of Russian Railways, or RZD, which can also transport oil. And RZD is headed by Vladimir Yakunin, a close ally of the president. Before long the Irkutsk region governor, local United Russia leaders and environmentalists were sounding off about the threat to the lake. Putin, who normally behaves as though demonstrations are an impermissible form of pressure, surprisingly bowed to public opinion on the issue.
Not only has the vaunted power vertical failed to bring terrorism under control; it can’t even implement its own reforms. You may recall that early in his first term Putin got the country’s top prosecutors together and told them to prepare for sweeping reforms, including the separation of the office’s oversight and investigative functions. Putin’s big idea went the way of military reform — nowhere.
The power vertical allows Putin’s buddies to violate the rules with impunity and even to undermine initiatives taken by the president himself. It makes you wonder if Putin controls anything apart from the Duma and your television screen.

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

TITLE: The voice of America
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Singer/songwriter Tracy Chapman discusses her musical influences.
U.S. singer/songwriter Tracy Chapman, who will make her live debut in  Russia this week, may be seen as a folk performer, but her celebrated songs such as “Talkin’ ‘Bout a Revolution” have nothing to do with “Blowin’ in the Wind” and the 1960s folk movement and are influenced more by great soul and R&B singers, she said in an interview with The St. Petersburg Times.
“I grew up in the ’70s in a working-class African-American neighborhood and no-one in that neighborhood ever listened to white folk music, no-one was listening to Joan Baez or Bob Dylan or any of those people, so they weren’t influences,” said San Francisco-based Chapman by telephone from a New York hotel last week.
“I think whenever a person plays an acoustic guitar, for the most part people tend to think about the folk-music tradition, but I think often they are considering the Woodstock era, you know, ’60s and ’70s singers/songwriters, but they are not thinking about the full American music tradition. You know, the blues is folk music, gospel can be considered folk music in some regards. Country music, of course, is folk music… 
“So it’s a category that has broadened to include all those different types of music... but I think it’s mainly a label that’s given by people because of instrumentation, you know, and the fact that acoustic guitar is so much associated with what is considered white American folk music.
“I’d say if I was influenced by anything, it was some of the country music that my mother liked to listen to. You know, she listened to Charlie Pride, Dolly Parton, people like that. I remember seeing Glen Campbell play acoustic guitar, and Buck Owens, and it maybe that I was interested in playing guitar because of that. But I grew up listening to R&B and soul music, and gospel music and jazz, but not folk music.
Chapman’s forthcoming St. Petersburg concert is part of the European leg of an extended tour in support of her seventh studio album, “Where You Live,” and her only concert in Russia.
Released in September, the album, which spawned the singles “Change” and “America,” was recorded in Chapman’s rehearsal-space-turned-studio with guitarist Joe Gore and drummer Quinn, both of whom are backing her on the current tour. With Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Flea guesting on three tracks, the album was co-produced by Chapman and celebrated sound engineer Tchad Blake, known for his work with Peter Gabriel, Pearl Jam, Tom Waits and Elvis Costello.
Chapman said that the album’s style was determined by the songs she had written. 
“Generally, I’m approaching the records in the same way, and that’s that I want the songs to dictate the tone of the record and the style of the production and the type of arrangement,” said Chapman.
“It’s really about what the songs required. That’s what determines the overall feeling and sound of the record.
“In this case I wanted to record as a trio, and so I worked with Joe and Quinn for a few years before making the record, and played lots of concerts with them, just three of us, and decided that I want to make a record in that way, and then that we would also make it in the way that people made records in the early days of recording by playing in one room together.”
Born in Cleveland, Ohio in March 1964, Chapman started to sing as a child at family gatherings.
“Music has always been a part of my life. I started singing, I think, as soon as I could talk,” she said.
“I don’t know if it’s like this in Russia, but, you know, there are some families where everyone seems to sing and whenever there’s a family gathering that everybody sings together, and so was the case with my family, so I started singing very early on, and I was interested in playing a musical instrument. My first instrument was ukulele, and then I played an organ for a bit and when I was seven or eight-years-old, I asked my mother to buy me an acoustic guitar, so I started playing guitar and writing songs at a very young age and continued to do that over the years.
Chapman combined songwriting and performing in the street and in coffee houses with studying at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, and graduated with a degree in anthropology, with a special interest in West African studies.
“I went to college with the idea of becoming a veterinarian; I was planning to major in biology. And ultimately majored and graduated with a degree in anthropology. But during the time that I was in school, I played for my friends and I started performing publicly, performing the songs that I’ve written over the years.”
Chapman became famous overnight after a performance at the televised Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute concert in June 1988, watched by 72.000 people at London’s Wembley Stadium and more than 600 million television viewers from 60 countries, including the  Soviet Union.
“I was honored to be there and to have added my voice to all the other voices that were asking for Nelson Mandela’s release, and the people who considered the plight of black Southern Africans and the fact that they were unable to represent themselves and take full part in their society,” she said. 
“So I was really honored to be a part of that. I was terrified to be on stage that day. It was the first time I ever played for an audience of that size, it was pretty overwhelming. But it was an amazing experience and obviously one that is hard to forget.”
Chapman’s 1988 eponymously titled debut album, which yielded such songs as “Fast Car,” “Talkin’ ‘Bout a Revolution” and “Baby Can I Hold You,” went multi-platinum and won four Grammies. She took part in an Amnesty International Human Rights Now! Tour later that year.
“The Amnesty tour was a tour to raise awareness about human rights and, specifically to give people information about the Declaration of Human Rights, the document signed by many countries around the world, but that was not really fully realized, and I generally think that many of the issues people see around the world these days are related to human rights. 
“You know, healthcare is a human rights issue, quality education is a human rights issue, you know, being secure and having the right to self-determination are also human right issues. Having the right to vote is a human rights issue. Those are all things that I continue to be concerned with, and so I continue to address through my music by working with organizations that are working on these issues.”
Despite her social and political commitments, Chapman opposes being seen as a political performer.
“I don’t see myself as a political songwriter or protest singer, but I do write about social issues and ideas that I think touch on politics,” she said.
Lyrically, she was influenced by poetry and soul and R&B singers, she said.
“As a child, I was always interested in poetry and I read a lot of poetry and wrote poetry before I started writing songs, so my interest in the word comes from that, from being an avid reader,” she said. “And as someone who loves good story-telling and who appreciates the poetic use of language.
“[My songwriting] didn’t necessarily come from music, but I’d also say that a lot of people don’t realize that many of the songs, the R&B and soul songs from the ’70s were songs dealt with social issues and politics. You know, songs like Stevie Wonder’s ‘Front Line,’ songs like Marvin Gaye’s ‘What’s Going On,’ and songs by people like Curtis Mayfield and James Brown.” 
“So in listening to music, in listening to soul music and R&B music I paid attention to those lyrics and may even in some ways have been inspired by them. So I would say that people should be reminded that that kind of appreciation can be stirred by other music besides from folk music and the music written by singers/songwriters.”
 
Tracy Chapman performs at Oktyabrsky Concert Hall on June 23. www.tracychapman.com

TITLE: Bykov wins national literary prize
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The National Bestseller Award — the only respected nationwide literary prize that has its award ceremony in St. Petersburg — this year went to Dmitry Bykov’s expertly written biography of the poet and novelist Boris Pasternak.
The award was founded in 2001. Over the contest’s brief history, its winners and finalists have included some of the country’s bestselling and most controversial writers, including Viktor Pelevin, Vladimir Sorokin, Alexander Prokhanov, Pavel Krusanov and Irina Denezhkina.
Bykov, who had been unsuccessfully nominated for the prize four times before, did not attend the award ceremony at the Astoria hotel on last Friday. The writer was on a trip to Paris, and left a soft toy of a bullfrog to serve as a stand-in. The toy, which wittly resembles the author, was introduced to the audience by Bykov’s nominator, local critic Nikita Yeliseyev.
At this year’s ceremony politics was in the air. Controversial writer and National Bolshevik leader Eduard Limonov presided over the six-member Small Jury (that happened to include his girlfriend, the actress Yekaterina Volkova), and politics featured prominently in critics’ speeches, almost to the exclusion of literary commentary.
The Small Jury makes the final verdict, while the Grand Jury, comprised of 19 writers, journalists, critics, publishers and cultural luminaries, chooses the six finalists from several dozen candidates.
As the ceremony’s co-presenter, journalist Artyom Troitsky put it, “in the first years of the prize’s history, historic novels and glam fiction dominated the offers but today the shortlist features three books about politics, a book about jail, a book about the hard life of a poet under the Soviet regime and only one book that makes an enjoyable read.”
Troitsky attributes this trend to the lethargic state of Russia’s current political life, leading to politics seeking refuge in literature. “When politics is in comatose condition, more and more people open up to the written form as a substitution for political standoffs, battles and controversy,” he said.
Activists from pro-Kremlin youth movements gathered outside the Astoria to protest against Limonov’s presence on the jury, holding posters bearing offensive, aggressive and threatening slogans such as “Limonov, bastard, Petrograd will punish you.”
Very few events involving National Bolsheviks have been fortunate enough to escape a violent clash among protestors, so there was a certain anticipation in the air. 
But prominent St. Petersburg literary critic Viktor Toporov eased the atmosphere at the very start of the ceremony by recalling an unorthodox theatrical experience with an avant-garde Moscow company. 
“Some twenty years ago these guys found a special way to plunge the audiences into the mood: every new audience member received a mighty bang on the head at the doorway, with the blow sending them fast down the steep stairs,” he said. “Upon landing, everyone was deeply into the atmosphere. I am happy and relieved nothing of the kind has happened to us here and now.”
Competing for the respected award with Bykov’s high-brow literary study, were Sergei Dorenko’s lively political satire “2008,” Andrei Rubanov’s semi-autobiographic novel “Plant, And It Will Grow” and Pavel Krusanov’s “American Hole,” set in St. Petersburg in 2010 and featuring the late avant-garde composer Sergei Kuryokhin mysteriously reappearing in town.
Other contenders were Igor Sakhnovsky’s apolitical and romantic “The Happy and the Mad”and Zakhar Prilepin’s intense social drama “Sankya.”
None on the jury voted for Dorenko, Sakhnovsky or Krusanov.
Rubanov’s novel, which traces the unlikely yet believable story of the magical transformation a New Russian into a human being during a term in jail, received one vote, from Moscow lawyer Svetlana Yachevskaya.
Jury member and filmmaker Ilya Khrzhanovsky, whose recent movie “Four” had been banned in Russia for extensive uncensored use of swearing but was then was repreived after winning rave reviews at top international festivals, said Rubanov’s book has a great potential to be filmed, but voted for Bykov instead.
Bykov received three votes in total, followed by Prilepin with two votes. According to the award’s rules, the jury president does not participate in the vote, unless the opinions of jurors divide evenly between the candidates.
Writer and literary critic Yulia Belomlinskaya voted for “Sankya,” written by 30-year-old veteran of the two Chechen campaigns and a National Bolshevik activist Zakhar Prilepin. 
“This is a very powerful city romance,” she said. “The novel follows the tradition of classical pre-Revolutionary Russian prose.”
The prize is valued at $4,000, with the book’s first publisher receiving further $4,000 and the nominator getting another $2,000.
In 2005, the award went to Mikhail Shishkin’s novel “Venus’ Hair.”
Shishkin, who has been living in Switzerland for the last 10 years, joined this year’s jury automatically as the winner of the previous event. He voted for Bykov’s “Boris Pasternak.”
“The list of finalists does not necessarily mean that these books will definitely become bestsellers,” Troitsky said, despite the name of the award. “What this award does is sets a trend.”

www.nazbest.ru

TITLE: Chernov’s choice
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
TEXT: Rumor has it that the general director of the well-known St. Petersburg-based courier service WestPost, Christian Courbois, plus partners, has launched a new, expat-friendly bar located exactly where the ambitious yet short-lived music bar DK Berlin once was. 
Located at 82 Bolshoi Prospekt Petrograd side, the new place has no name as yet and is reported to be opening early for friends to watch the World Cup, though the official opening will not be until early July. The bar is rumored to be planning a DJ night once a week and a live concert every two weeks. See this space for more news in the next couple of weeks.
Two Finnish bands, Magyar Posse and Laurila, will perform at Platfroma on Friday, while Magyar Posse is also due to stage a live appearance at Fidel on Saturday.
Saturday will also see the goth-influenced German avant-rock band Deine Lakaien performing with a chamber ensemble at the Glinka Philharmonic.
Hailing from Sacramento, California, the Grammy-winning alternative metal band the Deftones will perform at PORT on Wednesday. 
In an interview with The St. Petersburg Times, Deftones drummer Abe Cunningham drew a distinction between his band and such U.S. “nu-metal” bands as Korn and Limp Bizkit.
“We’ve just been doing it for quite a while, maybe for 17 or 18 years, and I think we do things a little differently than these other bands, do it from our heart, from our gut and keep on going,” he said. He also said that the “nu-metal” craze which was criticized for its commercialism is now finished.
“I’m so glad that I heard it’s over, I don’t like that stuff at all. You know, it’s not that I sit around being negative all day long, but that whole trend was very gross, I didn’t like it. And it seemed very false, you know what I mean?” See article, page iii.
KlezFest, a celebration of Jewish folk music and culture, comes to town for a tenth time this week. The usual suspects — including New York musician Lorin Sklamberg, Berlin-based Christian Dawid and Moscow-based trobadour Psoi Korolenko — will arrive, except for frequent KlezFest participant Michael Alpert whose cancellation was reported just before this paper went to press. The new face is U.S. DJ and musician Josh “Socalled” Dolgin, who experiments at blending Klezmer and hip-hop. Dolgin will lead the other musicians at the Hip-Hop Klezmer Party at Red Club on Thursday, while a more conventional Klezmer concert will be held at Beloselskikh-Belozerskikh Palace on Wednesday.
The local act Billy’s Band, will perform its homage to Tom Waits at Estrada Theater on Thursday. 
The band’s frontman and songwriter Billy Novik feels that the band’s ever-changing, English-language show called “Being Tom Waits” could prove interesting to international audiences.

TITLE: Accentuate the positive
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Deftones might have been through hard times lately, but has now regained its “Posi-tones.” The California-based alternative metal/post-hardcore quintet returns to Russia to perform its first concert in St. Petersburg this week.
The Grammy-winning band has already spent two years recording its next album, and in the meantime released “B-Sides & Rarities” in October. Although Deftones previously recorded all its albums with Terry Date as producer, the as-yet unreleased new album was to be have been produced by the legendary Bob Ezrin, responsible for classic albums by Alice Cooper, Lou Reed, Peter Gabriel and KISS, and, possibly most famously, Pink Floyd’s “The Wall.” However it was not to be, according to Deftones drummer Abe Cunningham.
“We ended up at this point where we’d done all of our records with the same person and we just wanted to change… to try something different, you know. We certainly did but I think at this point we can produce them ourselves, definitely,” said Cunningham speaking by phone from the U.K. before a Deftones concert in Glasgow.
“We started it with him and finished with, er... Pretty much ourselves, actually. But he helped with the beginning of it. [It was] a very long, long process. A lot of it has to do with just personal issues with him. A lot of inter-band fighting, you know. But it’s all good now, everyone’s happy.  We’re rockin’.”
The album is basically finished, according to Cunningham.
“Actually it’s finished, it’s been all recorded and we’re finishing the final mix of it, you know, it should be out in October at least.”
With these matters now resolved, Cunningham lists a “Posi-tone” as his second instrument after his drums.
“It’s a joke,” he said.
“The past years have been not negative, but there has just been a lot of stuff going on in people’s lives, you know, so I just made a joke this time to say we are back and we have new and improved ‘Posi-tones.’ Positivity. You know, that was what it was, sort of. It was a joke.”
The Deftones formed in Sacramento in 1988, but did not release its debut album until 1995. The town which is the capital of California, where Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger now resides, is renowned for its rich music scene.
“It’s pretty diverse, a lot of different music, from Tesla to Cake to Club Nuevo... Deftones,” said Cunningham.
“It’s a nice little town there with a lot of different stuff going on.”
The band, which also features vocalist Chino Moreno, guitarist Stef Carpenter, bassist Chi Cheng and keyboard player Frank Delgado, still spends most of its time in its home town.
In 2000, the Deftones was awarded a Grammy as the “Best Heavy Metal Band.”
“It’s kind of funny,” said Cunningham.“We’re definitely a metal-based band, you know, I mean from the get-go, from the very beginning, but I think there are certainly many, many bands that are far more metal than us and deserve that category. It’s pretty wild.”
Cunningham grew up exposed to music with his father playing bass and his stepfather being a drummer.
“Everyone in the band, we enjoy all music, all types of music,” he said. “For me I like a lot of Jimi Hendrix and Cream, the Police, The Beatles, these are the things I used to play along to. And then later on bands like Rush and Metallica, everything.”
His current favorite, however, is a New York avant-rock band called TV On The Radio.
“They’re very very cool, I couldn’t even explain it, it’s all over the board. It’s a really really cool fun, with very cool melodies and very interesting music, it’s rad and very cool.”
From St. Petersburg, the Deftones will travel to Moscow where it will play on Thursday. 
Cunningham said he was deeply impressed by Moscow when the Deftones performed at an oudoor concert there in June 2001.
“It was amazing, you know, it was very surreal to from when we started landing on the airplane, coming down. It was a place I wanted to go all my life, you know. It was very weird.
“We were there maybe three or four days, I think, and played only one show in Gorky Park and it was great. I was very excited when I saw we had a chance to go back.
“Especially because we’ve only been to Moscow, so we’ll be returning there and also [going] to St. Petersburg, so I’m looking forward to it very much. It’s very amazing. A lot of history. So much history.”

Deftones performs at PORT on Wednesday. www.deftones.com

TITLE: Summer lovin’
AUTHOR: By Olga Kalashnikova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A play based on the works of Dostoevsky shows his tender side. 
St. Petersburg’s famed White Nights season is well undeway and last Friday the Molodyozhny Theater unvieled its latest production, called, appropriately, “The White Night.”
Director Oleg Kulikov, who has work in both Russia and in the U.K., has staged a sentimental love story based on Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel “White Nights.” 
With insertions from the writer’s other works, the show aims to evoke the mystic spirit of a strange, fantastical St. Petersburg. 
“We usually have dealings with Dostoevsky in his great literary works. So Ilya Borovikov, the author of adaptation, and I decided to take the setting of ‘White Nights’ and make a story about a man and a woman on the basis of it,” said Oleg Kulikov. 
According to the director, “White Nights” is one of Dostoevsky’s simplest and most beautiful books.
The show’s protagonists — Nastenka and Dreamer — meet one white night in St. Petersburg.
“Who is my character — Dreamer? A lonely man? Undoubtedly. He always dreams about something,” said actor Alexander Kulikov. “Is he in love? With life — yes. He is in love with his own world.”
Dreamer falls in love with Nastenka. He wishes her to be happy and is ready to give away all his “fantastic years” for one day of real life with her.
“I think he will live in these events for a long time”, said Alexander Kulikov.
It is a story about love, dreams, happiness and loss.
“We tried to take scenes of love and the relations between a man and a woman from other Dostoevsky novels and to reflect on the story of a man and a woman in this wonderful urbanized and beautiful city,” said Oleg Kulikov.
Excerpts from the Dostoevsky stories “A Gentle Creature” and “Under the Bed and Another Man’s Wife,” and novel “The Idiot” are inextricably interwoven in “The White Night.” 
The theatergoer who knows these works well will find references to them. For the unprepared, however, the story includes some vague moments.
“The White Night” is a symbolic show, full of gentle hints and unusual director’s devices. 
“Fantastic realism” is how the director defined its genre. 
“I think that in most Dostoevsky novels something is broken between the man and the woman. We do not see a beautiful love story,” said Oleg Kulikov. “Everything comes down to philosophy. There is some kind of breakdown.”
That is why Kulikov is interested in the novels he merged for the show.
“There is no dogmatism in these works. There is just the feeling of tenderness, delicacy. Everything is in the beginning of its way, it seems the happiness is still possible.”

TITLE: Documentary evidence
AUTHOR: By Cori Weiner
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Michael Moore started a revolution with his brand of polemic documentary filmmaking, but the trend has yet to take off in Russia.
From the controversial “Fahrenheit 9/11” to the more subdued “March of the Penguins,” new-style documentaries have recently gained considerable popularity in mainstream America, but Russian filmmakers are unmoved by the trend. 
Not only informative, but entertaining and sometimes even humorous, a large number of the U.S. films more or less follow the traditions and constraints of their genre while a number of them don’t, sparking much controversy. 
Pioneered by Michael Moore, the polemic documentary has achieved box office success and inspired other such films in the same vein such as “Super Size Me “ and “Mardi Gras: Made in China.”
Accompanying all the buzz generated by these films is the on-going debate over whether they even belong to the documentary genre. 
Naturally, they feature footage of “real” people, but how the footage to be is edited is in the perhaps-overly-deft hands of the director. With such freedom, he may put forth his own agenda, and at the same time entertain: tactics not unprecedented in the history of documentary film, but certainly a shock for today’s moviegoers. 
In Russia, a country where over the past 15 years, American style has influenced everything from eating habits to television, the art of documentary films remains virtually untouched. 
Presenting the facts and allowing the audience to form its own conclusions continues to be status quo. Directors with more lofty goals in mind may also aim to create a work of art. 
Documentaries intending to entertain, however, are rare. The style recently popularized by Moore is nowhere to be found. What’s more, documentaries of any tradition are not growing in popularity. 
That’s not to say that the style of documentary films hasn’t changed during the past 15 years. The late 1980s marked the advent of freedom of expression in all spheres of life, and documentaries were no exception, said St. Petersburg-based documentary filmmaker Maxim Yakubson.
“In the late ‘80s and the early ‘90s, documentary films dramatically rose to center-stage,” Yakubson said. 
Noting such directors as Viktor Kosakovsky, he recalled, that “suddenly it was as though we all decided to walk around naked.... The reality of poverty, the government, historical events, it was precisely this reality that documentary films exposed to a great extent.” 
Before this time, directors created “a rather ideal and artificial world,” Yakubson said.
As a result, post-Soviet documentaries were shown in movie theaters and received widespread acknowledgement. 
“During that time, there were even movie theaters specifically for documentary films... Now, interestingly, not one of those movie theaters is left,” laments Yakubson. 
Parallel to what is presently happening in America, documentary film was used as a medium to show the truth. 
However, while certain American directors may be carving reality as they want the viewer to see it, post-Soviet directors strove to unveil the truth just as it was: reality in the raw.
Yakubson further commented on the next turn that documentary films took.
“It turned out that facts by themselves are interesting only to a certain extent. The effect of the openness passed and we needed something else...” Yakubson said. “In the past, Soviet documentary films had been more devoted to careful selection of each scene. In the ‘90s, however, filmmakers began to focus less on the artistry and more on the events themselves.” 
Yakubson attributes this change to arrival of the video camera which was able to shoot footage more easily than a film camera. 
As for the next stage according to Yakubson, “The American and European school of film had a profound effect on post-Soviet film, particularly regarding documentaries meant for television. The style became more energetic and rhythmic.”
Yakubson, a graduate of Moscow’s VGIK, is presently working on “Sornak” (“Weeds”) a film on jazz musicians in which the style of the film undoubtedly embodies the evolving tradition of documentary films. 
When asked how he succeeds in filming without the influence of his personal opinions, Yakubson said, “Meeting the musicians, I became interested in reconstructing as much as possible a picture of the history of jazz in St. Petersburg from within, listening to the musicians and showing their points of view and life path. I try to show the viewers where things came from, not just what’s on the surface.”
Why documentaries of any type aren’t making it big in Russia is anyone’s guess. 
One reason may be monetary: documentaries are generally low budget. Even with limited release on the big screen or no release at all, in America they can earn enough money to at least cover expenses, if not make a profit. A case in point: the documentary section in even the most mainstream American video rental stores has grown significantly over the past decade, and some of these films went straight to rental. 
In effort to satisfy the public, movie rental stores stock their shelves with these films, which, in turn, profit from the purchase. 
In present-day Russia, on the other hand, documentaries almost never make it to the big screen.
What’s more, rentals, while possible, aren’t popular. Purchasing DVDs or videos is more common, and of what relatively few purchases are made, many are pirated copies. Instead, documentaries by and large remain a genre reserved for TV or film festivals, where money is scarce. With little monetary motivation, directors may decide to invest their time elsewhere.
As a result, the number of Russian documentary films in circulation is small. 
In the words of one salesperson at Illusion, a video and DVD store in St. Petersburg frequented by those in the film industry, the number of Russian documentaries compared to the number created by other nationalities is “significantly less,” although somewhat popular. 
This opinion is corroborated by the small selection of Russian documentaries in the more mainstream store Titanic. And, in contrast with the situation at Illusion, few are popular. Making a new style of documentary film hoping for box office success would be a risk.
In fact, when asked whether he would direct a documentary with a socio-political goal in mind, Yakubson responded with an overwhelming, “Of course.” 
Why he doesn’t elicited a more detailed response.
“In the past I had other goals” Yakubson said. “The only work of that sort that I did was in 2001 on Chechen refugees. I had hoped that my film would influence the situation there.” 
Incidentally, the government did not fund Yakubson’s film on Chechen refugees.
Quite possibly the main reason is more simple: the trend has yet to catch on. A mere four years have passed since “Bowling for Columbine” made its debut, and only a percentage of the rising number of American box office documentaries have made it to Russia. Who knows, in the years to come, Russian documentaries meant to entertain, Mooresque or not, just may be the next big hit.

TITLE: Security Forces Capture Key al Qaeda Files
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BAGHDAD — Security forces have seized al Qaeda documents in Iraq giving key information about the militant group’s network and the whereabouts of its leaders, the country’s national security adviser said on Thursday. 
“We believe this is the beginning of the end of al Qaeda in Iraq,” Mowaffaq al-Rubaie told a televised news conference.
Rubaie told Reuters earlier this year that the Sunni Arab insurgency against the U.S.-backed, Shi’ite-led government had been defeated. But violence has continued to rage across Iraq, killing hundreds of people and showing no signs of abating.
Iraqi and U.S. officials have also in the past said that al Qaeda, blamed for some of the bloodiest attacks in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion three years ago, was on the defensive.
They have hailed last week’s death of al Qaeda leader in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in a U.S. air raid as a major blow to the militant group, while cautioning that it would not end violence.
“We believe al Qaeda in Iraq was taken by surprise ... the government is on the attack now ... to destroy al Qaeda and to finish this terrorist organization in Iraq,” Rubaie said.
He said on Thursday that some documents were found in an al Qaeda hideout where Zarqawi had been, but did not make clear whether this was the place where the Jordanian militant was killed last week.
Holding what he said was one of them in his hand, he added:
“I present to you a document that was found in one of Zarqawi’s computers that reveals many dangerous things and gives details on strategy and plans of the al Qaeda terrorist organization in Iraq.”
But a copy of the unsigned document, whose authenticity could not be independently verified, did not identify the anonymous author as an al Qaeda member or give specific information about any planned attacks.
Instead, it suggested that insurgent forces were being weakened by U.S. raids and propaganda and proposed ways to counter this, for example, by infiltrating Iraq’s armed forces, recruiting new members and manufacturing more weapons.

TITLE: 64 Killed by Sri Lankan Tamil Tiger Rebels in Blast
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: ANURADHAPURA, Sri Lanka — Suspected Tamil Tiger rebels killed 64 people on Thursday when mines blew up a bus in the worst attack since a 2002 truce, officials said, prompting a wave of air strikes on rebel positions.
The government said the rebels used two mines side by side, peppering the bus with ball bearings on an isolated road near rebel territory. At the hospital in the north central town of Anuradhapura, some mourned the loss of whole families.
“The bus was blown over,” 37-year-old survivor Chintha Irangani told Reuters. She was taking her three children to a clinic. All of them died.
“There was blood and body parts everywhere. I fell unconscious. I saw my children’s bodies at the hospital.”
A Reuters Television cameraman said the road beside the overturned bus was covered with glass and blood. In the hospital, he saw torn and burned corpses including many women and children. Officials said 13 children were among the dead.
Most on the bus were from the island’s majority Sinhalese community. The government said the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) wanted to provoke an ethnic backlash against minority Tamils to support their demands for a separate Tamil homeland.
“We have to seriously consider the ceasefire agreement and possibly restructure it,” government spokesman Kehilya Rambukwella told a news conference.
The Tigers denied involvement in the attack. Few have believed their denials of responsibility for similar attacks on the military. More than 500 people have died since early April, and many fear the island risks a return to civil war.

TITLE: African Leaders Call for ‘Green Revolution’
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: ABUJA — African heads of state and government pledged to lead a new “Green Revolution” on their hunger-stricken continent with an arsenal of better soil, seeds and financial aid for millions of subsistence farmers. 
The systematic use of fertilizer — by eliminating taxes and tariffs that often keep it out of reach — is crucial to rejuvenating what experts called the continent’s “dead” soil, the leaders concluded.
“To feed themselves and their countries, farmers will need to shift from low-yielding, extensive land practices to more intensive, higher-yielding practices, with increased use of improved seeds, fertilisers and irrigation,” they said in a joint statement at the close of Africa’s first agricultural summit.
An 11-point plan approved by the participants, which included at least seven African leaders, calls on governments to reduce the cost of fertilizers by the middle of next year, and to eliminate taxes and tariffs on them immediately.
Their statement, read out by Nigerian Agriculture Minister Adamu Bello, warned that enriching the depleted soil was “crucial for achieving an African ‘Green Revolution’ in the face of rapidly rising population and declining soil fertility.”
The “Green Revolution” refers to technical advances rolled out from the 1950s, including the creation of hardier hybrid plant breeds and the introduction of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and improved irrigation that boosted food production in many countries worldwide.
Though yields surged everywhere, transforming some states like India, the techniques have been criticised recently for encouraging a loss of biodiversity and increasing pollution through excess fertilizer and pesticide use.
For Africa, where more than 200 million people still suffer from food insecurity, summit host President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria said, it was impossible to overemphasize “the urgent need for Africa to double its fertilizer use, improve agricultural productivity, raise rural income.”
He highlighted the twin dangers of “a rapidly growing population and worsening incidents of poverty,” and said that despite Africans’ intensive labour, “our farmers have not enough to show for their toil.”

TITLE: Four Men Charged In Singer Attack
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK — Four young men suspected of beating a recording artist while yelling anti-gay slurs were arraigned on assault and hate-crime charges, but did not enter a plea.
They are accused of chasing and jumping Kevin Aviance, 38, at about 1:30 a.m. Saturday in the city’s East Village.
According to a felony complaint filed by prosecutors, the men followed Aviance, called him derogatory names and threw two garbage bags and a paint can at the singer before surrounding and attacking him.
Len Evans, Aviance’s publicist, said the singer could hear passersby yelling at the attackers to stop. 
Aviance suffered a broken jaw, bruised knee and other injuries, the complaint said.
When it was over, a stranger walked him to the hospital. Aviance was discharged Monday from Manhattan’s Beth Israel Medical Center, his leg in a brace and his jaw wired shut. 
Aviance, who performs in drag, appeared on the Billboard dance music charts in 2002 and 2004 with his songs “Give It Up” and “Alive.” 
Akino George, 20, of the Bronx, and Gregory Archie, 18, of Manhattan, were arraigned Tuesday on charges of first-degree gang assault and first-degree assault as a hate crime, a day after Jarell Sears, 20, of Newark, N.J., and Gerard Johnson, 16, of Manhattan, were arraigned on the same charges.
Each was held on $25,000 bail, and all were scheduled to return to court Friday. They face up to 25 years in prison if convicted.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Hamas Seeks Seize
JERUSALEM (Reuters) — The Hamas government wants a ceasefire with Israel and is willing to speak to Palestinian militant factions in Gaza to get them to stop firing rockets at the Jewish state, a spokesman said on Thursday. 
But Ghazi Hamad said Israel had to stop military activity in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank first. 
Hamas ended a 16-month truce with Israel last Friday. Its military wing responded by launching a barrage of makeshift rockets at the Jewish state from the Gaza Strip.
“I spoke today with the prime minister and he said we want quiet everywhere. We are interested in a ceasefire everywhere,” Hamad, speaking in Hebrew, said in an interview on Israel Radio.

More Latin Leftism
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) — With labor violence boiling over, a leftist candidate has pulled ahead going into the home stretch for Mexico’s presidential election after turning the tables on his conservative rival. 
Three opinion polls this week showed Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the leftist former mayor of Mexico City, winning back his pole position for the July 2 vote. Another one on Wednesday had opponent Felipe Calderon ahead but with a smaller lead.
Lopez Obrador, often the target of negative television ads, had some revenge last week when he accused conservative Calderon’s businessman brother-in-law, Diego Zavala, of influence peddling and evading taxes.
Analysts say a scandal over Zavala has begun to stick even though allegations that he used his influence to win government contracts and failed to pay millions of dollars in taxes may be hard to prove.

Clinton Cashes In
WASHINGTON — Life after the White House has proven lucrative for former U.S. president Bill Clinton.
President Clinton made nearly $7.5 million in speaking fees last year and sometimes earned as much as $350,000 for a single appearance. 
Clinton earned a staggering $650,000 for just two appearances in two days before major gatherings in Canada by motivational speaker Tony Robbins, according to the financial disclosure report filed Wednesday by his wife, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. 
As a senator, Mrs. Clinton is required to report her spouse’s income as well as her own.
In 2004, Clinton earned just $875,000 for speeches as he recovered from heart bypass surgery and finished his memoirs. Last year, he made eight times as much on the speech circuit.

Bush Retracts Joke
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush, who often teases members of the White House press corps, apologized Wednesday after he poked fun at a reporter for wearing sunglasses without realizing they were needed for vision loss. 
The exchange occurred at a news conference in the Rose Garden.
Bush called on Los Angeles Times reporter Peter Wallsten and asked if he was going to ask his question with his “shades” on.
“For the viewers, there’s no sun,” Bush said to the television cameras.
But even though the sun was behind the clouds, Wallsten still needs the sunglasses because he has Stargardt’s disease, a form of macular degeneration that causes progressive vision loss. The condition causes Wallsten to be sensitive to glare and even on a cloudy day can cause pain and increase the loss of sight.

TITLE: Joyful Mickelson Even After Nine Holes at U.S. Open
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: AMARONECK, New York — Phil Mickelson scrambled through his first nine holes Thursday and then capped them with a 30-foot putt for his first birdie of the U.S. Open. 
Mickelson pumped his fist in the air when the long putt dropped and the grandstand erupted for Lefty, a fan favorite in New York, who is seeking his third straight major championship. He made the turn in even par.
The winner of last season’s PGA Championship and this year’s Masters played almost a dozen rounds at Winged Foot in the months leading up to the Open. 
After analyzing the severely sloping greens, he put a new 64-degree wedge in his bag to deal with the tough greenside shots he figured to face. 
Starting his round on the back, and playing in a cool, blustery wind, Mickelson had plenty of chances to use the new wedge.
He hit an errant third shot into the sand on the par-5 12th that led to a bogey. He then missed the next five greens — but saved par on all of them. He got a huge break along the way, getting free relief from a sprinkler behind the 16th green. 
Instead of having the ball pressed against a two-inch collar of rough, he was able to drop in the first cut for an easy chip.
With half the field on the course about halfway through the morning round, only four of 78 players were under par. Jason Dufner was in the lead, at 2-under. 
Dufner, starting on the back, had a sand shot from about the same place as Mickelson’s on 13, except his went in for birdie.

TITLE: Henman Reaches Quarterfinals
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Tim Henman strolled into the quarterfinals of the Stella Artois Championships on Thursday with a 6-3 6-4 victory over France’s Nicolas Mahut. 
The 31-year-old Briton, three-times a runner-up at the pre-Wimbledon grasscourt event, comfortably beat Andre Agassi in the first round and controlled his match against Mahut from the start. 
“I’m very happy with the way I’m serving,” said the four-times Wimbledon semi-finalist. “I feel I’m getting a bit more bite on the ball and a bit more movement. I’m feeling strong.”
Henman will need his best tennis in the quarterfinals, where he will play jinx opponent Russian Dmitry Tursunov, if the Russian overcame Taiwan’s Yeu-Tzuoo Wang in a match late Thursday.
Hard-hitting Tursunov knocked Henman out of last year’s Wimbledon and both the Australian Open andFrench Open this year. 
Australian Mark Philippoussis, the 1997 champion, was knocked out 6-2 3-6 6-3 by Chilean Fernando Gonzalez.
Later French Open champion Rafael Nadal seeks his second win of the grasscourt season against fellow Spaniard Fernando Verdasco.
Defending champion Andy Roddick faces Thailand’s Paradorn Srichaphan for the right to face Gonzalez. 
Lleyton Hewitt and Ivan Ljubicic are also in third round action.

TITLE: Ecuador Makes History
AUTHOR: By Darren Ennis
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: HAMBURG — Ecuador strolled past Costa Rica 3-0 and into the second round of the World Cup on Thursday for the first time in its history. 
Goals in either half from Carlos Tenorio (8) and Agustin Delgado (54) and then a late strike from Ivan Kaviedes kept the South Americans’ 100 percent record in Group A intact following a 2-0 win over Poland in their opening match.
Germany is also through, having beaten Poland 1-0 in Dortmund on Wednesday.
Degado and Tenorio were also goalscorers against the Poles.
The group winners will be decided when Ecuador meets the host Germany next Tuesday. The Ticos, meanwhile, head home after the first phase for a second successive finals.
Despite early pressure from Costa Rica, Ecuador opened the scoring after eight minutes when Tenorio headed home from a nicely floated cross by Luis Valencia.
Costa Rica came out fighting once again in the second half, but their enthusiasm was short-lived as Ecuador doubled their tally in the 54th minute with a superbly taken goal.
Edison Mendez won the ball on the right hand corner of the box before Delgado pounced onto the loose ball, controlled it with his chest, before rifling home from a tight angle.
Two minutes into injury time, Kaviedes turned the ball in with a volley after a cross from the right to make it three. The early goal in the first half seemed to settle the South Americans, and they began to take control of the game, stringing together long pieces of passing play.
Their opponents were reduced to long range shots which never really troubled Ecuador.

TITLE: South Korea Readies For Showdown With France
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: LEVERKUSEN — One of the main architects of South Korea’s surge to the 2002 World Cup semifinals believes the current team can make the football world sit up and take notice again by fashioning a win over 1998 winners France on Sunday.
Pim Verbeek, who was assistant to coach Guus Hiddink in 2002 and is Dick Advocaat’s right-hand man in Germany, said that South Korea had nothing to lose against France following their 2-1 victory over African debutants Togo, which put them top of Group G on Tuesday.
France and Switzerland fought to a 0-0 draw in the other group match on Tuesday, piling the pressure on the richly talented French ahead of their encounter with South Korea in Leipzig.
The French boast a Who’s Who of football’s finest, but Thierry Henry, Zinedine Zidane, Patrick Vieira and Co. have not engineered a World Cup goal in 360 minutes of play. Verbeek said they were desperately seeking some kind of form.
“Four years ago they were struggling, and what I’ve heard is that they’re still struggling,” said the Dutchman. “But still they have a lot of international experience and they know it’s their last chance, because if they lose against us [South Korea] they will be in deep trouble. 
“Also, we want to win. We have two games left and have to win one (to progress). So the sooner the better.
“If we win against France we can relax against Switzerland. If we don’t win against France we have to go full (out) against Switzerland.
“So I think everybody understands that we will try to win the game against France and we can win it. 
“But we can be a little more relaxed. Because if we lose the game we can still get to the next round if we beat Switzerland. So we are in, we think, a good position but not a safe position.”
France has beaten South Korea in their last two matches — a 3-2 win in their final warm-up game for the 2002 World Cup and a 5-0 thrashing at the 2001 Confederations Cup in Korea — but Verbeek said the gap had closed markedly in the last four years.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Gays Pick Pin-Ups
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AFP) — Portuguese winger Cristiano Ronaldo has been anointed the pin-up boy of the World Cup by Dutch gay magazine Gay Krant. 
It is the second successive major championships in which the Manchester United star has won the accolade.
While Ronaldo ended the opening 1-0 win over Angola on the bench shaking his head at coach Luis Felipe Scolari’s decision to take him off, his appearance certainly met with the approval of the 3,000 readers of the twice-monthly magazine.
They judged the 21-year-old — who was also judged the finest male specimen at Euro 2004 — to be “the most beautiful, the most attractive and the sexiest” player at the showpiece event.
Sweden’s Markus Rosenberg took second place in the poll of the sexiest team — otherwise known as the “FC Hunks” which also was made up of England’s Michael Owen and David Beckham and Dutch wing Robin van Persie.

Ronaldo ‘Feels Fine’
KOENIGSTEIN (Reuters) — Ronaldo insisted Thursday he “felt fine” and was looking forward to Brazil’s next World Cup match after an illness scare.
The 29-year-old striker, who scored both goals in Brazil’s 2-0 World Cup final win four years ago over Germany, was taken to hospital after complaining of dizziness and headaches on Wednesday.
It recalled memories of 1998 when he fell victim to a mystery illness hours before Brazil’s 3-0 World Cup final defeat by France.
“I felt quite sick during the day off [Wednesday] and at about three o’clock in the afternoon the doctor decided to take me to hospital just to make sure there was no serious illness or anything,” he told reporters on Thursday.

Police Detain Fans
DORTMUND (Reuters) — Police have charged 96 people with criminal offences following clashes ahead of Germany’s World Cup match with neighbors Poland on Wednesday in by far the worst outbreak of trouble at the tournament so far. 
A police spokesman said on Thursday that 429 fans were detained either because they were known Polish or German hooligans or their behaviour was aggressive and threatening and police wished to prevent violence from escalating.
Of those detained, 278 were German and 119 were Poles. By Thursday morning police had released all but three fans.
Wolfgang Niersbach, a vice-president of the German World Cup organizing committee praised the action of the police at a briefing for reporters Thursday.
“The police deserve tremendous praise for the way they handled the situation, realized the danger and took preventive action,” Niersbach said.