SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1184 (50), Friday, July 7, 2006
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TITLE: New Chief Prosecutor Sacks Six Of His Deputies
AUTHOR: By Oksana Yablokova and Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — New Prosecutor General Yury Chaika fired the chief military prosecutor and five deputy prosecutors Wednesday in an overhaul of the Prosecutor General’s Office that removes several officials linked to incompetence or corruption.
Chief Military Prosecutor Alexander Savenkov, however, had made a name for himself as being independent and fair, and his dismissal dismayed soldiers’ rights activists.
The fired deputy prosecutors include First Deputy Prosecutor General Yury Biryukov, who blocked a high-profile smuggling investigation into the Tri Kita and Grand furniture stores; the outspoken Vladimir Kolesnikov; Nicholai Shepel, who oversaw the Beslan investigation; and Anatoly Bondar and Valentin Simuchenkov, Interfax reported late Wednesday.
Chaika said he would replace Savenkov with Deputy Prosecutor Sergei Fridinsky, a move that looks like a victory for Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov. Savenkov had repeatedly and publicly criticized Ivanov for not doing more to prevent hazing. He shocked the country in January by announcing that a brutal New Year’s hazing incident had forced doctors to amputate a conscript’s legs and genitals.
“Savenkov was an independent and qualified chief prosecutor who made sure that his subordinates investigated army crimes properly, at least in recent years,” said Valentina Melnikova, head of the Union of Soldiers’ Mothers Committees, a group that defends soldiers’ rights.
“Judging by his previous record in Chechnya, I am not sure that Fridinsky will be independent and strong enough to resist the pressure of the military, which will be trying to cover up crime in the army,” she said.
Under former Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov, Fridinsky headed the prosecutor’s office for the Southern Federal District from 2000 to 2004. 
The district includes Chechnya. Fridinsky then moved to the main office in Moscow, where he came under the spotlight for heading an investigation into the adoption of children by foreigners.
The dismissals come a week after Chaika, who was appointed prosecutor general in mid-June, told all 13 of his deputies to submit their resignations but indicated that not all of them would go. He immediately accepted the resignation of the Moscow city prosecutor, however.
Chaika on Wednesday named Alexander Buksman and Viktor Gulyagin, both allies from his recent tenure as justice minister, as new deputy prosecutors, Interfax said, citing Viktor Ozerov, head of the Federation Council’s Defense and Security Committee. 
The other deputy posts will be filled by former Moscow Prosecutor Ivan Sidoruk, Krasnoyarsk Prosecutor Viktor Grin and Buryatia Prosecutor Ivan Semchishin, Ozerov said.
The Federation Council has to approve the shakeup, but it is expected to do so easily on Friday.
Fridisnky’s successor in the North Caucasus, Shepel, led the investigation into the Beslan school hostage-taking, and former hostages have bitterly accused him of refusing to accept evidence that did not back up the official version of events. 
Protests from Beslan activist groups prompted President Vladimir Putin last year to send a second deputy of Ustinov’s, Kolesnikov, to Beslan to conduct an investigation into the performance of Shepel’s team. Kolesnikov cleared the team of wrongdoing and opened several fraud and corruption investigations into senior North Ossetian officials who had tacitly supported the activists.
It was not clear where the fired prosecutors will go, but some are likely to follow Ustinov to the Justice Ministry, where he is now minister.
Kolesnikov, 58, who once promised to jail all oligarchs, will probably retire. He recently said he would run for the State Duma next year.

TITLE: China, Russia Resist Sanctions for North Korea
AUTHOR: By Edith Lederer
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: UNITED NATIONS — China and Russia resisted an attempt in the UN Security Council to impose sanctions against North Korea for its missile launches Wednesday, saying only diplomacy could halt the isolated regime’s nuclear and rocket development programs. 
Japan, backed by the U.S. and Britain, circulated a resolution that would ban any country from transferring funds, material and technology that could be used in North Korea’s missile and weapons of mass destruction programs.
China, the North’s closest ally, and Russia, which has been trying to re-establish Soviet-era ties with Pyongyang, countered that they favor a weaker council statement without any threat of sanctions. Both countries hold veto power in the council, making sanctions unlikely.
North Korea, which has proclaimed itself a nuclear weapons state, has said sanctions would amount to a declaration of war. China and Russia are clearly concerned that a UN demand for such measures would only make the current situation worse and delay a return to six-party talks. China and Russia are part of the talks along with North and South Korea, the United States and Japan.
In a possible sign that Moscow’s and Beijing’s position may carry the day, President Bush addressed the issue in a subdued manner without the harsh warnings that he had issued as recently as last week when he said that a missile launch would be unacceptable.
Bush said Wednesday that the failure of North Korea’s long-range missile test does not lessen the need to push the communist regime to give up its nuclear weapons program.
“One thing we have learned is that the rocket didn’t stay up for very long,” Bush said about the Taepodong-2 missile that failed 42 seconds after liftoff Tuesday. “It tumbled into the sea.”
“It doesn’t diminish my desire to solve this problem,” he said in Washington.
Bush spoke by phone to Japan’s Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and they agreed to cooperate in pushing for a UN resolution to impose sanctions on North Korea, Japan’s Kyodo news agency reported Thursday. The U.S. president also spoke to South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun and they agreed to cooperate on the missile issue, a South Korean official said.
The failure of the Taepodong-2 missile — the object of intense international attention for more than a month — suggested a catastrophic failure of the rocket’s first, or booster, stage. A working version of the intercontinental missile could potentially reach the United States with a light payload.
The North also fired six shorter-range missiles on Wednesday, arguing it had the right to such launches. All of them apparently fell harmlessly into the Sea of Japan.
Major South Korean newspapers reported Thursday that North Korea has three or four more missiles on launch pads ready to be fired. 
The North barred people from sailing into some areas off the coast until July 11 in a possible sign of preparations for additional launches, said Chosun Ilbo, one of South Korea’s largest dailies.
Tokyo responded swiftly by barring North Korean officials from traveling to Japan, and banned one of its trading boats from entering Japanese waters for six months.
In South Korea, separated from the North by the world’s most heavily armed border, officials said Wednesday’s tests would affect inter-Korean initiatives such as the dispatch of food and fertilizer from the South to the North, but stressed that diplomacy was the best way to solve the crisis.
Both Japan and South Korea are within range of North Korean missiles.
The Security Council held an emergency session at Japan’s request, and council experts met late Wednesday for to discuss the draft resolution. Council diplomats said China and Russia stuck to their demand for a presidential statement — not a resolution. Experts will meet again Thursday morning and council ambassadors may then meet in the afternoon to review progress, the diplomats said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the session was closed.
France’s UN Ambassador Jean-Marc de La Sabliere, the current council president, said after the council meeting that all 15 members “expressed deep concern” at the missile tests.
“Thirteen delegations were in favor of a resolution, and two delegations thought a presidential statement would be more appropriate,” he said, confirming that these were China and Russia. 
“It’s too early to say at this moment what the outcome will be except to say that there is an agreement in the council to act swiftly and firmly,” de La Sabliere said. 
The draft resolution proposed by Japan and obtained by The Associated Press would condemn North Korea’s ballistic missile launches and deplore its role as “the world’s leading proliferator of ballistic missiles and related technology.” It would demand that Pyongyang immediately halt “the development, testing, deployment and proliferation of ballistic missiles and reconfirm its moratorium on missile launching.” 
If approved, the council would strongly urge North Korea to return immediately to the six-party talks “without precondition” and stop all nuclear-related activities with the aim of completely dismantling its nuclear programs, including both plutonium reprocessing and uranium enrichment. 
China’s UN Ambassador Wang Guangya and Russia’s UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin both noted that after North Korea shocked Japan in August 1998 by blasting a Taepodong-1 missile over its territory and into the Pacific Ocean, the Security Council reacted merely with a press statement.

TITLE: Opera Diva Confesses Passion for Petersburg
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: U.S. opera star Renee Fleming is this week recording a CD with conductor Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Symphony Orchestra in St. Petersburg, the singer revealed at a meeting with local journalists.
Following a solo recital on June 27 at the theater’s “The Stars of the White Nights” festival, the popular soprano remained in the city to collaborate with Gergiev and the orchestra on a recording of late-Romantic composers for Decca Records. 
“I will be here until the middle of July and use whatever time Valery and the orchestra have available,” Fleming said.
The recording by the two-time Grammy Award-winning singer, who gained international recognition in the bel canto repertoire as well as through the work of Massenet, Mozart and Strauss, will be comprise d of works by Strauss, Conrngold, Janacek, Smetana, Cilea, Puccini, Massenet, Gounoud, Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky.
These works are new to Fleming who has taken a year to select them and prepare for the recording.
Fleming said that the Mariinsky Symphony Orchestra, with its vibrant, deep low sound, is one of the few ensembles in the world that represents and has retained a national character. 
“This is something that we all desire to hear, and there is so much passion and so much low sound, which by the way makes a wonderful contrast to the soprano voice,” she said.
Gergiev has long promoted St. Petersburg as an international destination for the world’s greatest classical artists.
During her time in the city, Fleming also performed at a White Nights Ball in the Yekaterininsky Palace in Tsarskoye Selo with pianist Yefim Bronfman and violinist Leonidas Kavakos.
“White Nights is already that; the ball was on a level that I would never find in New York or Paris or anywhere, and the city is really becoming more and more of a great destination,” she said, concurring with Gergiev’s enthusiasm for St. Petersburg. “Even the fireworks were artistic.”
The singer said she feels the same inspiration from performing in St. Petersburg that she experiences at Milan’s La Scala or Vienna’s Staatsoper. 
“It comes from the history, from understanding of who sang on this stage for hundreds of years,” the singer explains. “Because I am American and I didn’t grow up with that — nothing in the United States is that old — it is very enthralling and inspiring for me to perform at this kind of place.”
Fleming, who had an acoustic test at the Mariinsky’s brand new Concert Hall on Ulitsa Pisareva, describes the new venue as exciting, thrilling and suited to musicians’ needs.
“We might even try and make this new recording at the new hall — if I stand the dust from the construction!” the diva suggested.
Fleming, who sang with baritone Dmitry Khvorostovsky at a concert of popular classics in the Oktyabrsky Concert Hall in February, says she is willing to do a mix of projects.
The singer has found that some commercial success enables her to do more serious projects involving less popular and little known works, such as the current recording with the Mariinsky Symphony Orchestra.
Fleming appreciates Gergiev’s idea to incorporate a standing parterre area in the new concert hall, and recalls her years as a student in Germany. In 1984, she traveled to Frankfurt, where she took lessons from two lengendary sopranos, Dame Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and the late Arleen AugÎr, on a Fulbright Scholarship.
“Valery [Gergiev] told me he remembers being a student and standing hearing concerts for nothing, and it was the same for me in Germany,” she remembers. “Concerts should be accessible for everyone.”
Fleming expressed a keen interest in performing more in Russia but said her schedule is fixed until 2011.
The Mariinsky Theater does not plan its program that far in advance. The Shostakovich Philharmonic remains the only classical music venue in town capable of providing a performance schedule a year in advance.
Fleming said that her daughters, aged 10 and 13, take up a lot of her time but when they have grown up the singer hopes to catch up with St. Petersburg.
Fascination with Russia seems to run in her family. The singer’s younger daughter joined Fleming on her tour to St. Petersburg in February, and was enchanted by the city so much she is now asking her mother to arrange Russian lessons for her. Her elder daughter shares Fleming’s love for opera and even appeared in the role of a maid in a recent production of Verdi’s “La Traviata” at New York’s Metropolitan Opera. 
“My daughters love music, and I think it is good for them to have this experience and to understand what I do,” she said. 
“But she wants to be a politician, so I am already nervous.”

TITLE: Putin Backs U.S. on the Net
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that Russia’s role should not be to counter the United States, adding that Washington was “our principal partner,” with close positions on issues such as global security, nonproliferation and disarmament. 
Answering questions in an Internet Web cast, Putin also called President Bush “a decent person” and a good partner, “with whom it is possible not just to talk but to reach agreement.”
He said he had sent greetings to Bush on his 60th birthday.
“As a human being, (Bush is) one of the people I consider to be my friends,” he said, speaking before a summit of the Group of Eight leading industrialized nations that he will host July 15-17 in St. Petersburg.
Pressed to name Russia’s chief enemies, Putin said he hoped that “terrorists and drug barons” would become the only main foes of leading nations.
But while he stressed cooperation with the United States, the Russian leader indicated that Moscow’s former Cold War foe should not dominate the post-Soviet world, saying that because the planet is diverse, “it should be multipolar.”
With oil prices high, Putin has been seeking to boost energy-rich Russia’s global clout.
Putin also said the war his government has waged against separatists in Chechnya has been “worth it,” asserting that militants wanted to create a separate state stretching from the Black Sea to the Caspian.
Defending a widely criticized referendum that cemented Chechnya’s status as part of Russia, Putin suggested similar votes could be held in breakaway provinces in neighboring Georgia and called for unified global standards for determining the status of separatist regions such as Kosovo in the Balkans.

TITLE: Putin Wags Finger At Europeans
AUTHOR: By Oksana Yablokova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday took issue with Britain for granting asylum to a senior Chechen rebel and scolded Europeans for ignoring neo-Nazi marches and violations of the rights of ethnic Russians in Baltic countries.
While Putin did not explicitly cite Britain, the target of his criticism was clear. 
“It is difficult for us to explain the refusal of certain countries to extradite those suspected of being implicated in terrorism, not to mention granting them political asylum,” Putin said in a speech at the seventh session of the Conference of Prosecutors General of Europe at the President Hotel. 
“In such cases,” Putin said, “the corresponding international agreements should be followed precisely and unfailingly.”
Forty-four prosecutors, including British Attorney General Peter Goldsmith, attended the conference, which was organized by the Council of Europe and was expected to include discussion of wrongly prosecuted suspects, witnesses, juveniles and prisoners.
Russian authorities have been infuriated with British officials for granting asylum to Chechen rebel envoy Akhmed Zakayev, who is wanted in Russia on suspicion of murder and kidnapping.
Earlier this week, Russia refused a visa to Tom de Waal, a former Moscow Times correspondent from Britain who wrote extensively on Chechnya and was an expert witness for the defense at Zakayev’s 2003 extradition trial in London.
Responding to Putin’s remarks, the British Embassy in Moscow sought to distance the British government from Zakayev’s case. 
“As we have said many times, extradition in the United Kingdom is a matter for the independent legal system, not for the government,” an embassy spokesman said. “It is not a political decision. It is taken on legal grounds, in line with the U.K.’s international obligations.”
Putin also warned Europeans against using human rights issues as an instrument for putting pressure on Russia. The president scolded foreign officials for permitting Nazi demonstrations in a Council of Europe member state, referring to an annual march in Latvia commemorating Nazi Germany’s Waffen SS. Latvia has come under fire from Russia for seeking to marginalize, politically and legally, its substantial Russian minority. 
“It is difficult for us to understand why in some countries officials turn a blind eye to the violations of the rights of Russian-speaking citizens,” Putin said. “Why do they break up anti-fascist demonstrations but ignore marches of former Nazis? The fight against all manifestations of Nazism is the direct responsibility of every state.”
Yury Chaika, recently appointed the prosecutor general, said the main function of his office was protecting individual rights. Chaika used the conference to boast of his accomplishments since taking office less than a month ago.
Oddly, Chaika then turned to the tenure of his predecessor, Vladimir Ustinov, noting that from 2001 to 2005, the Prosecutor General’s Office investigated nearly 6 million complaints from citizens claiming rights violations during criminal prosecution or court proceedings. 
“Almost 1.5 million of the complaints had grounds for the prosecutors to interfere, and the citizens’ rights were restored,” Chaika said.

TITLE: A St. Petersburg Vodka Fit for G8 Leaders
AUTHOR: By Stephen Boykewich
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: In the ongoing debate over whether Russia deserves a place in the Group of Eight, the Kremlin has focused on what Russia can bring to the table: resource riches, fiscal health and experience fighting terrorism.
With the summit just a week away, a Russian company has found something else to bring to the table: G8 vodka.
“It was astonishing to me that no one had thought of this, despite all the marketing experts in the West and our own in Russia,” said Maxim Chernigovsky, business development director at Dionis, a St. Petersburg vodka distillery.
“This” was a bottle of vodka labeled “Spetszakaz: G8,” or “Special Order: G8,” that Chernigovsky proudly held up during a recent interview. With a jumble of official-looking stamps, including a number unique to each bottle and the announcement “By Order of the Foreign Ministry for the G8,” you might think the vodka is the official alcoholic beverage of Russia’s G8 presidency. That is just what Dionis wants you to think.
“Notice that it doesn’t say ‘Foreign Ministry of the Russian Federation’ or of any other country. We’re simply expressing our esteem for all foreign ministries, for the institution as a whole,” Chernigovsky said, beaming. “We also discovered that no one had registered the trademark ‘G8’ since it isn’t an official name for the group.
 “We have a very good legal department,” he added.
The G8 vodka, which hit store shelves and restaurants in St. Petersburg and the surrounding Leningrad region in late May, was the product of years of market research by Dionis into short-term — or what Chernigovsky termed “subjective” — branding.
The brand apparently appealed to the owners of the St. Petersburg restaurant Blow Up — which Chernigovsky, probably not accidentally, picked for the interview. The restaurant, situated across from Kazan Cathedral, has cooked up two cocktails using the G8 vodka. 
The first, “The Summit,” combines the vodka with two carefully poured layers of red and blue liquor to resemble the Russian tricolor. “Summit 2” is an intimidating blend of eight liquors, each of which represents a member nation of the G8.
Whether or not they make it to Blow Up, foreign delegations will be presented with bottles of the vodka, Chernigovsky said — though they won’t be drinking it at official events. 
Summit organizers told Dionis they had chosen and ordered their official beverages before April, when the company first made its pitch.
One million liters of those beverages will be coming from Wimm-Bill-Dann, the country’s top juice and dairy producer. 
The company will be packaging juice and mineral water under a G8 logo that resembles its J7 brand of juices.
Company spokeswoman Eleonora Chernetskaya downplayed the repackaging and refused to disclose what it would cost the company. “This is a one-time shipment, not a massive PR campaign,” she said.
But she did concede that the G8 juices were bound to make it onto television screens worldwide, as the world media zoom in on the summit.
“It’s a smart move,” said Alexei Petrenko, head of ratings agency Superbrand Russia. The G8 logo will remind consumers of J7, he said.
He expressed far more skepticism about the vodka. “I can only think of it as a gag,” he said.
While the distiller does hope the vodka finds a wider audience after the July 15-17 summit, when the drink will hit shelves throughout Russia and possibly abroad, Chernigovsky stressed that the project had never been taken too seriously. As proof, he pointed to the tongue-in-cheek touches on the bottle’s label, including a signature by the fictitious “People’s Commissar V.O. Bespokhmelnykh” — a name roughly translatable as “Hangover-Proof.”
“The G8 is not just an official event, it’s also a celebration. I truly believe that,” Chernigovsky said. “And what’s a celebration without a good drink?”

TITLE: Big Mac Shows Calorie Count
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — McDonald’s is changing its packaging in Russia to show how many calories are in Big Macs and other foods it sells.
The change started Wednesday in Moscow and will include all of McDonald’s 150 restaurants in the country, spokeswoman Nina Prasolova said. 
“A Big Tasty has 850 calories, which is 43 percent of an average young lady’s daily needs,” Prasolova said of McDonald’s best-selling sandwich in Russia. “A medium-sized french fries has 450.”
McDonald’s is making the switch at all its outlets worldwide this year after its branches in Turin, Italy, began providing calorie counts during the Winter Olympics in February. 
In Russia, McDonald’s will monitor sales after changing its packaging, seek customer comments and then alter its menu accordingly, Prasolova said.
The company’s Russian sales are rising more than 25 percent per year.

TITLE: Officials Positive Over Transport
AUTHOR: By Yelena Andreyeva
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The state of the city’s transport infrastructure came under the spotlight at SPIBA’s (St. Petersburg International Business Association for Northwestern Russia) general meeting, June 20.  
At the St. Petersburg Economic forum in June, two city construction projects were named along with four other national projects as recipients of Russia’s investment fund. The building of the Western Speed Diameter road will receive 28 billion rubles ($1 billion) and a section of the high-speed highway between Moscow and St. Petersburg — 25.8 billion rubles. The forum also staged a presentation of St. Petersburg’s Orlovsky road tunnel, that is planned to run under the Neva River between the Piskarevsky and Bolsheokhtinsky bridges. 
The Western Speed Diameter is a 46.4 km long highway that will connect the southern part of the city ring road with the Big Port, run across the western part of Vasilievsky Island and north to the “Skandinaviya” highway (E-18.). The construction of the southern part of the Western Speed Diameter started in September 2005 and opens in 2008. According to the plan, therefore, the new highway will connect the north-western, central and southern parts of the city, circumventing the historical center and strengthening links along the federal highways to the Baltic and Skandinavia. In this way it will play a vital part in boosting the competitiveness of Russia’s transport system.
The Orlovsky Tunnel is also aimed at connecting the left and right hand banks of the Neva in order to divert traffic from central bridges. It will provide a twenty-four hour link between the historic center and the ring road and federal highways “Skandinaviya” and “Kola.” Private investors will be sought to run the toll tunnel. 
Among the other projects discussed at the meeting was the reconstruction of the Moskovskatya Tovarnaya station (near Moskovsky Railway station) where the Gazprom City office block is planned. 
“As for transport communication between St. Petersburg and Moscow, we predict that the business passenger will soon prefer high-speed trains to planes,” said Nikolay Asaul, deputy chairman of the committee for investments and strategic projects of St. Petersburg. 
“The city’s airports are located in the outskirts, and even now it takes almost the same time (4.5 hours) to get from Moscow to St. Petersburg either by plane or by a high speed train.” 
It is thus hoped that the construction of skyscrapers, such as Gazprom’s, will maximize use on what is expensive land while conveniently locating the corporation’s office all in one building, in the center, close to the railway station.” According to Asaul, a whole host of surveys were carried out to make sure the new skyscrapers do not affect the city’s historical architectural ensembles.
“It was SPIBA’s members who initiated discussion on the development of city transport infrastructure,” said Natalia Kudryavtseva, executive director at SPIBA. “It influences all aspects of the city economy and business, industrial and commercial buildings, transport services, tourism, and is crucial for the development of St. Petersburg as a business center, something very close to the hearts of our members.”

TITLE: Heineken Eyes Russia Expansion
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: ST. PETERSBURG — Dutch brewer Heineken hopes to increase its share in Russia, its single largest market, to 20 percent from the current 16 percent in five to six years, its chairman said Wednesday. 
“Our investment in Russia is a cornerstone of Heineken’s development,” Chairman Jean-Francois van Boxmeer told reporters, referring to the company’s 1.2 billion euro ($1.53 billion) investment in the world’s fifth-largest beer market since 2002. 
Heineken owns 10 breweries and is the country’s third-largest producer after Baltika, controlled by Scottish & Newcastle and Carlsberg, and InBev. 
A comparatively late entrant to the Russian market, Heineken acquired six local companies from 2002 to 2005, and now owns 36 out of the country’s 1,400 beer brands. “We have a very beautiful portfolio now,” said Roland Primez, Heineken’s chief executive in Russia, adding the firm planned no more acquisitions in Russia. 
Heineken, which produces local beers such as Three Bears, Ohota, Bochkarev and PIT, feels it is under-represented in premium brands, which make the highest profit, and is now pushing forward with licensed beers. 
It launched several premium beers, including an international version of Amstel, last year and will in a month start selling Budweiser under license from U.S. brewer Anheuser-Busch under the “Bud” trademark.

TITLE: Gazprom’s Monopoly On Exports Backed by Duma
AUTHOR: By Stephen Boykewich
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — The State Duma overwhelmingly approved a bill Wednesday formalizing Gazprom’s monopoly over gas exports, defying EU calls for liberalization on the eve of the Group of Eight summit. 
The legislation is likely to exacerbate tensions between Russia and the European Union. Energy security is expected to top the G8 agenda in St. Petersburg.
“The principle of a unified export channel has always been part of our export strategy, though it hasn’t been set out in any normative documents or legislation,” Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov said. “Now it will become the law.”
Besides cementing Gazprom’s role as Russia’s sole natural gas exporter, the law extends the company’s export monopoly to liquefied natural gas, or LNG, and liquefied petroleum gas.
While Russia does not produce LNG for now, it will begin doing so in the near future, as the Sakhalin Island and Shtokman gas fields come on line. 
The sole exception to the new bill allows non-Gazprom gas exports from companies that hold production sharing agreements, or PSAs, with the Russian government. Royal Dutch Shell and ExxonMobil hold PSAs from the 1990s at the Sakhalin-1 and Sakhalin-2 fields.
The EU, rattled by drops in Russian gas shipments during Gazprom’s January price dispute with Ukraine, has pushed Russia to break up Gazprom’s export monopoly and ratify the Energy Charter Treaty, which mandates that signatories hew to market-based principles in energy investment and transit.
Russia seems to have hardened its stance against both the Energy Charter Treaty and breaking up the monopoly in recent months, paving the way for renewed conflicts at next week’s summit.
The new bill “proceeds from the necessity of defending Russia’s economic interests, fulfilling international gas export obligations, securing federal budget revenues and supporting Russia’s energy balance,” Interfax reported Wednesday, citing the text of the bill.
A virtual who’s-who of Russian energy companies unsuccessfully lobbied to restrict the bill’s scope after it was introduced in the Duma in early June.
Vladimir Volubyov, a spokesman for joint Russian-British energy company TNK-BP, said his company sent its proposals to the Duma’s Energy Committee along with those from oil companies LUKoil and Rosneft, and independent gas producers Itera and Novatek but that they were rejected without explanation.
“The law itself is a necessary one. No one is saying that it shouldn’t exist,” Volubyov said. “But we need to define the system of rules by which independent producers’ access [to Gazprom’s pipelines] will be regulated.”
President Vladimir Putin and Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin have signaled in recent weeks that independent Russian gas producers would be allowed greater access to Gazprom’s pipeline infrastructure, but only for deliveries to the domestic market.
Gazprom sells gas to domestic consumers at a steep discount — about $45 per thousand cubic meters — and relies on lucrative foreign exports for profits. It provides over one-quarter of Europe’s gas for an average of $216 per thousand cubic meters.
LUKoil spokesman Dmitry Dolgov said his company had hoped to have LNG excluded from the bill in view of possible future LNG projects.
It should come as no surprise that lobbying efforts failed to soften the legislation, Troika Dialog oil and gas analyst Kakha Kiknavelidze said.
“I don’t think it’ll be an overstatement to say the lobbying power that Gazprom has today is not comparable to that of private companies,” Kiknavelidze said.
One indication of Gazprom’s clout is that Deputy Valery Yazev both helped author the legislation as chair of the Duma’s Energy Committee and was charged with gathering criticism of it as chair of the Russian Gas Society. 
Yazev could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
Putin has yet to sign the bill, but Kiknavelidze said he had no doubt the president would do so, calling the timing of his signing a “formality.” But given the G8 summit on July 15-17, Putin might wait a few weeks, suggested Ronald Nash, chief strategist at Renaissance Capital.
Irrespective of what Putin does before the summit, the bill will likely be discussed among less-senior officials in St. Petersburg, Nash said.
The Kremlin press service said senior spokesmen were unavailable to comment due to preparations for the G8 summit. The bill “is upping the ante” in an energy dialogue already tipped in Russia’s favor, Nash said.
“While the Europeans as customers obviously have some influence, Russia as producer is by far the stronger partner in this,” he said. “In some ways, Europe really does have to listen to what Russia wants, and obviously this law is a fine example of what Russia wants.”
Also on Russia’s wish list is the widest possible access to downstream assets in its European markets, from domestic pipeline networks and underground gas storage facilities to electricity generation.
Reports that British lawmakers might block Gazprom from buying Britain’s Centrica led to a spike in bilateral tensions this spring when Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller lashed out at European diplomats, threatening to divert Russian gas to eastern markets.

TITLE: Grain Exports To Plunge Due To Weather
AUTHOR: By Anna Smolchenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian grain exports are set to plunge this year because of a lower harvest due to drought in the country’s south and heavy rainfall in Siberia, Agriculture Minister Alexei Gordeyev said Wednesday.
The country will export between 7 million tons and 8 million tons of grain in the agricultural year beginning July 1, compared with the more than 12 million it shipped last year, Gordeyev said at a news conference. Russia is among the top five grain exporters in the world. Analysts said the drop in exports should not have far-reaching consequences for the industry, however.
“We have the first data on the drought in the Stavropol krai, and Siberia confirms rainfall during the harvest, and that could lead to the loss of grain,” Gordeyev said. The Stavropol krai is one of the leading growing areas. 
Russia had a bumper harvest of 78 million tons of grain last year, as the agricultural sector continues to revive after a severe slump in the 1990s. 
Despite the lower harvest forecast of 70 million tons for this year, from an earlier 73 million tons, Gordeyev said the speed at which the fields were being harvested was improving due to “a higher level of technology and better organization.”
Dmitry Rylko, general director of the Institute of Agricultural Market Studies, said the lower harvest forecast was not surprising given significant winterkill losses. “But there won’t be any catastrophic consequences,” he said.

TITLE: Soros Speaks Out Against Listing
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Europe must develop a common energy policy and the planned flotation of state oil firm Rosneft should be blocked to tackle the threat Russia poses to energy supplies, billionaire financier George Soros said Tuesday.
“I think that Russia is working as a monopoly supplier and it is essential for Europe to have a coordinated energy policy to be able to stand up as equal partners in negotiating with Russia,” Soros said. “If it is unable to do it, I think the dependence on Russia is excessive.”
Soros reiterated his opposition to the Rosneft IPO, which would be Russia’s biggest-ever share offering and is scheduled to take place in London this year.

TITLE: Flagship Carrier Aeroflot Rebuffs Smuggling Claims
AUTHOR: By Conor Humphries
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Flagship carrier Aeroflot on Wednesday dismissed as hearsay allegations that its staff members had been involved in the organized smuggling of counterfeit DVDs into the United States.
An article published in the Los Angeles Times last month cited a California-based dealer of pirate DVDs as saying that Aeroflot employees routinely supplied him with hundreds of disks, transporting them in their personal luggage.
“No Aeroflot staff member was stopped at customs or at the border and caught doing this,” Irina Danenberg, the company’s chief spokeswoman, said by telephone. “If a staff member was actually caught, then there would be a hearing. But it’s all hearsay.”
The company’s staff has to go through the same customs and security controls as regular passengers, she said. “It’s a question for customs, they check the baggage. Aeroflot staff are allowed to carry exactly the same things that passengers are,” she said. 
The Los Angeles Times article quoted an anonymous Russian merchant as saying that several stores in the U.S. city had for years depended on Aeroflot to supply books, CDs and other items from Moscow, charging between $6 and $8 per kilogram. 
On Friday, U.S. Congressman Howard Berman, a member of the judiciary subcommittee on courts, the Internet and intellectual property in the U.S. House of Representatives, called on the head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection to investigate allegations of a breach in customs enforcement. 
But airline experts said it was improbable that staff would find it any easier to smuggle goods into the United States than would regular passengers. 
In the wake of recent terror attacks it is highly unlikely that airport staff can circumvent security and customs checks to get illegal merchandise onto planes, said Boris Rybak, an analyst with the Infomost aviation consultancy.

TITLE: Steelmaker Cancels Share Offering
AUTHOR: By Yuriy Humber
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel, or MMK, delayed indefinitely its first-ever offer of shares to investors just hours before a Wednesday placement, blaming a slump in emerging markets. The metals firm’s decision comes in the wake of a string of Russian bond and share issue cancellations and postponements last month.
The country’s No. 3 steel producer announced the delay Wednesday morning. A placement of 2 percent of MMK shares on the MICEX exchange was scheduled for 1 p.m. Moscow time.
“Placement preparations showed that among investors there still persists a feeling of uncertainty regarding the short-term dynamics of the market,” MMK said in a statement. The company will reconsider the placement after the capital markets stabilize, Yelena Azovtseva, an MMK spokeswoman, said by telephone. 
She said the company made the decision to withdraw from Wednesday’s sale the previous day.
Despite last week’s resurgence in emerging markets following a dramatic slump in late May, investors remain cautious about Russia’s capital markets. The country’s largest grocery store chain, Pyatyorochka, recently decided to indefinitely postpone a domestic listing, while only half the announced bond issues for May went ahead.
MMK’s last-minute turnaround came as a complete surprise to the MICEX exchange and to the banks involved in the placement, Renaissance Capital and Gazprombank.
“I’m just as surprised as you,” a source at one of the banks said, asking not to be named due to the bank’s involvement in the deal. While the cancellation was “nothing sinister,” it could damage the company’s reputation with potential investors, the source said.
Less than 1 percent of MMK is traded on the off-listed section of the RTS and MICEX exchanges. The company’s vice president, Vladimir Shmakov, said last month that the 2 percent placement was intended to introduce the company to investors, potentially leading to an initial public offering sometime in 2007.
Timothy McCutcheon, a fund manager with DBM Capital, said the sudden delay might be due to poor communication between the company and its brokerages. The price range for the Wednesday placement, between 67 cents and 72 cents per share, which would value the company at $7.1 billion to $7.65 billion, did “seem a little low,” McCutcheon added. “A lot of funds see Russia as one kind of exposure,” McCutcheon said. With the Rosneft IPO in two weeks, funds with a limit on their investments in Russia may not have any spare cash for MMK, he said. The placement’s late cancellation is unlikely to irritate investors, since the current market volatility is not good for the company or potential shareholders, said Nikolai Lukashevich, an analyst with Fitch Ratings.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Port Dispute
ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — The port of St. Petersburg, Russia’s biggest, may be paralyzed because of a dispute between the authorities and stevedoring companies, Kommersant reported, citing unidentified sources in the Association of Russian Ports.
The two sides disagree on the timing of renegotiations on the renting of dock space, Kommersant said.
The port is part of a loading complex that feeds both the Gulf of Finland on the eastern edge of the Baltic Sea and the harbor of he city. 

Pipe Share Sale 
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia’s Trubnaya Metallurgicheskaya Kompaniya, the world’s second-biggest maker of steel pipes, may sell shares to the public in London in November, Vedomosti reported, citing an unidentified person close to the plan.
The sale had originally been planned for January and was delayed until market conditions improved, Vedomosti said.
Trubnaya, which owns four plants, controls 42 percent of the Russian market and 4 percent of the world market.

TITLE: Not All Among the Chosen
AUTHOR: By Felix Corley and Geraldine Fagan
TEXT: Something quite mundane seems to have helped one religious community bring together an illustrious assortment of the big international names in the area of religion: oil. Far from the impoverished relative invited to sit in humbly as the G7 grandees conferred, Russia is now holding its head high in the G8, with many suitors pandering for a share of its black riches.
Without this month’s G8 meeting in St. Petersburg, the idea for a Russian-based summit of international religious leaders under the patronage of the Moscow Patriarchate would likely have ended up as a dull sideshow drawing only B-list attendees.
At Moscow’s President Hotel this week, however, the Russian Orthodox Church at last got its moment on the world stage. Patriarch Alexy II took his place next to President Vladimir Putin, and a prospective patriarchal contender, Metropolitan Kirill beside prospective presidential contender Dmitry Medvedev. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan even thought enough to send his greetings.
But hosting the meeting has come at a price. To howls of protest from those among their flock who believe that the Orthodox Church is wrong to sit down with heretics and unbelievers, the patriarchate’s leaders had to invite people from international religious bodies they have long vilified, including the Roman Catholic Church and the World Council of Churches. Following Monday’s opening session, Kirill also had to don a friendly smile as four of Russia’s leading Baptists and Pentecostals — dangerous sectarians in any other context — posed alongside him for photographs.
Letting in a few decorative local religious minority figures is one thing. But the Moscow Patriarchate still could not bring itself to invite two foreigners at the top of anyone’s list of world religious leaders: Pope Benedict XVI and the Dalai Lama. Alexy’s complaints about the Catholic Church’s activities in Russia and Ukraine continue to allow him to maintain that the time is not yet ripe for a meeting with Benedict. As for the Dalai Lama, Kirill stated that the lack of invitation was to avoid souring the Tibetan leader’s own relations with the Chinese.
Nor were any local leaders of “new religions” invited. A patriarchate spokesman explained a month before the summit that this was because many representatives of world religions would refuse to engage in dialogue with them. “In particular, it would be difficult for us to sit down at the same table as the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who greatly distort Christian teaching,” he argued. One wonders how Koranic pronouncements on the Prophet Isa and his mother are any more palatable for the Russian Orthodox.
Few could object to many of the sentiments expressed on the conference’s declared themes. Avoiding inter-religious hatred, clashes of civilizations and promoting respect for religious and moral values are all admirable aims. But in the light of Kirill’s bold promise that no “political correctness” would prevent the conference from tackling difficult subjects, will there be any serious impact on the conflict in Chechnya or the rise in fatal racist attacks across Russia? 
Will it end the complaints from Russia’s religious minorities that the state treats them as second-class citizens? Will Muslim, Catholic, Protestant, Jehovah’s Witness and non-Patriarchate Orthodox now be free to build places of worship, rent state-owned facilities, promote their activities in the public arena and have equal access to state institutions like prisons and hospitals, as guaranteed by the Constitution?
On the contrary, a web site run by Nizhny Novgorod’s Muslim community complained last month that the summit was primarily intended to reinforce the Orthodox Church’s dominant status. Previously used to taking second place in the patriarchate’s pecking order of “traditional confessions” (Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism), Russia’s Muslim leaders are becoming increasingly disquieted by the church’s penetration of the armed forces to the exclusion of other groups. Like the Old Believers — surely one of Russia’s most “traditional” faiths — they are also alarmed at the inroads now being made into the state education system by the patriarchate’s “Foundations of Orthodox Culture” course. The key role among the nation’s faiths claimed by Russian Orthodox hierarchs as they led this week’s summit, the Nizhny Novgorod Muslims wrote in a message published on their web site, will result in the world’s religious leaders unwittingly “giving carte blanche for further clericalization of Russia according to the position of the Orthodox Church.”
For journalists who endured the 45-minute security checks to make it into the President Hotel — built for the Communist Party Central Committee and now the property of the presidential administration — being shunted into a separate room to watch proceedings on screen was reminiscent of a round of international political meetings, or of Soviet-era conferences stage-managed to the last detail, with agendas packed with meaningless platitudes. Putin himself opened his address by recalling that such a “broad and uniquely representative” forum last met under Soviet auspices almost 25 years ago, referring to the World Conference of Religious Workers to Save the Sacred Gift of Life from Nuclear Catastrophe. That event, he maintained, could now “without exaggeration be considered a step toward overcoming world confrontation and the end of the Cold War.”
As the fleet of VIP cars leaving the President Hotel on Monday caused gridlock in rush-hour Moscow, however, it was hard to imagine how the summit could produce anything more than irritation for ordinary citizens trying to get home — even those with a crucifix dangling above their dashboards.

Felix Corley and Geraldine Fagan are correspondents for the Oslo-based Forum 18 News Service, which monitors religious freedom in the former Soviet Union.

TITLE: Small Talk, Big Problem
AUTHOR: By Masha Gessen
TEXT: Making my way through the giant, packed backyard of the American ambassador’s residence the other day — during the U.S. Independence Day reception, when, it seemed, most of Moscow was there — I glimpsed an old acquaintance. He saw me too, but I was hoping it was one of those situations when two people, by tacit agreement, make like two ships passing in the night. I continued on my way, about three human clusters away from him.
Andrei Bystritsky and I used to work together at a Russian newsweekly in the mid-1990s. Now, as chief of information programming, he is the top news executive at the All-Russian State Television and Radio Company, which includes Rossia television, a new 24-hour news channel, Rossia radio and other media companies. It is the 300-pound gorilla of broadcast information, the main propaganda instrument of President Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
For the last few years, whenever I run into my old acquaintance, he pulls me into a conversation the purpose of which is, it seems, a temporary absolution. He has joined me at a restaurant table to tell me how despicable the work he does is. 
During the 2004 presidential election, he actually came to liberal candidate Irina Khakamada’s loss party and lamented her bad luck; the news service he runs had, in blatant violation of election laws, imposed a virtual information blockade on her campaign.
I tried to duck behind a couple of gray suits as I traversed the backyard. But here was my old acquaintance, his neck stretched, his reddish beard sticking out above someone’s shoulders, his hands reaching for me. Escape was impossible. I smiled. He kissed me on both cheeks.
“How are you?” he asked.
“I’m on book leave,” I said. “Living at the dacha, writing. It’s great.”
“Oh, oh, but who is going to save the motherland?” he asked, shaking his head. There are so few opposition journalists, his question implied, that I had no right to take a break.
“I’m regenerating,” I answered. “I’ll be back.” I have no idea whether there will be any print media outlets left by the time I am ready to be back, but I wasn’t going to go into that. “And how are you?”
“I am swell,” he answered. “Still harming the motherland. If there is ever a Nuremberg trial, I’m sure I’ll be sentenced.” He laughed at his own joke. Self-deprecation sounds odd coming from a man in a $3,000 suit bought with money he has made “harming the motherland.” He added quickly that, generally speaking, his work was fun and I should stop by sometime.
I felt slimed. My acquaintance had banked on the fact that I would not snub him openly. I really could not bring myself to say, “What you do is despicable, and I have no desire to talk to you, much less stop by your office or kiss you on the cheek.” 
He had also banked on the fact that I would never print anything he tells me — like the way he characterizes his job. He had pulled me into a trap of polite chitchat, where the payoff for him was knowing — and, perhaps, showing others — that I will still talk to him, which must mean he is not total scum. That may or may not suggest he still has something resembling a conscience, but that is really none of my concern.
But the thing is, I think people who make their living broadcasting lies in the guise of news for tens of millions of people to see every day are, indeed, total scum. And if they also think, or even suspect, that in the process they are “harming the motherland,” that makes them even more disgusting. People like this just shouldn’t bother to make small talk with me: I will print every word of it.

Masha Gessen is a Moscow journalist.

TITLE: Bright Sparks
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Sparks, the seminal art-pop band from Los Angeles that changed the course of pop music with its 1970s albums such as “Kimono My House” and “Propaganda,” inspiring generations of listeners and musicians — most famously Morrissey — makes its local live debut, several months after playing a pair of very diverse concerts in Moscow.
In St. Petersburg, Sparks will perform an oudoor “best-of” show and a few songs from its most recent, surprisingly refreshing album “Hello Young Lovers” as part of the Stereleto series of events. 
In concert, brothers Ron Mael on keyboards and Russell Mael on vocals will be backed by the band’s long-time drummer Tammy Glover, guitarist Josh Klinghoffer (who has played with Beck, PJ Harvey and, most recently, Gnarls Barkley), the former Faith No More guitarist Dean Menta and ex-Red Kross bassist  Steve McDonald.
Russell Mael spoke to The St. Petersburg Times by phone from his home in Los Angeles.

“Hello Young Lovers,” your new album, sounds very fresh. How did you achieve this?
Well, your comment that it was a fresh sound is pretty much the motivation behind how we approached this album. You know, it’s our 20th album, and at this point of our career we just don’t want to be recycling things as far as what Sparks has done in the past. It is also just as countermeasure to what we hear going on just in general in pop music at the moment. That seems to be based on the past and based on formulaic ways of working and traditional song structures and traditional instrumentation, and we just wanted to find a way to try to eliminate a lot of those conventions from the past and try to find fresh ideas and fresh ways in approaching doing an album. We think we succeeded with that task. 

The title “Hello Young Lovers” with the record’s cover art featuring dozens of rabbits could be taken as somewhat sarcastic. To whom does it address? 
We didn’t know what it was going to be called beforehand, and we just thought afterwards that a lot of the songs within the album deal with relationships in a certain way but hopefully in a kind of fresh sort of way, a fresh angle. Like a song like “Perfume” where it’s talking about a guy liking his new mate because she doesn’t wear any perfumes that remind him of his past relationships, and things like that. 
The title “Hello Young Lovers” is kind of a cliched title, it’s been a song title before. We thought just a combination of that with the lots and lots of bunny rabbits seemingly crammed in together in one frame somehow bore some relationship to that title and sensibility. 

“(Baby Baby) Can I Invade Your Country” sounds as if it’s dealing with both romance and the politics at the same time.
I think it does, it’s on two levels again. You can take it as a relationship song, too, because it’s saying, “Can I invade your country, baby?,” so in a certain way it’s speaking in a very primitive way, about a relationship, but then it also combines this kind of overly jolly-sounding chorus which is so happy but with the lyric of “Can I invade your country,” which is not such a happy topic. We just like the contradiction of those two elements, plus the confusion speaking about the relationship, so it’s speaking about the current affairs in the world. 

The line “screw the past” in “Perfume” was picked up by the reviewers who wrote about the album. 
I think that maybe what they’ve picked up from that “Perfume” song maybe summarizes a lot about how we feel. You know, we don’t like to look back on the past because it’s  paralyzing to do that and so in all sorts of ways, musically, to have to look back is dangerous for creativity. I think that that comment sort of does exemplify a lot of how we felt about approaching this album. 

You once said that you didn’t like “funny songs,” Sparks songs are dark and funny at the same time. 
It’s not funny in the sense of comedy, but it seems sort of… humorous... But then the humor relates to deeper matters. 

Morrissey was an early fan writing letters to the NME about how he liked “Kimono My House.” Do you feel the influence of Sparks in his songs?
I think he’s always said that we’ve been a big influence on him. We’ve met with him recently. We even did a remix for him recently on an album called “Future Retro.” We did a remix on “Suedehead” in a kind of non-club way.
I don’t see not any similarity musically, but there’s some similarity in the sensibility of the lyrics and the mindset of how both he and Ron approach lyrics. I think there is some similarity in the sensibility. Musically I don’t see much overlapping in what the two of us do, but there’s, I think, just the fact both he and Ron care about lyrics in a big way is something, you know, that most artists either don’t care that much about it or just incapable of doing lyrics that are really clever and have something really fresh to say and a fresh approach in how they say it. 

In its early years Sparks was frequently mistaken for a British band, and you became popular in Britain before in the U.S. 
Yeah, that’s right. We have always been more akin to British music, just in a general way, and we always were Anglophiles, when we were first starting, so ironically enough people just assumed that we were British. The tone of the music and our sensibility in both, the musical sensibility and our visual sensibility was more akin to what was going on in Britain, especially early on. So I think that there’s that sensibility that relates more to the British audience.

So what were these influences when you started out? 
We really liked English music when we were first growing up. The early Who and the early Kinks and the Move, bands like that, just a lot of stuff from Britain where it was both musically really strong and lyrically strong, and there was fashion sense to those bands as well, and all those elements were really important to us. 

What about classical music and opera?
I think that came a long, long time later, and especially more for Ron, he really does a lot of classical stuff. But a lot later on, not at the beginning, at the time when we were doing those early albums like “Kimono My House.” Neither of us was listening to much classical stuff at that time.
Has your film-making background influenced Sparks work?
I think maybe in a certain way because we like to see things in cinematic terms where music can be, you know, as big as a film. You know, you’ve got limitless ways just to say things and you can make things if you want to be big and have big mood changes like those mood changes in films with editing and all. Especially on our new album, there are lots of changes that are cinematic in the way they are approached, where the shift of the tone of something can go from being really happy, perhaps, to being something all of a sudden really dramatic and more emotional. And I think those sorts of elements are maybe something that’s tied to us liking cinema a lot, and thinking that music can also be cinematic in its approach.

What films, what kind of filmmaking do you like?
Well, both of us really like people like Orson Welles a lot, just everything that he’s done. Lots of Japanese filmmakers, like [Akira] Kurosawa, and Wong Kar-Wai, the Chinese director. And, you know, also we were watching [Sergei] Eisenstein films as well in a film school, so the Russians as well.

Has there been any influence of literature and poetry?
I don’t know if there’s anything such specific... You know, specific authors or things, or poems. But just the fact that we’re both worldly people and we read all sorts of things, and are just paying attention to life and observing all the time. And we both, especially Ron has read all of Shakespeare plays that there are. There’s always that sort of interest. 

Sparks’ work appears to be very organic, but you and Ron seem to be responsible for different aspects. How does it work? 
In a studio it’s basically the two of us and for the new album we recorded for two years, and Ron plays all the parts and does all sorts of musical stuff, and my role is more... I do, you know, the engineering of the albums, and then also obviously all the singing parts and that sort of thing. Our roles is pretty divided and don’t overlap so much. 

After the album has been finished, what are you doing now except for touring and performing?
We really don’t know. It took two years to do this album, and before we’ll start the next project whatever that might be, we want to make sure it’s something that’s again fresh and something with an angle that’s going to be, you know, not just going through the motions. So now we’re taking time even to think before we just start recording... We don’t even know if it’s specifically an album or it’s related to a film or it’s related to a theatrical play or performance, we’re just trying to figure out exactly what we want to do.

What music do you listen to now? Have you heard any interesting new bands?
Oh, the problem is that we are pretty disenchanted with most new music, and, to be honest, we listen to a lot but we just don’t hear a lot that’s really compelling in ways that you feel pop music should be compelling, and that’s why even from Ron’s standpoint and maybe from my standpoint we listen to a lot of classical stuff, just because we have to find some sources of inspiration rather than trying to draw on the other pop music at this point, be inspired by and say, ‘Wow, that’s really fresh!’ We’re finding it’s harder and harder to find those kinds of things that inspire from pop music, so we turn to other forms of music or the other forms of entertainment to get inspired by something that you can, you know, even equate to pop music.

Sparks performs at Molodyozhny Theater’s gardens on Saturday.
www.allsparks.com

TITLE: Peace, love and respect
AUTHOR: By Jenna Rudo-Stern
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Guests at the Open Look dance festival.
In a city characterized by racial tensions and a classical ballet sensibility, Monday night’s performance “Same Spirit Different Movement” by the American hip-hop dance company Illstyle & Peace Productions was refreshing and fun.
Even before the show had begun, people were grooving in their seats. The audience was young and lively, the pre-show music had an easy beat, and the mood was festive. As part of the contemporary dance festival “Open Look,” the concert drew a large number of local dancers participating in the festival’s wide-ranging master classes. Cheers went up when some of the visiting artists giving classes entered the theater to sit among their students. Teenage boys roamed the aisles, showing off new moves.
As promised by a pre-show video, designed by Darrin Ross and Keith Stallworth, the performance was a high-energy celebration of the spirit and art of multiple movement forms, including funk, African, ballet, modern, b-boy, and jazz.
In accordance to the ethnic roots of hip-hop culture, the show began with Shakia Johnson’s entrancing African dance solo. Her strength, grace, and cheerful focus set the tone for the evening and, ultimately, carried the show. The following pieces, comprising the fast and fluid program, were less focused, but highly entertaining. Another highlight was the “Robot” solo by Brandon “Peace” Albright, the company’s artistic director. In addition to his finely honed technique, Albright brought a touch of humor to his solo, adding a finger-wiggling flourish and transforming himself from refined machine to jazz trumpeter.
The entire ensemble, including Albright and Johnson, Marty Milan, Jason Poleon, Katoya Johnson, and Emiko Sugiyama, gave an engaging, playful, and athletic performance. While some of the more modern- and ballet-influenced pieces fell flat, a capoeiro solo by Poleon was full-bodied and the trio “Mime Popping” was clean. Indeed, the emphasis on technique, especially in the one-upmanship style of “B-boys R u Ready?”, was reminiscent of classical ballet solos, the head-spins reminiscent of fouettes.
But, while the dancers showed remarkable skill, this was not a highly-polished performance.  I&P Productions plays on the appeal of hip-hop’s populist roots, giving the show a home-grown, dancing in the streets feel.  At the end of the program, Albright took up a mic, saying that the spirit must come first, before the dance, and that theirs was a celebration of the integration of multiple art forms and multiple cultures. He finished the night by leading the audience in a round of “Peace, love, and respect — for everyone” then invited audience members up to the stage to join in a final improvisational dance party.

“Open Look” continues through Saturday. The final performance begins at 7 p.m. and costs 100 rubles. All performances are held at the Troitsky Culture Center 223 Prospekt Obukhovskoi Oborony (free bus from Lomonosovskaya Metro). 
Call 336-6271. www.kannondance.ru

TITLE: Chernov’s choice
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
TEXT: Sparks and the Leningrad Cowboys will make their live debuts in the city this week. The both acts took time to speak with this paper, see pages i, ii and iv.
Your Voice Against Poverty, an outdoor rock concert featuring such local bands as Tequilajazzz, Dva Samaliota and Pep-See will be held at the Molodyozhny Theater’s inner gardens on Friday.
Promoted by the Russian Movement Against Poverty, which is part of The Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP), the concert is due to start at 4 p.m. and last through 10 p.m. Tickets will available at the Theater’s box office for 100 rubles. 
Kings of Convenience, a Norway-based folk-pop duo inspired by Simon and Garfunkel, will perform at the recently opened high-end restaurant Bridge Lounge at Peter and  Paul Fortress’s Zayachy Ostrov on Saturday.
Its members are Eirik Glambek Boe and Erlend Oye who both sing and play acoustic guitars. Boris Grebenshchikov, the founder of the local rock legends Akvarium, is a fan. Tickets cost 500 rubles. See gigs for ticket and location details.
The Anal C*nt concert at Roks Club on Sunday will be in reality performed by the Massachusetts grindcore band’s founder Seth Putnam backed by the likeminded Moscow band Anal Nosorog. The concert will be last in Putnam’s eight-date Russian tour that started on June 30.
“If any people around there have always wanted to see Anal C*nt, this will be the closest thing to it,” wrote Putnam, infamous for offensive song titles such as “Hitler Was A Sensitive Man” and “Your Kid Committed Suicide Because You Suck,” to his Russian fans on his web site.
This column has been criticized for describing Billy Idol, who performed in the city last week, as an “ex-punk.”
“Ex-punk????!!!!!  Better think again, or better yet, go to the show  (I only wish I could)  and see for yourself that there is nothing ex-punk about Billy Idol,” wrote a Billy Idol fan from Michigan in the U.S. 
“Just because he took time off to get it together and raise his family doesn’t mean he’s an ex-punk!!! Wow...Don’t you know that Billy is Uncle Punk!!!  
“He’ll definitely prove it and I sure hope the younger bands will watch and take notice when the Idol Band performs together. The entire band is attentive to their fans, but especially Billy, just watch how he treats his fans.  
“No, he doesn’t spit on them anymore (not on purpose anyway, and I loved it when it happened to me!) but he watches them (us), reaches out to us and actually takes the time to sign autographs from pleading fans who love the physical contact, all the while he’s singing his bloody heart out and pumping those fists of steel, curling that whiplash smile that we all love so much, and moving that oh-so luscious chiseled body in his expert way... Anyway, please don’t describe Billy Idol as an ex-punk.”

TITLE: The big match
AUTHOR: By Lena Schreiber
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The World Cup final on is on Sunday — where will you be at kickoff at 10 p.m.?
The FIFA World Cup 2006 has been a vivid mixture of excellent football, plenty of drama and magnificent goals. It has seen the death and resurrection of soccer gods and shown that a well-formed collective is more likely to succeed than any bunch of individualistic, overpaid superstars. Many highly praised uber-players such as Ronaldinho, Messi or Rooney have packed their bags, and the final has become an all-European affair for the first time in 24 years. There is no doubt that it has all the ingredients to become one of those passionate, historic matches football is all about. 
This leaves only one question: Where to watch the big match and make sure July 9, 2006, not only becomes a classic on the pitch, but also in your social life? 
If you prefer big crowds and loud cheers, a more classy experience or if your footie evening doesn’t feel right without a pint of Guinness, Shepherd’s Pie and the sweet sound of Gary Lineker’s commentary, St. Petersburg offers plenty of choices. 


The Red Lion 
1 Ploshchad Dekabristov. Tel: 571 4526

Some things never change. The fact that ancient football wisdoms are always right is one of them. There is, for example, the universal football truth that England will opt for a tragic penalty-exit, while another says that it is hard to beat the atmosphere of an English pub during a big match. 
As the first wisdom has already been meticulously fulfilled courtesy of Portugal in the quarterfinals, why not watch the final in an English-style pub? The Red Lion, conveniently located in the Senate building, is arguably one of the most authentic English pubs the city has to offer. It is also its largest and after tasting a few of the imported ales (half a liter of Guinness or Old Speckled Hen for 200 rubles, $7.40) it might take extra-time to re-emerge from its maze of rooms, bars and dance floors. Several of the dark-wood panelled rooms are equipped with large TV screens and the multi-national crowd is bound to be cheerful. The greasy pub-grub wouldn’t be out of place in a London local and any Anglophile will be warmed by the sight of Cottage Pie (259 rubles, $9.60) on the menu. 


Golden Garden Club 
(“Zolotaya Strana”)
9 Vladimirsky Prospekt. Tel: 572 2233

If you love watching the game but despise the typically loud and laddish culture that comes with it, the Golden Garden Club is an excellent choice for the final. The exclusive boutique hotel has dedicated its cozy, elegant lobby to the big game, with all of its sofas facing a large TV screen. Not only the seating arrangements, but also a special menu is aimed at spoiling football lovers. Spectators can, at a reasonable price, enjoy a buffet shaped by culinary treasures of the two contesting countries. Similarly, the language of the TV coverage will be adapted to the countries on the pitch. 
A small but adequate selection of drinks (bottled Heineken for 140 rubles, $5.20, and bottled Tinkoff Pilsener for 175 rubles, $6.50) is served with complementary nibbles. With space being limited it is advisable to reserve a seat in advance and it can be assured that the mixed crowd will provide good company. So, if you have always secretly dreamt of indulging in football in a particularly tasteful atmosphere of chandeliers and marble floors rather than rowdy crowds and broken bottles your big night is most certainly well-spent at the Golden Garden Club.  


Shamrock
27 Dekabristov Ulitsa. Tel: 570 4625

Another possible locale for watching the big game is Shamrock, an atmospheric Irish Pub located opposite the Mariinsky Theater. This bar is a favourite with expats, tourists and locals and has an impressive selection of drinks on offer, including beer from many of the countries which made it to the World Cup. And should the game not bring the desired result, 25 sorts of whiskey offer plenty of liquid in which to drown the football blues. 
Drinks are on the pricy side (pint of Guinness, Erdinger or Kilkenny costs 210 rubles, $7.80), but a dedicated fan might just be prepared to pay this price in order to enjoy the match while sipping on his favorite tipple. An extensive food menu offers plenty of international cuisine to fill the half-time break and the two screens showing Sky Sports provide English language commentary. Amid this footie oasis only the live performance of authentic Irish folk may be considered a distraction. Die-hard fans would therefore be better off watching elsewhere, but for everybody else Shamrock is certainly a great place to watch the final — and be pleasantly distracted. 


Football Bar 
28 Karavannaya Ulitsa. Tel: 314 8468

As its name suggests, the centrally located Football Bar has solely dedicated itself to the beautiful game and it is only logical that its waiters are fully decked out in football gear. The bar seems very dark due to the wallpaper displaying football images of past glory. But the seating arrangements make up for it, guaranteeing the primarily Russian crowd a perfect view onto large screens. 
While the drinks menu offers the usual beverages (half a liter of Kronenburg for 130 rubles, $4.80, and Budweiser  for 200 rubles, $7.40, for half a liter), the food menu is certainly unique. Dishes are as football-themed as everything else in the bar and a dish called “Goal Movement” (a platter of beer snacks for 285 rubles, $10.50) seems to be a customer favorite. These extras are potentially very appealing, but the bar’s service is certainly not. If orders placed during the national anthems played at the start of a match have not been delivered by half-time, any football decor starts to look less and less inspiring. 
In fact, a football match without a beer is only half the fun. And as half the fun for a whopping 800 rubles, $30 (the cover charge for the final on Sunday) seems like a rather bad deal, this bar might be nice to look at, but is best avoided on Sunday. 


Sports Pub 84
118 Naberezhnaya Obvodnogo Kanala, Varshavsky Express Complex. Tel: 322 2266

If you fancy combining the world cup final with a stroll through the recently opened shopping mall in the former Varshavsky Vokzal (Warsaw Railway Terminal) building, Sports Pub 84 is a perfect place to enjoy the game and the meal you deserve after your shopping spree. 
With the smell of paint still lingering in the air, there is no doubt that the place is brand new, but this also means that its staff make a special effort to welcome you. During the World Cup this sports bar is all about football and decorative club scarves, footie placemats as well as seven large screens create an ambiance worthy of the big match. 
The extensive menu offers a large variety of drinks at reasonable prices (half a liter of Heineken for 150 rubles, $5.55, and bottled Corona for 180 rubles, $6.70) and the food menu is surprisingly global, ranging from Russian classics to Asian noodles to European dishes like Fish and Chips (320 rubles, $11.85). 
A special World Cup promotion invites spectators to predict the final score and with bar vouchers of up to 6000 rubles ($220) to be won, it seems worth taking a shot. But remember it’s a funny old game that could leave you as sick as a parrot. 
As both the guessing game and admission are free of charge booking your table is essential — get your seat soon!

TITLE: Leningrad Cowboys go St. Petersburg!
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Leningrad Cowboys, the flamboyant band that became known internationally after featuring in films by Finland’s leading director Aki Kaurismaki and also for its collaborations with the Alexandrov Red Army Ensemble, owes its moniker to St. Petersburg’s Soviet name, but this week’s concert will be the Helsinki-based band’s first in the city since it has formed in 1986. 
Complete with 10 players and two dancers, the self-styled “world’s worst band” will arrive on the strength of its most recent album “Zombie’s Paradise,” which includes covers of very diverse songs such as David Bowie’s “Starman,” The Bangles’ “Manic Monday,” and Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire,” all done in a heavy metal style.
“That’s the idea of the album that we wanted to make; every song sounds somehow the same, the same formula,” said Mauri Sumen, who plays keyboards and accordion, in a recent telephone interview from his home in Helsinki.
“With this album, it was more metal sound, not the old metal sound, but, let’s say, more of today’s metal sound.”
“Every song on the album is a cover song, all of them are big hits and everybody who has lived in the West knows them, that’s the point. But then the result, the arrangements are totally new; in most cases the songs have only the same lyrics, but even the melodies, at least the harmonies, are completely new. Many songs, you can say, were recomposed.”
With their trademark “unicorn” hairdos (giant quiffs), half-meter long pointed shoes and unlikely covers of Soviet songs and American rock hits, the Leningrad Cowboys first emerged in 1986 as a cultural joke, a spin-off project by Finnish punk pioneers Sleepy Sleepers.
“The Sleepy Sleepers was actually the first punk band in Finland when they started in 1974, actually two or three years before they started to play punk in England,” said Sumen.
“So that was the attitude against the police, against the government, against the conservative way of thinking. It was typical young people attitude against conservative way of life. With nasty words. Well, they said things straight, not in a soft way, like very often people do. The lyrics were so straight that it was forbidden to play the records on Finnish radio, because the politicians thought that it was not correct.”
According to Sumen, the Sleepy Sleepers, who sang in Finnish, formed the Leningrad Cowboys in 1986 to pursue its musical and film interests.
“The band wanted to do a project in English, to change the language from Finnish to English and record a couple of songs, and also make short movies with cine cameras with Aki Kaurismaki; not with video cameras but with cinema production,” said Sumen.
“And so we found the name ‘Leningrad Cowboys,’ which history has shown to be a very practical name because everybody asks, ‘Why this name, Leningrad Cowboys?’ It’s illogical, it’s surrealistic, or something like that. Many people around the world, they don’t understand why we are called Leningrad Cowboys. So that’s how it’s started.”
Arguably, the band’s name might have something to do with Finnish vodka tourism; Leningrad was the closest Soviet city, and drinks were fabulously cheap compared to Finland.
“I don’t know about that story but I know there were hundreds of thousands Finns who went to Leningrad to buy vodka,” said Sumen.
“Leningrad was a very famous place for the Finns to go to, since the ‘60s when the Finnish people started to travel a lot. And the price of alcohol [in Finland] has always been very high, but in the Soviet Union it cost next to nothing to us, it was like water. That’s why all the working people who didn’t have much money went to Leningrad and bought lots of vodka and also drank lots of vodka there.”
For several years the Leningrad Cowboys and the Sleepy Sleepers co-existed, performing as two separate bands at the Rock Summer in Tallinn in 1988, before Estonia regained independence. 
Headlined by P.I.L., the band led by John Lydon (formerly the Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten), it was the Soviet Union’s first international rock festival attended by 100,000 to 150,000 fans, and a highlight for the Cowboys which had played live only once before that. The Leningrad Cowboys became a full-time band in the early 1991, since the Sleepy Sleepers were put on hold in 1990, according to Sumen.
The band’s members have been collaborating with film-maker Kaurismaki long before the Leningrad Cowboys formed, according to Sumen.
“Aki is actually is an old friend of the band’s members from the beginning of the 1980s, probably in 1982, so many of us had been working with Aki’s films doing scripts or acting or doing music, even before the Cowboys films,” he said.
“And Finland is just a small country, so everybody who’s in the business knows each other, so that’s how we could make the film and that’s how Aki decided to make a film about the band. So we co-operated somehow for at least six years [before the Leningrad Cowboys.]”
Kaurismaki’s 1989 rock-and-roll road movie “The Leningrad Cowboys Go America” was an international breakthrough both for the band and the director.
In the spoof film, the Leningrad Cowboys actually act as a Russian band from a Siberian village who come to conquer the U.S. followed by a village idiot called Igor who wants to join the band, but, eventually, make it big in Mexico.
“It’s been released maybe in 50 or 60 countries. The band is quite known as a cult band all around the world. Not super popular, but as a cult band. It first became popular among the students, because they were the first audience who went to the cinema and saw the band. But then we got a bigger audience.” 
“The first film is also half-documentary, because everything happened more or less like in the film, because we went first to the places and asked ‘Can we play here?’ and make a film also at the same time, and people said ‘OK, why not?’ And also audiences, when the band plays in the film, they are real audiences. They are acting natural. They are just normal people who don’t act anything there.”
“The Leningrad Cowboys Go America,” described by Kaurismaki as “the worst film in the history of the cinema, unless you count Sylvester Stallone’s films,” was followed by two more collaborations between the band and the director, “Total Balalaika Show” and “The Leningrad Cowboys Meet Moses,” both in 1994.
“Total Balalaika Show” documented an extremely bizarre concert, held on Helsinki’s Senate Square in 1993, when the Leningrad Cowboys performed with the full, 160-member Alexandrov Red Army Ensemble to 70,000 fans.
“It started in August ‘92, when we were planning our new album,” said Sumen about the beginnings of the collabotation.
“We were going to the studio, we had one CD from them, just by accident, and we thought, ‘This would be a good idea to make one song with them, to ask them to sing with us as the background choir.’ That was the first idea. Then we thought, ‘Why not to try to make a concert with them,’ and at that time we didn’t know if they existed anymore because of the collapse of the Soviet Union.”
After finding that the ensemble still existed, the Leningrad Cowboys contacted it by phone. 
“They said only, ‘We are not discussing things like these on the telephone, you must come to Moscow.’ And then we went to Moscow in December ’92 and they gave us a half-an-hour private concert, highlights of their repertoire. Then we had a one-hour discussion, and everything was clear. From the beginning it was very easy, very flexible and very nice. They are really co-operative and musical people.” 
Although the military uniform-clad members of the Alexandrov Red Army Ensemble, which frequently performs at Russian state occasions, may look stern, Sumen said it was not the case when the Leningrad Cowboys got to know them better. 
“You must remember they are not soldiers, they are musicians. That’s maybe the difference,” he said.
“They’re just working under the Ministry of Defense, but they are not soldiers, they are musicians, so that’s why it was so easy for us to work with them. They got the uniforms, so did we, but we’re not soldiers. So we’re all musicians, so there was absolutely no problem at all to work with them. We had another project with them after that, so we’re good friends.” 

The Leningrad Cowboys performs at PORT on Friday. www.leningradcowboys.fi

TITLE: North Korea Threatens to Test More Missiles
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SEOUL, South Korea — A defiant North Korea on Thursday threatened to test-fire more missiles and warned of even stronger action if opponents of the tests put pressure on the country, amid signs of further activity at the reclusive regime’s launch sites. 
The further show of bravado by Pyongyang came amid intense diplomatic jockeying by the United States and its allies to prod the U.N. Security Council to take stern action against the North’s seven missile tests on Wednesday. 
The North Korean Foreign Ministry, in a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency, insisted that the communist state had the right to missile tests and argued the weapons were needed for defense.
“The successful missile launches were part of our military’s regular military drills to strengthen self-defense,” the statement said. 
“As a sovereign country, this is our legal right and we are not bound by any international law or bilateral or multilateral agreements.”
The statement did not mention the apparent failure of the most advanced missile fired on Wednesday, the long-range Taepodong-2, which security officials say aborted less than a minute after takeoff.
The ministry also appeared to confirm mounting fears in South Korea that the North was preparing for further launches. South Korean officials said intelligence showed continued activity at Northern missile sites, though at least one official said another launch was not imminent. Pyongyang vowed to retaliate against efforts to interfere with the launches, but it did not specify what it would do.
“Our military will continue with missile launch drills in the future as part of efforts to strengthen self-defense deterrent. If anyone intends to dispute or add pressure about this, we will have to take stronger physical actions in other forms,” the statement said.
The missiles, all of which apparently fell harmlessly into the sea, provoked international condemnation, the convening of an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council and calls in Japan for economic sanctions. 
Japan’s ruling party was set to give rapid consideration to a bill to impose the sanctions, but the measure would not be implemented until a fall session of parliament.

TITLE: Trans-Dniester Bus Explosion Kills Eight
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: CHISINAU, Moldova — An explosion ripped apart a small bus in a separatist Moldovan region Thursday, killing  eight people and injuring  46, state media said. 
More than half of those injured in the explosion in Tiraspol, capital of Trans-Dniester, were seriously hurt, prosecutor Ivan Lesukov was quoted as saying Moldova’s official Olvia Pres news agency. A photo showed the remains of the bus with its roof and sides blown off.
The cause of the explosion was not immediately known, the news agency said, quoting the Interior Ministry press office.
Most of those injured were passers-by, and 10 were passengers on another bus who were hurt by the impact of the blast, the private news agency Lenta PNR added.
Lenta PNR said 12 passengers were traveling on the bus that exploded. Eight of them died and four were badly injured, it reported.
Trans-Dniester broke away from Moldova with Russian support in 1992 after a war that left more than 1,500 people dead. It is not recognized internationally. Russia maintains about 1,500 troops in the mainly Russian-speaking region along the Ukrainian border, which it considers to be strategically important.
Moldova’s relations with Moscow have soured in recent years over the Kremlin’s support for the separatists. The region has been tense March when Moldova imposed a new customs regime.

TITLE: Shuttle Set To Dock With ISS
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — The crew of space shuttle Discovery woke up Thursday on course to dock with the international space station after a two-day journey from Earth. 
A recording of Elton John’s “Daniel” woke the crew up, a choice of the wife and two sons of European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Reiter, who was set to become a member of the space station’s crew after the shuttle docked.
Reiter, who has a son named Daniel, will spend six months living on the space station, bringing the size of the crew to three people for the first time in three years.
The crew size was reduced in the years after 2003’s Columbia accident when NASA’s shuttle fleet was grounded. Russian vehicles weren’t large enough to keep the space station supplied for more than two people. 
The docking with the space station, orbiting about 220 miles above Earth, was to come a day after in-flight inspections of Discovery by its crew, using cameras attached to a 50-foot boom, revealed no major damage from the launch.
There would be one more opportunity to inspect the space vehicle before docking.

TITLE: Video: Somalia Becoming New Haven For Al-Qaida
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NAIROBI, Kenya — A recruiting video issued by members of the fundamentalist Islamic movement in Somalia shows Arab radicals fighting alongside the local extremists in Mogadishu, and invites Muslims from around the world to join in their “holy jihad.” 
The video, obtained by The Associated Press, provides the first hard evidence that non-Somalis have joined with Islamic extremists in Somalia.
The Supreme Islamic Courts Council, which defeated U.S.-backed warlords in Mogadishu last month and is now the country’s most powerful force, has repeatedly denied links to extremists such as al-Qaida.
But the one-hour video appears to confirm U.S. fears — and al-Qaida’s boasts.
President Bush expressed concern last month that Somalia could become an al-Qaida haven like Afghanistan was in the late 1990s. And recordings attributed to Osama bin Laden portray Somalia as a battleground in his war on the United States. 
The videotape, produced to both recruit new fighters and raise funds, glorifies the Islamic victory over U.S.-backed, secular warlords in Somalia. U.S. officials cooperated with the warlords, hoping to capture three al-Qaida leaders allegedly protected by the Islamic council, especially three men accused in the deadly 1998 bombings at the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Those singled out by the United States include the courts council leader, Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys, branded a terrorist by the Americans.
Aweys, speaking on Somali radio over the weekend, said his movement had no contacts with bin Laden or al-Qaida. He also rejected accusations that foreign fighters were in Somalia.
But the video, shot on a handheld recorder, shows Arab fighters preparing for a major battle on the northern outskirts of Mogadishu. Arabic anthems and poetry play on the audio track urging Muslims to join the global holy war to advance Islam and defeat its enemies.
The video starts with a black flag featuring a Koranic verse and a saber fluttering in the wind. Such black banners have only recently appeared in Somalia but have been used by Islamic extremists in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon for years.
After a few minutes of battle footage, the tape documents the Arab fighters’ predawn preparations for battle, including prayers, a commander’s speech to his troops and the preparation of weapons. The Arab fighters then climb onto two pickup trucks mounted with heavy machine guns, which the Somalis call “technicals.”
As the sun rises, the location of the Arab camp north of Mogadishu becomes clear and six more trucks loaded with Somali fighters come into view. A senior member of the Islamic group, Yusuf Indohaadde, is filmed walking among the men before the pickups roll out of an old warehouse compound.
The rest of the footage follows one group of Somali militiamen as they battle troops loyal to warlords who controlled Mogadishu for 15 years and had ties to the United States. The tape ends with the capture of Essaleh, a small town with strategic air and sea ports three miles north of Mogadishu.
Most of the tape’s audio is filled with Arabic prose and songs urging Muslims to join the holy war against the West.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Mexican Election
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) — Mexico’s conservative presidential candidate Felipe Calderon appeared headed for a razor-thin victory on Thursday although his leftist rival could fight the result with legal challenges and street protests. 
Calderon had 35.62 percent support with results in from 97.84 percent of polling stations, just 0.05 points ahead of anti-poverty campaigner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in a tense vote recount, the Federal Electoral Institute said.
Lopez Obrador had led the recount from the start but Calderon caught up and overtook him in the early hours of Thursday as late returns came in from northern and western Mexico, his conservative strongholds.

81 Die From Rain
MUMBAI (Reuters) — Monsoon rains lashed parts of India’s east and west on Thursday, taking the death toll from a week of extreme weather to 81 people, but eased over the financial hub of Mumbai after disrupting life for three days. 
The June-September annual monsoon, key to India’s agriculture and economic growth, revived this week after a two-week lull.
Most of the latest deaths were in the eastern state of Orissa and western Maharashtra and Gujarat and were due to lightning strikes, electrocution and drowning.

TITLE: Grand Slam in Sight For Henin-Hardenne
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WIMBLEDON, England — Justine Henin-Hardenne is one victory from a career Grand Slam. 
She defeated Kim Clijsters 6-4 7-6 Thursday to reach the Wimbledon final and close in on the one major title missing from her collection. 
Henin-Hardenne reached the Wimbledon final in 2001, losing to Venus Williams. Since then, she has won three French Opens and one U.S. Open and Australian Open. By taking Wimbledon, she would become only the 10th woman to win all four Grand Slams. 
Thursday’s match was the 20th career tour-level meeting between the players and seventh at a Grand Slam, but their first at Wimbledon. 
The two Belgians, whose relationship has often been frosty, shook hands at the net. But they did not embrace or kiss on the cheeks as is common in women’s tennis. 
Henin-Hardenne evened the series at 10-10, winning for the third time in a month after victories in the French Open quarters and the Eastbourne grass-court event. 
Henin-Hardenne has won 17 straight matches, including 13 consecutive Grand Slam matches without dropping a set. She can become the first player in the Open era to win the French Open and Wimbledon back-to-back without losing a set. 
“I’m playing good tennis, I’m aggressive,” Henin-Hardenne said. “I try to play calmly. I hope I can go to the end.” 
Henin-Hardenne beat Clijsters for the fourth straight time at a Grand Slam tournament in a match that swung in momentum during both sets. She raised her game when needed and played a more varied, all-court game than Clijsters, taking 17 of 21 points at the net. 
“It was tough, the nerves today,” Henin-Hardenne said. “I played very well on the important points. She broke me but I could always come back.” 
After being broken to go down 4-3 in the first set, Henin-Hardenne ran off 12 of the next 16 points and three straight games to take the set. She continued a stretch of 11 straight points and 14 of 15 to go up 1-0 and 15-40 on Clijsters’ serve, but Clijsters bore down and won three consecutive games for a 3-1 lead. 
After another exchange of breaks, Clijsters served for the set at 6-5 but couldn’t convert. Henin-Hardenne had three winners and Clijsters blew a short forehand on break point. 
Henin-Hardenne took the lead at 3-2 in the tiebreaker and went on to close the 90-minute match with a crosscourt passing shot off her one-handed backhand. 
“I love this kind of situation,” Henin-Hardenne said, referring to the tiebreaker. “I have the feeling that is why I am playing tennis. There is a lot of pressure in these moments.” 

Second seed Rafael Nadal ground down Finland’s Jarkko Nieminen 6-3 6-4 6-4 on Thursday to reach the Wimbledon semi-finals and a meeting with Cypriot Marcos Baghdatis. 
The match was held over from Wednesday because of rain. 
Triple French Open champion Nadal, looking more and more comfortable on unfamiliar grass courts, wore down Nieminen’s resistance in long baseline rallies, breaking his serve in each set. 
The Finn, seeded 22, tried to mix up his shots and volleyed successfully when he could get to the net. He saved a match point with a forehand down the line. 
But Nadal’s movement and retrieval skills were too much and the Mallorcan reached his first Wimbledon semi-final after two hours 15 minutes with an uncharacteristic volley on his second match point.

TITLE: Landis Gets Favored-Status Spot
AUTHOR: By Jean-Paul Couret
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: CAEN, France — Phonak team manager John Lelangue has claimed favorite status for his leading Tour de France rider, American Floyd Landis, a former lieutenant of Lance Armstrong. 
“Everybody knew that Floyd was a first-class rider. Since he joined our team he has become a true and complete leader,” Lelangue told journalists before the start of the fifth stage from Beauvais to Caen on Thursday. 
Landis joined Armstrong’s team, U.S. Postal which later became Discovery Channel, in 2002. For three years, he had a difficult relationship with the seven-times winner of the Tour. “It’s impossible for a member of the team to be a friend of Lance because he always behaves like a boss,” Landis said when he split with Armstrong to join Phonak in 2005. 
“Floyd had to settle his personal problem with Armstrong but he has now realised he has the potential to win big races. What’s more, he wants to be involved in all sectors of our team’s life and stays in contact with the other riders even when he is in the States,” Lelangue said. 
A time-trial specialist as well as a strong climber, the 30-year-old Landis started the 2006 season with overall wins in three week-long races, the Tour of California, the Tour of Georgia and the prestigious Paris-Nice. 
“We entered the Tour to win it. I said so last year after the Vuelta, I said so again when the itinerary of the Tour was unveiled last October and I’m saying so again six days into the Tour,” said Lelangue. 
The Phonak manager said another reason for his optimism was that his team were going through “a perfect first week.” 
“I was criticised when I decided not to select Santiago Botero and Jose Ignacio Guttierez but events proved me right,” he added, referring to two riders who were named in the doping probe in Spain just before the start of the Tour. 
“The fact they weren’t with us helped us to prepare for the race peacefully. 
“Then, our main objective until the first individual time trial on July 8 was to guard ourselves against any mishap and to stay in contention. We just did that. Floyd is in a good position to strike when the time comes.” 
At the start of the fifth stage, Landis was ninth in the overall standings only 16 seconds adrift of leader Tom Boonen of Belgium.

TITLE: Kenny Rogers, Tigers Avoid Sweep
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: NEW YORK — Kenny Rogers beat his former team for the seventh consecutive time as the Detroit Tigers avoided a series sweep with a 10-4 win over the Oakland Athletics on Wednesday.
Craig Monroe and Brandon Inge both homered as the surprising Tigers improved to a Major League best 57-28 and avoided a three-game sweep at the hands of the AL West leaders.
Detroit has only been swept once this season, by the defending World Series champion Chicago White Sox.
Rogers’s record at McAfee Coliseum now stands at 25-4, including 23-1 in his past 24 decisions.
“I’ve had some success here but I don’t take it for granted,” Rogers told reporters.
“I’ll take any kind of win. It doesn’t matter how I get it.”
Rogers (11-3) allowed four runs on eight hits over 5 2/3 innings, striking out four and walking two, while beating the A’s for the 21st time, the most wins any pitcher has against Oakland.
“He wasn’t at his best today, but he [Rogers] was good enough,” Detroit manager Jim Leyland told reporters.
Reliever Roman Colon took over in the sixth and wound up pitching 3 1/3 shutout innings of two-hit relief for his first save.
Detroit jumped on Oakland starter Kirk Saarloos for two runs in the second inning and four more in the third, pounding out all of their 13 hits in the first six innings. 
Ivan Rodriguez had three hits for the Tigers, scored twice and drove in another run, while Curtis Granderson, Carlos Guillen and Monroe all had two hits and scored twice.
Saarloos (3-5) allowed eight runs on nine hits over 4 1/3 innings, striking out two and walking none.
Bobby Kielty homered and had three hits for the A’s, who have taken over first place in the AL West after a sluggish start.
Marco Scutaro added a two-run homer off Rogers in the fourth inning for Oakland, putting the A’s on the board after they trailed 8-0.
In Cleveland, the New York Yankees scored eight runs in the fourth. The late scoring allowed them to avoid a series sweep by downing the Indians 11-3.

TITLE: Dallas Stars Sign Up Halpern, Barnaby
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: NEW YORK — The Dallas Stars restocked its depleted roster by signing free agents Jeff Halpern and Matthew Barnaby on Wednesday. 
The 30-year-old Halpern has played his entire seven-year NHL career with the Washington Capitals, scoring 87 goals and amassing 127 assists in 438 games.
“I wish September would get here more quickly and it would be nice to be down there now to start playing,” said Halpern, a center who scored 11 goals as the Capitals’ captain last season.
“From everyone I’ve dealt with, from the general manager to the coaching staff to some players on the team, the mentality the Stars have is something I’m excited to be a part of.”
Barnaby, 33, appeared in all 82 games with the Chicago Blackhawks last season, collecting eight goals, 20 assists and a team-leading 178 penalty minutes.
“We are excited about acquiring Jeff Halpern and Matthew Barnaby, as both players bring a great deal of character and grit to our team,” said Dallas General Manager Doug Armstrong.
“Both players have gained valuable experience in the National Hockey League and will bolster our forward group immediately.”
The Stars have lost several players during the off-season, including veteran right wing Bill Guerin, who signed with St. Louis, and center Jason Arnott, who landed in Nashville.

TITLE: France Faces Italy in World Cup Final
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BERLIN — Few teams faced more questions heading into the World Cup than Italy and France. The French team was over the hill — they couldn’t even score. The Italians were consumed by the biggest soccer scandal in the nation’s history. No teams have answered their doubters more emphatically.
“We were not listening to it when they were giving us a lot of stick,” French forward Thierry Henry said, “and we’re not listening to it now.”
On Sunday in Berlin, the Italians play for their fourth world soccer championship and the French go for their second.
Both teams have rich traditions, but neither entered the monthlong tournament a favorite.
The Italians came to Germany as a match-fixing scandal built at home. Day after day, allegations of bribes and favoritism piled up against four topflight clubs for which 13 of the 23 Italy team members play.
The players were silent about the probe, but their performances were boisterous.
“Yes, the confusion of the past two months has given us all the desire to respond in an appropriate way,” coach Marcello Lippi said. “It’s brought this group of guys together. We wanted to show what Italian soccer really means.”
Italy won the World Cup in 1934, 1938 and 1982. This time it has allowed only an own-goal in six games, and now its offense is rising to the same level. After beating Germany with two goals in the final minutes of extra time, Italy headed to its first final since losing to Brazil in 1994.
That run has required a determination no team has matched in this event.
Except, perhaps, for France.
Four years ago, the French became the first defending champion to exit in the opening round of the next World Cup. They didn’t even score a goal in 2002.
In the buildup to Germany 2006, they rarely impressed, barely escaping from their qualifying group. Veteran players such as Zinedine Zidane, Patrick Vieira and Fabien Barthez hinted at dissension toward coach Raymond Domenech.
Through two first-round games, France was on the verge of early elimination again, and Zidane was suspended for the match with Togo after getting two yellow cards. He even threw his captain’s armband in the coach’s direction when substituted in the dying moments from a 1-1 tie with  South Korea. It looked like it might be the last game for Zidane, who retires after this tournament. 
But the French beat Togo — and were revitalized.
They beat Spain 3-1 with a dominant second half, then toyed with pretournament favorite Brazil in the quarterfinals.
Their 1-0 semifinal win over Portugal came with a bit of good fortune — a suspect rewarding of a penalty kick that Zidane converted. No matter: France will be in Berlin for its fifth World Cup meeting with Italy.
Italy won the first two World Cup matches with France, 3-1 in 1938 and 2-1 in 1978. France won 2-0 in 1986, then took a penalty-kick shootout 4-3 after a 0-0 tie in ‘98.
Who has the edge this time? 
“It is an advantage having this experience, having players who know what it takes to go to the end,” Domenech said. 
“I think we enter in good form, just the right mix physically and psychologically,” Lippi said. 
Although France has yielded just two goals, Italy has the superior defense, led by Fabio Cannavaro, perhaps this World Cup’s best player.

TITLE: Zenit Plays First Match At Condemned Kirov Stadium
AUTHOR: By Martin Burlund
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Scheduled for demolition in coming weeks, the Kirov Stadium on Krestovsky Island saw one of its last events Thursday as FC Zenit St. Petersburg played its first match of the 2006/07 soccer season there against Dinamo Moscow.
It was Zenit’s first match under former South Korea coach Dick Advocaat who joined the Premier League team on a three-year contract last month.
The Rolling Stones had been scheduled to be part of the stadium’s last hurrah with a concert last month but the concert has been postponed until 2007. It is not known where the Stones will play since the Kirov will have been taken down by then. 
The stadium, which can hold 80,000 spectators, is second in capacity in Russia only to the vast Lenin Stadium in Moscow and has been the site of hundreds of sports events, shows and concerts since it opened in 1950. The stadium, designed by architect Alexander Nikolsky, took 18 years to build using earth dredged from the Gulf of Finland.
The destruction of the stadium stems from a plan to build a new smaller stadium costing $100 million and equipped with modern facilities necessary for European-level soccer.
Zenit, which normally plays its matches in the smaller Petrovsky Stadium in the center of the city, is facing a deadline imposed by UEFA, European soccer’s ruling body. 
Clubs without a properly equipped stadium by the 2010/11 season will forfeit the privilege of taking part in the European competitions — something that Zenit is not keen to surrender as it is the club’s ambition to play European soccer every year according to the club’s management.
Governor Valentina Matviyenko and Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller, whose company will finance the stadium’s construction, confirmed the plan in a joint announcement prior to a Zenit-CSKA game on April 17.
However, because Kirov Stadium is a landmark structure as one of the most outstanding monuments of the Soviet era left in St. Petersburg, the decision to tear down the stadium did not pass without anger.
The Architect’s Union signed an open letter to the governor in support of keeping the Kirov complex and build around it instead of tearing it down. However the final design adopted after an achitectural competion required the removal of the historic structure.
Sergei Shmakov, an architect whose design came second in the competition, has been an outspoken advocate of retaining the Kirov Stadium as the essential component of any future design in opposition to Matviyenko, who fell in love with a newly built stadium in Manchester, U.K., on a recent trip there. 
“Building on the site of Kirov Stadium will restore this traditional area of sports and recreation,” he said in previously published comments.
“There is the possibility of a new international design competition and the results could be unpredictable,” Shmakov said. “But to wreck what’s there now would be a big mistake.”

TITLE: Klinsmann Urged to Stay
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BERLIN — Franz Beckenbauer said on Thursday he hoped Juergen Klinsmann would stay on as coach because the job he started rebuilding Germany football is not finished yet. 
Germany’s World Cup organising committee president, who led West Germany to the championship as a player in 1974 and coach in 1990, praised Klinsmann for taking his young team to the semi-final even though he has long been a critic of the coach. 
“The team has faith in him, he has faith in the team, and those are the best possible conditions,” Beckenbauer told a group of journalists. 
“I think he should stay on. He should finish what he’s started,” he added. 
A huge majority in Germany appear to agree. Among 1,002 Germans polled on July 5 by the Forsa research instutute, 93 percent said they wanted Klinsmann to continue and 95 percent said they were proud of the team’s World Cup performance. 
Beckenbauer had been critical of everything from Klinsmann’s decision to live in California and commute back and forth to Germany as well as the former striker’s emphasis on high-scoring, attacking football. Beckenbauer said, however, no one should expect Klinsmann to make an instant decision.

TITLE: Scolari Pays Tribute to His Portuguese Men O’ War
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: MUNICH, Germany — Luiz Felipe Scolari says Portugal can be proud of its football team despite their agonising loss to France, as he goes about the difficult task of picking them up for a third-placed play-off match. 
Zinedine Zidane shattered Portugal’s dreams of making a World Cup final for the first time ever with a 33rd minute penalty — giving them a 1-0 win — which proved the decisive moment in a tight and balanced semifinal match.
Scolari had no qualms about the penalty decision, and was philosophical about the defeat, his first in 13 World Cup finals matches, and against a team Portugal have failed to conquer since 1975 including three championship semifinals including Euro ‘84 and Euro 2000.
“We did everything possible but if you don’t score you don’t win,” said the Brazilian, who for the first time in three major tournaments failed to take his side to the final.
He warned Italy it will have its work cut out against France in the final in Berlin on Sunday, while paying tribute to his players who matched Portugal’s best ever World Cup campaign.
“I don’t believe France were the better team. It was a balanced match. But France are an excellent team, a team with a lot of capacity and ability and they did enough to reach the final,” he said.
“One penalty decided it. It happens. But we’re a very small country and it is difficult to reach the World Cup final.
“I now need to work with the players. We had a dream and we were nearly there but we have another match now — for third place in the World Cup, which should also be an interesting game.
“On Saturday we will have new difficulties and we must work on a strategy to beat Germany. We need to gather strength.” Portugal dominated possession against France and created twice as many chances, but a solid defence superbly marshalled by Lilian Thuram and William Gallas allowed Fabien Barthez to keep a clean sheet.
Scolari knows he must put the disappointment behind him and lift his players back up for one last push in Stuttgart, keenly aware of the massive outpouring of patriotism his side’s heroics have created in Portugal.
“I’ll be ready. I just need to soak in the defeat first,” he said.