SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1188 (54), Friday, July 21, 2006
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TITLE: Planes Sent To Syria For Refugees
AUTHOR: By Anton Troianovski
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW —  The Emergency Situations Ministry sent two planes to Syria on Wednesday to begin evacuating Russians fleeing Lebanon because of fighting between Hezbollah militia and Israel, officials said.
The ministry sent the planes to Latakia, Syria. Buses brought more than 200 Russians to Syria on Tuesday, and about 1,000 others were to be bused in on Wednesday and eventually flown to Moscow, officials and news reports said.
Separately, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said that a new international peacekeeping force in south Lebanon would only be possible if both sides agreed to it, and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called for a cease-fire, Russian news agencies reported.
Some Israeli officials have left open the possibility of a temporary international force to bolster the 2,000-member UN force in south Lebanon, while Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he would be cautious about a new force.
“I think that the agreement of all sides is the basis needed for the UN to send a contingent and guarantee relative security and calm there,” Lavrov said in an interview on Ekho Moskvy radio.
Ivanov also expressed concern that “the war in the Middle East is escalating” and tacitly criticized Israel’s use of force, saying, “It is particularly painful to witness the destruction of the civilian infrastructure of Lebanon,” according to RIA-Novosti.
Former Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, a Middle East expert, said a peacekeeping force was “required and very important” since it would “create conditions for negotiations.”
Primakov also warned that the conflict could widen. “I think that this is now a war, a real war,” he told a news conference.
“The evacuation of completely peaceful residents by our Western partners and ourselves means that everyone is expecting a big, huge war.”
Lavrov urged all sides to implement steps laid out by the Group of Eight nations over the weekend at the St. Petersburg summit, Interfax reported. He said those included releasing hostages, stopping exchanges of fire and releasing Palestinian Cabinet and parliament members.
Lavrov also said Syria and Iran must put pressure on Hezbollah to help end the conflict, and spoke of the need to back moderate elements inside Hezbollah.

TITLE: Kremlin Criticizes Israeli Offensive
AUTHOR: By Anton Troianovski
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia on Thursday sharply criticized Israel for its offensive against Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon, saying it went “far beyond the boundaries of an anti-terrorist operation” and repeating calls for an immediate cease-fire.
The Foreign Ministry said Russia affirms the need to fight terrorism and called for the immediate release of captive Israeli soldiers, but it added that “the unprecedented scale of the casualties and destruction” in Lebanon indicates that Israel is using too much force.
The comment echoed a statement by President Vladimir Putin, who said while hosting a summit of the Group of Eight nations Saturday that Russia had the impression Israel was “pursuing wider goals” than the return of abducted soldiers.
While G-8 leaders cobbled together a statement on the Mideast conflict in a bid to display unity, the criticism of Israel and the cease-fire call contrasted with the U.S. stance. Washington has rejected calls for an immediate cease-fire and blamed Hezbollah for the conflict’s intensity.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry said that “international humanitarian law” demands that strikes be launched only against military targets, even if there are suspicions that civilian facilities could be used to support military actions.
Russia has consistently rejected Western accusations that it has used too much force during its wars against rebels in Chechnya, in which thousands of civilians have been killed. The Kremlin refers to the conflict in Chechnya as an anti-terrorist operation.
The statement also echoed Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s calls for an immediate cease-fire, saying it was a “first step that cannot be delayed.” 
The United States has said Israel has the right to defend itself and that what is needed is a “meaningful” cease-fire.
A cease-fire would allow civilians to safely leave areas affected by the fighting, the ministry said.
Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Saltanov met Thursday in Damascus with Syrian President Bashar Assad, who said Syria was prepared to help promote a cease-fire, according to another Foreign Ministry statement.
But Israel’s ambassador to Russia rejected the notion of an immediate cease-fire, saying it would not end the Hezbollah threat.
“Let’s say a cease-fire is declared tomorrow — 8,000 rockets will continue to threaten Israel,” Ambassador Arkady Mil-Man told a news conference. “The essence of Hezbollah won’t change overnight.”
Mil-Man also underscored Israel’s friendship with Russia, while criticizing Russia for not recognizing Hezbollah and Hamas as terrorist organizations.
“We believe it’s wrong and it’s not helping things,” Mil-Man said of Russia’s position. 
Russia is prepared to provide Lebanon with urgent humanitarian aid, the Foreign Ministry said.

TITLE: Mrs. Blair, Lawyers Support Activists
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Russian lawyers say that the government repressed antiglobalists and opposition activists during the G8 summit, as they tried to reach an alternative event. 
But on Monday, Russian human rights advocates received the help of Cherie Blair, a human rights lawyer and the wife of the British prime minister, who offered them the help of her legal chambers. 
Activists were detained en route to the city or during the Second Russian Social Forum, a protest gathering of opposition forces intended as a satellite event for the G8 summit on July 15-17, the lawyers said.
Natalya Zvyagina, a resident of Voronezh and an activist with Legal Team, a network of lawyers who provided legal support to the forum, said life was made miserable for ordinary citizens and activists who attempted to take to the streets last weekend to demonstrate their critical attitudes to the policies of the world’s leading states.
Zvyagina said her organization has collected information about at least 24 cases of “preventative detention” and more than 140 cases of illegal police persecution of the counter-summit’s delegates and participants from across the country.
“Eight people were stopped more than once on the way to the counter-summit, with police confiscating their tickets or documents,” Zvyagina said. “We know of 26 cases of the police attempting to force activists to sign a written undertaking not to leave a specified location — a document that can only be forced on somebody by a court ruling.”
City Hall refused to give permission to an antiglobalist march from Kirov Stadium to the cruiser Avrora, as well as an anti-war meeting and a Communist march on Nevsky Prospekt during the summit. 
Governor Valentina Matviyenko, who attended the alternative summit, said marches were banned for the sake of everyone’s security. “Nobody can guarantee the safety of the march’s participants and local citizens,” she said. “Besides, any street activity is hugely disturbing to citizens and if I’d have allowed it the public would have been mad at me.”
But activists argue that City Hall’s “arbitrary behavior” violates the Russian Constitution that declares the people’s right to hold peaceful gatherings.
Dmitry Makarov, a lawyer with Legal Team and a resident of Oryol, said that during the summit St. Petersburg was in an emergency state de facto. 
“Police cordons at every corner, illegal searches in people’s apartments, endless document checks with no reasons given — what is that if not an emergency state,” he said. “It was an illustration of just how easily and how fast repressive methods are implemented when they are needed by the state. It also shows that the police here do not find it necessary to use legal methods to keep order.”
Makarov claimed to have knowledge of several cases of the police telling people directly that they were detained “in connection with the summit” and that they would be released “as soon as the summit is over.”
“The problem is that the law enforcement agencies follow what they regard as expediency and they can easily ignore the law,” the lawyer said. 
Environmentalist Ivan Ninenko was in St. Petersburg on July 10 when his apartment in Moscow was invaded by the police. “An officer dressed in civilian clothes rang my apartment and introduced himself to my roommate as a neighbor whose apartment we ‘flooded’,” Ninenko recalls. 
“He opened the door and a police squad stormed in, and when my friend tried to reach for the phone, he was hit, and his phone was confiscated. 
He was then escorted to a police station, questioned about the counter-summit and people involved in preparing it. He was asked to give a written note confirming that he was not going to attend the alternative summit. All that with no protocols or explanations.”
An offer of legal help arrived unexpectedly on Monday this week, when Cherie Blair, a prominent human rights lawyer who works for the Matrix legal chambers, paid a visit to the offices of Citizens’ Watch human rights group instead of attending a scheduled visit to a handicraft exhibition. Citizens’ Watch is an outspoken critic of the Kremlin.
Mrs. Blair’s meeting with the organization was closed to reporters, but Yury Vdovin, co-chairman of Citizen’s Watch, said the British prime minister’s wife volunteered to help with legal support when the discussion touched on the topic of the new law concerning the funding of non-governmental organizations. 
The law, which came into force in April, opens the way for restrictions on foreign funding of human rights groups. Its critics say that the law creates major bureaucratic obstacles to the registration process.
“This law was masterfully written and is meant to be used as a powerful weapon with a telescopic sight against the most irritating groups,” Vdovin said. “Mrs. Blair asked us if we have any plans to send an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights and offered the help of her chambers, should the need arise.”
According to a statement provided by Human Rights Watch, Mrs. Blair said at the meeting that she “believes passionately that civil society is very much a part of civilized society.”
“As a human rights lawyer, I came here to hear your experiences and to celebrate the work you carry out,” she was reported as saying.

TITLE: Questions Surround Future Of Nationalist Party Rodina
AUTHOR: By Francesca Mereu
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Four months after the ouster of its outspoken leader, Dmitry Rogozin, Rodina has been transformed from a popular nationalist party into what is being described as a toothless “sister” of United Russia.
The replacement of Rogozin with wealthy businessman Alexander Babakov has in effect made it forbidden to criticize the Kremlin or United Russia leaders, said Mikhail Delyagin, a former senior party member.
“Rodina is not in the opposition anymore,” Delyagin said. “It is a puppet in the Kremlin’s hands, like United Russia. The only difference is that United Russia does something, while Rodina doesn’t do anything at all.”
Delyagin, a former architect of Rodina’s platform, was expelled from the party after he made it known he planned to attend a meeting of opposition parties and human rights activists last week in Moscow.
“Under Babakov, Rodina has stopped saying anything,” Delyagin continued. “The party is afraid of doing anything that might annoy the presidential administration.”
Babakov, a State Duma deputy who is president of the CSKA Moscow football club and owns several Ukrainian businesses, denied Rodina had lost its opposition stance.
“How do you decide if it belongs in the opposition? By the number of street demonstrations? How?” Babakov said by e-mail.
The “primitive power-opposition scheme” that applied in 1996, when President Boris Yeltsin was reelected, is out of date, Babakov said. 
Today, he said, “political constructions have a more complicated character.”
Rogozin’s ouster was widely seen as a Kremlin effort to rein in a monster, as some saw it, of the Kremlin’s own making. 
The party was slapped together before the 2003 parliamentary elections to channel votes away from the Communists but subsequently emerged as an independent force rivalling United Russia.

TITLE: Alkhanov Calls For Amnesty Extension
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW — Chechnya’s Moscow-backed President Alu Alkhanov called Wednesday for an extension of a planned amnesty for rebels in the North Caucasus to last until Jan. 1.
The head of the Chechen rebel movement, Doku Umarov, quickly dismissed the offer, however, saying the rebels would respond with attacks beyond the borders of Chechnya.
Alkhanov said postponing the amnesty deadline to January would give militants “time to contemplate their decision and make use of the chance to become free and return to peaceful pursuits for the well-being of their motherland,” Interfax reported.
Alkhanov also called Wednesday for a constitutional amendment that would allow President Vladimir Putin to run for a third term.
(SPT, Reuters, AP)

TITLE: Ukrainian Relations Still Rocky
AUTHOR: By Oksana Yablokova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Despite the near certain rise of Party of the Regions leader Viktor Yanukovych to the prime minister’s post, Ukraine is unlikely to abandon the Western course it embarked on after the 2004 Orange Revolution and return to the Russian fold.
Instead, the country, which remains politically and culturally torn 15 years after the Soviet collapse, is expected to continue forging ahead with plans to join NATO and the European Union.
Still, major change is afoot. Next week, Yanukovych, President Viktor Yushchenko’s former rival, is slated to reassume his old job as prime minister, a position he held under former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma. The parliament submitted Yanukovych’s candidacy Tuesday to Yushchenko; the president has until July 25 to approve it.
The latest turn of events in Kiev stemmed from the March 26 parliamentary elections, in which the Party of the Regions won more seats than any other party. Following three months of feuding between the former Orange allies, the Party of the Regions managed to form a 239-member majority with the Communists and Socialists. The Socialists formerly belonged to the Orange coalition.
But analysts said a future Prime Minister Yanukovych was unlikely to shape dramatically the country’s foreign policy, given that his jurisdiction extends mostly to economic issues.
 “Ukrainian foreign policy will still largely depend on President Yushchenko, who retains the power to name a foreign minister and might want to keep Boris Tarasyuk in that position,” said Mikhail Pogrebinsky, director of the Kiev-based Center for Political and Conflict Studies, referring to the Western-leaning foreign minister. Tarasyuk has called for Ukraine to join NATO and the EU.
But Pogrebinsky suggested that Yanukovych might temper government policy, making it less “provocative” from a Russian vantage point. “That will happen not without internal conflicts in the Cabinet,” he said.
Ukraine has been gravitating away from Russia and toward the West ever since Yushchenko swept to power on the crest of massive street protests in Kiev in November and December 2004 over rigged presidential elections.
Sergei Markov, a Kremlin-connected political analyst, said the new prime minister’s influence could reverse some recent anti-Russian trends — including talk of raising the rent paid by Russia’s Black Sea Fleet and discouraging use of the Russian language. It could also lead to an end of the economic blockade of the breakaway pro-Russian Transdnestr province of Moldova.
And it is likely to have an important impact on the all-important issue of gas prices.
While Ukraine imports most of its gas from Russia, including some gas that the monopoly Gazprom buys from Turkmenistan, Russia also depends heavily on its neighbor: Eighty percent of the gas that Russia exports to Europe flows through the Soviet-era network of pipelines in Ukraine. Until recently, Ukraine enjoyed low gas prices. 
But in January, Russia sought to jack up gas prices in Ukraine, prompting a fierce spat between the two countries that led to a brief shutdown and raised concerns in Western Europe about Russia’s reliability as an energy provider. Soon after, Moscow and Kiev struck a gas deal under which Kiev agreed to pay $95 for 1,000 cubic meters of gas, up from $50.

TITLE: Experts Slam Giant Gazprom Tower Plan
AUTHOR: By Evgenia Ivanova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: As energy giant Gazprom selects architects for its ambitious Gazprom-City business center in St. Petersburg, local experts weighed in Thursday on the possible construction of the planned 300-meter skyscraper. 
In a letter to Governor Valentina Matviyenko released Thursday, the St. Petersburg Union of Architects said the tower will destroy the unique harmony of the city’s skyline and might result in St. Petersburg’s exclusion from the UNESCO list of world heritage sites. 
The center is to be located on the right bank of River Neva opposite Smolny Cathedral. And although the final design has not been chosen because an architectural competition is underway, Gazprom chairman Alexei Miller said when it was announced last November that he expected a positive outcome.
“I am positive that St. Petersburg’s citizens will be proud of these new architectural masterpieces,” Miller said when the international architectural contests in relation to Gazprom-City and the Gazprom-Arena Football Stadium were presented. 
St. Petersburg’s architects, however, are not so positive. In the letter to Matviyenko and the chairman of the Legislative Assembly, Vadim Tyulpanov, they write that the construction of the giant tower visible from the city center would be a “crime.”
“The low skyline makes the verticals of St. Petersburg especially magnificent... the conservation of inimitable silhouettes of its spires and domes is of great importance to town planning and spiritual importance,” reads the letter from the St. Petersburg Union of Architects. 
“A 300-meter tower, more than twice as high as the Peter and  Paul Cathedral and three times higher than St. Isaac’s  and Smolny Cathedral, visible from all the main locations of the historical city center (even from Vasilievsky Island)…will bring the irreparable damage to the fragile skyline of the city as it will make all its verticals look almost toy-like,” the document continues. 
The architects said the world already has the “depressing example” of London, where the Tower of London and historic cathedrals are now lost among skyscrapers, and Rome, where the dome of  St. Peter’s Basilica is no longer the city’s focus.
The Gazprom-City project has also attracted criticism from St. Petersburg charities and foundations. 
“Petersburg is the only megalopolis in the world whose center as a whole is on the UNESCO list and now it’s on the brink of an abyss,” Alexander Margolis, head of the international Salvation of Petersburg-Leningrad Foundation said Thursday, speaking at a news conference organized under the title “The Skyline of St. Petersburg — to Save or Destroy?”  
“This strategic investor came from Moscow. Therefore it is used to Moscow practices where... entire architectural formations are being destroyed... and where the image of the city center is already totally distorted,” Margolis said, referring to Gazprom. 
Therefore the same might happen in St. Petersburg in the near future, he said, “if we don’t stop what’s happening now.” 
Gazprom said they think the chosen area is most appropriate for their business center.
“The industrial zone on the border of historic and modern St. Petersburg is regarded upon as the most suitable building site for the office area. This location will allow Gazprom-City to become a link between St. Petersburg’s past, present and future and to give the city a new image,” a statement from Gazprom’s information division reads.

TITLE: Rosneft Makes Lackluster Debut on London Stock Exchange
AUTHOR: By William Mauldin
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Rosneft shares made a lackluster debut on the London Stock Exchange on Wednesday, as market players warned the stock price would depend on the firm’s ability to acquire new assets in the next year.
More than 5 million shares changed hands Wednesday, and the price shot up to $7.62 in London before settling back down to $7.54, a cent below the IPO’s $7.55 offer price and 15 cents above the close of preliminary trading Tuesday. Rosneft shares also began trading Wednesday on the MICEX.
Gazprombank, one of the banks involved in the IPO, called the placement an “indubitable success” and said it was “truly a people’s IPO.”
The share issue has been bolstered by the participation of four strategic investors — BP, Malaysia’s Petronas and China’s CNPC, plus a mystery buyer — who snapped up a combined 49 percent of the $10.4 billion IPO.
Britain’s Financial Services Authority approved the Rosneft listing at about 7:30 a.m. London time, just hours after the British High Court ruled against Yukos late Tuesday. 
Yukos had argued that the sale of shares in Rosneft, with its Yuganskneftegaz unit, would constitute the sale of stolen property. 
The former Yukos unit was sold off in a December 2004 bargain auction to help pay the company’s crippling back tax bills.
 In his 47-page ruling, Justice Arthur Charles said it was difficult for English courts to second-guess the act of a “friendly state” that had forcibly acquired an asset. 
For a precedent, he cited the 1986 decision in Humbert v. W&H Trade Marks, in which a British subsidiary of a Spanish company lost its sherry trademark to the Spanish government. 
In the Yugansk case, it wasn’t sherry, but oil. 
The act of the Russian government necessarily trumped Yukos’ claims that the London listing violates British law on the sale of stolen assets.
Yukos said Wednesday that it would appeal the court’s decision.
“Most people have understood that the court case didn’t have much probability of success,” said James Fenkner, managing partner at Red Star Asset Management. 
“I don’t think the lawsuits are going to have much traction,” he said, referring to continuing litigation surrounding Yugansk.
Rosneft’s stock price in the next few months will likely be closely linked to what new assets it can acquire through auctions, tenders and other means. 
A Yukos creditor meeting Thursday in Moscow could press for the company to be declared bankrupt, and analysts said Rosneft would obtain more assets from the liquidation as Yukos is still in debt to Yugansk, formerly its main production unit.
Acquiring a Yukos refinery would be particularly useful for Rosneft, as the state oil firm currently has limited downstream infrastructure and exporting gasoline rather than crude oil, which carries a much higher export duty, could trim its tax bill. 
One analyst said Rosneft might even get its hands on entire groups of Yukos assets, such as its production units and distribution networks on the European side of the Urals or its production and distribution assets in Siberia.
“Rosneft made no secret that they could be interested in these tenders,” said the analyst, who requested anonymity during the quiet period surrounding the IPO. 
The government is expected to auction off the Chayandinskoye oil field in the Sakha republic soon, and Rosneft could bid for it even though it would face competition from other oil companies and Gazprom, the analyst said.
“I think Gazprom will be competing, and I think the other Russian oil companies will also be interested,” said Mattias Westman, CEO of Prosperity Capital Management. 
“I think they’ll do well in the auctions, but it won’t be a giveaway to them,” he said, referring to the Yukos assets.
Rosneft’s stock price down the road would also depend on how much cash it could squeeze out of its assets, as state-owned companies have never been known for their efficiency, he said.
“We don’t know how long it will take to develop these projects and get any cash flow out of them,” Westman said.
A failure to increase output significantly would hurt Rosneft’s stock price, since the market currently values Rosneft more highly than LUKoil, the country’s largest oil producer. 
LUKoil pumps 7.5 million tons of oil per month and has a $71 billion price tag, while Rosneft, with an implied value of nearly $80 billion, produced just 6.5 million barrels in June.

TITLE: City, Oblast Compete In Industrial Growth
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Leningrad Oblast governor Valery Serdyukov reported a solid increase in industrial production in the first half of 2006.
“The growth rate of 30.5 percent is rather high, even compared to the steady increases in production during the last six years,” he said at a briefing Thursday.
Summarizing economic figures for the first six months of 2006, Serdyukov said that manufacturing was the most dynamic industry with a growth rate of 35.3 percent.
The governor indicated wide modernization of production facilities and active construction of new plants as the main sources of the current industrial growth.
During the first five months of this year, investment in fixed capital totaled 32.5 billion rubles — a 50 percent increase on the same period last year, he said.
“By the end of the year, we expect investment to be between 3 billion rubles and 3.5 billion rubles,” Serdyukov said.
Industrial growth is expected to be between 20 percent and 25 percent by the end of 2006, Serdyukov said.
Serdyukov listed the largest projects due for completion this year.
By August the first section of the Baltiisky Ferry Line will be completed, connecting Leningrad Oblast with German ports through car, railway and ferry transportation.
200 million euros will be spent on construction of logistics centers during the next two years. IKEA is to complete two shopping and entertainment centers with a total cost of $500 million.
$12 million will be invested to complete the second and the third sections of the oil refining plant at the port of Vysotsk.
“We are also providing all conditions necessary for the North-European Gas Pipeline project. At the moment, we are working out the design of a gas processing plant, which is to be built near the pipeline — 260 hectares of land have already been allocated for this purpose,” Serdyukov said.
The St. Petersburg government also reported industrial growth in the first half of the year, though it was much more moderate.
In a statement released Wednesday, the committee for economic development, industrial policy and trade announced industrial growth of 6.1 percent, which “exceeds the Russian average (4.4 percent).”
Manufacturing grew by 6.9 percent as opposed to 4.5 percent in Russia in general.
According to experts, however, both regions have their advantages.
“Obviously, St. Petersburg significantly outpaces the Oblast in terms of the total volume of produced goods and services in money terms. At the same time, production development dynamics are just as important. In this regard, Leningrad Oblast’s performance is more attractive than that of St. Petersburg,” experts from Energy Consulting stated in a report on the local investment climate.
The highest industrial growth in St. Petersburg was reported in metallurgy (31.4 percent), electronics and optics (19.5 percent), oil processing (13.5 percent), chemicals (11.8 percent) and food and tobacco production (11.3 percent).
“At the same time, a number of industries are continuing to slow down in comparison with 2005 levels — production of leather and shoes, wood processing and manufacturing, publishing and printing,” the committee for economic development, industrial policy and trade said in its statement.

TITLE: Mobile Retailers Go Electronic
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: National retailer Svyaznoi announced a broad expansion of its assortment in one of its mobile retail chains claiming the move would considerably improve the company’s performance. Svyaznoi 3 now intends to heavily promote portable digital equipment, the company said Wednesday in a statement.
“Recently, we’ve seen active development in the digital photo-equipment, portable audio-electronics and multifunctional devices market segments. Offering such products, including through credit schemes, increases sales. We also expect to attract more customers by satisfying a wide range of their needs,” said Sergei Rumyantsev, commercial director at Svyaznoi group of companies.
At the moment the company operates 50 shops under the Svyaznoi 3 brand in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod and other large cities. The company also operates regular mobile retail shops under the Svyaznoi brand. As of last December, Svyaznoi operated about 850 shops in Russia.
To date, Svyaznoi 3 has distributed mobile phone handsets, recorders, CD-players, MP3-players and other audio electronics, pocket PCs, digital photographic cameras and accessories.
In the nearest future it will introduce notebooks, video cameras, digital reflex cameras and professional photo-equipment, iPod accessories, portable TV sets, DVD-players and play stations.
“The profitability of the core business — of selling handsets, accessories and telephone cards — is steadily decreasing. This forces retail chains to promote new products and services, often quite dissimilar to the mobile market — for example, insurance policies at Svyaznoi or plane tickets at Euroset,” said Eldar Murtazin, leading analyst at Mobile Research Group.
Last year, mobile retailers included MP3-players and digital equipment in their product ranges. This year they are likely to switch to other types of electronics, Murtazin said.
“The Svyaznoi initiative could be regarded as a test. If the sales levels of such devices are reasonable, the practice could be spread to the whole chain,” Murtazin said.
According to Mobile Research Group, Svyaznoi is demonstrating positive sales dynamics, occupying 14 percent of the mobile retail market, giving it second position in the sector after Euroset (32 percent).
The market, however, is in decline. Murtazin forecasts that 26 million handsets will be sold in Russia this year as opposed to 32.5 million units in 2005.
“The beginning of this year was rather bewildering — the market decreased by 16 percent to 17 percent, sales were small compared to last year,” said Dmitry Karmanov, marketing director at the Ultra mobile retail chain.
“However, since May we’ve seen sales increase by 15 percent to 20 percent. In the second half of this year, we forecast sales equal to last year’s level in terms of handsets sold. In money terms, sales are expected to grow by about 20 percent,” he said.
Ultra is also focusing on new, promising market segments.
“The range is primarily expanding with regard to digital equipment. At the moment, Ultra distributes MP3-players, digital photo-cameras and some accessories. We plan on expanding the range of photo-cameras and introducing other digital devices, including communicators, notebooks and pocket PCs,” Karmanov said.
Market reserch by J’son & Partners provides more evidence of these trends.
J&P estimates that retail sales of consumer electronics in Russia reached $3.4 billion last year, including sales of audio and video equipment, home appliances, personal electronics and photographic gear.
“We expect the market to grow more than 1.3 times in less than three years,” the analysts said in a report.
At the same time, research data shows that 33.5 million handsets were sold in Russia last year ($5.5 billion). In comparison with 2004, growth totaled 11.7 percent, while growth over 2003-2004 amounted to 76 percent.
The slowdown is caused by both market saturation and the summer customs crisis, according to J&P.
Analysts expect about 35.3 million handsets to be sold in Russia this year, with the sharpest decreases in sales coming in Moscow and St. Petersburg, which amounted to 22 percent of total sales volume at the end of 2005.

TITLE: State to Take VSMPO in Weeks
AUTHOR: By Yuriy Humber
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Rosoboronexport could gain control of VSMPO-Avisma, the world’s largest titanium maker, in the next three weeks as the metals company’s two main shareholders are reported to be selling out to the state arms trader.
The deal, which could be worth as much as $1.5 billion, would enable the Kremlin to close in on its goal of bringing several strategic industries into a huge state conglomerate. VSMPO controls about 30 percent of the world’s supply of titanium, a lightweight metal used in aircraft construction.
Vedomosti reported Wednesday that VSMPO chairman Vyacheslav Bresht had sold his 30 percent stake to Renaissance Capital two weeks ago. The investment bank is to sell this stake, together with another stake of about 10 percent, to Rosoboronexport, Vedomosti said, citing a source familiar with the deal.
VSMPO general director Vladislav Tetyukhin is close to selling a 27 percent stake in the titanium maker to Rosoboronexport, the paper said. The deal would leave Tetyukhin with a nominal 2 percent to 3 percent stake in the company.
Bresht and Tetyukhin declined to comment Wednesday, but a source close to VSMPO said, “I think the deal will be wrapped up in three weeks.”
Rosoboronexport chief Sergei Chemezov, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, said at an air show in Britain on Tuesday that the trader had “almost completed” a deal to gain a controlling stake in VSMPO.
A source close to Rosoboronexport on Wednesday confirmed the details of the Vedomosti report. “It’s all there. I can’t add anything to what was printed” in the interview, he said.
Renaissance Capital declined to comment, although a source close to the bank said it had not bought out Bresht’s entire 30 percent stake.
The bank acquired a 13.4 percent in VSMPO-Avisma after it was sold by tycoon Viktor Vekselberg last summer. Under a so-called “Russian roulette” agreement between Vekselberg and Bresht and Tetyukhin, one of the shareholders had to sell out at a discount if the others could pay for his shares in cash. If Bresht and Tetyukhin had not bought him out, Vekselberg would have been able to buy their stakes at the same discount.
The biggest titanium supplier to aircraft manufacturers Boeing and Airbus coming under Kremlin control is not an immediate worry, said Alex Kantarovich, chief strategist at MDM Bank.
“This is a short-term positive,” Kantarovich said. “It could bring some order to the boardroom” and resolve corporate issues bugging VSMPO, he said.

TITLE: A Personal Rebranding for RusBrand’s Boss
AUTHOR: By Jamie S. Rich
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — For someone who feels she lacks great career ambition, Jennifer Galenkamp’s professional accomplishments prove to the contrary. Her objective of “trying to make the world a better place” has helped protect Russia against consumer-goods counterfeiting, gray-market imports and trademark violations. The New Jersey native has successfully busted bogus brands for nearly a decade, most recently as executive director of consumer-goods association RusBrand.
But despite her professional achievements, matters of the heart, not of the boardroom, have guided some of her most defining career moves. Now, after 20 years of working in the public and private sectors, she is relying on her heart once again and leaving it all behind.
After graduating from Georgetown University in Washington, the eager, then-23-year-old Galenkamp became a U.S. Foreign Service Officer, eventually working in eight countries outside of the United States.
For the first eight years of her public affairs career, Galenkamp lived in cities including Buenos Aires and Mexico City, where she fell in love with Latin America. But in 1994, duty called her to a colder climate, and she took a two-year posting as a Vienna-based regional public affairs officer for Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Moldova. Little did she know that a different kind of love awaited her in the former Soviet Union.
“I thought, ‘If I have to leave Latin America, I might as well do something incredibly exotic,’” she said in an interview at RusBrand’s offices. “It was a very transitory time. When I went to Tajikistan, the embassy was located in the October Hotel. It was the funniest thing. You walked in on the first floor and it was just a normal hotel; the second floor was the Russian Embassy; the third floor was the United Nations delegation; and the fourth floor was the American Embassy.”
The energy and intrigue of the job kept Galenkamp in the region for 1 1/2 years, when fate cut this adventure short. One auspicious plane ride later, Galenkamp found herself giving up her decade-long career in the U.S. Foreign Service to marry a Russian man she met on a flight to Moscow.
“I was just about at the 10-year mark, and here was this guy who swept me off my feet and this exciting new part of the world that had never been available and open to Westerners before,” she said nostalgically. “I had a job and a career that I was very proficient at as a diplomat, and I left it behind for love. If you look hard enough and you’re open-minded enough, you can find something interesting and fascinating to do wherever you are.”
In 1996, Galenkamp found that “something” in Moscow, where she joined the global public relations firm Burson-Marsteller. That job eventually led her to her next role, the head of external affairs for Nestle Foods in Russia. At Nestle, Galenkamp joined forces with peers in other multinational consumer companies, creating an informal team called the Brand Protection Group, which eventually became part of today’s RusBrand.
“In 1999, for consumer goods, some companies were reporting as high as 40 to 60 percent of their products in the market were counterfeit,” she said. “It was the first time that a number of companies had gotten together to focus on this specific issue.”
Galenkamp flourished while fighting the phonies, and she lobbied for food quality and brand protection on behalf of Nestle and the consumer goods industry for six years.
“I met Jennifer when she was working for Nestle. She really did a great job,” said Nina Alexeyeva, president of Superbrands Russia, an independent arbiter on branding.
Alexeyeva said food industry players sometimes had to fight for their good name, and that Galenkamp “managed to deal with all those problems with charm and elegance.”
Her efforts helped mold the beginnings of Russia’s first brand protection laws.
“She is clever, a very strong personality,” Alexeyeva added. “I was not at all surprised when she was selected to head RusBrand. She is so highly professional.”
In 2005, Galenkamp joined RusBrand, and she has served as its executive director for more than a year. But as fate would have it, she is now trading in her high-powered position for a different role — full-time mom to her two kids, ages 6 and 8. When her husband was offered a year-long project in London, she re-evaluated her goals. Galenkamp faced a dilemma all too common among mothers: how to balance a full-time career with family.
“For an expat woman in Russia, I’m probably one of the luckiest to have such a great job, and that’s also very hard to give up,” she said ahead of her departure last weekend. “My priority right now is making sure my kids get the best education possible and that my family is settled and happy. Hopefully I’ll be involved in interesting things, ... but staying at home sounds really nice now.
“I don’t know one mother who is working full time — if they’re really honest about it — that doesn’t have moments of enormous angst or feeling like there’s nothing in balance. You try to keep all the pieces in place in a controlled way so you’re getting the intellectual satisfaction, so that your kids are happy and your family life is somewhat balanced.”

TITLE: Time to Seal the Deal
AUTHOR: By Peter Westin
TEXT: After more than a decade of negotiations to enter the WTO, Russia is now waiting only for the United States to OK its membership bid. Last week Russia made an important concession on the issue of financial institutions. Although Russia has reserved the right to prevent foreign banks from opening their own branches in the country — an issue considered to be the main factor preventing an agreement with the United States — it has given ground on the question of insurance companies. Foreign insurance companies will be able to set up their own branches, as long as total foreign ownership does not exceed 35 percent of the overall insurance sector in Russia.
Agreement over these issues sparked widespread hopes that a deal could be reached before the G8 summit in St. Petersburg. That hope, however, was crushed, and although U.S. President George W. Bush made clear that the aim was to bring Russia into the trade club, he said Saturday that more discussions were needed.
Failure to seal an agreement thus far is a product of U.S. negations being driven by political rather than business and economic issues. The American Chamber of Commerce in Russia, which represents the interests of U.S. businesses, has been a strong supporter of Russia’s WTO bid. But this kind of support appears to have fallen on deaf ears in Washington, where concerns over human rights and democracy have overshadowed the economic issues.
Russia deserves an admission ticket to the trade club. Its economy is in better shape and less regulated than the Chinese economy was when it joined in 2001, and it would be more than a stretch to claim that China had done more to democratize its society. In fact, Washington’s approach to China was clearly led by business interests, with politics taking a back seat. Of course, China is the United States’ third-biggest trade partner, while Russia is No. 26.
With an agreement on financial institutions, the outstanding issues are related to agriculture and the protection of intellectual property rights. On agriculture, U.S. concerns over Russian subsidies and other protective measures have not been fully assuaged, and the negotiations have reportedly now stalled on issues related to Russian imports of beef and pork. Russia accounts for 0.4 percent of total U.S. exports, and although last year U.S. exports of food and livestock accounted for 22 percent of total U.S. exports to Russia, this represented less than 0.1 percent of total U.S. exports.
From the viewpoint of trade relations, it is hard to understand why negotiations between Moscow and Washington have been so difficult, as the mutual relationship is very insignificant. The United States accounts for 2 percent of Russia’s total trade, while Russia makes up a mere 0.7 percent of the U.S. total.
Protection of intellectual property rights remains a weak spot in Russia. Despite television images of bulldozers crushing pirated copies of DVDs, CDs and computer software, these items are quickly replaced and remain easily available. In 2004, the cost of piracy to the U.S. music and movie industry was estimated at $13.4 billion, and a U.S. report cited Russia and China — already a WTO member — as the biggest offenders. The difficulty of cracking down on piracy in Russia, however, is partly the result of simple economics. A licensed DVD currently costs as much as $25 in Russia, or about 7 percent of the average monthly salary. In the United States, a DVD goes for about $30, or 1 percent of the average monthly wage.
Despite the remaining hurdles, an agreement between Moscow and Washington remains imminent, as both countries have more to win than to lose from Russian membership. The United States is seeking support from Russia over Iran and North Korea’s nuclear programs and is also looking to reduce its dependency on energy supplies from OPEC, so striking a deal with Russia on WTO membership appears to be a small price to pay to improve the political dialogue between the two countries.
For Russia, WTO membership would be positive, although potential benefits from tariff reductions are likely to be insignificant, mainly because Russia has gradually liberalized its tariffs and the current average trade-weighted tariff of around 8.5 percent is relatively low. Furthermore, WTO membership has tended to be more beneficial for countries with a large manufacturing sector, such as China. Russia is a major producer and exporter of commodities. Questions remain about the ability of the WTO to bring discipline to the oil industry, which is governed by global markets and OPEC.
The main benefits of WTO membership are likely to arise from the liberalization of Russia’s own market, and especially from reforms and the removal of barriers to foreign direct investment in service industries like telecommunications and the financial sector. Increased market access to foreign investors will put pressure on domestic players and could thus act as a catalyst for enterprise-led reforms.
The banking sector could possibly be the big winner, which in turn would be a victory for individual depositors and creditors. In 2001, the Center for Economic and Financial Research said that: “The main dilemma for the Russian financial sector has to do with improvement of the investment climate and protection of creditors’ rights, not with WTO membership.” This still holds true. WTO membership could help to convince more foreign banks to enter the Russian market, which could only be a positive. Although Russia has retained the right to prevent foreign banks from opening their own branches, the country’s strong economic growth and consumer boom have created huge interest from foreign banks. Nevertheless, foreign banks’ expansion into Russia’s financial sector has been, and will continue to be, a gradual process. This will allow domestic banks to improve their own operations in preparation for a more competitive environment.
WTO membership will also pave the way for the European Union to open negotiations with Russia on a free trade agreement. The EU is Russia’s largest trading partner, accounting for more than 50 percent of the country’s total trade, and the ongoing process of EU enlargement means the EU is likely only going to increase in importance as a trading partner. The benefits for Russia from free trade with the EU would depend on the coverage of any agreement. As with the WTO, a free trade deal would be limited if it only covered reductions in tariffs. But Russia could benefit significantly from a deal that stimulated regulatory reforms and included trade in services, which is more likely to be the case.
The main Russian concerns over WTO membership come from certain industries and the agricultural sector, which are convinced that joining will flood Russia with cheaper imports, worsen unemployment and generally prove harmful to the domestic manufacturing and agriculture sectors. WTO membership would not, however, mean that Russia would lose its right to employ protective trade policies. For example, Russia would retain the right to impose protective measures temporarily in any industry determined to still be in its infancy. Russia has also been granted a five-year grace period before it has to lower tariffs on certain products and open its agricultural market to outside competition. And while it is true that increased international competition may be harmful to certain industries in the short run, in the longer term, remaining outside the WTO and avoiding this pressure to restructure would be even more harmful.

Peter Westin is chief economist at MDM Bank.

TITLE: Extraordinary Measures
AUTHOR: By Georgy Bovt
TEXT: A journalist friend of mine was in St. Petersburg for the G8 summit over the weekend and told me the following story.
He was walking down the city’s main thoroughfare, Nevsky Prospekt, when a police officer he passed smiled at him. My friend stopped and talked to the officer about what it was like working during the summit. Then he asked the officer why he had smiled. The policeman told him that he had been sent as part of a detachment from Yaroslavl for the summit and that they had been ordered to smile all the time.
The summit generated a cultural revolution. A Russian police officer smiling! He was told to smile — and he did!
The reason this happened is that this was a major international event and Russia has always been able to show its good side to foreigners.
The tsars attached almost mystical importance to foreigners, receiving at court people who would have been refused entrance to the household of a lowly count in Europe. During the Soviet era, this trend grew. Visits by writers like Romain Roland and H.G. Wells to Stalin’s Soviet Union were national events, with the visitors feted at the highest level. The Soviet Union passionately wanted people to write good things about it, which could only stem from some kind of inferiority complex.
After Stalin’s death, the Soviet Union moved from receiving just the famous to admitting foreigners in their thousands. “Look at us,” the visitors were subconsciously entreated; “see how wonderfully we live and how splendid everything is. Please tell us it’s true!” The statements all came from smiling faces, even though most of them were connected somehow with the KGB.
Under Khrushchev, the World Festival of Youth and Students — an insignificant event by any normal measures — was turned into a mini cultural revolution, as thoroughly vetted Soviet boys and girls made contact with foreigners under intense scrutiny from the party and the security forces.
For U.S. President Richard Nixon’s motorcade during a 1972 visit, several Moscow buildings were torn down, creating what is now Manezhnaya Ulitsa. In what other capital would a good chunk of the historic downtown be razed to improve the route for a foreign leader?
The scale of activity for the 1980 Olympics was unprecedented. The entire city was cleansed of out-of-towners and “suspicious” types. Shops added new meaning to the term “window dressing,” selling products for the two weeks that Soviet people had never seen before and would not see again until the advent of the market economy.
Soon thereafter Russia began opening up to the world, meaning events involving foreigners in the 1990s happened mostly without any particular ceremony.
But the Soviet-style window-dressing for the visiting foreign VIPs made its comeback for St. Petersburg’s 300th anniversary in 2003. And now we have the G8 summit.
Foreign journalists got free intercity and international phone calls, not to mention free food and drink, and were treated to boat rides along the Neva River. At no previous G8 summit were the foreign media granted such an opportunity for freeloading. Foreign reporters were also offered unprecedented access to Russian newsmakers, who gave more briefings on every conceivable topic during the summit than they would to the Russian press during an entire year.
Ketchum, the U.S. PR firm hired by the Kremlin to boost Russia’s image, worked particularly hard, and had obviously been given exclusive rights, including the organization of news briefings by Russian officials. In turn, officials seemed to obey Ketchum as much as they would the Kremlin, trying their best to appear open, welcoming and — just like the Yaroslavl police officer — desperately trying to keep smiling from ear to ear. The one thought going through their minds was likely that they had to put on their best faces for the foreigners.
It would be nice to think that the police officer from Yaroslavl will continue to smile at people when he gets back home. It would also be nice to believe that Russian officials will remain as open and willing to provide information to the press as they were during the summit, and that they will also just keep on smiling.
But these dreams are just that — dreams. The smiles will fade and we will be left with the familiar scowls — and the morose behavior that goes with them.

Georgy Bovt is editor of Profil.

TITLE: Art in the Arctic
AUTHOR: By Andrei Vorobei
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Can the harsh, unpolished North compete with the warm, sophisticated South? 
Can the inhospitable climate and slim cultural pickings of the North attract the art-loving tourist? 
“Artscape Nordland” — a huge, unprecedented cultural undertaking in north Norway — has seriously challenged these flippant biases. Instead of walking along crowded, stuffy urban streets, visitors follow a route marked by contemporary sculptures inserted into a bewitching and pristine landscape.
Nordland County is narrow and lengthy, indented by the rocky coastline of fjords, half of which is beyond the Arctic Circle. To the north, it is washed by the Atlantic Ocean and to the south, it shares a mountain border with Sweden.
This extremely isolated location was transformed from a barren cultural desert into a captivating artistic oasis from 1992 to 1998. An open-air collection of 33 sculptures from both young and celebrated artists from all over the world is spread around a sparsely populated area of 40,000 square meters. Because of the vast distances between the art works, it is not considered a traditional sculptural ghetto similar to those in city parks. 
Behind the enormous investment in the project stood a democratic ideology of making contemporary art available in Norway’s provincial backwaters. This was questioned by the region’s residents who were initially against the sculptural decoration of the area, thinking something like “as if Nordland isn’t beautiful enough as it is.” But the project was also didactic, teaching tolerance of contemporary art, which might be an alien, artificial thing to a person who has been a sheep farmer or fisherman all his life.
“Artscape Nordland” radically breaks the quite arrogant practice of isolating art from its surroundings. Urban, vainglorious man packs his art in clean and secured boxes in museums or on the white walls of galleries. 
But in Nordland, all the sculptures were made for wild, natural sites chosen by the artists themselves. Often using local materials (of which “Norwegian Rose” marble is, perhaps, most well-known and beautiful), the artists had in mind certain interactions with the majestic environment — fjords, mountains, tranquil lakes, boisterous rivers (famous for their maelstroms), and calm oceans.
The art is in a way a pretext for visitors to experience certain natural phenomena; grandiose performances like the Midnight Sun or the Northern Lights. According to residents, the area next to the ocean near Swiss Markus Raetz’s inventive work “Head” is one of the best places to see such sights. 
However, the chosen natural spots are often conceptualized by the artists and these conceptions are culturally dependent, at least as far as project curator Maaretta Jaukkuri is concerned. The artist’s selection policy went according to an expanding geographic spiral: starting with Norwegian artists, then those from Nordic countries, then those from Northern Europe and up to those artists with an absolutely foreign geographical background such as the Spanish artist Cristina Iglesias, whose work is called “Laurel Leaves — Moskenes” and the Brazilian artist Waltercio Caldas, whose contribution is titled “Around.” 
After they were installed, the sculptures were left in brutal natural habitats, open to the elements. The same forces which gave mountains or the fjord coastline its shape through winds, waves, erosion, rain and vegetation are exterted on a great number of the sculptures such as Jan Hafstrom’s “The Forgotten Town,” Martti Aiha’s “Seven Magic Points,” Anish Kapoor’s “The Eye in Stone,” Steinar Christensen’s “Stella Maris,” and Dorothy Cross’ “Shark-Cow-Bathtub.” The experience of these and many other exciting art works, besides their austere natural milieu, is seriously amplified by nature’s mastery of them. 
A few of the works take this relationship into artistic consideration right from the beginning. Kari Caven’s sculpture “Today, Tomorrow, Forever” consists of three elements, each of which is made of material with different life cycles — firewood, wood and stone. As with anything organic, the work will not always be the same as it used to be. 
There are some smart urban references in some of the sculptures. 
The most private and intimate is made by Inghild Karlsen’s “After-images.” In the two-part sculpture, the glass shade of an ordinary street lamp takes the shape of a human face which becomes a source of light and assistance. 
The most visible and absorbing is Antony Gormley’s granite “Havmannen” (“Man from the Sea”), stuck somewhere between a natural and urban environment. 
“If we take a step further away and look at the sculpture in its setting, in the landscape formed by the town and its buildings, the fjord with its water and the fells with their intricate stone formations, we can experience the sculpture losing its materially heavy presence and being transformed into a black outline, almost a hole or a negative form sculpted in the air,” curator Jaukkuri said, beautifully and precisely capturing the sculpture in words. 
The “Artscape Nordland” route is now one of the standard items on the north Norway tourist menu, along with scuba diving, fishing, rafting, whale watching and mountaineering. There is an illustrated travel guide in Norwegian, German and English, as well as a special road map that shows the way to the sculptures.
It is best to start the journey at the city of Bodo, a locality with tall, sunlit, wooden, colored houses and a population around 45,000. Established in 1816, it is now the administrative center of Nordland County. In the harbor area stands a work by one of the top names that contributed to the project, British sculptor Tony Cragg. 
It takes visitors about two weeks to follow the whole route and see each sculpture.

www.skulpturlandskap.no, www.kunstinordland.no

TITLE: Chernov’s choice
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
TEXT: Looking at Sting these days, it is hard to imagine that there was a time when he was relevant and, actually, good. It has finally occurred to the singer/bass player himself who is trying to recapture  the glory days of the late 1970s by performing hits from his former band The Police on his Broken Music Tour 2006, which arrives in the city on Monday. 
Performing at the Ice Palace, Sting will be supported by a stripped-down band of two guitarists and a drummer. Sting, 54, released his most recent album, “Sacred Love,” in 2003, and the the current tour is named after his memoirs. Tickets cost between 800 and 3,000 rubles ($30-$111.)
Sting will be competing with a younger and more relevant British music scene in the form of 24-year-old Frank Turner, who performs at Platforma also on Monday. Turner re-emerged as a folk singer this year after his hardcore-punk band Million Dead had split. 
Turner’s current tour of Russia, Finland and Latvia has been set up by Edgars Abolins, a Latvian promoter who brought Million Dead to Latvia last year. This January Abolins brought Turner to Latvia as a solo artist. From St. Petersburg, Turner will go to Pskov to perform at Tir Club on Tuesday, and then to Moscow to perform at Tabula Rasa on Wednesday and Mir Priklyucheny on Thursday. Tickets for the local gig cost 200 rubles ($7.40).
Local favorites Markscheider Kunst will perform what the band calls its “Famous Summer Concert” at Orlandina on Friday. 
The concert marks a reunion with Kirill Ipatov, the band’s percussionist who returns after a 10-year hiatus.
“It is a very nice event for us, because he is a pleasant man and he plays better than anybody,” said guitarist and singer Sergei Yefremenko by phone this week.
The concert will also unveil a new single called “Ryba” (Fish) from the band’s forthcoming album, due later this year.
Meanwhile, Simba Vibration, the band formed by Markscheider Kunst’s former vocalist, the Democratic Republic of Congo-born Seraphin Selenge Makangila, will perform at JFC Jazz Club on Monday and Platforma on Thursday.
Moloko, the city’s leading underground rock club, has postponed its reopening at a new location until late September. According to director Yury Ugryumov, the main reason is a lack of money, as loads of it was spent on basic repairs of the basement where the club will be located.
A once-unnamed bar which replaced DK Berlin at first took the name The Eager Beaver but promptly changed it to Yazzyk (yazyk is the Russian word for “tongue”). The bar is located at 82 Bolshoi Prospect (Petrograd Side) and holds DJ parties and occasional live concerts. 
But this week’s main scandal, apart from the G8 summit, was the absurd theft of a disco ball from Novus, which occurred when a bartender left the bar “just for one sec.” A new disco ball was purchased and installed on Wednesday.

TITLE: Soviet summer
AUTHOR: By Andrei Vorobei
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: This is the most Soviet summer in the city since the collapse of the U.S.S.R. in more ways than one.
A remarkable exhibition of Soviet art is showing at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts Museum which follows other such shows that are already running at various venues of the State Russian Museum. “The Soviet Epoch of the 1920s-50s” is drawn from the museum’s holdings and the private collection of the Italian cultural attachÎ in St Petersburg, Francesco Begacci, and many of the exhibits are on display for the first time. 
The new show, unlike the Russian Museum’s “Times of Change: Soviet Art 1960-85” the “Essence of Life / Essence of Art” show that was dedicated to the Eastern European underground and post-Soviet art and a newly-opened retrospective of the outstanding Russian-Soviet avant-garde artist Pavel Filonov, offers a comprehensive review of the visual legacy of the Soviet era.
“The Soviet Epoch of the 1920s-50s” is comprised of largely unseen diploma works by students of the Academy of Arts and covers the time of the transition from the Russian avant-garde to Socialist Realism, and how these movements shaped the educational paradigm within the institution. As a measure of the epoch, the Academy of Arts changed its name and principles seven times between 1918 and 1934.
In the Raphael Hall, one of the two chronologically divided exhibition spaces, students’ works from the 1920s share the modernist language of the time, and the main point of interest is work by students of Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, a prominent avant-garde artist and theorist. 
In the Titian Hall, there is work that has nothing in common with such formal searching and experiments; there are only works following the healthy and clear principles of state-mandated Socialist Realism, of which the prevalent visual motif is the “teacher and his pupils,” whether it is at a school or a factory. This is derived from the sole prototype of Stalin and the Soviet people. 
Numerous prosperous and happy kolkhozniki (collective farm workers), stakhanovzi (Stakhanovites), udarniki (shock workers), and carefree pioneers, attending all sorts of unanimous meetings and festive orgies in sunny environments naively compete with another mythology — the painted and sculptured ancient heroes and gods from the rich permanent collection of the oldest educational art institution in Russia. 
The artist Isaac Brodsky (1883-1939) is the second key character in the show. The favored pupil of Ilya Repin, key master of the 19th century Russian Realist School, and from 1934 director of the Academy, Brodsky became the paradigmatic figure of Soviet art at its dawn and produced canonical images of Lenin and Stalin. Along with a skilful series of glossy portraits of other top communists, the exhibition features such Soviet visual icons by the artist such as “Lenin at Smolny” or “Shock Worker from the Hydro-Electric Power Plant.” Brodsky is also behind the rarest work in the exhibition — “The Grand Opening of the Second Comintern Congress,” which took place in Moscow in 1920. Presented in the exhibition as a reduced color lithograph, it features hundreds of Leftist peoples, most of whom looked forward to certain benefits from the fire of world revolution.

“The Soviet Epoch of the 1920s-50s” runs through July 30 at the Academy of Arts Museum. www.nimrah.spb.ru

TITLE: Anti-folk hero
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Frank Turner, who recently fronted Million Dead, a London-based hardcore-punk band, has reinvented himself as a folk singer. 
Now he plays the guitar and sings witty and caustic songs inspired by Billy Bragg, another punk rocker turned folk singer. However, Turner, who will perform in the city this week, claims he still subscribes to the punk ethos.
“The thing is that I’ve been playing in punk bands and hardcore bands for about 10 years,” said Turner, 24, speaking by phone from his home in Winchester this week. “And it comes to the point where it’s just not interesting anymore. I still like that kind of music, but I think I’ve done enough of screaming and jumping around for one lifetime on the stage.
“Over here there’s a strong tradition of folk music and punk rock being very close to each other with artists like Billy Bragg. I think a lot of people were surprised when I made the change, but I think it’s not too weird a thing to do.”
Indeed, Million Dead, which played its last concert last September before splitting due to “personal problems” after four years and two albums, was acclaimed for its solid songwriting, a far cry from what most people usually think when they hear the word “punk.” 
“The whole kind of stupid drunk punks with mohawks and two-minute songs with three chords and stuff, I never really was interested in that,” said Turner. “I think with Million Dead we were interested in bands like Black Flag and Minor Threat and At The Drive-In and stuff like that. More hardcore, I guess, than punk.
“To me ‘punk’ is a word that’s more about an ethos, about a way of doing things, than necessarily about a sound. And from that point of view I still like to consider what I’m doing now as being punk in the sense that I do it myself and I’m independent.”
Million Dead’s early supporters included, famously, the BBC’s legendary John Peel, who died in 2004.
“John Peel was the first person to play Million Dead on the radio, and we did a Peel Session as well in 2003,” said Turner. “Unfortunately we never met him, he never came down to the Sessions. But we were honored to be supported by him.”
So far Turner’s only solo release is the five-track EP, “Campfire Punkrock,”  but he said he was planning to finish his full debut album upon return from Russia for British and European release in January.
“The title of the EP for me is quite important,” said Turner.
“The EP is called ‘Campfire Punkrock,’ which to me sums up what it is I’m trying to do. There are five songs on that, because it’s just my first kind of proper solo release. And they were just the best songs I had at the time I thought. 
“But I was really, really proud of this EP, and it sells very, very well in this country, and I’m going to be bringing some copies with me to Eastern Europe to give people out there.”
One of the tracks is called “Thatcher F***ked The Kids,” where Turner blames the former  British prime minister’s politics for destroying a sense of community and turning “small, charming and harmless” children into a “violent bunch of bastard little shits.”
“In a way, it was kind of a joke because it’s kind of a cliche in this country that a political folk singer has to sing about Margaret Thatcher, because when Billy Bragg came out, all his songs were about Margaret Thatcher and stuff like that,” he said.
“But then at the same time it’s not  just about the 1980s, it’s a song about the fact that the whole neo-liberal economic project of the 1980s destroyed a lot of the sense of community in our society that enabled people to respect each other and get along. 
“At the moment you walk down the street in the U.K. and if you walk past a group of kids, you kind of run away, you cross the road, do you know what I mean? I think that’s completely insane. I don’t think the world should be like that. I don’t think we should be scared of our children. It’s crazy.”
Turner said he is pleased by being compared to Bragg, whom he lists as his major influence alongside Johnny Cash, Neil Young and Counting Crows, the 1990s American country-tinged rock band whose albums he used to play along to when learning to play guitar.
“If I’m making noises that sound like Billy Bragg then that’s totally fine with me. Also just the fact that the story with Billy Bragg is that his band broke up and he decided to do things on his own rather than waiting to form a new one, that was very inspiring for me. And that’s pretty much what I’ve done as well.”
Like Bragg, Turner finds himself in opposition to the British folk scene that he finds “traditionalist.”
“It’s interesting, because, do you know, there’s a whole kind of scene that began with Billy Bragg, that’s known as ‘anti-folk,’ he said.
“There’s a sort of established, older folk scene in the U.K. that’s very traditionalist. They’re quite snobbish. You have to be an old man with a big beard who sings songs about, like, the countryside, you know, that kind of thing. And it’s bullshit! It excludes so many people. 
“This is the whole point about Billy Bragg and anti-folk, because the original point of folk music was that it was music for everybody, that would tell stories or pass on wisdom from one person to another.
“So now there’s been a bit of a kind of revival in the last few years, especially in London, there’s an awful lot of people who started to play folk music, young people, who live in a city or whatever and who are trying just to tell stories to each other. I personally love that, and that’s what I’m trying to do.”
Turner slams the popular balladeer James Blunt who he said is deprived of any sense of humor or self-irony.
“He’s my nemesis, you know,” said Turner. “Just in the sense that he represents a lot of things that I do not want to be myself. I think that James Blunt’s music, it has no sense of humor. It never laughs at itself.
“Songs are like people, you know. If you know a person who can’t laugh at themselves, then they’re a boring person, you know, and just sort of a dick, basically.”
“I think in fact, in a way, quite a lot of the people who are involved in the anti-folk scene in the U.K. right now, one of their motivations is because they hate people like Damien Rice or James Blunt. They want to prove that you can be one person with one instrument and actually be really good rather than boring and sappy.”
Pointing to his mix of folk and punk, Turner’s guitar is decorated with the motto “This Machine Kills Hippies,” a play on Woody Guthrie’s famous “This Machine Kills Fascists,” something that he describes as a “little joke.”
“Underneath it says ‘Not really.’ It’s just a joke,” he said.
“I’ve never been into, like, the whole hippie thing, you know, people kind of like taking loads of acid and hugging trees and shit, and not washing. I don’t really see what it has to do with changing the world, personally.”

Frank Turner performs at Platforma on Monday. www.frank-turner.com

TITLE: Generation Q
AUTHOR: By Evgenia Ivanova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: One Russian jazz instrumentalist will have the opportunity to become a student at Berklee College of Music, one of America’s finest music institutions with a glittering list of celebrity alumni, as a delegation from the college arrives in St. Petersburg this weekend in a quest to discover a bright new jazz talent. 
The Boston, Massachusetts college, where such legends of modern jazz as Quincy Jones, Diana Krall, Branford Marsalis and Gary Burton were once students, has already shortlisted 30 musicians and almost half of them are from St. Petersburg. 
The selection process will reach its final stage Saturday, after auditions are held at the JFC Jazz Club. The choice will be made by members of the Berklee faculty and administrators, including Guitar Department chair Larry Baione and Director of Admissions, Scholarships and Student Employment Damien Bracken.
“We are confident, given Russia’s outstanding reputation for music education, that we will discover a bright new talent and bring them to Berklee to help them realize their full potential,” Bracken said Sunday in an emailed statement.
The initiative is part of the JazzQ International jazz festival, and is funded by its organizer Sergei Kremensky. The Sergei Kremensky Endowed Scholarship will cover four years of tuition and living expenses at the U.S. college. JazzQ organizers will also be involved in selecting the musician who will receive the scholarship.
“In support of [Berklee] President [Roger H.] Brown’s goal to expand the Presidential Scholarship Program to include international talent, Mr. Kremensky has agreed to fund one Presidential Scholarship for a Russian jazz musician of the highest caliber,” Bracken said.
Berklee is also bringing its student band Heavy Groove Ensemble to peform at the two-day festival, which replces the Peter & Paul Jazz Festival. The group is said to be preparing an “exhilarating” program of jazz, soul, R&B and hip-hop music with original student compositions and songs.
The two-day JazzQ festival begins on Friday in the historic setting of the Peter and Paul Fortress. 
The premier jazz event on St. Petersburg’s music calendar is produced in association with the Netherlands-based North Sea Jazz festival, and will hopefully be better organized than in previous years. 
The festival features 12 concerts including performances by Latin Jazz musician Eddie Palmeri and Marceo Parker, who has played on records by the the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Jennifer Lopez.
Stanley Clarke and George Duke, the founders of the Clarke/Duke Project, will recreate their collaboration of the late 1970s during the festival. 
“This year, compared to last year, there’ll be more names. We’ll also have a new double stage, so there won’t be long intervals between artists. A double stage means one stage right next to the other one, so while an artist is playing, there are others preparing just next to him,” said JazzQ’s new president Theo van den Hoek. Hoek, who spent 30 years working for the North Sea Jazz Festival (13 as its director) said he wants to put St. Petersburg on the world’s jazz map, 
Berklee student and Moscow native Nikolai Moiseyenko, saxophonist for the Heavy Groove Ensemble said that he thinks Russia’s jazz scene is “very strong.” 
“I hear there are many great sax players there,” Moiseyenko said. “Igor Butman is making Russian jazz known around the world. I hope to come back after I graduate from Berklee to play.” 

JazzQ International Jazz Festival on Friday and Saturday at the Peter and Paul Fortress. www.jazzq.ru

TITLE: Iran to Give Response By Saturday
AUTHOR: By Ali Akbar Dareini
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TEHRAN, Iran — Iran on Thursday promised to formally respond on Aug. 22 to a Western package of incentives aimed at resolving the standoff over its suspect nuclear program.
The Supreme National Security Council, Iran’s top security decision-making body, also threatened that the country will reconsider its nuclear policies if sanctions are imposed.
The council didn’t elaborate, but Iranian officials repeatedly have suggested that Tehran may withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and stop cooperation with the UN inspectors.
“The package of incentives requires a logical time to study it ... August 22 has been set for declaring (our) views,” the council said in a statement read on state-run television.
“In case the path of confrontation is chosen instead of the path of dialogue ... and Iran’s definite rights are threatened, then there will be no option for Iran but to reconsider its nuclear policies,” it added.
The statement came a day after Russia said the UN Security Council is in no rush to pressure Iran over its nuclear program, striking a more conciliatory tone than the United States as diplomats began discussing a resolution to put legal muscle behind demands that Tehran suspend uranium enrichment.
The United States and some of its allies accuse Iran of seeking to produce highly enriched uranium and plutonium for nuclear weapons. Tehran says its nuclear program is peaceful and aimed at generating electricity.
The Western nations offered Iran a package of incentives on June 6 — including advanced technology and possibly even nuclear research reactors — if Tehran suspended enrichment.
But the frustrated powers agreed last week to send Tehran back to the UN Security Council for possible punishment, saying it had given no sign it would bargain in earnest over its nuclear ambitions.
Iran has said the incentives package was an “acceptable basis” for negotiations.
The council said special committees in key state agencies were still studying the offer by the United States, Britain, China, France, Russia and Germany, and invited the U.S. and its allies to return to the negotiating table.
It said it was “surprising” that the U.S. was creating obstacles in the way of a negotiated settlement while Iran was seriously studying the offer.
“Iran is not after tension, but if others push things toward tension and create problems, then all will face problems. Iran believes dialogue is the most logical solution. It is serious in this path. We want the other side to return to the negotiating table,” the statement said.
A senior Iranian lawmaker said Tuesday that the country’s parliament was preparing to debate withdrawal from the nonproliferation treaty if the UN Security Council adopts a resolution that would force Tehran to suspend uranium enrichment.
Withdrawal from the treaty could end all international oversight of Iran’s nuclear program.
In February, Iran for the first time produced its first batch of low-enriched uranium, using a cascade of 164 centrifuges. The process of uranium enrichment can be used to generate electricity or in building a bomb, depending on the level of enrichment.

TITLE: Israel Will Not Rule Out Full-Scale Invasion
AUTHOR: By Hussein Dakroub
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BEIRUT, Lebanon — Israeli troops met fierce resistance from Hezbollah guerrillas Thursday as they crossed into Lebanon to seek tunnels and weapons for a second consecutive day.
Israel, meanwhile, refused to rule out a full-scale invasion.
Israeli warplanes also launched new airstrikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold, shortly after daybreak Thursday, followed by strikes in the guerrilla’s heartland in the south and eastern Bekaa Valley.
The strikes came after a wave of bombings Wednesday killed as many as 70 people, according to Lebanese television, making it the deadliest day since the fighting began on July 12.
Russia sharply criticized Israel over its onslaught against Lebanon, now in its ninth day, sparked when Hezbollah guerrillas captured two Israeli soldiers. The Russian Foreign Ministry said Israel’s actions have gone “far beyond the boundaries of an anti-terrorist operation” and repeated calls for an immediate cease-fire.
At least 306 people have been killed in Lebanon since the Israeli campaign began, according to the security forces control room that collates casualties. In Israel, 29 people have been killed, including 14 soldiers. The UN has said at least a half million people have been displaced in Lebanon.
In developments on the evacuation of Lebanon, U.S. Marines landed in Beirut on Thursday to help Americans onto a Navy ship bound for Cyprus in the second mass U.S exodus from the battle-torn country.
About 40 U.S. Marines arrived at a beach just north of Beirut in a landing craft and picked up 300 Americans who they ferried to the amphibious assault ship USS Nashville just off the coast. The Nashville is supposed to sail for Cyprus with about 1,000 Americans.
Hundreds of people, some with shirts draped over their heads to protect themselves from the sun, gathered on the beach. A U.S. Embassy official, speaking through a megaphone, pleaded for patience, reassuring the crowd that all those who registered to be evacuated would be assisted.
“We are frustrated and disappointed, but we are OK,” said Bob Elazon, an Illinois resident who complained that the U.S. evacuation was badly organized.
Elazon, who left his native Lebanon 34 years ago, was with his 20-year-old daughter, Anna, who was visiting the country for the first time. His wife departed just before the fighting erupted.
Meanwhile, the first plane carrying U.S. evacuees landed outside Baltimore early Thursday, and eager family members waited to greet the 145 Americans aboard the charter flight from Cyprus.
Some 900 Americans arrived in Cyprus early Thursday aboard a luxury cruise ship — the first mass U.S. evacuation from Lebanon since the Israeli airstrikes started more than a week ago.
It was among dozens of cruise ships evacuating thousands of foreigners from Lebanon. Some 8,000 of 25,000 U.S. citizens in Lebanon have asked to leave. So many people were leaving Lebanon that boats were forced to line up outside Beirut harbor and had to wait before docking in Cyprus.
Israel’s series of small ground forays across the border have aimed to push back Hezbollah guerrillas who have continued to fire rockets into northern Israel despite more than a week of massive Israeli bombardment against them — raising the question of whether air power alone can suppress them. 
Guerrillas fired 25 rockets into Israel on Thursday, which caused no casualties.
But the guerrillas have been fighting back hard on the ground, wounding three Israeli soldiers Thursday, a day after killing two. On Thursday, an Israeli unit sent in to ambush Hezbollah guerrillas had a fierce gunbattle with a cell of militants.

TITLE: Rescue Crews Seek Tsunami Survivors, 531 Dead
AUTHOR: By Anthony Deutsch
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PANGANDARAN, Indonesia — Rescue workers dug through the ruins of this tsunami-devastated town in search of bodies Thursday, as locals woke up from a third night spent in hillside camps. A mass burial was held for some of the 531 people killed by the waves.
Some tsunami survivors scoured the Pangandaran beach for nails, wood, tin — anything they could use to start rebuilding their lives.
“We need a family shelter,” said Sakiman, 71, who was among tens of thousands waiting to return home. “The camps are crowded, inconvenient. We’ve received donations of rice and noodles, but can’t cook them because the water is too dirty.”
Hundreds stood at the edge of a mass grave, some covering their mouths, as unidentified corpses were lowered into the ground. The bodies were photographed and tagged in case relatives later wanted to claim them.
A magnitude 7.7 earthquake triggered Monday’s tsunami, which smashed into a 110-mile stretch of Java island’s southern coast, destroying scores of houses, restaurants and hotels. Cars, motorbikes and boats were left mangled amid fishing nets, furniture and other debris.
Police and army teams with dogs and mechanical equipment continued to hunt for bodies in the ruins, while others took their search to the sea, going island to island in search of people listed among the missing.
The death toll stood at 531, said Maman Susanto of the government’s disaster coordinating board.
The government has come under fire for failing to warn residents about the impending disaster or, in at least one case, misinforming the public about the sequence of events in its aftermath.
Vice President Jusuf Kalla claimed most people fled inland after feeling the temblor, so “in actual fact there was a kind of natural early warning system.”
But Sri Rahayu, 34 — like most others interviewed by The Associated Press — said she did not feel the earthquake that struck deep beneath the Indian Ocean 150 miles southwest of Java’s coast.
She said she would not have known what was happening if her neighbor hadn’t run out in panic screaming “The water is raising! Run!”
“I am traumatized,” said Rahayu, who escaped with her 5-year-old daughter. She said she would not return home until “the government announces formally it is safe.”
The tsunami has taken away the jobs of tens of thousands who worked in shops, bars or gave surfing lessons to vacationers.
Businessman Sirkusumo Sudjanarko, 58, who owns the Bunga Laut seaside hotel on Pangandaran, said his business has been devastated.
“I lost my bungalow and restaurant just like that,” he said, estimating the damage caused at roughly $110,000. “Tourists are going to avoid this place for at least three years.”

TITLE: Landis Fights as Tour Hits Mountains
AUTHOR: By Jerome Pugmire
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LA TOUSSUIRE, France — Lance Armstrong and Johan Bruyneel saw early on that Floyd Landis was struggling. Landis began Wednesday’s 16th stage of the Tour de France with a lead of 10 seconds — and ended it more than 8 minutes behind new leader Oscar Pereiro of Spain, with Sunday’s finish in Paris approaching fast. 
“We know Floyd well, so you can see the body English,” seven-time Tour winner Armstrong said of his former teammate. 
“Still, I didn’t want that to happen. I wanted the jersey to stay in America,” Armstrong said after the stage had finished. “Floyd was riding well, and now the guy that was 28 or 29 minutes down looks like he might win the Tour.” 
Pereiro’s improbable rise has him on the brink of the first Tour win for a Spaniard since Miguel Indurain in 1995. 
The absence of Armstrong, who retired last summer, and prerace favorites Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso — both kicked off before the Tour started because of suspected doping — makes the 2006 Tour the most wide-open in years. 
It set the stage up perfectly for Landis who, after years of sweating for Armstrong, finally had a chance for his own win. However, that all but evaporated Wednesday in the unforgiving sun. His burning red face clashing with the custard yellow of his Tour leader’s jersey, Landis buckled on the Alps. 
Barring an improbable scenario of mass crashes, the 11th-placed Landis will not be able to make up the 8:08 gap on Pereiro. 
“It’s finished. He can’t win it any more,” said Bruyneel, Armstrong’s former team director. 
As soon as Landis hit the Col du Galibier — the first of Wednesday’s three torturous climbs and the highest of the three-week race at 8,681 feet — Bruyneel saw signs of fatigue. 
“It was pretty clear he was not having a good day,” Bruyneel said. “I could see straight away from the Galibier that he was not looking good.” 
His legs betraying him, Landis tried to put on a brave face. 
“I suffered from the beginning and I tried to hide it,” Landis said. 
Bruyneel’s eye, however, pierced straight through the mass of whirling legs in the peloton and spotted Landis wilting even before the day’s second major climb up the Croix-de-Fer — midway through — and long before the uphill finish to La Toussuire. 
“I know his style,” said Bruyneel. 
Bruyneel, who guided Armstrong on each of his seven Tour wins, feels Landis could have won the Tour had he survived Wednesday’s 113-mile stage, which began at Bourg d’Oisans. 
“If he had stayed solid, he ultimately could have won it in the time trial [on Saturday],” Bruyneel said. 
Mickael Rasmussen of Denmark won stage 16, clocking 5 hours, 36 minutes, 4 seconds. It was his second career Tour stage win, after a success last year, and propelled him into the polka-dot jersey. The award, given to the best climber, was won by Rasmussen last year as well. 
In contrast to Landis, Rasmussen whizzed up and down the day’s four hills with the grace and ease of a surfer cruising waves. 
Nearly 2 minutes behind, countrymen Carlos Sastre and Pereiro rolled over the line in second and third respectively. Despondent Landis chugged up the hill in 23rd place. 
“It was difficult to imagine that things would turn out like this,” Pereiro said. “Floyd Landis seemed untouchable, but like everybody, he wasn’t immune to collapse. I’m really sad for him.” 
Overall, Pereiro holds a 1:50 lead over Sastre, and is 2:29 up on third-place Andreas Kloeden of Germany, who is close to another podium finish after placing runner-up to Armstrong in 2004. 
Saturday’s time trial could benefit speedy Kloeden, providing he can shave time off Sastre and Pereiro on Thursday’s 17th stage, the last tough ascent in the Alps. 
The route, a 124.3-mile trek from Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne to Morzine, is less demanding than Wednesday’s stage, and also Tuesday’s trudge up to L’Alpe d’Huez. 
However, the Tour is still up for grabs — and mystery still surrounds who will wear yellow on the Champs-Elysees on Sunday. 
That was never the case in Armstrong’s era.

TITLE: FIFA Mulls Disciplinary Action For Zidane
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ZURICH, Switzerland — FIFA’s disciplinary committee met Thursday to consider punishments for Zinedine Zidane’s head-butt in the World Cup final. 
The former France captain, who was sent off for ramming Italy defender Marco Materazzi in the chest with his head, went into the closed-door hearing midmorning, FIFA spokesman Andreas Herren said. 
Details of the proceedings were unavailable. 
Zidane, who retired after the July 9 game in Berlin, faces a possible fine and a symbolic ban. He could also be stripped of his Golden Ball award as the best player in the tournament. 
Materazzi, who appeared before the FIFA panel last week, also faces a possible fine and suspension. 
Zidane has already submitted written testimony. 
FIFA plans to announce its verdicts following the hearing. 
Any penalty would sully the legacy of Zidane, a man widely considered one of the greatest players of this generation. 
Zidane said he attacked Materazzi because he insulted his mother and sister. Materazzi denied insulting Zidane’s mother. 
The head-butt came during a match watched by hundreds of millions of people around the world, forcing FIFA to respond. 
Zidane apologized to children who watched the match, but said he didn’t regret what he did because he was provoked by repeated harsh insults about his family. 
“Above all, I’m human,” he said on French television last week. “I would rather have taken a punch in the jaw than have heard that.” 
Playing in extra time in his farewell game, Zidane and Materazzi exchanged words as the two walked upfield. Zidane appeared to be distancing himself from the Italian, but then turned, lowered his bald head, and drove it into Materazzi’s chest — knocking him to the ground. 
Zidane was sent off, and Italy went on to win its fourth World Cup, beating France 5-3 on penalties after a 1-1 draw through 120 minutes. 
Materazzi said the focus should be on Zidane’s gesture and not on any provocation.

TITLE: New Russia Coach Visits to Get To Know Moscow, St. Petersburg
AUTHOR: By Gennady Fyodorov
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — New Russia coach Guus Hiddink got his first taste of the job by making a whistle-stop tour of the capital this week. 
The Dutchman began his 2-1/2-year stint as Russia’s first foreign manager by visiting the Russian Football Union headquarters and meeting fellow coaches, the national team’s staff and officials. Accompanied by his wife Elizabeth, Hiddink also toured famous Moscow landmarks such as the Kremlin and Red Square. 
He even had time to make a quick trip to St. Petersburg to watch Zenit take on Russian champions CSKA Moscow in a key premier league encounter on Wednesday. 
Everywhere he went, Hiddink was followed by a horde of reporters, photo and television cameras. 
“Moscow is a great city, the only problem seems to be these huge traffic jams. It’s just a nightmare,” he said. 
President of the Russian Football Union Vitaly Mutko told Reuters: “It was purely a business visit. 
“Of course, he couldn’t resist the opportunity to see two of our top clubs in action, meet some of the players, feel the atmosphere. We also had to look for a suitable residence for Guus and his family, opening a bank account for him and so on.” 
According to media reports, Hiddink will earn close to $3 million per year and Chelsea’s billionaire owner Roman Abramovich, who was responsible for luring the Dutchman to Russia, will also help to pay his salary. 
Hiddink guided relative newcomers Australia to the second round of the World Cup in Germany. Previously he led the Netherlands and South Korea to the semi-finals. 
Hiddink left Russia on Thursday and will return to Moscow next month to prepare for the European championship qualifiers. Russia, who failed to qualify for the World Cup, open their Euro 2008 qualifying campaign by hosting Croatia on Sept. 6.