SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1204 (70), Friday, September 15, 2006
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TITLE: Officials: No More Easy Money
AUTHOR: By William Mauldin
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — The spectacular investment returns of the past few years are unlikely to be repeated, and future growth will depend on investing heavily in industry and infrastructure and on overcoming government greed and corruption, the country's top economic officials said Wednesday.Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref told an investor conference Wednesday that the country had a deep "hunger" for investment. But the government will keep resisting the temptation to put budget surpluses into economic development as it needs to save oil revenues for the future and avoid stoking inflation, officials said.
Kremlin adviser Arkady Dvorkovich highlighted the country's shortage of skilled workers, while Central Bank deputy chairman Alexei Ulyukayev decried the dependence on petrodollars that he said put the country's economic wellbeing at risk.
While the country has benefited from high levels of economic growth and stock market returns of more than 50 percent per year, the current job of the government is to ensure macroeconomic stability, conference speakers said.
Future economic growth will depend on the government being committed to improving the woefully inadequate judicial system and staunching endemic government corruption and competition for resources, they said.
"Our stock market rally was a necessary precursor to investment growth," said Al Breach, chief economist at UBS, which organized the investor conference.
Breach said that the eye-catching stock market returns had all but eliminated capital flight. The money attracted to Russia has nothing to do with oil but has nevertheless fueled gross domestic product growth of 7.4 percent, he said.
"Russia and Moscow are going to turn into one big building site," he said.
Assuming that oil prices stay above $30 per barrel and that there are no harmful political changes, Russia can expect GDP growth of about 7 percent over the next few years, Breach said.
The stock market is still undervalued by 25 percent to 30 percent because stocks are not yet "pricing in what commodity prices imply," he said. He forecast that the RTS would hit 1,700 by the end of the year and 1,900 by next September — 22 percent above its close Wednesday at 1,556.
Breach said he expected Russian firms to raise some $30 billion in IPOs and other additional stock offerings this year.
Oleg Vyugin, head of the Federal Financial Markets Service, said he was working to make sure that companies going public would list in Russia as well as abroad, and he said he expected three or four of these dual listings in the fall.
Equity gains have led investment growth in recent years, but future growth will come from the fledgling debt markets — mortgages, bonds, borrowing, leasing and other forms of long-term finance, Breach said.
Although the theme of the conference was "Russia: Energizing the World," Breach and Gref took pains to point out that much of Russia's recent economic growth — and even more of its future growth — had little to do with high world energy prices, since oil exports are taxed heavily, with much of the revenues flowing into foreign reserves.
Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Shatalov said oil and gas exports "provided a very positive contribution" to the economy, but Gref said economic growth "has started to be driven by other factors and other sectors."
Some industries, such as electrical power generation and transmission, are already suffering from lack of investment, and Gref said investment in electricity needed to double in 2007 and triple in 2008 from current levels.
One way the government funnels investments is through the State Investment Fund, which is spending 160 billion rubles ($6 billion) to help finance seven projects worth 360 billion rubles ($13.4 billion), ranging from highways around St. Petersburg to industrial development. These projects alone will add an estimated 1 percent to GDP in the next 10 years, Gref said.
None of the big investment projects will succeed in the long run without improvements to the way land and other resources are allocated, fundamental judicial reform and a reduction of corruption and greed among government officials.
"Only one out of four court decisions is implemented, and therefore it's difficult to talk about the efficiency of the judicial system," Gref said. Many courts are run like a "family business," with assets flowing to a judge's spouse or other relatives. "We would like to videotape all court proceedings and keep an archive of them," he said.
Dvorkovich spoke just as bluntly about corruption.
"Government bureaucrats are often not very interested in letting other companies enter the market," he said.
Corruption is often viewed as a "systemic element" of a particular business or sector, leading some businessmen to wonder how their sectors could survive in its absence, he said.
"That fear is not justified," Dvorkovich said, adding that everyone should learn to fear the rule of law.
Dvorkovich was resolutely upbeat about the economy and its ability to attract investment, however. "Our failures come from the inability to believe in what we do," he said. "I believe in the ability of the Russian economy."
Dvorkovich said that as companies become more transparent, investment levels will rise. After all, attracting loans or equity investors requires several years of financial results, including tax payments, he said.
"The vast majority of companies don't yet have that three-year tax history," Dvorkovich said.
Even the demise of Yukos — the biggest investing disaster to hit the country in recent years — has actually improved at least one aspect of the investment climate.
"People are paying their taxes," Breach said.

TITLE: Alcohol Reform Has Lethal Consequences
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW— The country has seen a spike in the number of people who have died or suffered illnesses in the past six weeks from drinking disinfectants following a government campaign to purge stores of fake liquor.The anti-bootlegging effort stalled production and inadvertently drove up prices.
Seeking a cheaper substitute to real, officially approved vodka, 20 homeless or unemployed men and women opted for alcohol that had been explicitly labeled as not fit for consumption, officials said.
An additional 650 people have been hospitalized for drinking similar substitutes.
The Tver region town of Rzhev saw the greatest concentration of incidents, with 11 people dying since Aug. 21 from drinking disinfectant from 5-liter plastic canisters, said Arsen Grigoryan, chief of the Emergency Situations Ministry's regional office.
Another 216 people in the town suffered severe liver problems and were undergoing treatment for toxic hepatitis, Grigoryan said.
Labels attached to the canisters used in Rzhev indicated that 93 percent of the contents were "industrial spirit." The labels also included a warning in large letters that the alcohol was not meant for drinking, Grigoryan added.
"These people are mostly from dysfunctional families, homeless or unemployed," he said. "Two or three [of the victims] are young people who drank the alcohol accidentally, but the rest have unhealthy lifestyles."
In the Belgorod region, six people have died and 304 people have been hospitalized after consuming bad alcohol since July 30, a spokeswoman for the regional administration said. Most poisonings occurred in the town of Stary Oskol, and some were in the nearby town of Gubkin, she said.
Dobromir Kurtev, a Belgorod Regional Clinical Hospital medical assistant, called this latest spate of poisonings the worst he had seen in the four years since he began working there.
The hospital sent doctors to the affected towns to help local medical staff cope with the problem, Kurtev added.
While vodka and other liquor is readily available in the Belgorod region, patients have been turning up daily at Stary Oskol's Central District Hospital, said a doctor who worked there but was unauthorized to speak with reporters.
Compounding problems is the relatively cheap price tag that a canister or bottle of bad liquor carries. Alyona Moroz, deputy head of health care at the Stary Oskol administration, noted that a half-liter bottle of industrial alcohol cost as little as 25 rubles (93 cents).
By contrast, the cheapest half-liter bottle of vodka now costs about 95 rubles, said Vadim Drobiz, a spokesman for the Union of Alcohol Market Participants.
The same bottle of vodka cost 65 rubles before the government began requiring, as of Jan. 1, more expensive excise labels on liquor, Drobiz said.
The Stary Oskol Hospital doctor said victims had been combining industrial spirits with water. Surprisingly, he said, people tend not to say where they obtain the bad alcohol.
In Tatarstan, meanwhile, three people died earlier this month from bad alcohol, while another 51 people were poisoned but survived, according to the local branch of the Health and Social Development Ministry's Federal Consumer Protection Service, Rossiiskaya Gazeta reported last week.
Two other regions, Voronezh and Rostov, showed above-average poisoning rates, reporting a total of 98 cases, local officials said.
Authorities say they have been detaining suspected vendors of poisonous substances and seizing tons of the bad liquor in an attempt to head off the crisis.
Gennady Onishchenko, head of the Federal Consumer Protection Service, played down the recent rise in poisonings, saying the government's new labeling measure had actually helped lower the mortality rate across the nation.
He said the number of alcohol-related deaths in the first seven months of 2006 dropped by 4,046 from the same period in 2005.
About 40,000 people are estimated to die annually in Russia from alcohol poisoning.
But an alcohol-market analyst said the number of deaths from poisoning was likely to rise by 50 percent this year, as consumers seek to avoid the higher price tag.
The analyst asked not to be identified for fear his comments would antagonize officials.
Also, the analyst said, many liquor producers who once sold their goods on the black market, thereby avoiding excise fees, have stopped doing so as a result of the new labeling regime.
This shortage has given consumers one more reason to resort to bad alcohol.
Onishchenko conceded that the situation had grown worse in several areas.
Oddly, the areas he cited were different from those experiencing the current wave of poisonings. Onishchenko named the Sakhalin, Omsk, Magadan, Kurgan, Volgograd and Kursk regions.
"That testifies to a lack of attention from the leaders of these regions toward this important problem," he said, Interfax reported.
Tver region Governor Dmitry Zelenin last week proposed a government ban on the production of industrial spirits and urged producers to use other ingredients for disinfectants, as they do in the West.
Zelenin won the support of the No to Alcoholism and Drug Addiction Fund. Sergei Politykin, head of the fund's medical programs, said alternatives to industrial spirits were available.

TITLE: No Food for 50 Days in Glass Box
PUBLISHER: The Moscow Times
TEXT: A 46-year-old man in the Leningrad Oblast is attempting to break a world record by fasting for 50 days.Agasi Vartanyan of Shlisselburg, a town on the Neva River to the east of St. Petersburg, has been fasting in an elevated, glass-encased box since Aug. 27, St. Petersburg-based newspaper Smena reported this week.
After losing his job as a construction worker, Vartanyan realized that he would be going hungry for a while anyway, so he decided to make the best of a bad situation, Smena said.
Vartanyan built the structure himself and stocked it with 150 liters of drinking water, 50 packs of cigarettes, an electric heater, bedding, changes of clothing and an icon.
The large box, which is situated near a statue of Peter the Great, has become a local attraction, Smena reported.
Newly married couples who visit the tsar's statue often have their photograph taken in front of Vartanyan's temporary home.
Vartanyan is also soliciting money during his fast, promising to give half to a local veterans' organization.

TITLE: Senior Central Banker Shot Dead in Moscow
AUTHOR: By Steve Gutterman
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — The top deputy chairman of Russia's Central Bank died Thursday, hours after being shot by unidentified assailants in an attack that officials suggested was prompted by his efforts to clean up the country's banking system.Andrei Kozlov, the bank's first deputy chairman, died hours after he was hospitalized in critical condition following the shooting late Wednesday, Moscow prosecutor's office spokeswoman Svetlana Petrenko said.
Kozlov's driver was also killed in the attack, which Russian media said was carried out by two gunmen who fled after the shooting. It occurred outside a sports arena where bank employees were having a soccer game.
While rarer than in the turbulent 1990s, contract killings of businessmen and bankers still regularly occur in Russia, where business conflicts often turn violent.
Vice Premier Alexander Zhukov said the shooting was likely linked to Kozlov's duties, and suggested the possibility of a connection with the Central Bank's revocation of licenses of unreliable commercial banks, the Interfax news agency reported.
Kozlov had been responsible for banking supervision, and had overseen an ambitious program to reduce criminality and money laundering in the banking system.
"His steps to cleanse the [banking] system and to build a normal, civilized system apparently strongly encroached upon somebody's interests," the head of the Association of Russian Banks, Garegin Tosunian, told Ekho Moskvy radio.
Kozlov, 41, had been the Central Bank's first deputy chairman since 2002 after first holding that position from 1997-1999.
His work had made him a potential target for the owners of the hundreds of unsound or criminal banks operating in Russia, and he had frequently been the target of smear campaigns in Russian newspapers and on Web sites.
Kozlov's most conspicuous achievement had been the introduction of a deposit insurance program designed to restore faith in the banking system after widespread defaults in 1998, in which many Russians lost their savings.
At Kozlov's initiative, bank licenses were revoked and others were effectively earmarked for closure when they wre denied access to the deposit insurance program.
Kozlov "repeatedly infringed upon the interests of dishonest financiers," the ITAR-Tass news agency quoted Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin as saying. Kudrin called him "a very courageous and honest person who was at the forefront of the struggle with financial crime."
Opening a Cabinet meeting hours after Kozlov's death, Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov expressed condolences to his wife and children and government officials stood for a moment of silence, shown on state television.
Anatoly Chubais, a former prime minister who is now head of electricity monopoly RAO Unified Energy Systems and survived an assassination attempt last year, called Kozlov "an unquestionably honest, principled and absolutely noncommercial person."
"His killing is an impudent challenge to all Russian authorities," Chubais said in a statement.
Tim Ash, an analyst with the investment firm Bear Stearns, said the shooting was a direct affront to Putin's government and threatened a return to the violence that plagued Russia's chaotic business world following the 1991 Soviet collapse, Dow Jones Newswires reported.
"We would expect Putin to set the resolution of this case as an absolute priority for the country's security services," Ash was quoted as saying. "Failure to apprehend the killers would send a signal to others that intimidation of government officials is once again an option."

TITLE: Seven Dead in Police-OMON Battle
AUTHOR: By Simon Saradzhyan
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW— A shootout between Ingush and Chechen policemen Wednesday left seven dead and 21 wounded, news agencies reported.Five Chechen OMON special forces officers died in the skirmish, along with two Ingush policemen. Eleven Chechen officers were wounded, including Buvadi Dukhiyev, a deputy commander in the Chechen OMON, or riot police. Ten Ingush policemen were also injured.
The gun battle broke out after a Chechen OMON convoy entered Ingushetia in pursuit of a suspect without alerting Ingush authorities, a Chechen Interior Ministry official told Interfax. The Chechens feared that their Ingush counterparts might leak the information, he said.
Ingush policemen ordered the convoy to halt at a checkpoint on the border with Chechnya, the Ingushetia.ru web site reported. The Ingush officers asked the Chechen officers to present their identification papers, but they refused.
The Ingush policemen then spotted the suspect in one of the cars in handcuffs with a bag over his head. They ordered the Chechens to freeze and called for backup, Ingushetia.ru reported. The Chechen OMON officers responded by opening fire.
An official at the Joint Staff of Forces Operating in the North Caucasus told Interfax that the Ingush policemen began shooting first.
Senior police officials from both Chechnya and Ingushetia rushed to the site of the shootout Wednesday afternoon, and both sides said they would investigate the incident before making any comment on the cause of the incident.
Ingush President Murat Zyazikov said only that the exchange of gunfire resulted from a "fatal mistake," Interfax reported.
Chechen Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov said the incident was the result of a "misunderstanding," Interfax reported.
Both Zyazikov and Kadyrov called for restraint Wednesday, reminding people in both regions that the Ingush and Chechens are ethnic cousins.
But a prominent Ingush politician, Issa Kostoyev, called for people in his region to resist Chechen police that venture into Ingushetia. Kostoyev, formerly a senior federal prosecutor and member of the Federation Council, told Ekho Moskvy radio that Ingush civilians should use force to turn back Chechen policemen that attempted to search their homes.
Law enforcement agencies in regions surrounding Chechnya have often entered into conflict with Chechen police and paramilitary units, most of which are loyal to Kadyrov.
On Sept. 7, a fistfight broke out when Chechen police tried to check the documents of Ingush officers in Ingushetia's Sunzhensky district.
Two Ingush policemen were severely injured.
In January 2005, Kadyrov and law enforcement units loyal to him, known as kadyrovtsy, employed force to wrest his sister from a police station in Dagestan, where she had been detained along with her bodyguards for failing to produce permits for weapons they were carrying. Several Dagestani officers were badly beaten.

TITLE: Fear, Uncertainty and Loathing Reign in Kondopoga
AUTHOR: By Carl Schreck
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: KONDOPOGA, Karelia — In the aftermath of the ethnic explosion here that left two men dead, destroyed numerous businesses and kiosks, and forced hundreds to flee, Russians across the country are asking the same question: Could it happen here?Aside from its picturesque setting on Lake Onego, Kondopoga — with its Soviet-era streets names, Lenin statue and World War II memorial — differs little from thousands of towns struggling to stay afloat.
There's the paper mill, employing one out of five of Kondopoga's roughly 38,000 residents. There are the crumbling apartment blocs and storefronts that can be seen everywhere in Russia.
And, like numerous towns in post-communist Russia, there's the local outdoor market, which is dominated by dark-skinned natives from the Caucasus, much to the dismay of ethnic Russians.
The white people in Kondopoga say "hot-blooded" Azeris, Chechens and others don't respect local mores and accuse them of flaunting their wealth and paying off the police so they can sell illegal drugs.
That the recent ethnic riots were sparked by a fight at an Azeri-run restaurant, Chaika, in which natives of the Caucasus purportedly killed two ethnic Russians has only reinforced that sentiment.
"The only things Chechens understand is force," said Sergei, 46, a retired Army officer whose sons served in the North Caucasus. "Everyone gets into fights, but here we do it with our fists. They showed up with weapons and the intent to kill."
Natives of the Caucasus, many of whom fled north after the outbreak of the first Chechen war in 1994, counter that the ethnic Russians are too drunk or not enterprising enough to start their own businesses.
"If we are paying off the police, it certainly didn't do us much good," said Hamzat Magamadov, a Chechen. "When the pogrom started, we had to hide our children, who were trembling with fear. The police did nothing."
Officials from Kondopoga to the republic of Karelia's capital of Petrozavodsk to Moscow blame the riots on everything from alcohol to police ineptitude to mafia turf wars to political opportunists trying to stoke racial fires for their own ends.
But Kondopoga residents — ethnic Russians and Caucasus natives alike — say government authorities are unwilling to face an ugly truth: Ethnic tensions have been brewing here for years, they say, and all it took for widespread turmoil to break out was the Aug. 29 bar fight.
"This was just the last straw," said Margarita Slezova, whose son, Grigory Slezov, 27, was killed in the fight at Chaika, once one of Kondopoga's few watering holes. As she spoke, Slezova, dressed in black, tended to a small shrine for her son in her apartment.
Her son, she said, had stopped by the restaurant and bar for a drink with friends to celebrate the new apartment he had moved into with his common-law wife, Kristina, who is due to give birth to their child in November.
"I can't say for sure what happened," Slezova said, "but when things turned violent, he apparently defended himself."
Prosecutors and witnesses say a group of ethnic Russians had been drinking at Chaika and began arguing with the Azeri bartender. The argument led to a fight, and soon the bartender was getting pummeled by the group of ethnic Russians. The bartender escaped, returning later with a group of Chechens bearing knives, baseball bats and iron rods. A brawl ensued, spilling onto the cement veranda outside. Along with Slezov, Sergei Usin, 32, lost his life. Several others were injured.
In the days following the brawl, mobs armed with Molotov cocktails torched Caucasian-owned businesses, including Chaika, and rampaged through the outdoor marketplace, smashing dozens of kiosks that remain unrepaired. Most of the Chechens living in Kondopoga fled. Forty-nine Chechens are at a summer camp outside Petrozavodsk under police protection. Four Chechen men, meanwhile, have been charged with murdering Slezov and Usin. A Chechen, a Dagestani and an ethnic Russian have been charged with hooliganism.
There have been numerous attempts to make sense of the chaos and violence, and the loss and confusion and uncertainty about what looms ahead.
State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov recently called the violence a "criminal showdown" and a "provocation of interethnic violence," Interfax reported.
Alexander Belov, head of the ultranationalist Movement Against Illegal Immigration, or DPNI, turned up in Kondopoga soon after the riots to address a crowd of 2,000 angry white people. He called for the expulsion of natives of the Caucasus lacking residence permits.
Everyone blames the police. "The only people the police are protecting right now are themselves," said Yury Zakharnyov, a friend of Usin's who is a turbine operator at the paper mill. A police officer speaking at a recent town meeting was shouted down by the 300 residents in attendance.
What's clear is the devastation and recrimination, and the lingering fear that, in a way, nothing has changed.
"Look at those empty stands," said Artur Galstyan, an Armenian shoe trader at the Kondopoga market, pointing to a dozen kiosks. "Those were empty before the pogrom. Nobody was stopping the Russians from selling anything there. But all they do is drink."
Galstyan said he wasn't afraid of being attacked; Armenians, after all, like Russians, are Christian. But he conceded that locals had trouble distinguishing between different peoples. "Azeri, Chechen, Armenian — it's all the same to them," he said.
Like Galstyan, a beefy 37-year-old, not all natives of the Caucasus have left town. And a modicum of normalcy has returned. Police were on constant patrol.
But an uneasy current persists. "No to Gooks!" is scrawled on a kiosk hawking honey; on Proletarskaya Ulitsa, Kondopoga's main drag, windows had been smashed in and building facades charred.
An odor redolent of a steaming landfill emanated from Chaika. Broken glass, stray clothing, a one-legged table and random blocks of wood and concrete were strewn on the veranda. Passersby don't seem terribly fazed by the rubble, but people have laid flowers in front of the restaurant in memory of Slezov and Usin.
No one appeared to have been lulled into thinking the violence was over for good, especially if the Chechens who fled the town return. "I don't think things will remain calm," Slezova said.
Alexander Brod, head of the Moscow Bureau of Human Rights, said that ethnic violence similar to the riots in Kondopoga had broken out in several Russian regions in recent years and that a Kondopoga-like scenario could happen anywhere.
The natives of the Caucasus who once lived in Kondopoga seemed aware of that much. Satsyta Visayeva, who came to the town 12 years ago with her husband, said she didn't know where the family would go after they left the summer camp, which is outside Petrozavodsk. There is talk of some of the self-exiled Chechens seeking political asylum in Finland or elsewhere in Scandinavia.
"Maybe they can come back eventually," Slezova added, her crisp speech suddenly breaking into a sob. "But only later. The city needs time to calm down."

Staff Writer Anatoly Medetsky contributed to this report from Moscow.

TITLE: Local Firm Pulls Off Substation Sensation
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A local construction company, UNR-427, succeeded in its attempt, Thursday, to build a transformer substation within 24 hours, thus staking its claim for a place in the Guinness Book of Records.The company also managed to receive all the necessary approvals in just two weeks. This compares to the seven days and six months it normally takes for construction and approval respectively.
"By applying modern construction technologies, we can reduce the time needed to just 24 hours," Sergei Migulyov, general director of the UNR-427 construction company, said Tuesday at an Interfax Northwest press conference.
"We will arrive early in the morning [at Leninsky Prospekt 168/4] and start digging the foundation pit. By the evening a transformer substation will emerge on the spot," he said.
Experts suggest the experiment could be a source of new opportunities for the local construction market and power network.
According to the plan for the development of power infrastructure proposed by RAO Unified Energy Systems and the city administration, about 60 large transformer stations need to be built in the city. This means that between 2,000 and 3,000 new substations are required to transfer energy to consumers.
At the moment 6,000 transformer substations operate in the city, of which 4,000 are in need of replacement. With existing methods of construction it will take about 100 years to complete the task, the specialists said.
"Plans for increasing the volume of construction and reducing construction time are constantly being discussed. This technology could help put these plans into practice," said Mikhail Viktorov, general director of Northwest Industrial and Construction Complex Association.
"This experiment is interesting, first of all, because it can be replicated in other regions and also because the equipment is ordered from local producers. And this is very important for us," he said.
Viktorov suggested creating a standard set of solutions that could be used at any construction site by any construction company.
"Everybody knows LEGO, which allows quick assembly of various different structures. We designed standard modules, which could be assembled into the ultimate building," Migulyov said.
The cost of the project is four million rubles ($150,000), which is comparable to the regular cost of constructing transformer substations, Migulyov said.
The new 2.5 megawatt substation, which replaced the old 400 kilowatt substation, will supply energy to a polyclinic, two business centers and residential buildings in the area.
"We get modern, long-lasting and energy-safe technology — in reducing construction time we decrease the cost of construction many times over," he said.
Migulyov suggested the wide scale replacement of equipment and power distribution networks in the city — district by district. "Simply repairing the odd substation entails huge expense but does not solve the problem," he said.
"If we create a standard set of procedures for getting approvals, it will significantly simplify our work for connecting consumers to the power network," said Victor Tamarov, deputy director of Lenenergo.
At the moment Lenenergo has 500 consumers who expect to be connected to a power network by the end of the year.
For this particular project, two and a half weeks were needed to obtain all the approvals. As for construction time, Migulyov said that in normal conditions, not trying to break any records, it would take around seven days.
Pyotr Rezantsev, deputy director of Northwest Industrial and Construction Complex Association, said that at least six months is normally required to deliver energy to the construction site.
"If we succeed in reducing this time, even down to two months, it will already be something that construction companies will appreciate," he said.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: n ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Amsterdam Trade Bank has opened a 30 million euro ($35 million) credit line for the "36.6" chain on drug stores, Interfax reported Monday.
The credit line will last one year — its interest rate includes EURIBOR plus 3.75 percent annually.
By June 30 "36.6" was operating 582 drug stores across the country.n ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The largest retail chain in the Northwest, Pyatyorochka, opened its 200th store in St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast, the company said Tuesday in a statement.
The 1,500 square meter store opened on Dunaisky Prospekt. Over the last seven years the company opened 47 stores in the city, investing around $1 million in each store.n ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The Veda alcohol company will increase production of its low alcohol beverages to 16.5 million liters this year, as compared to 4.567 million liters last year, Interfax reported Tuesday.
Last year Veda occupied one percent of the Russian market for low alcohol beverages. This year the company expects to increase its share to 3.5 percent.n ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — French company Schneider Electric will invest 12.5 million euros ($16 million) into the construction of an electrical equipment plant in the Gatchina district in Leningrad Oblast, Interfax reported Wednesday.
The plant, which is due for completion by 2009, will produce 19 million units of equipment a year.n ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The Tsement company, a part of the LSR construction holding, will launch a concrete plant in Leningrad Oblast in 2009, Interfax reported Wednesday.
The company will invest 160 million euros ($200 million) into the project. The plant will produce one million to two million tons of concrete a year.n ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Finnish company K-Rauta will construct a shopping and warehouse complex in the Vsevolozhsk district in Leningrad Oblast, Interfax reported Wednesday.
The cost of the project, due for completion by 2009, is estimated at 14 million euros ($17 million). The complex will occupy 7.5 hectares territory.n ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — St. Petersburg International Management Institute IMISP became the first business school in the city accredited by the Association of MBAs, the company announced Tuesday at a press conference.
The accreditation confirmed that IMISP programs correspond to European standards.

TITLE: WTO Talks Could go Beyond 2007
AUTHOR: By Oksana Yablokova and Valeria Korchagina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW —Russia will not join the World Trade Organization before the end of 2007 at best, Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref said Wednesday.Addressing the State Duma during the monthly "Cabinet hour," Gref said he hoped rocky talks with the United States — the only main roadblock to Russia's accession to the WTO — would be concluded by a late October deadline.
But the negotiations could continue beyond the deadline, he said.
"God willing, [Russia will join] by the end of 2007, but it is quite possible that it will happen later," Gref said.
The United States and Russia set the deadline in July after they failed to reach a much-anticipated agreement on the eve of the Group of Eight summit in July, which was hosted by President Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg. The talks collapsed over the issue of U.S. meat imports.
Gref last month raised the stakes by threatening sanctions on U.S. meat if the deadline was not met. It was unclear whether a possible prolongation of negotiations would prompt Russia to stick to the threat to curb U.S. meat imports.
At the moment, there are more than 130 discriminatory procedures against Russia when it comes to international trade. As a non-member of the WTO, Russia is treated as a country with a non-market economy, Gref told Duma deputies.
"This means billions of dollars in losses for Russian exporters ... Once we are a WTO member, we will have the right to fully protect our interests," he said.
Gref spent almost two hours briefing the deputies on the benefits of WTO membership for Russian exporters.
The delay in joining is particularly harmful for Russia's developing manufacturing sector, and is blocking diversification of the country's economy away from raw material exports, said Yevgeny Gavrilenkov, chief economist at Troika Dialog.
"One doesn't need to be a WTO member to export oil and gas," he said.
Even exports of famous goods such as AK-47 assault-rifles are being undermined by Russia not being a member of WTO, Gavrilenkov said. Only about 10 percent of the world market for Kalashnikovs is controlled by Russia, and the market is flooded with illegal copycats. As a member of WTO, Russia would have a way to defend its interests against such violations, he said.
But even though economists like Gref and Gavrilenkov advocate WTO membership, not all Duma deputies are convinced.
Dmitry Rogozin, a Rodina deputy, said now was not the time to join the WTO. "There is no question about whether it makes sense for Russia to join the WTO, but why do it now before giving many the national economic sectors an opportunity to get stronger," he said.
Communists, too, expressed wariness. "Joining the WTO in haste poses serious threats to the national industry and agriculture," Deputy Anatoly Lokot said.
If anything, haste is unlikely to be the right word to describe the accession process, Gavrilenkov noted.
"American business, which normally is the biggest lobbyist for such agreements, simply does not register Russia. They are much more concerned about China. ... For them, Russia is just the same as Zanzibar," he said.
"It's just we are very egocentric; we think Russia is the center of the universe. But others don't share this view."
Valery Draganov, head of the Duma's Committee on Economy, Entrepreneurship and Tourism, said Russia would join WTO eventually, but only after the terms of accession were in full compliance with the nation's interests.

TITLE: Patrushev's Son Joins Rosneft
AUTHOR: By Miriam Elder
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Federal Security Service director Nikolai Patrushev's 25-year-old son has been named an adviser to Rosneft chairman Igor Sechin, Kommersant reported Wednesday.Andrei Patrushev is moving to Rosneft from a post as deputy director of the security agency's department that watches oil company activities, the newspaper said, citing an unidentified Rosneft official. Rosneft and the Federal Security Service on Wednesday declined to confirm the appointment.
The move, if confirmed, would solidify control of Rosneft by the siloviki, the hawkish group of security and military officials close to President Vladimir Putin.
Sechin, deputy head of the Kremlin and a former KGB official believed to have played a key role in the legal attack on Yukos, was appointed to lead Rosneft's board in July 2004, despite having no experience in oil.
Rosneft stands as the country's second-largest oil producer, after its purchase of Yuganskneftegaz, formerly Yukos' largest production unit.
The company raised $10.4 billion from its initial public offering in July. The IPO was widely criticized as overvalued, and several investors and fund managers accused Rosneft of telling investors that they could buy the shares as a means of currying favor with the Kremlin.
Nearly 50 percent of the shares up for grabs were bought up by BP, Malaysia's Petronas, the China National Petroleum Corporation and a fourth unidentified buyer.
BP has acknowledged that its purchase was largely driven by a desire to cultivate better relations with the state, rather than to strengthen its portfolio.
The IPO became the country's largest and a symbol of the Kremlin's campaign to reassert state control over the strategic oil and gas sector.
Andrei Patrushev is not alone as the child of a powerful official joining the top ranks of Russian business: Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov's son was appointed vice president of Gazprombank last year; the son of Governor Valentina Matviyenko works as a senior vice president at Vneshtorgbank; another employee of the state-owned banking giant is Dmitry Patrushev, Andrei's older brother, who oversees loans to oil companies, Kommersant said.

TITLE: Vyugin Expresses Fears Over Pension Reforms
AUTHOR: By Maria Levitov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW —Painting a grim picture of pension reform, financial markets watchdog chief Oleg Vyugin said Wednesday that the Health and Social Development Ministry was stalling on much-needed changes and that the pension fund was seeing returns dwindle."The only correct decision would be to replace those carrying out this reform because they have proven their inadequacy," Vyugin said during an investment conference organized by UBS.
Vyugin's Federal Service for Financial Markets agency shares responsibility for the reform with the Economic Development and Trade Ministry, the Finance Ministry and the Health and Social Development Ministry.
He did not say which agencies should be charged with the reform. Vyugin said his federal service agency had done its part by preparing amendments on the pension system, but the health ministry had not done its part.
Vyugin also said the state pension fund, managed by Vneshekonombank, was seeing near-negative returns because it was required to invest in bonds, whose yields are falling amid rising inflation. Debate on the reform, including increasing the approved investment tools for the fund, has been going on for two years, but to no avail, he added.
State-controlled Vneshekonombank manages more than 90 percent of all pension savings, which land there by default if people fail to designate a different management company to handle their pension money. The fund is only allowed to invest in government bonds, with annual yields of 4 percent to 6.5 percent, said Tatyana Bobrovskaya, an analyst with BrokerCreditService. She said only very active, successful bonds trading could help the bank set higher returns than inflation, expected to reach 9 percent this year.
"Private pension funds have been more active on the market," Bobrovskaya said, adding that they were also allowed to invest in more profitable instruments.
As well as government bonds, private pension funds can invest in other securities, including blue-chip corporate bonds, yielding returns of 7 percent to 9 percent.
More than 50 private pension funds manage less than 10 percent of all pensions, or less than $300 million in total assets, said Anatoly Milyukov, executive vice president of asset management at Gazprombank.

TITLE: New Mall Hopes Bigger Size Fits All
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Systema-Gals has started construction of what it claims will be the city's largest shopping mall. Occupying a total of 17.6 hectares on the Pulkovskoye highway, the 100,000 square meter LETO shopping and entertainment center hopes to attract customers from all over the city, the managers said Wednesday at a press conference.Despite competition from another 14 shopping centers located in the vicinity, the managers are confident that Leto will be a success.
"We've evaluated what the other shopping centers have to offer and took this into account designing our own project," said Igor Pastukhov, CEO of Systema Gals Northwest.
The project will cost $130 million, with 30 percent funded by Systema Gals and 70 percent made up of bank loans. Construction will be completed by the summer of 2008.
Pastukhov expects the project's pay-back period to be between seven to eight years, providing an internal rate of return (IRR) of 25 percent to 26 percent.
The two-floor center will offer a total of 106,000 square meters of space, of which 83,000 square meters will be commercial.
A food court will occupy 5,000 square meters, the main hypermarket — 12,000 square meters, an entertainment zone — between 7,000 and 8,000 square meters on the second floor.
The entertainment area will include a multiplex, skating rink, bowling, playgrounds and an amusement park.
"We want this center to be a day-long attraction for people," Pastukhov said.
The Centrum Group consulting company was responsible for developing the concept. The managers spoke of light, spacious channels (up to 30 meters wide), which will wind round the building allowing customers to see most of the shopping areas from almost any location.
"The crucial point is that it can be easily seen from the Pulkovskoye highway," said Vyacheslav Beregovoi, deputy director of Systema Gals Northwest.
The center will target people who regularly drive past to and from the city, he said.
"This project follows the popular trend of developing mega-shopping centers on the outskirts of large cities," said Victor Polischuk, deputy chairman of the Committee for Town-planning and Architecture.
"This shopping center will attract a large number of people. It will be very important for the Moskovsky and Pushkinsky districts as well and for all of the city," he said.
Maxim Karbasnikoff, director for Russia and CIS at Jones Lang LaSalle, a consultant for the project, emphasized Leto's size as one of its major advantages.
"This complex will be twice as large as the Atrium in Moscow," he said.
Karbasnikoff also mentioned its "unique entertainment zone," spacious parking lot for 4,000 cars and its general ergonomics as other pluses of the project.
At the moment the company is in negotiations with two major international retail chains and four Russian retail operators on rental agreements, Karbasnikoff said.
Apart from the hypermarket and multiplex, an electronics supermarket, a sports and computer and household appliances shops will be major tenants.
Yelena Andreyeva, retail director at IB Group development company, indicated that its proximity to the Pulkovskoye highway is a definite advantage.
"This road shows no seasonal decrease in traffic, unlike roads running to the north," she said.
However Andreyeva doubted if the operator would be able to sustain the normal market rate of profitability due to direct competition from similar shopping centers located in the same trade zone.
"Raduga will be a very strong competitor. It is located within ten minutes by car. Moreover, the time of market entry will be very important. The MEGA and Raduga centers will start operating first. Leto will be last in line," Andreyeva said.
"Taking into account the similarity of the tenants, they will have to kind of split the same customers between them. It will be extremely difficult for Systema to have success in this location," she said.
As for size of the shopping center, it entails attracting customers from a wider trade zone, she indicated, and to be profitable Leto has to serve about one million customers.
"The company will have to attract people not only from the Moskovsky, Pushkinsky and Gatchina districts, but from the rest of the city as well, and Raduga will pursue exactly the same goal," Andreyeva said.

TITLE: Liberals Battle With Fradkov
PUBLISHER: EDITORIAL
TEXT: Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov told a Cabinet committee Monday that he believed the time was ripe to start "stimulating industrial production without concentrating too much on the cost."Thus Fradkov handed another point to his Cabinet's economic liberals.
Since being named to replace Mikhail Kasyanov in early 2004, Fradkov has engaged in regular battles over economic policy with Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref and Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin. Fradkov has favored an approach aimed directly at boosting growth, while Gref and Kudrin have argued that the government should focus on structural reforms in the economy and combating the destabilizing effects of petrodollars.
The squabbling is easy to understand. Fradkov inherited his Cabinet from Kasyanov, whose approach was closer to that of the economic liberals. Without a real base within the Cabinet, the prime minister adopted President Vladimir Putin's economic mantra of doubling gross domestic product by 2010 — a goal that the economic liberals have dismissed as unrealistic.
Even though media coverage of the friction within the Cabinet often reduces it to a mere conflict of personalities, there are strong economic arguments and constituencies backing each side.
Feuding, of course, is not unique to the Russian government. The uneasy nature of the partnership in the British Cabinet between Prime Minister Tony Blair and Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown can be attributed at least partially to differences in their economic visions.
The open debate and competing visions between Fradkov and the economic liberals are probably a good thing. If nothing else, they increase the chance that the largest possible number of economic options receives real consideration.
It is unfortunate that comments like Fradkov's on Monday do his side such a disservice. Not much in the way of economic education is needed to understand that simply throwing money at problems isn't going to be particularly effective. Creating new industry at whatever cost is bound to mean ignoring fundamental issues such as the industry's efficiency and, ultimately, its ability to compete. For a country planning to join the World Trade Organization in a very competitive world, building uncompetitive industry is folly, pure and simple.
That this is so blindingly obvious may go a long way toward explaining why Gref and Kudrin tend to emerge victorious in their battles with Fradkov, who at least nominally is their boss. Against comments like these, the liberals win by default.
That is a shame. Russia would profit from a more reasoned economic debate.

TITLE: Mobility Benefits
AUTHOR: By Gideon Rachman
TEXT: Walking into the corner shop near my house in west London the other day, I found the Kashmiri woman behind the counter absorbed in a book. Its title was "Teach Yourself Polish." Behind her was an array of Polish delicacies — imported to cater for the newest wave of migrants to arrive in Britain.The Kashmiris, along with other south Asians, arrived in force in Britain in the 1960s and 1970s. The latest wave of immigration to Britain is from central Europe. The British government estimates that some 600,000 people, the majority of them Polish, have moved to Britain to work since 10 new countries joined the European Union in 2004.
By and large, they are regarded as model immigrants. As a British government adviser puts it with politically incorrect bluntness: "The Poles are great. They all work, they don't want to kill us and their women don't wear bags over their heads."
Even so, a backlash against unlimited immigration from central Europe is growing. Next January, Bulgaria and Romania are almost certain to join the EU. An unlikely coalition of British opinion, ranging from big business to leftist politicians, is now calling for the imposition of temporary restrictions on free movement of labor before Bulgaria and Romania join. Last weekend, British Chancellor of the Exchequor Gordon Brown, presumed to be prime minister-in-waiting, gave an interview in which he endorsed a policy of "British jobs to British workers."
The British debate reflects rising global anxiety about immigration. The German Marshall Fund's annual transatlantic trends survey published last week showed that 79 per cent of Americans and 76 percent of Europeans regarded "large numbers of immigrants coming into their countries as an important threat."
The U.S. Congress has spent much of this pastyear arguing bitterly about a new immigration bill, designed to deal with the fact that the United States currently plays host to some 12 million illegal immigrants, and that about 900,000 new illegals are thought to enter the country every year — mostly across the Mexican border. In Europe there is a similar sense that immigrants from the third world are massing on the borders. Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, has just called for a coordinated European response to the growing number of illegal immigrants from Africa washing up on Europe's shores. On one recent weekend almost 2,000 Africans landed on the Spanish-owned Canary Islands. There are now thought to be 5 million to 8 million illegal immigrants across the EU.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair argued in a recent speech that "immigration is the toughest political issue in Europe and the USA right now." He thinks that if mass immigration is to remain politically acceptable, "there have to be rules."
But that is the problem. From west London to the Rio Grande to the Canary Islands, people no longer really believe politicians have the ability or the will to make and enforce rules on immigration.
There is plenty of reason for skepticism. In the United States, increased border security has made it more difficult, dangerous and costly to enter the country illegally — but does not appear to have affected overall numbers much. In 2005, Spain granted amnesty to more than 500,000 illegal immigrants. That appears to have encouraged even more desperate people to strike out for Spanish shores. So now the Spanish are talking about mass deportation.
In Britain, the government estimated that 13,000 new workers per year would come legally to Britain after EU expansion in 2004 — so the arrival of 600,000 or more since then has come as something of a shock. There is no way to put the genie back into the bottle. Those EU countries that have tried to place temporary restrictions on Polish workers have not found them particularly effective. For all EU citizens are still free to enter other EU countries as tourists — and then to find their way into the underground labor market.
As Demetrios Papademetriou, president of the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute, argues: "Illegal immigration is part of the vital lubricant of our societies. It wouldn't be happening if so many people's interests were not served by the status quo." Businesses benefit because they can employ cheap labor. Middle-class householders benefit because they can afford more help with childcare and cleaning.
The correct response to all this is not to continue hypocritically demanding a crackdown on illegal immigration. It is to create more avenues for legal immigration for workers of all types. Without really meaning to, this is what the EU did with its latest enlargement to take in the countries of central Europe.
The Australian and Canadian points systems, which favor immigration from high-skilled workers, are often cited as models for developed countries to imitate. But the reality is that the rich world also has a huge appetite for cheaper, lower-skilled labor in industries such as hotels, catering and agriculture. It is simply hypocrisy to say that all the people coming across the Rio Grande or the Mediterranean are unwanted immigrants. Somebody wants them or they would not keep coming.
But there are also more attractive emotions than hypocrisy involved in the rich world's confusion about immigration. It is not true that nothing can be done to control the phenomenon. The real problem is that the things that would need to be done are so harsh that people rightly shy away from them.
Does the nited States really want to build an Israeli-style security fence along its border with Mexico? Could Europeans or Americans really stomach the site of millions of illegal immigrants — and their children — being rounded up and deported? Do EU countries really want to get rid of one of the most attractive aspects of the European venture — the right for EU citizens to live and work legally across the continent?
So far the answer is no. The free movement of people, like the free movement of goods, does not always benefit everybody all of the time. But the world is a better place for it all the same.

Gideon Rachman is a columnist for the Financial Times, where this comment was published.

TITLE: Liberal Words, State Capitalist Behavior
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref said Monday that the government would stick to an economic policy that was as liberal as possible. Has something changed, or is this simply the public expression of disputes going on within the government? A look at recent events helps to clarify the situation.The government decided to experiment with liberalizing domestic natural gas prices. Based on this, the fate of the gas sector will be decided in the fall of 2007. Igor Shuvalov, President Vladimir Putin's point man for G8 issues, has said the state's stake in oil company Rosneft will likely fall. In the wake of this, Gref said extensive monopolization of domestic markets was harmful for development, and that state-owned companies looking to increase their market share were playing a negative role in the economy.
Gref also trespassed on the gas sector, which Putin has referred to as the "holy of holies," admitting that the deficit in Russia's gas balance was not a myth, but a reality. He accurately referred to the situation as "problems with the gas supply."
Then last week came the news that the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service had finally submitted a proposal to the government for regulating access to the crucial gas transportation system. Although it is formally not a monopolist on the gas market, Gazprom retains complete control of the country's gas pipelines. And this means that international producers do not, in fact, enjoy genuine independence, as there is always a risk that they can be denied access to the pipeline system on the grounds that there is not enough capacity.
Market players say the anti-monopoly service's new suggestion could create transparent and fair rules for the whole of the gas market. If the regulations are adopted, then the course toward at least partial liberalization will begin to look like more than empty words from individual officials.
In the case of electricity monopoly Unified Energy Systems, the breaking point came in the summer, after Industry and Energy Minister Viktor Khristenko forecast that the country would face a deficit in electricity production in the near future. At a meeting with UES boss Anatoly Chubais, Putin said the effect of an electrical power shortfall could slow GDP growth rates by as much as 5 percent per year. As a result, a plan to privatize electricity-generating companies was approved, and reform began to move forward. The first IPOs will apparently also be launched in the near future.
When you add it all up, however, the picture is a little strange. What we hear is the strengthening of liberal rhetoric, but it strikes a clearly false note against the backdrop of the high-tempo construction of state capitalism. There are numerous examples. Rosneft has been strengthened by the acquisition of Yukos' former production unit Yuganskneftegaz, apparently in order to create a state oil company with serious muscle. Carmaker AvtoVAZ has almost become a unified state enterprise, Gazprom is buying up shares in independent producers and rumors continue to circulate that it is looking to buy up other attractive assets.
The amount of state property being privatized has started to drop, while the creation of state holdings continues to build momentum. Currently in the works are the creation of a unified aircraft-building corporation and a nuclear-industry body, and plans are currently under discussion for the consolidation of airlines and the management of airports.
The UES example may eventually sway the course of already-established economic policy, which analysts are increasingly calling the "Asian model" of development. But this will likely only occur if we run into crises in other sectors similar to the electricity deficit. According to most independent experts, for the gas sector this is probably not far off.

This comment was published as an editorial in Vedomosti.

TITLE: Treading the boards
AUTHOR: By Olga Kalashnikova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Priyut Komedianta theater company invites a Moscow actress to star in a new production.As theaters open their doors for the 2006/07 season, the Priyut Komedianta theater company embarks on its 20th anniversary season with premieres, plans and a project to broaden the appeal of the theater by holding different events at the venue.The premiere is unveiled Friday, with Moscow director Garold Strelkov producing a stage version of Belarussian playwright Andrei Kureichik's play "Knocked Down by The Rain," starring Inga Oboldina and Alexander Bargman.
"I am happy that Oboldina is appearing in St. Petersburg", said Viktor Minkov, the theater's artistic director, of the well-known actress. "This is the first time in Petersburg theater history that a popular Moscow actress appears in repertory theater."
The play is "almost a funny story," Minkov said. A family of poor fishermen find in their yard a strange man — an angel. He was apparently knocked down by the rain and fell from the heavens. The play traces the way the family uncover the angel's identity and exploit him.
The next premiere comes hard on the heels of the first with a staging of Edward Albee's 1962 classic "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" on Oct. 13.
"This play is one of the best in the world's repertoire. It is mystic, multi-layered and this is a great honor to work on such a play," said Larisa Luppian, the actress who will play the leading character Martha.
In November, Priyut Komedianta presents a production of "The Veil of Pierrette," staged by Moscow director Nikolai Druchek.
The play is mimed, and is a poetic sketch of the tragic love of Pierrette and Pierrot based on work by Austrian playwright Arthur Schnitzler.
Later in the winter, theatergoers can expect a play based on early short stories by Anton Chekhov, directed by Igor Konyayev, and a production of "Camille" by Alexandre Dumas, performed by Venyamin Filshtinsky.
"I think 'Camille' will be the mightiest work of this season," said Minkov.
"This will be an experimental work, because we will not stage Dumas' play but a stage version of his novel. It is new," said Filshtinsky. Dumas wrote both the novel and the play of the same name.
"To my mind, the novel is much better than the play," the actor added.
"When I was invited to stage my first performance here I was told that this is a special state theatrical concern. I was afraid of it, there is a prejudice against its poor-quality work," said Filshtinsky. "But I understood I was wrong. We created a really serious performance, worked as long as we needed to."
Priyut Komedianta is an experimental theater that has quite different performances in its repertoire — from classical pieces to modern plays and musicals.
"Every theater has its own language and its own way, but here different directors bring their languages," said Sergey Peregudov, a fledgling actor.
However the theater also tries to maintain the traditions of the Russian national theater school. In November, the Second International Master/Pupil Festival will be held with students of Russian director Kama Ginkas from Moscow, New York, Barnaul and Samara.
The theater has other ambitious plans.
"The idea is to convert it into a 'theaterclub,' where, apart from its main activity — putting on performances — there will be some 'hooks' to help us to increase our income by holding different events," said Minkov. "Maybe it will be elite fashion shows, having internet access at the theater, the opportunity to reserve books from the Mayakovsky Library, or even a juice bar."
"The theatergoer should be given more services," added Minkov.
Priyut Komedianta is not the only theater opening its doors to the new season.
The Theater on Liteiny celebrates the 100th performance of Alexander Volodin's play "Don't Part From Your Loved Ones," an eternal story of human feelings and relationships, this month.
The theater is also planning a new version of "The Bankrupt," based on Alexander Ostrovsky's play. Among other projects are "The Threepenny Opera" by Bertolt Brecht and a play based on works of the 20th century poet and artist Alexei Khvostenko.

See Stages for listings and Center Map Spread for addresses and telephone numbers

TITLE: Chernov's choice
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
TEXT: The soon-to-open second incarnation of the legendary local underground rock club Moloko tested out the new premises earlier this month by celebrating local musician Seraphin Selenge Makangila's birthday with a concert by his band's Simba Vibration. But now the club has sent clubgoers into shock by announcing that the new location will have a totally different name, Tsokol.The new name — a reference to the basement where the new club is located — has been firmly decided upon by the Moloko team that will now manage Tsokol, according to director Yury Ugryumov.
"It's clear that there can't be the second Moloko; moving the sign to a new place doesn't mean moving the club as it was. We fully realized that we can't do a new Moloko, because it's a different location, different attitude and different time. I don't know any examples of when moving to another location didn't hurt the place. I am sorry but it's a different club."
Apart from fans, Makangila's birthday concert also drew the attention of the police, which drove to the place in three vans.
"The party was fun, but plenty of people came, and there were around 200 fans standing outside at 11:45 p.m. and they were quite noisy," said Ugrymov, adding that some fans launched fireworks.
"So the police came and asked them not to scream and disperse, politely but firmly."
The second "test" concert at the new club, which is due to be officially launched in late September, will be by the U.S.-based band Melomane on Saturday. Tickets cost 200 rubles.
"We haven't advertised this concert: those who know about it will come," said Ugryumov. "We don't want to pack the place out because it's not finished. There's a ventilation problem, for instance."
Melomane will also perform at Platforma on Sunday. For an interview with the band's frontman, Pierre de Gaillande, see page xii.
The MTV Music Awards concert, due to be held at the Ice Palace on Thursday, is not usually the sort of mass, trash event this column concerns itself with, but when the music channel was launched in Russia in September 1998 it was a cause of hope; the music was 80 percent western, a lot of it was relatively alternative and, even better, it absolutely excluded the annoying lip-synching Russian pop stars that were filling all the other channels.
Eight years later, Russian pop won; the awards nominees mostly include manufactured teen acts forged for school students, and middle-aged-oriented pop singers such as Valery Meladze and Valeriya, who had no chance of appearing on MTV Russia in its early period.
Oddly, the concert's lineup features the veteran hard-rockers Alisa, infamous for promoting both Orthodox Christianity and Russian nationalism.
Earlier this year, frontman Konstantin Kinchev reportedly described the pop acts that are ever-present on Russian TV as "sheer satanism." Now his band performs alongside them.

TITLE: Baroque and roll
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The annual Earlymusic festival, which highlights the musical legacy of Europe by embracing works created between the medieval era through to early classicism, opens on Friday.The Earlymusic festival — founded by Marc de Mauny and Andrei Reshetin — opens this year with a concert by the distinguished Belgian ensemble Il Fondamento, one of the most highly acclaimed baroque ensembles in Europe, with the musicians performing a selection of Johann Sebastian Bach's suites in the Atrium of the Commandant's House of the Peter and Paul Fortress.
Playing exclusively on period instruments, members of Il Fondamente are renowned for original interpretations of well-known Baroque pieces, as well as initiatives in promoting and bringing to light the once-unknown or undeservedly overlooked treasures dug out by the ensemble's artistic director Paul Dombrecht during relentless research.
"Although the ensemble's trademark has indeed become its concert program, which constantly wanders off the beaten track, Il Fondamento also regularly performs the larger works by Bach and well-known oratorios by Handel," reads the ensemble's profile in Early Music Review magazine. "In recent years, Il Fondamento has expanded its repertoire to include Haydn and Mozart and is planning to include contemporaries of Beethoven and Schubert in future seasons."
The Earlymusic festival will mark the 250th anniversary of the birth of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart with a concert by U.S. harpsichordist Kristian Bezuidenhout, who appears in a solo recital with the title "Around Mozart" at the Chamber Hall of the Conservatory on Tuesday. In St. Petersburg, Bezuidenhout will play the hammerklavier, a historical predecessor of the modern piano, and the instrument used by Mozart and his contemporaries.
"Bezuidenhout is a thoroughbred performer who wants his audience to share his wonder," wrote Dutch music critic Thiemo Wind in a review for De Telegraaf in 2001. "With this, he can rely on his musicality and his technique to such an extent that even silence tells the most beautiful stories."
France contibutes to the festival with a performance by the magnificent baroque ensemble Les Basses RÎunies. Their program, entitled "Voyage in Italy," can be heard on Sept. 27 at the Chamber Hall of the Conservatory.
Les Basses RÎunies was established in France in 1996.
Its four founding members — Blandine Rannou, Bruno Cocset, Pascal Monteilhet and Richard Myron — have performed with a number of Europe's most distinguished baroque ensembles, including Gerard Lesne's Il Seminario Musicale and Jordi Savall's Concert des Nations and Hesperion XXI.
The musicians use a wide range of authentic instruments, including the harpsichord, cello, basse de violon, theorbo, lute, baroque guitar, double bass, and violone.
One of the festival's most eye-catching concerts will be a performance by the Italian ensemble Micrologus, which presents a program of the music of 14th-century Florence.
The members of Micrologus — Patrizia Bovi, Adolfo Broegg, Goffredo Degli Esposti and Gabriele Russo — are widely considered to be pioneers of the rediscovery of medieval music in Italy. Through original interpretations of centuries-old scores, the musicians have gained attention in Italy and abroad.
"The ensemble's work is based on profound research of authentic sources, as well as historical, paleographical, organological and iconographical surveys — that allowed its members to recreate unique medieval musical instruments — and also on comparative studies of written repertoires, and collections that belong to oral tradition," Micrologus's spokeswoman Barbara Bucci said."The Micrologus members maintain an innovative way of interpretation that goes beyond the idea of a concert as a show — in fact, this concept of 'show' was unknown in ancient times."
Another Italian name to look out for at the Menshikov Palace on Sept. 26 is Paolo Pandolfo, composer, maestro of viola da gamba, director of the ensemble Labyrinto and a professor at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel, Switzerland.
"Like jazz, his music makes its appeal direct to the senses," reads a review in Gramophone magazine. "Pandolfo is a musician of touching humanity."

www.earlymusic.ru. www.paolopandolfo.com, www.micrologus.it, www.krisbezuidenhout.com, www.ilfondamento.be

TITLE: Tolerance on the metro
AUTHOR: By Andrei Vorobei
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Among numerous ordinary flashy advertisements for boots and clothes, sausages and IT services, passengers have noticed unusual posters on St. Petersburg's metro trains from the beginning of September.Some months before going underground, the images could be found on free post-cards in bars, clubs and restaurants in the city. Straightforward and appealing or obscure and involved, all the images have a single message: to reduce hate.
The posters and postcards are reproductions of original art works created for "5x3. Tolerance," an ingenious and unprecedented public project aimed at engaging the politically sensitive issue of prejudice. The equally social and cultural undertaking of putting these images in the metro has become a key event of the 10th anniversary of the European University at St. Petersburg. As an independent, post-graduate college, the University aims to normalize post-Soviet and Western research standards and principles in the social sciences and the humanities — in other words, some of the academic fields most ideologically infected during the Soviet era.
Although the word "tolerance," has always had a Russian equivalent in terpimost, the concept begs for a better understanding in Russia. But instead of making heavy theoretical contributions, the University expressed itself in art, in which visual metaphors are obviously more efficient at expressing the point. Of equal format but varying in technique, the five art works stand for the University's five departments: political sciences and sociology, economics, ethnology, history and art.
The pioneering project features prominent local artists of different generations and genres.
Vladimir Shinkarev's animate, laconic image is the most attractive and convincing example from the series. In his casual meeting of a spiny hedgehog and a cat (or maybe something else), there is a good deal of humor which helps to keep a safe distance between the diverse sides represented. The work was produced for the Department of Ethnology and suggests that people should be tolerant toward each other.
In the same way, the collage produced for the Department of Political Science and Sociology by the sculptor Dmitry Kaminker is about respect towards other political views. Using more complicated visual language, this multilayered relief features black and white figures shaking metallic hands against a wooden background resembling that of old icons.
Karim Ragimov's watercolor modifies the quite plain motif of his well-known series "RoadOff": a western jeep stuck in a landscape by some Russian 19th century artist or other. In this case, the car drives into the widely replicated Russian painting "Morning in the Pine Forest" by Ivan Shishkin — as if Western civilisation fails in the Russian jungle, with friendly but unsociable bears. Unexpectedly, this poster produced for the Department of Economics archly suggests tolerance of economical experiments.
The piece made for the Department of History is a sort of puzzle of photo-images of the devaluated and revaluated architectural legacy of the city. Andrei Chezhin suggests that you accept your own history in order to avoid more destruction and violence in the present as revenge.
Finally, Yelena Gubanova and Ivan Govorkov's mixed-media piece for the Department of Art History advocates diversity of forms of expression and experimentation. The artists approach the Mobius Strip as a possible metaphor for tolerance — it has no beginning and no end, no "right" and no "left"; everything is connected and interrelated. At the same time, this metaphor exposes another issue under discussion: how to tolerate intolerance? Refusing to do so illustrates that there are limits to tolerance.
As a part of the project, a member of the University's Board of Trustees, State Hermitage Museum director and Islamicist Mikhail Piotrovsky, gave a lecture on "Islam and Contemporary Russia." In October, the original works will be solemnly donated to the Hermitage, one of the University's most important partners. The leading museum in the country is only now about to start arranging its own collection of the 20th century art — an essential act in reducing ignorance and its after-effect, intolerance, at least in the field of art."5X3. Tolerance" runs through the end of September in the metro. www.eu.spb.ru

TITLE: Banging his own drum
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: If your daring and experimental musical work lacks commercial potential, even for your fellow musicians in the U.K., go to St. Petersburg.That is exactly what Marcus Godwyn, a British drummer, percussionist and composer, did.
"St. Petersburg is a good place to start something," said the city-based Godwyn in an interview with this newspaper last week.
Godwyn, who leads his own band Noise of Time and is one of two drummers with Nado Podumat, the band led by the former Markscheider Kunst trombone player Ramil Shamsutdinov, will be performing this week with FIGS, an experimental quartet of local drummers and percussionists.
Godwyn formed Time of Noise in Prague in 2001, where he lived for four years before coming to St. Petersburg. In the beginning he tried to recruit Czech musicians, but after the first rehearsal they all bowed out, according to Godwyn.
"I was lucky to have ended up with English and American musicians in [that] project, because in Prague there are a lot of foreigners, not like here," he said.
"What happened then, was that everybody wanted to leave Prague at the same moment but not in the same direction. Some went back to England, some went back to America and I came to Russia, where for some strange reason I had always wanted to live, but never had done. And I had an opportunity; I had an invitation to come here at this time, so I came."
Originally, Godwyn attempted to form the band in the U.K., but it did not work out.
"All the musicians said to me, 'Well, yeah, it sounds great, but it's never going to make any money, it won't get anywhere,'" he said.
"Musicians just weren't interested in putting time into it and I didn't have big backing behind it, because they didn't see any commercial perspective and they didn't see they would make any money, whereas in Prague people did or at least they didn't need much money, because Prague is not as expensive as England."
There was already a Russian link even at that time; the name "Noise of Time," which Godwyn came up with before the band was even formed is the English translation of "Shum Vremeni," the title of an autobiographical work by the Russian poet Osip Mandelshtam, who perished in the Gulag system in 1938. In this short book, published in 1925, Mandelsham documented memories and impressions of his childhood and youth from 1890s and 1900s.
"It was the memoirs of his wife, Nadezhda Mandelstam [nee Khazina] that enabled me to understand and connect with my own artistic direction, and helped me to find my way out of, what was, for me at any rate, the artistic desert of Britain in the mid-1980s," wrote Godwyn in the band's manifesto in 2001.
"The second volume especially, 'Hope Abandoned,' is the most all encompassing testament of 20th century experience that I know. Not to mention the fact that I like this title in English as well as Russian. (Generally speaking the sense of 'shum' implies more of a sustained and uniform auditory effect than the English word 'noise.' [Mandelshtam's translator Clarence Brown]) Hubbub, tumult, commotion, clamor are all possible translations."
Godwyn, who first visited Leningrad, as St. Petersburg was then known, in 1984, returned in 2002 to work on "Simon Magus," a ballet project with local cellist Dmitry Kakhovsky (who led his own band Totalitarian Music Sect), before finally moving here in 2003 on the advice of his Austrian musician friend, Metamorphosis guitarist Richard Deutsch.
Deutsch, who had moved to St. Petersburg six months earlier, had played with Godwyn in a band called Sing Sing in Prague.
Noise of Time's early, Russian lineup, which made its stage debut at SKIF, the city's biggest left-field music event, in April 2003, included Deutsch on guitar and Auktsyon's Mikhail Kolovsky on tuba.
Born in London in 1959, Godwyn got his first musical education as a child from his father, who worked as a technician in recording studios and concert halls where classical music and jazz were performed and recorded.
"I remember... one day he came home incredibly excited and said, 'Today we had the most amazing session in the studio.' There were all the top session musicians in Britain — I think this record was made in 1969 — playing TV thriller themes, like 'Ironside,' 'Mission: Impossible' in this Latin-American style, and played incredibly well, with lots of drumming, lots of percussion all over it. That was the moment I decided to be a drummer."
Later on Godwyn who took percussion and trumpet lessons at school, started to play drums at home when he was 16. In his early 20s he was a professional musician.
"I played anything; my first professional job was in a circus. Maybe it doesn't sound very artistic but at that time I just needed experience," said Godwyn, who now makes his living by teaching English as a second language at St. Petersburg University's foreign languages school.
He proceeded to play sessions for BBC Radio 2, playing "kind of cabaret music, some smooth jazzy stuff, disco music: those days I did everything. Now I only play music I want to play — my own music and other people's music."
Godwyn listened to David Bowie in his glam-rock, early 1970s period, turned to Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin, and then to the prog-rock of Genesis and King Crimson before discovering jazz music as performed by John Coltrane, Miles Davis and Thelonius Monk.
"When Britain went punk, I went jazz," he said.
According to Godwyn, his work is rooted in folk music, both British and Eastern European, jazz and the 20th century classical composers such as Gyorgy Ligeti.
"I compose music primarily by singing, because I don't play a melodic instrument well enough, fluently enough to sit and play an idea that comes into my head — I have to sing it, into some kind of tape recorder, mini-disc recording device, computer or whatever. Then I can write notes from this," he said.
"I don't have classical music training or any official training at all. I studied drums pretty seriously. I haven't got a diploma for this but I had many lessons. For composing, I've had no training. And yet my music seems to be very hard to play for a lot of people, so it is a surprise for me."
According to Godwyn, Noise of Time performs strict compositions like a classical ensemble, looser compositions with room for solos and improvisation as in jazz and certain forms of rock (the band's music is neither jazz nor rock and should not be described as "jazz rock," he stressed), and free improvisation.
"All three of these musical possibilities should combine to form a homogeneous whole for each and every Noise of Time performance and recording," he wrote in the band's manifesto.
St. Petersburg is full of good musicians, but even if they improvise well, not all of them can play arrangements, which is essential for Noise of Time's music, said Godwyn.
"The idea is to improvise, too, but the most important thing for Noise of Time is any musician who wants to play with Noise of Time must be able to play the arrangements first and foremost, if you can't do that, there's no point in being in the group," he said.
"In St. Petersburg I had the opposite problem to Prague, because there's a scene of musicians here who improvise and do free improvisation concerts, some of them very good and very interesting, but some of those musicians turned out not to be able to play the arrangements or not to want to learn. We had to say, 'Well, I respect you, you respect me, but let's go separate ways.'"
This week, Godwyn, who is now looking for a manager for his projects, will perform at GEZ-21, the Gallery of Experimental Sound, at the Pushkinskaya 10 modern arts center, with FIGS, a band of drummers and percussionists from the city's avant-rock scene.
Apart from Godwyn, FIGS, whose name is an abbreviation of its members' last names, features Alexei Ivanov who alongside Godwyn performs with the avant-rock band Nado Podumat and in his own right with S.K.A., the improv band led by Auktsyon's saxophone player Nikolai Rubanov, ZGA's Nikolai Sudnik and Iva Nova's Katya Fyodorova.FIGS performs at GEZ-21 on Friday.

TITLE: Europe stateside
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Melomane, a Brooklyn-based indie-pop band that has come to Russia to promote “Glaciers,” its third and the most recent album which has been released locally on the legitimate Moscow-based label Soyuz, has frequently been described as the “most European band in America.” 
Fronted by French-born singer-guitarist Pierre de Gaillande, who conceived Melomane in 1998, the band also features English keyboard player Quentin Jennings and Swiss cello player Frank Heer. Drummer Kenny Savelson is married to a German woman and speaks fluent Russian. 
“I think it also has to do with our sound, which is influenced by European-classical music more than it is in the Americana-blues-country tradition, more McCartney, less Lennon,” said de Gaillande speaking by phone from New York this week.
Born in Paris to a French father and an American mother 36 years ago, de Gaillande was brought to the U.S. when he was seven and does not feel himself an alien in New York.
“I’m pretty much an American as well as a Frenchman,” he said. “It’s kind of irrelevant. New York is different from the rest of America, it’s much more European, so it’s not really that foreign for me to be living in New York as a French guy.”
Melomane usually describes its quiet, beautiful music as “chamber pop,” yet it incorporates many diverse musical influences, including folk artists Nick Drake and Iron and Wine, as well as Leonard Cohen and French singer-songwriter George Brassens (“truth, sex, wonderful poetry”) and Elvis Costello and The Beatles (“pure songwriting craft”), according to de Gaillande.
“One of the things about our band that we are proud of is that it’s hard to categorize it as one kind of music, because we play a few different kinds of music,” said de Gaillande, who also acknowledged the influences of Nick Cave, the Violent Femmes, Belle and Sebastian and Ween.
“I don’t limit what I listen to and what we are allowed to do as a band, musically.”
However, there is also a punk, political bite to it stemming from Billy Bragg, Fugazi and the Minutemen. 
“We think George Bush is a criminal and should be arrested and imprisoned,” said de Gaillande. “We don't support the war in Iraq. We played a benefit concert to try to elect [2004 Democratic presidential candidate] John Kerry.”
Melomane’s songs with overtly political lyrics on “Glaciers” include “Little Man's Castles,” de Gaillande’s interpretations of the Sept. 11 terror attacks on America, a tragedy he describes as “basically a repeating historical pattern of small men, with small spirits and small minds, competing for power by destroying each others' castles. (i.e. The Twin Towers)” and “I'm In Love with Love/The Ballot is the Bullet,” which is a call for the political destruction of Bush.
The latter song was actually written before Bush’s reelection in 2004, when the band campaigned for Kerry.
“When George Bush won, we sort of gave up, we thought, ‘There’s no hope, anyway,’” said de Gaillande.
“Personally I feel like the best way to change this is just to be a better person and change yourself. I feel a little bit hopeless about the political situation in America, because I don’t have much faith in the American people, because they were able to reelect this person who was obviously disastrous for the country so I became less political, personally, when that happened.”
According to de Gaillande, “Glaciers” stands out from the body of the band’s recorded work.
“‘Glaciers’ is more aggressive, fuller, more experimental sonically,” he said.
“We had unlimited studio time because we recorded most of the overdubs in our personal studio, so there is a lot of texture and sound experimentation. Also we are maybe a little bit better musicians technically than we were on the last two albums. Each album is an evolution.”
The band’s name comes from French where it means a “music lover,” yet de Gaillande said there is more in the sound of the word for him than simply this.
“The reason why I named the band Melomane was because of this meaning, ‘lover of music,’ but also I like the feeling of ‘mellow’ as in melancholy, kind of sad, and ‘mania’ is like happy or manic, so it’s kind of a mixture of happy and sad for me,” he said.
De Gaillande briefly visited St. Petersburg in July to perform an impromptu concert as The Snow, a duo formed with his girlfriend Hilary Downes, at Platforma. This week, Melomane will perform at Platforma and Tsokol, which is the (not-yet-quite-open) second incarnation of the legendary underground club Moloko, located at 2/3 3-ya Sovetskaya Ulitsa.
For the Russian concerts, the regular band, that also features Daria Klotz, will be augmented by Brad Stewart, the trumpet player who also played on Melomane’s 2001 debut, “Resolvo.”

Melomane performs at Tsokol on Saturday and Platforma on Sunday. www.melomane.org

TITLE: Get into the groove
AUTHOR: By Leo Mourzenko
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: An eye-witness report of Madonna's much-hyped concert in Moscow earlier this week.MOSCOW — In short, it happened. Madonna delivered an astounding performance in Moscow on Tuesday. Despite everything that stood in the way of the show taking place, 50,000 concertgoers at Luzhniki Stadium had a chance to confess their love for one of world showbiz's most celebrated icons.You probably heard something about it.
The fuss accompanying the show — part of Madonna's "Confessions" world tour and her debut in Russia — was unprecedented.
The Orthodox Church led frequent demonstrations against the use of religious symbols in the show, which has caused controversy elsewhere in Europe. A church spokesman was reported in The Washington Post as saying Madonna "needs spiritual assistance."
Meanwhile, Russia's largely state-controlled media has in recent weeks devoted acres of newsprint and hours of television time to the pop diva's visit to Russia.
In an attempt to get a different perspective on the event, The St. Petersburg Times declined the opportunity of enjoying the show in the comfortable press seating area, and went to Moscow by train earlier this week with the intention of joining the regular crowd.
In the event, Tuesday's concert was one of the best shows — and one of the most poorly organized events — your correspondent has ever witnessed.
Some sources Wednesday reported gloatingly that the show was the only venue on Madonna's 40-stop tour that wasn't completely sold out. Well, no wonder. Less than two weeks before the concert, its date was put back a day and its location was changed from a predominantly standing-room-only field in front of Moscow University on Sept. 11 to Luzhniki Stadium, a monstrosity built for the 1980 Olympic Games.
Trying to take advantage of this sudden change of venue — reportedly prompted by fears of a terrorist attack on the original concert's portentous date that coincided with the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in the U.S. (two suicide bombers killed 16 people at a concert in Moscow in 2003) — the organizers decided to issue some 15,000 more tickets to fill the extra seats; the price for these, however, was 4,500 rubles and up, as opposed to 1,500 rubles for standing tickets at the original concert.
With the arena's 80,000 seats, almost three times more than the capacity of the original venue, it would have been nearly impossible to expect a huge boom in sales a week before a show, which at the time looked very unlikely to happen altogether due to the confusion.
As expected, the result was unimpressive: half the bleachers were quite bare. The furthest from the stage, supposedly with the most advantageous view of all the "non-VIP" seats, were jam packed; the rest not so much.
A similar situation occurred two years ago during an overpriced Cher show in the Ice Palace in St. Petersburg. Keeping a straight face, the management masked up the unsold seats in the main area by simply moving the crowd down a level from the much cheaper top tiers. In the end it indeed looked like a full house. Here nobody bothered with such a manoeuvre, so 30,000 people spread thin along 80,000 chairs made the stadium look pitifully empty.
But another 20,000 people had a good time in the standing area which became a massive dancefloor. What these folk had to go through to get there though was something like a cross between bootcamp and an episode of "Survivor." It was fun to get into the groove with a friendly crowd during a two-hour dance music show, but during the middle of a six-hour wait to get there some people grew impatient.
The most-obsessed fans lined up in front of the first gate about half a mile away from the arena when dawn broke Tuesday. By 3 p.m. a few thousand more people had joined them. By 4 p.m. most had entered the complex, only to find themselves confronted by another set of entrance gates.
This was where chaos began.
Desperate for any kind of guidance, excited Madonna afficionados migrated from one line to another looking for assistance from police and guys in black suits, who were silent like lambs.
An hour later it was announced that standing-room admission would only occur at Gate 1, so there was rush to Gate 1. After 10 minutes of a potentially deadly people jam there, the guards changed their minds and opened another couple of gates. At the ticket gates, the authenticity of tickets was examined with the help of ultraviolet lamps which were probably as old as the arena itself.
Once through the gates, the crowd had to cross another 500 meters to the building only to find another heap of clueless people. Folk piled up around any entrance, urged on by the magnetizing sound of Madonna warming up. The diva was so close, yet so far.
The entrance area, flooded by police, special forces and the military, was a disorganized sight: hundreds of people pointlessly rushing around trying to figure out the location of a stairway to heaven.
Then, all of a sudden rows of uniformed guys tightened up, forming corridors leading to the entrances. Jammed in lines 3 meters wide, the crows waited patiently. Madonna in the meantime could still be heard rehearsing.
After another 30 minutes, people were finally let inside. The first few hundred got a chance to see the stretching and humming into the microphone. She waved her hand and disappeared backstage. For five hours.
Luzhniki is ordinarily a soccer stadium and the field is big but normally there is about a thousand times less people kicking one ball on it. After a while, admission to it was stopped and even people with tickets for the area were sent to the stands.
The rows of standing people were so tight that if one considered going to the bathroom, one had to realize that he or she would never make it back to the spot one had secured… or make it back at all.
The bathrooms were so carefully secured by the men in uniform that one had to make it back onto the field through the first checkpoint — and the chances were that the only way back into the stadium was to be sent to the seats.
At 7 p.m., celebrated DJ and Madonna collaborator Paul Oakenfold appeared. He entertained the crowd with an unimaginative 45-minute long set, consisting of the frequent flyers of pop radio airplay. A few Russian tunes included pleased the crowd, but the guy wasn't really into it.
Silence fell. Up until 9.30 p.m., when a Swarowski crystal disco ball finally descended onto the stage, it was up to the crowd to keep itself entertained. People kept looking at vacant seats and complained about bathrooms or the total lack of food or drink to be had.
In the end, however, all was forgotten. At 9 p.m., tensions evaporated and people started laughing — and coming up with the nasty things they'd do if the concert never took place. When the lights came down everyone was quite warmed up by the excitement of exhaustion and the realization that the waiting was over.
Madonna put on a grand show, performed with outstanding energy. A brushed up "Like a Virgin" sounded like it could be released tomorrow and top the charts anew, and non-single tracks like "Isaac" or "Forbidden Love" from Madonna's latest album, "Confessions on the Dancefloor," were also potent. Together with the hits "Sorry" and a 10-minute rendition of "Hung Up," the songs kept hands up in the air for most of the show.
After it was all over, a satisfied public slowly moved to the nearest metro station through yet another uniformed corridor, already disregarding such minor obstacles as confusing guidance to exits or continuous lack of amenities. People had seen the legend; they were happy.
How happy was Madonna herself we'll never know.
It is hard to believe she was that bothered by the empty seats, given the enormous hype which her appearance in Russia had generated.
But the lack of enthusiasm with which the crowd met a "support democracy" speech Madonna gave must have been a disappointment.

TITLE: Gun Terror at Montreal School
AUTHOR: By Robert Melnbardis
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MONTREAL — A gunman dressed in a black trenchcoat opened fire in a downtown Montreal college on Wednesday, killing a 20-year-old woman and leaving a trail of blood and injury as he sent students fleeing for their lives before he was shot dead by police.Montreal police chief Yvan Delorme said the gunman appeared to have used three weapons and fired indiscriminately, until confronted by police officers inside the college's main building.
"The first policeman took charge of the situation, and shot in the direction of the suspect, and the suspect died," Delorme said.
Police said the gunman had wounded 20 people and one, a 20-year-old woman, had died at the scene. Health services officials said 13 people were taken to hospitals and five were in critical condition.
Montreal General Hospital said the 11 victims brought to its emergency ward had gunshot wounds. Six were women and five were men.
"It was the most scary thing that has ever happened to me," student Michael Boyer told CBC Television. "We ran out of the building as a SWAT team was coming in. They were screaming 'Where is he? Where is he?' And when you have 20 police running at you with guns you really know that your life is in danger."
Eyewitnesses said at least 20 shots were fired and reported blood on the steps to the college, and inside the cafeteria, which is on the second floor overlooking an atrium.
One television image showed what appeared to be a body under a yellow covering.
The shooting took place in and around Dawson College, an English-language school with about 10,000 students between the ages of 16 and 19 in the heart of Montreal, Canada's second biggest city.
Police initially looked for up to three suspects, but later said there had been only one gunman. They said the gunman was a Canadian, but could not say whether he was a Dawson student, or whether he had specifically targeted women.
The shooting triggered memories of the 1989 massacre at the Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, where a gunman killed 14 women before killing himself, as well as of the 1999 Columbine massacre in Colorado, where two teenagers killed 12 other students and a teacher before killing themselves.
The Ecole Polytechnique gunman, Marc Lepine, 25, left behind a three-page letter that said feminists had ruined his life and named 19 high-profile Quebec women he wanted to kill.
Police said the gunman at Dawson began firing at 12.41 p.m. local time outside the college. He walked through the front door and continued firing inside.
"He said nothing. He had a stone cold face, there was nothing on his face, he didn't say anything, he didn't yell out any slogans or anything. He just started opening fire. He was a cold-blooded killer," said student Soher Marous.
One woman said the shooter looked like "the stereotype, with the long black trenchcoat and all the studs and piercings and stuff like that."
Students huddled in their classrooms behind locked doors on the third and fourth floors could hear the shots below.

TITLE: Famous Head Butt Needs Formal Reconciliation
AUTHOR: By Tim Dahlberg
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: Marco Materazzi thought it would be nice if Zinedine Zidane dropped by his house and said he was sorry over a few cappuccinos. Heck, if Zidane wanted, he could probably even bring his sister along.What better way to put aside all the hard feelings over their little confrontation on the soccer field than a cozy tete-a-tete?
"A peace among men, without a lot of publicity," Materazzi said last week. "The door to my house will always be open for that. And if Zidane wants, he knows where to find my address."
That would likely be in Italy, which at last glance isn't all that far from France. Zidane could take the train down, enjoy a good meal, and make a day of it.
If only it were that easy. Apparently the most famous head butt in the history of sport calls for a more formal reconciliation.
File this one under silly ideas taken way too far:
Soccer king Sepp Blatter is working on a plan for the two to get together and resolve their differences in South Africa, where the 2010 World Cup is scheduled to take place. Actually, the meeting would be off the coast of South Africa on Robben Island.
If you haven't heard of Robben Island, it's never been known as a place for jolly summits. For the better part of four centuries, it served as a prison for political troublemakers and social outcasts.
Its most famous inmate was Nelson Mandela, who spent more than 20 years locked up there in a tiny cell that's now a museum.
The perfect place, it seems, for two soccer players to shake hands and maybe even exchange a hug or two.
"We are working on bringing together Zidane and Materazzi and to bring to end this story," Blatter said Monday.
That end also would be a beginning of sorts for the 2010 World Cup, which will be the first to be held in Africa. It also would serve as a thank you to the South African Parliament, which last month approved some $2 billion in spending for what is billed as the biggest sporting event in the world.
There were suggestions —denied by Blatter and others — during this summer's World Cup that FIFA was looking to move the 2010 event because of fears South Africa would not be ready.
An appearance by the two famous combatants from this year's final would certainly be a morale booster for organizers.
Still, it seems like a strange spot to hold a reconciliation. The British tabloids are already having a field day with the idea, with one suggesting that Mandela serve as a referee.
"Blatter dreams of Zidane-Materazzi love island," screamed one headline.
Actually, there are a lot of reasons to continue to milk the head butt that got Zidane tossed out of the final, which Italy won on penalty kicks.
Because even Americans who would rather watch the WNBA than a soccer match were captivated by the endless video replays of Zidane putting his head down and ramming it into Materazzi's chest.
Anyone with an e-mail account who didn't get at least five different funny takeouts on the head butt needs to get out more. They may not know who Pele is, but they can tell you in great detail how that crazy Frenchman knocked the Italian flat.
Materazzi finally came clean last week and revealed to a breathless world just what it was he said that provoked Zidane into attacking him. Seems Materazzi was grabbing Zidane's jersey and the French star told him:
"If you want my shirt, I will give it to you afterwards."
"I responded that I preferred his sister, it's true," Materazzi said.
As trash talking goes, it hardly approached NBA or NFL levels, where not only are sisters in play, but mothers, too.
The French, however, take these kind of things a bit more seriously.
It may have cost them the World Cup, but 61 percent of the French in a recent poll said they forgave Zidane for his behavior.
If anything, he is more of a national hero than before for being man enough to defend his family's honor.
At a European Championship qualifier in France last week, fans brought life-sized effigies of Zidane and chanted his name even though he was not on the field as France beat Italy in the rematch of the World Cup final.
If the two meet in South Africa, don't expect a lot of apologizing. Zidane's place in French history is secure without telling anyone he is sorry.
Materazzi, meanwhile, says he has nothing to apologize for. His trash talk was just that —trash talk.
"If anything, I owe apologies to his sister, although I swear, before all this mess, I didn't even know Zidane had a sister."

TITLE: Sports Watch
TEXT: BERLIN (Reuters) — Authorities have searched the Swiss home of German cycling star Jan Ullrich as part of an investigation into alleged doping, state prosecutors in Bonn and the country's federal crime office (BKA) said in a statement.
Officials from the BKA and a team of investigators raided the cyclist's home in Scherzingen near the German border on Wednesday in the course of a broader international probe into suspected doping abuses in the sport, the BKA said.
Ten premises were searched in total, they added.
The 1997 Tour de France winner, who was married last weekend, was not present because he is on his honeymoon.
Wolfgang Strohband, Ullrich's manager, who also had properties in Hamburg searched on Wednesday, said the raids had taken him completely by surprise.
"I wasn't contacted, so I don't know anything," he told German sports news agency SID. "But we have called in our lawyers. They will look at what steps we should take next."
Ullrich's cycling team T-Mobile sacked him this summer after he was implicated in a Spanish doping investigation. The German has consistently rejected all the allegations.nLONDON (Reuters) — The Manchester United shirt worn by George Best when he scored six goals against Northampton Town in 1970 sold at auction on Wednesday for 24,000 pounds.
Best's performance during the match is widely considered as one of his finest and drew praise from opponents and team-mates alike.
Roy Fairfax, the Northampton player who was marking the Northern Irish player, said afterwards: "The closest I got to him was when we shook hands after the game."
The red-and-white shirt was part of a soccer memorabilia sale at auction house Christie's.
The world record price for a football shirt at auction is 158,000 pounds paid in 2002 for Pele's shirt from the 1970 World Cup final.
Best, whose flamboyant life took him from the heights of sporting success at Manchester United to the depths of alcoholism, died aged 59 in November 2005.
The Northern Irishman, widely regarded as the only British footballer in the same league as Pele, Diego Maradona and Johan Cruyff, died in the London hospital where he had spent the final two months of his life, drifting in and out of consciousness.nNEW YORK (Reuters) — The Columbus Blue Jackets snapped up one of the last high quality players left on the free agent market by signing Anson Carter to a reported one-year $2.5 million deal on Wednesday. Carter had a career-high 33 goals with the Vancouver Canucks last season and led the team in power play goals (15) and game winning goals (seven).
"Anson Carter is a big, strong power forward who is a proven 25-30 goal scorer in the National Hockey League and we are very excited to welcome him into our organisation," Blue Jackets general manager Doug MacLean said on the team's web site.
"We are committed to putting a winning team on the ice for our fans.
"Bringing in a player of Anson's calibre is another step in that direction and we'll continue to work daily towards that end."
In 610 career games with six teams; the Canucks, Washington Capitals, Boston Bruins, Edmonton Oilers, New York Rangers and Los Angeles Kings, Carter has 191 goals and 202 assists, averaging over 23 goals per season since 1998.

TITLE: Arsenal, Man. Utd Open With Victories
AUTHOR: By Robert Millward
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON — Real Madrid tumbled at Lyon 2-0 while AC Milan and Arsenal opened with impressive Champions League victories Wednesday.Manchester United also won, edging Celtic 3-2 in an entertaining game at Old Trafford. Six-time European champion Milan beat AEK Athens 3-0 and Arsenal, last season's runner-up, began its campaign with a 2-1 win at Hamburger SV despite the absence of the injured Thierry Henry.
Despite the return of former coach Fabio Capello and more big-name signings, Madrid looks no nearer to turning around its slump in European soccer. The nine-time champions still can't recapture the form that earned them three titles in five seasons from 1998 to 2002.
French champion Lyon could have been four goals up by halftime in a one-sided game at Stade Gerland. Fred scored in the 11th minute and Tiago added a second in the 31st while Florent Malouda hit the crossbar and the Madrid defenders made frequent mistakes under pressure.
"We could have been further ahead at halftime," Lyon coach Gerard Houllier said. "The first half was sublime to watch, then we controlled the match and tried to make them do all the running."
In the other Group A game, Nicolae Dica scored twice as 1986 European Cup winner Steaua Bucharest beat Dynamo Kyiv 4-1.
After Sorin Ghionea gave the Romanians a third-minute lead, Serhiy Rebrov replied for the hosts in the 16th minute. But Valentin Badea restored Steaua's lead in the 24th minute and Dica added two more to put his team in first place.
Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink gave Celtic a 21st-minute lead before more than 74,000 fans at Old Trafford in the first meeting of the two British teams.
Two-time champion United was lucky to get a penalty for Louis Saha to level, and the France striker scored another to make it 2-1.
But Japanese midfielder Shunsuke Nakamura equalized two minutes before halftime with a direct free kick, and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer made it 3-2 for United early in the second half after Saha's shot had been blocked.
It was Solskjaer's first European competition goal in nearly three years.
"We should have scored a lot of goals," United manager Sir Alex Ferguson said. "Celtic had a go all night. Some of the attacking play was very good and we should have scored a few goals. We did show our quality but there was a bit of slack defending."
The result put United in first place in Group F because FC Copenhagen and two-time European champion Benfica drew 0-0. Toronto's Atiba Hutchinson played the full 90 minutes for the Danish side.
Arsenal was fortunate to go ahead in the 12th minute in Hamburg when goalkeeper Sacha Kirschstein was penalized and sent off for a trip and Brazil midfielder Gilberto Silva scored from the ensuing penalty.
Czech Republic midfielder Tomasz Rosicky added the second from 20 yards early in the second half for the Gunners. Boubacar Sanogo replied for Hamburg in the final minute.
"It was an important result and the performance was hard to judge after they had the goalkeeper sent off," Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger said. "It was like the Champions League final with the goalkeeper sent off for a foul."
Arsenal had goalkeeper Jens Lehmann sent off in the Champions League final loss to FC Barcelona.
A 0-0 draw between FC Porto and CSKA Moscow meant that Arsenal is in first place in Group G after the opening round of games.

TITLE: Accusations, Insults Fly as Showdown Looms
AUTHOR: By Alan Baldwin
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — The accusations and insults are flying, a sure sign that Formula One's title battle is reaching boiling point.Renault's world champion Fernando Alonso accuses his Ferrari title rival Michael Schumacher of being the most unsporting driver in the history of the sport, as well as the most successful.
Schumacher's manager Willi Weber says the Spaniard's behaviour is "pitiful" and his comments "totally below the belt."
Renault team boss Flavio Briatore tells reporters that Schumacher lacks star appeal, Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo says Briatore talks too much.
Like boxers growling and grimacing at a weigh-in, the posturing is all part of the build-up to the big fight.
Yet there is also genuine bad blood building up between the title contenders.
Alonso is just two points ahead of Schumacher, the seven times champion who is three races away from retirement. Ferrari are three clear of champions Renault in the constructors' standings.
Nothing will be decided at the next race in China but everything will be at stake in Japan and the Oct 22 season-ender in Brazil. Meanwhile, there is controversy and suspicion.Renault were aggrieved that their performance-enhancing 'mass damper' system was outlawed in July after being used for more than half the season and questioned the timing of the ban and who triggered it.In the four races since then, Alonso has taken just 12 points to Schumacher's 27.
They were outraged, along with many others, that Alonso was penalised for allegedly impeding Ferrari's Felipe Massa in qualifying at Monza — the 25-year-old demoted from fifth to 10th on the starting grid.
Alonso's penalty seemed unfair — former champion Niki Lauda said it was the craziest decision he had seen in all his years in the sport — and while Briatore later declared complete faith in the governing body and the race stewards, it was only after he faced possible disrepute charges.
"This is a world championship which has already been decided at the table," he had said.
"They have decided to give the world championship to Schumacher and that is what will be."
Renault's tyre suppliers Michelin, who are leaving the sport at the end of the season after the decision to move to a single supplier in 2008, have also taken issue with Ferrari's partners Bridgestone.
After raising suspicions at Monza, the French company revived them on Wednesday when they circulated a photograph from Saturday of a Bridgestone technician wearing protective clothing — gloves and apron with ear protectors and face mask dangling around his neck.
He was also eating an ice cream, although that was clearly not the worry.
"Normal working practice for a tyre company at an F1 race consists of fitting, inflating and demounting tyres," Michelin observed in a note. "For these procedures we would not use this type of equipment.
"As regards the practice of dissecting and analysing tyres at the track, this also does not call for this type of equipment.
"According to our own environmental experts, this type of equipment would be required in the case of products giving off fumes or toxic by-products. We do not use any such substance at an F1 race or test track."
The implication was that Bridgestone may have been illegally treating their tyres, a notion that the company emphatically rejected.
"Bridgestone fully cooperated with the FIA and explained the contents of the photo and the safety reasons behind the clothing," a spokesman said.
The FIA said it had no reason to doubt the Japanese tyre maker's explanation. "We are aware of the image and have absolutely no concerns," said a spokesman.Such accusations are to be expected when there is so much at stake and everything is under intense scrutiny, anything suspected.There was a fair amount of needle between Renault and McLaren at the end of last season and two years ago the gloves really came off as Schumacher, Kimi Raikkonen and Juan Pablo Montoya fought for the title.
Then, it was the legality of the Michelin tyres that was called into question, just as Williams threatened to take Ferrari's title. There is plenty of 'previous' between all sides.The battle lines are well and truly drawn.

TITLE: NFL Says Quarterback Hit was Legal
AUTHOR: By Bob Bensch
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: The hit that gave Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Trent Green a concussion in the team's first game last weekend was legal, the National Football League said.Green, 36, was knocked unconscious during the third quarter of Kansas City's loss to the Cincinnati Bengals when he was hit by defensive end Robert Geathers as he attempted a feet-first slide after a run.
NFL quarterbacks are allowed to slide to complete a run without being hit. The NFL concluded that Green had started his slide late, and that Geathers had been blocked in the back and didn't have control of his body on the play.
Geathers's shoulder hit Green's, driving the quarterback's head and upper body into the ground, the league said.
"In other instances this contact might be illegal, since a defensive player has the responsibility to avoid unnecessary contact even when he is blocked by an opponent,'' NFL Senior Vice President of Football Operations Ray Anderson said in a statement.
"However, in this case, the late slide and the block in the back were mitigating factors.''
Green, who spent two nights in the hospital, will miss this week's game against Denver.

TITLE: England Name Ashes Tour Squad
AUTHOR: By Sam Sheringham
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: LONDON —England cricket selectors, criticized four years ago for taking an unfit squad on an Ashes tour, picked five injured players for the team's defense of the sport's oldest trophy in Australia.Andrew Flintoff, who hasn't played a Test match since June because of an ankle problem, will captain a 16-man squad that includes sidelined bowlers James Anderson, Liam Plunkett, Steve Harmison and Ashley Giles. Opening batsman Marcus Trescothick, receiving treatment for a stress-related problem, will also embark on a tour comprising five Tests in six weeks.
"We believe they will all be fit by the time we have to go,'' chairman of selectors David Graveney told reporters yesterday. He was speaking at The Oval in London, exactly a year after England clinched the Ashes for the first time since 1987 at the same venue. The rematch starts Nov. 23 in Brisbane.
Four years ago, England arrived in Australia with Flintoff, Darren Gough and Simon Jones all recovering from injuries.
Flintoff didn't play a Test as he failed to shrug off the effects of a hernia operation, while Jones tore knee ligaments on the opening day of the first Test and didn't play again until 2004. Chris Silverwood, Giles, Andrew Caddick and John Crawley were also affected by injuries as Australia wrapped up a series victory in a record 11 days of playing time.
On returning to England, Graveney and then captain Nasser Hussain vowed never to take injured players on an Ashes tour again."Four years ago Andrew Flintoff arrived hardly able to walk after having been signed off in this country and Darren Gough was in a similar condition,'' Graveney said. "This time, we've had virtually daily reports of the injured players. The way that injuries are dealt with is far better.''Flintoff, Harmison and Anderson were all included in England's squad for the Champions Trophy, a one-day tournament featuring the world's top 10 teams starting Oct. 7 in India. Giles, who hasn't played this year after hip surgery, will travel with the squad to play domestic matches. Graveney said he would pay regular visits to Trescothick, who withdrew from the Champions Trophy.
"They've got a few guys they'll be sweating on,'' Australia captain Ricky Ponting told reporters yesterday after his team's one-day victory over the West Indies in Kuala Lumpur.
In an interview last week, former England captain Michael Atherton labeled the Champions Trophy a "spurious add-on'' to the calendar. England coach Duncan Fletcher previously suggested taking a weaker team to rest players for the Ashes.
"Ironically the Champions Trophy is actually now a good thing to be involved in,'' Graveney said. "It gives an opportunity to test some of these players.''Allrounder Flintoff denied he would expose himself to further injury risk by overextending himself in the Tests."A lot of people are worrying for me,'' he said. "I'm in control of my own destiny. But I won't be bowling 51 overs in an innings again.''

TITLE: Poland to Send NATOTroops To Afghanistan
AUTHOR: By Natalia Reiter
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: WARSAW — Poland said on Thursday it would send 1,000 troops to Afghanistan in the first offer since a NATO appeal for reinforcements, but it was unclear whether any would go to the dangerous south and none would go until February.NATO's top commander of operations James Jones said last week he wanted reinforcements of up to 2,500 in the south by the onset of the Afghan winter in a matter of weeks. Nations had failed at talks on Wednesday to respond with firm offers.
"We know this will be a dangerous operation," Poland's Defense Ministry spokesman Leszek Laszczak said.
"Poland understands that NATO will have to be more active in Afghanistan. We are well aware of that, and that is why we decided to increase the size of the force."
Deputy Defense Minister Boguslaw Winid said that Poland had agreed with NATO that the bulk of the troops would go to the east of the country. Asked whether it could agree to send some to the south, he said that was a matter of discussion.
"This is still a subject of discussions. We have to talk through all details with NATO and the final decision will be made by the president soon," he said.
"This is what we have agreed so far," he added.
Poland has 100 troops in Afghanistan at present and NATO officials had for some time been expecting it to add more. Warsaw has still not decided when to withdraw the 900 soldiers it still has in Iraq.
NATO defense chiefs agreed in principle over the weekend to seek more troops and fewer limitations on the actions of its 20,000-strong Afghan force, locked in daily clashes with resurgent guerrillas in the south.
But on Wednesday, an alliance spokesman said it could be weeks before reinforcements were committed. Diplomatic sources said that many nations had complained that their armies were already overstretched.
Afghanistan is seeing its worst spell of violence since U.S.-led forces overthrew the Taliban in late 2001 after they refused to hand over al Qaeda's chief, Osama bin Laden, the architect of the Sept. 11 attacks on America.
More than 2,000 people, mainly rebels but including civilians and Afghan and foreign troops, have been killed in fighting this year.
Defense Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, in Washington with Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, said Poland had moved quickly with the new troops commitment in the hope of encouraging other countries to do the same.
"NATO's secretary general asked me to make the decision public today because it will help him mobilize more forces," PAP quoted Sikorski as saying. "So our decision will help the operation in Afghanistan get up to full steam."
NATO nations currently have around 18,500 troops in Afghanistan with other non-NATO countries contributing a further 1,500 to its International Security Assistance force (ISAF).

TITLE: Garcia, Sheets Flirt With Perfect Games
AUTHOR: By Dan Bollerman
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: Freddy Garcia of the Chicago White Sox and Milwaukee's Ben Sheets each flirted with perfect games in pitching their teams to victories.Garcia went 7 2/3 innings without allowing a baserunner in a 9-0 win at the Los Angeles Angels, while Sheets retired the first 18 Pittsburgh batters he faced in a 2-1 win in the second game of a Major League Baseball doubleheader.
At Angel Stadium in Anaheim California, Garcia set down the first 23 Angels batters before allowing a line-drive single to Adam Kennedy with two out in the bottom of the eighth.
Garcia (14-9) had three strikeouts in eight innings and Neal Cotts pitched the ninth to complete the one-hit shutout.
At PNC Park in Pittsburgh, Sheets gave up a base hit to Chris Duffy leading off the seventh, ending his bid for a perfect game.
Sheets (5-6) allowed two hits and a run, while striking out 10, in eight innings, and Francisco Cordero pitched a perfect ninth for his 12th save. The Pirates had beaten the Brewers 6-3 in the first game of the doubleheader.
Pittsburgh's Freddy Sanchez was 3-for-8 in the two games to take the lead in the National League batting race with a .340 average. He began the day tied with Florida's Miguel Cabrera at .339.
In Minneapolis, Dan Haren and Huston Street combined on a three-hitter to lead the Oakland Athletics to a 1-0 victory over the Minnesota Twins.
Haren (14-11) walked one and struck out seven in eight innings, and Street pitched a perfect ninth for his 32nd save.Jay Payton drove in the game's only run with a sixth-inning double as the A's extended their lead in the American League's Western Division to 5 1/2 games over the Angels.The loss dropped Minnesota to two games behind first-place Detroit in the AL Central. The Twins are 1 1/2 games ahead of the White Sox for the AL's wild-card playoff berth, which goes to the second-place team with the best record.
Twins left-hander Francisco Liriano was activated from the disabled list to start the game, then left in the third inning with pain in his pitching elbow.
The 22-year-old rookie struck out two in the first two innings and allowed a single to Nick Swisher leading off the third, then grimaced after throwing a pitch to Bobby Kielty and left the game. Matt Garza replaced him.
Minnesota manager Ron Gardenhire told reporters after the game that Liriano, who was selected for July's All-Star Game, was done for the year.
"Well, we'll just have to keep going and believe that everything will be okay with him and get him ready to do what he has to do for next year,'' he said in remarks posted on the Star Tribune's Web site.
In other NL games, it was Houston 5, St. Louis 1; and Philadelphia 6, Atlanta 5 in the first game of a doubleheader.
In the AL, Toronto scored nine runs in the fourth inning, highlighted by a bases-clearing double by John Hattig and a grand slam by Gregg Zaun, in a 10-0 win at Seattle.