SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1208 (74), Friday, September 29, 2006
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TITLE: Channel Five Goes National On Sunday
AUTHOR: By Evgenia Ivanova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: St. Petersburg's Channel 5 television station is to go national from Sunday, aiming to create an alternative discussion platform for those viewers who are unhappy with the current state of Russian television, the channel's management announced Wednesday."In Russia, there's an unmet demand for lively debates broadcast live, new faces, including experts and commentators; but most importantly, there is a serious absence of a place where people can discuss matters that truly worry them," said Alla Manilova, chair of the board of the directors of the Channel 5, speaking at a press conference Wednesday.
The channel broadcast nationally before 1998, when its federal airwaves were removed, but Manilova said that was simply a case of a regional television broadcast country-wide. When Channel 5 goes live on Oct. 1, the approach will be entirely different, Manilova said.
"Now it will be a fully-fledged national channel with its own news bureaus and its own broadcasting from Russia's regions — we won't merely broadcast the St. Petersburg content," Manilova said.
According to Manilova, even though Channel 5's budget comprises "just a fraction of the budgets of the major Russian channels," the St. Petersburg station will have a strong competitive advantage.
"Our competitors cannot afford such risks — if they take any risk or experiment in any way, they might end up losing their share of viewers, and losing millions of dollars as a result," she said.
"We can take those risks and we should, because we are a channel that is only in the process of developing and we can try new things until we find something that works," she said.
The focus of the channel will be news, from which, "everyone should be able to understand that they aren't receiving broadcasts from Moscow," according to Channel 5's Vladislav Ponomarenko, who is in charge of the channels news and analysis programs.
St. Petersburg will be a main subject of the news content, with the regions also making regular appearances on the programs, he said.
At present, the channel has no concrete plans for broadcasting in Moscow.
"We will also try not to use commentary from well-known figures in Moscow. Instead we will be using St. Petersburg's commentators and commentators from the regions, as there are people outside Moscow who follow current events and are able to analyze the situation in the country, but who are almost never seen on television," he said.
Nikolai Barkan, arts director at Channel 5, said there were no plans to radically change the arts and entertainment programming currently being aired by the station.
"We have got data showing that St. Petersburg viewers preferred watching 'Zorro' starring Alain Delon to 'Armageddon,' which was shown at the same time on Channel 1 — and I personally would have chosen the same option," Barkan said.
"Our colleagues from the major channels spend a lot of their money on expensive blockbusters. That's one approach — we've chosen a different way," he said.
Films from the '50s, '60s, '70s and '80s, retro rock concerts and recordings from sports archives, together with documentaries and news and analysis, feature heavily in the line-up of broadcasts for Channel 5 when it goes national.
According to Channel 5, this programming will allow the station to retain its viewers over the age of 35, but also "to attract a unique audience of viewers aged from 20 too 35."
Kirill Nikolayev, the head of the Nikolayev e:Consulting media consultancy thinks that Channel 5 plans to take viewers from STS, an independent entertainment network, and the Culture Channel.
"I get the impression that they would like to create a beautiful, entertaining story with hints of culture and traditions," Nikolayev said.
The president of STS Media Alexander Rodnyansky said the channel would have to find a specialized niche if it is to realize the channel's ambitious plans.
"We have very strong competition [in the industry] right now and the television channels have to be more specific in targeting their audiences," he told St. Petersburg's Vedomosti business daily on Wednesday.

TITLE: Empress Returned To Russia
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: Cannon shots boomed, motorists honked their horns and church bells tolled as the remains of the Danish-born empress who was the mother of Russia's last tsar were interred in the Romanovs' royal crypt 78 years after her death.Tsarina Maria Feodorovna was the mother of Nicholas II, who was executed by the Bolsheviks in 1918. She fled to Denmark in 1919 and died in 1928.
The empress regarded the last decade of her life as exile, and wished to be buried in Russia.
Russian and Danish guards placed the wooden casket, covered with a bright yellow flag, near her husband, Tsar Alexander III, in the royal crypt at the cathedral of the Peter and Paul Fortress on an island in the Neva River, as an orchestra played solemn music. A marble sarcophagus baring Maria Fyodorovna's name was then placed in the cathedral.
"I am very glad that Empress Maria Fyodorovna will now again be with her husband and her children ... it's great that they fulfilled the wish of Maria Fyodorovna to be buried next to her family," said Alevtina Batalova, a 64-year-old former teacher who came to catch a glimpse of the procession.
Several hundred officials, guests and foreign dignitaries, including members of the British and Danish royal families, attended the ceremony, many holding candles and white roses and most of them wearing black. Many of the women wore broad-brimmed black mourning hats.
Tatiana Erdman, a great-great-granddaughter of Maria Fyodorovna who lives in Colorado, said she was deeply moved by the occasion.
"It's very significant that Maria Fyodorovna has finally returned home," Erdman said. "This event is also very meaningful because it gathers the big family of the Romanovs."
The pomp-filled events began with Orthodox Patriarch Alexy II leading prayers in St. Isaac's Cathedral, the principal church of the Romanov dynasty. He praised Maria Fyodorovna as a true daughter of Russia.
"Having fallen deeply in love with the Russian people, the empress devoted a great deal of effort for the benefit of the Russian fatherland," Alexy said. "Her soul ached for Russia."
As the procession moved around the city, people crossed themselves, military officers saluted the cortege, and car drivers blew horns.
Many Russians felt the return of the tsarina's remains was a meaningful step in restoring their appreciation of their country's complicated and tormented history.
Since the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Romanov family have been working for the remains of Maria Fyodorovna to be sent to Russia.
"Today we have fulfilled the innermost will of the empress," said Culture Minister Alexander Sokolov. "It means the time has come to fill the gaps in our history and culture."
Maria Fyodorovna initially was betrothed to Tsar Alexander II's son, Grand Duke Nicholas Alexandrovich, but he died when the princess was 17. In his will, he asked that she marry his brother, which she did the following year, in 1866.
Her husband became tsar in 1881 after the moderately reform-minded Alexander II was assassinated; Alexander III died in 1894.

TITLE: EU, Russia Discuss Border Issues
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: PETROZAVODSK, Republic of Karelia — Sorting out customs formalities on the St. Petersburg-Helsinki train while in motion, rather than on the Russian-Finnish border and giving small regional towns the authority to sign direct agreements with foreign cities across the border, were among the ideas voiced at the Cross-border Co-operation between the Russian Federation and the European Union international conference being held in Petrozavodsk this week.The event, focusing on the prospects and obstacles for co-operation between Russian and its Baltic and Nordic neighbors, attracted politicians, businessmen and academics from Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland and Poland. The conference was organized jointly by the Nordic Council of Ministers, the presidential administration and the government of Karelia.
Across Russia, 49 regions have borders with foreign countries but the North-West region is widely considered a champion of cross-border collaboration. Alexander Grushko, deputy Foreign Minister of Russia, said that St. Petersburg's history as a cosmopolitan city and its strategic location have made the city a premier candidate to host a new political organization meant to serve as a coordinating center for EU-Russia initiatives.
"The need for such an organization is obvious to both sides of the dialogue," Grushko said.
"It is still too early to set any deadlines, but work on shaping up this new body is going full steam ahead."
Russia's trade with the EU has rocketed over the past five years. Fifty-five percent of Russia's export go to EU states and Russia is the EU's third-largest exporter, after the U.S and China. Russia also holds fourth place among importers of products produced in the EU.
Speaking at the conference on Thursday, Mark Franco, ambassador and head of the delegation of the European Commission to Russia, said both the EU and Russia still have to get over the political turbulence of the past two decades, and even the Communist past.
"Over the past 15 years, the Eurasian continent — which the EU and Russia share — has gone through enormous turmoil; the continent used to be a very divided land," Franco said. "Although the dividing lines are now a thing of the past and maps have changed, the legacy of the Cold War is still sensed in the air. The main challenge is to get over the past and resist newly emerging dividing lines."
Vasily Likhachyov, deputy chairman of the International Affairs Committee of the Federation Council criticized relations between Russian parliamentarians and delegations of the parliaments of EU states within PACE (Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe), and blamed the organization for failing to push forward any initiatives on developing legislation that would facilitate cross-border activities.
"Our delegations treat each other worse than some divorced spouses," he said. "At times, it seems they completely ignore each other's existence, or even behave as if they are unaware of any common goals, interest or ground."
Russian participants in the discussions emphasized that new forms of cooperation between Russia and the EU have to be found.
"It is high time to end the era of donors and recipients; we have overgrown the TACIS schemes," said Yury Tikhomirov, a counselor with the presidential administration in Moscow. "Relations between Russia and EU should now be developing as an equal partnership on all stages, with joint funding, joint planning and joint implementation."
At present, the annual EU budget for projects in Russia amounts to 30 million euros. Priority spheres include transport, energy, environment, tourism and culture.
Viktor Stepov, head of the Oktyabrskaya Railways, threw his weight behind the idea of carrying out customs procedures on the St. Petersburg-Helsinki train instead of making a stop on the border and cited the London-Paris express train as an example. Borders between France and the U.K. are open, unlike those between Russia and the EU, making the scheme difficult to implement.
Waiting at customs check-points on Russian-Finnish and Russian-Estonian border can involve hours — especially for cargo-traffic and cars, and the situation is much easier for trains that it is for automotive transport.
Reconstruction of the existing customs check-points and investment in new ones has to be made a state priority, Stepov said. "Check-points in Ivangorod and Pskov-Pechera have already exhausted their resources and are barely coping with the dramatically increased flows of travelers."
Tikhomirov suggested that web-cams be installed at major check-points and information presented on a round-the-clock basis to web-portals covering cross-border relations, for regular monitoring.
Andrei Nelidov, deputy chairman of the CIS Affairs Committee of the Federation Council, called for more powers to be given to smaller towns.
"According to Russian legislation, only subjects of the federation have the legal authority to sign cross-border agreements with foreign towns," Nelidov said. "Regional municipalities, that, ironically, happen to carry the lion's share of the cross-border contacts, are deprived of the legal means of inking these deals. This is absurd."

TITLE: Third Term For Putin Ruled Out
AUTHOR: By Maria Danilova
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia's top election body on Wednesday rejected a petition calling for a referendum on constitutional changes to allow President Vladimir Putin to run in 2008 elections for a third term in office.Putin has insisted he will step down when his second terms ends, though several politicians and organizations have called for changing the constitution to allow presidents more than two consecutive, four-year terms.
On Wednesday, the Central Election Commission struck down the latest effort to have the term limits changed, dismissing a petition filed by the Accord and Stability group that had proposed a referendum on constitutional changes because the wording of the referendum question was illegal.
Under Russian law, plebiscites must ask voters to approve or reject a question or questions. In this case, however, the group wanted to ask people to vote against current law.
Putin has argued that the country's constitution be left intact, and he is believed to be trying to anoint a successor. But some analysts have speculated that he could choose to stay if the Kremlin felt it was unable to guarantee a successor would be elected.
The commission's verdict, ruling against the proposal on technical grounds, appeared to leave open the possibility for similar petitions to be filed.
Chechnya's Kremlin-backed Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov told reporters Wednesday that Putin should "be president for a third and a fourth term — as long as he is healthy he should lead the country."
Andrei Ryabov, an analyst with the Gorbachev Foundation, called the commission's decision "ambiguous" because it avoided a judgment on the broader issue of amending the constitution.
"The issue of a third term can be successfully solved" any time before the elections are scheduled, Ryabov was quoted as saying by the Kommersant daily.
Other analysts suggested, however, that the decision by the election commission meant Putin definitely would not run and was aimed at ending debate on the issue.

TITLE: Italian Police Find Hidden Belarus Girl
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: ROME — Italian police on Wednesday located a 10-year-old Belarussian orphan girl kept in hiding for nearly three weeks by an Italian couple who feared she would be abused if she returned to the orphanage in her home country.The case of the girl, identified in Italy as Maria to protect her identity and in Belarus as Vika, short for Viktoria, has gripped Italy and stirred a dispute between the two countries — with Minsk complaining formally about what it called her "deliberate abduction."
"The little girl has been found. I have just received an SMS," Italian Justice Minister Clemente Mastella told the parliament, without giving details.
Alessandro Giusto and Chiara Bornacin believe she has been sexually abused at the orphanage in Belarus. They sent Vika to a secret place with her foster "grandmothers" on Sept. 8.
Acting in defiance of a Genoa court order for the girl to be sent back, the couple then informed police, saying they would rather go to jail than return her to the orphanage in Belarus.

TITLE: Attacker of Sychova Gets Four Year Prison Sentence
AUTHOR: By Alexander Dybin and Oksana Yablokova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: CHELYABINSK — A Chelyabinsk military court on Tuesday convicted Junior Sergeant Alexander Sivyakov in a high-profile trial that has focused public attention on the problem of hazing in the armed forces.Prosecutors showed that Sivyakov forced Andrei Sychyov, a first-year conscript at the Chelyabinsk Armor Academy, to squat for several hours while beating him last New Year's Eve. The incident led to the amputation of Sychyov's legs and genitals.
Sivyakov, who has consistently maintained his innocence, was convicted on five charges, including "exceeding authority, resulting in grave consequences," and sentenced to four years, less time served, in a medium-security penal colony. He has been in jail since mid-January.
Sivyakov was stripped of his rank and banned from holding a command position for three years. He was also ordered to pay 22,000 rubles ($825) to cover the cost of transporting witnesses and experts to the court.
"This is horrible," said Marina Muffert, Sychyov's sister, who burst into tears when the sentence was read.
"I called my mother in Moscow, and she was furious that Sivyakov had been given such a light sentence. Andrei isn't satisfied, either. He was angry at first, but then he buried his head in his pillow and said nothing."
Sychyov continues to undergo treatment at the Burdenko Military Hospital in Moscow and was unable to attend the trial, although his condition is no longer critical. His mother has been in Moscow with him since he was airlifted from Chelyabinsk in January.
Sychyov's lawyer, Yevgeny Belov, said the family was satisfied with the conviction, but would appeal for a stiffer sentence.
Muffert added that the family would also consider seeking damages in a civil suit against the Defense Ministry.
Some Sychyov supporters were less diplomatic. "This is all crap. I saw the bruises myself," said an officer at the academy who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Why did this take so long? They should have shot him at once."
Sivyakov's lawyer, Yelena Ustinovich, also vowed to appeal the verdict. "Such a light sentence only confirms that Alexander is not guilty," Ustinovich said.
"I have not yet spoken to Alexander, so we don't know if we will appeal the verdict, but Sasha is undoubtedly shocked. He did not commit this crime, and he is not guilty," she said.
As the court reviewed the evidence in the case Tuesday, Sivyakov smiled and chatted with his mother through the bars of the courtroom's holding cage. When the sentence was read, however, he was clearly stunned, and had difficulty responding to the judge. His mother, Natalya, ran out into the hallway in tears.
Prosecutors had asked the court to put Sivyakov behind bars for six years. Sychyov's lawyers called for the maximum sentence of 10 years.
Two codefendants in the trial, Privates Pavel Kuzmenko and Gennady Bilimovich, were convicted of hazing a soldier of equal rank and given suspended sentences of 1 1/2 years, followed by one year of probation.
The Sychyov case became public in late January, and immediately caused an uproar across the country, culminating in calls for the resignation of Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov.
On Jan. 30, President Vladimir Putin ordered Ivanov to draft "legal and organizational measures" to boost what he termed "the work of education and upbringing" in the military.
Human rights groups and politicians have demanded an end to the draft and the creation of a professional military.
Vladimir Lukin, the national human rights ombudsman, said Tuesday that he was satisfied with the verdict, Interfax reported.
"The important thing is that this person has been found guilty," Lukin said. "I don't want to discuss the issue of how long he will be in prison. That is the court's prerogative. But it is important that he has been found guilty and punished. It was a serious crime with serious consequences."
Valentina Melnikova, head of the Union of Soldiers' Mothers Committees, said Tuesday that Sivyakov deserved the maximum sentence for his crimes.
"With a sentence this light, one cannot expect that the lessons of the Sychyov case will be learned," Melnikova said. "We had hoped that the verdict in the trial would somehow shake up the military, and that they would stop covering up hazing incidents. But nothing like that will happen, because the sentence was almost encouraging for the military."
Given that Sivyakov was not convicted of a particularly serious crime, he could be eligible for parole after two years. He has already served nine months of his sentence, so he could walk free in just 15 months, Melnikova said.
Melnikova attributed Sivyakov's light sentence to unprecedented pressure on the court from the Defense Ministry.
More than 30 journalists from across the country attended Tuesday's much-awaited court session in Chelyabinsk. Chief Judge Yury Shatsky read the verdict in a monotone.
The court found the evidence presented by both the prosecution and the defense during the trial unreliable, and based its decision on testimony collected during the investigation.
Near the end of the three-month trial, several witnesses changed their testimony, and some said their original statements had been coerced.
The trial took an unexpected turn in July, when a military unit commander admitted he had allowed an unidentified officer unsupervised access to three key prosecution witnesses.
The commander, Alexander Anupriyev, served in a unit where the witnesses had been placed for their own protection. The three witnesses earlier had told the court that an "unknown general in civilian clothes" had told them to recant their previous testimony.
The court expressed doubt that witnesses had actually been pressured, however, noting that accusations to this effect had been made at the last minute.
The trial also included a duel between the local doctors in Chelyabinsk, who first treated Sychyov, and Burdenko Military Hospital specialists. At issue was the origin of the extensive blood clots in Sychyov's legs that led to gangrene.
Local doctors said the blood clots had resulted from being forced to crouch for a long period. The Burdenko specialists maintained that Sychyov suffered from a hereditary condition that made him susceptible to blood clots.
Prosecutors were tight-lipped about the verdict Tuesday. A spokesman for the Chief Military Prosecutor's office in Moscow referred requests for comment to the Prosecutor General's Office, which in turn posted a statement on its official web site that summed up the verdict but offered no assessment of it.

TITLE: Local Firms Support Charity
AUTHOR: By Yelena Andreyeva
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Gifts donated by schoolchildren in the U.K. to children cared for by the charity A Heart for Russia were delivered in St. Petersburg on Saturday.The parcels were collected in the U.K. by O'Grady Air Services Ltd early in September and driven nearly three thousand miles to St Petersburg. The vehicle O'Grady Air Services used displayed the logos of companies who have donated to A Heart for Russia, which works to ease the suffering of street children and orphans in St. Petersburg.
A Heart for Russia has worked in St. Petersburg since 2003 when it was founded by Tony Allen, Jo Cheadle and Michael Wynne Parker from the Allen and Allen group of Companies.
A Heart for Russia rents four apartments in the Avtovo region for 16 teenagers who live with foster families.
The A Heart for Russia charitable program covers not only the children's accommodation, food, clothes and basic living expenses but also assists them to get an education, assisting them until the age of 25.
"It is possible to come to an understanding with any difficult child," said Valentina Patrikeyeva, the branch representative of A Heart for Russia in St. Petersburg. "They all just need love and care."
"We need to pay for everything — the apartments, food, and so on. Recently, we paid over 5, 000 rubles ($170) just for textbooks in order to get the children ready for school," said Patrikeyeva.
Although finance is one of the main problems facing foster families, their work is also hampered by numerous bureaucratic obstacles.
"It is sad that we can't provide help to every child that needs it," Patrikeyeva said. "The officials must understand that there is no profit in what we are doing, we just want to help the most vulnerable of people, children," Patrikeyeva said.
Celebration of the charitable event took place at the The Red Lion pub with live music provided by a U.K. band who were flown in especially for the event.
The event was hosted by the children, their tutors, O'Grady Air Services and other guests.www.heartforrussia.org

TITLE: Georgia Arrests Alleged Spies
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW — Georgian authorities detained four Russian military officers and 12 civilians on Wednesday on spying charges, and Interior Ministry forces surrounded Russian military headquarters in Tbilisi to demand the handover of another officer, Georgian Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili said.Moscow has threatened sanctions against Georgia if the officers are not released, Interfax reported.
Merabishvili said the Russian officers, whom he identified as senior members of the General Staff's Main Intelligence Directorate, or GRU, had been detained Wednesday in Tbilisi and the Black Sea port of Batumi on charges of espionage.
Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Saava and Lieutenant Colonel Dimitry Kazantsev were arrested in Tbilisi, while Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Zagorodny and Major Alexander Baranov were picked up in Batumi, Merabishvili said.
Merabishvili said the dozen Georgian citizens who were detained were part of the same "very dangerous" spy chain. He added that the suspects had been involved in espionage for several years.
(AP, SPT)

TITLE: Tourist Rise in St. Pete On The Back of Caring Angels
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The number of tourists visiting St. Petersburg is set to increase by up to 15 percent this year, local analysts have said. City authorities believe they can preserve this kind of growth without the advantages of being a special tourism zone.Earlier this year the Russian government announced a tender to award special tourism zone status and tax concessions to regions where tourism was not fulfilling its potential.
By Monday, 28 regions had filed applications for the tender, Interfax cited the minister for Economic Development and Trade, German Gref, as saying Tuesday.
The minister described tourism as "the most multiplicative service industry in terms of job creation," which makes it the key factor in the development of regional economies.
Last year investment into fixed capital in the tourist industry in Russia accounted for $2.75 billion. 240,000 people were employed in the sector.
Those regions that do not apply for tax concessions, will have to attract tourists through private investors and make use of their own local budgets.
Last year St. Petersburg attracted around three million visitors.
"All specialists agree that in high season the number of tourists will increase by 10 percent to 15 percent compared to last year," Interfax cited Sergei Korneyev, president of the Northwest branch of Russian Tourism Union, as saying Monday at a briefing.
"September is indicative in this regard. At the moment operators and hotels are working at full capacity — something previously unheard of," Korneyev said.
Chairman of the Committee for Investment and Strategic projects, Maxim Sokolov also forecast growth of 15 percent.
Among the contributory factors he indicated a number of local government programs— 24 hour bus routes between Pulkovo airport and the city center and the "Angels' Service" introduced at the end of June.
Next year information terminals, maps and signs in English will be installed at the city's metro stations.
The other area of improvement is in the hotel industry. St. Petersburg is notorious for its lack of decent mid-price accommodation. By the end of 2006 eight new hotels will open in the city.
"To accommodate five million tourists a year we have to increase the number of hotel rooms by 10,000," Interfax cited Sokolov as saying at the briefing.
According to official statistics, currently 331 hotels operate in the city amounting to a total of 18,265 rooms.
18 hotels are currently under construction, which will add 1,500 rooms. A total of 114 hotel projects are at various stages of consideration and approval.
Sokolov suggested that only by 2009 would the city be capable of hosting five million tourists.
The Baltic Information Agency reported that, according to Marianna Ordzhonikidze, head of tourism at City Hall, in 2007 the city budget will contribute one million euros to promote the city abroad.
Within the "Ship of Peace" project promoters will visit the largest European cities and Mediterranean ports presenting St. Petersburg as a tourist destination.
Next year the local government plans to organize 20 tours to St. Petersburg for foreign journalists.
On Wednesday this week an American delegation completed a four-day tour to St. Petersburg, the committee for investment and strategic projects said Wednesday in a statement.
The delegation included representatives from tour companies and journalists from the Washington Times, Performance Media Group, Northstar Travel Media, Jax Fax Travel, Hospitality Design and other media.
"Primarily we will invite journalists from the countries in which we are most interested — China, Japan, the U.S., Germany and Arabian countries," BIA cited Korneyev as saying Monday.
Korneyev said that private investors will also contribute to the funding of promotional activities.

TITLE: Gazprom, Ukraine Agree Deal
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Gazprom, Russia's natural gas export monopoly, will continue selling the fuel to Ukraine for $95 per 1,000 cubic meters to the end of 2006 as they seek to avoid repeating a dispute that disrupted gas supplies to Europe.Gazprom Chief Executive Officer Alexei Miller and Ukrainian Energy Minister Yuriy Boyko agreed to set prices through 2009 by the end the year, the Moscow-based company said in an e-mailed statement Monday. Gazprom wants to charge Ukraine more for gas supplies after agreeing to pay more for Turkmen gas supplies.
Gazprom shut off deliveries to Ukraine on Jan. 1 during a dispute over pricing, leading to a disruption of supplies to Europe. Ukraine agreed to a compromise price of $95 for a mix of cheaper Turkmen gas and more expensive Russian gas.
"The likelihood of another disruption of gas supplies is much lower following this agreement,'' said Kaushik Rudra, an emerging-markets strategist at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in London. The improved relations between Russia and Ukraine after pro-Russian politician Viktor Yanukovych became Ukraine's prime minister should make negotiations easier, he said.
Ukraine will get 55 billion cubic meters a year over the next three years, supplied by RosUkrEnergo, Gazprom said.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Baltika SalesnST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Baltika brewery increased sales by 16 percent in July-August this year compared to the same period last year, Interfax reported Tuesday.
The Russian beer market grew by 14 percent in the same period. The crisis in the alcohol market contributed to this unusual growth, the company experts said reporting on the performance.Taking OffnST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The Kenford construction company opened its $10 million shopping and entertainment center, Pilot, in Leningrad Oblast on Thursday, Interfax reported.
Offering 12,000 square meters of shopping area the center is located in the Gatchina district and occupies a 2.2 hectare land plot.Pyaterochka BuybacknST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — Pyaterochka Holding NV, Russia's largest supermarket chain, is asking shareholders to approve buying back as much as 10 percent of the company's shares over the next 1 1/2 years.
Shareholders at an extraordinary general meeting Oct. 16 will be asked to approve the buyback program, St. Petersburg-based Pyaterochka said last night in a statement posted on its web site. The meeting also will vote on whether to change the company's name to X5 Retail Group NV.
The shares will have to be bought back at the market price of the company's global depositary receipts, or lower, Pyaterochka said.Carlsberg PlansnCOPENHAGEN (Bloomberg) — Carlsberg will invest 5 billion Danish kroner ($850 million) in Baltic Beverages Holding AB, its joint venture in Russia with Scottish & Newcastle Plc, this year and next, Boersen said, citing Joergen Buhl Rasmussen, executive vice president in charge of the region.
The company expects to spend 2 billion kroner this year and an equal if not larger amount next year, on expanding and improving production and logistics, the newspaper said, citing Rasmussen. Carlsberg also will invest an undisclosed amount on marketing, Boersen said.SocGen Lifts StakenPARIS/MOSCOW (Reuters) — Societe Generale moved to become a leading foreign bank in Russia on Thursday through a multi-stage deal to acquire control of top-10 bank Rosbank by the end of 2008.
The deal, a key plank of SocGen's strategy to expand in emerging markets, came as it unveiled a 2.4-billion-euro ($3.1 billion) rights issue of shares to help finance acquisitions.
The French bank said it had agreed to double its stake in Rosbank — which has Russia's second largest branch network and is the market leader in car loans — to 20 percent, minus one share, for $317 million.

TITLE: Shelling Out For the Environment
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: YUZHNO-SAKHALINSK — Royal Dutch Shell Plc's Sakhalin-2 oil and gas project should stop building pipelines and resolve the environmental damage it has caused, said Oleg Mitvol, deputy head of Russia's environmental inspectorate."We will do everything to make the company stop work and pay for the environmental damage,'' Mitvol, sitting at a table flanked by local and international environmentalists, said Thursday in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, the capital of Sakhalin Island. Mitvol yesterday said his inspectorate may assess that damage at more than $50 billion.
Shell and Japan, developers of the Sakhalin-2 fields in the Sea of Okhotsk, yesterday rebuked Russia for threatening to halt the project, citing "abnormal'' and "one-sided'' demands.
Shell, BP Plc, Exxon Mobil Corp., and Total SA face demands from Russia to cede some control of oil and gas fields to state-aligned companies, OAO Gazprom and OAO Rosneft. The foreign-led ventures have become anomalies in Russia as President Vladimir Putin increases state control over the energy industry.
The Natural Resources Ministry will take "very detailed aerial photographs'' of the pipelines and study them, before turning them over to the Prosecutor General's Office, said Mitvol, whose inspectorate is part of the resources ministry. The venture may be liable for prosecution, Mitvol said.
Sakhalin Energy Investment Co., the project operator, refused to let Mitvol inspect the pipelines today, Mitvol said. The venture also declined to attend a meeting set up today with environmental inspectorate officials, journalists and local and international environmentalists, Mitvol said.
Mitvol's visit was delayed because of safety concerns connected to the number of people that the official wanted to bring with him, Ivan Chernyakhovsky, a Sakhalin Energy spokesman, said Thursday in a phone interview from Sakhalin.
The U.K.-based International Fund for Animal Welfare was sceptical regarding Mitvol's assessment of the possible damages. "$50 billion is an unrealistic figure, especially considering that the standard fines for damaging the environment are so low in Russia,'' said Masha Vorontsova, the head of the fund for Russia.
According to Clare Sterling, a spokeswoman for the fund, "the environmental message is clear. Whoever ends up running the project needs to be aware of its environmental impact,'' Sterling said in an interview on Sakhalin Island.

TITLE: Booklet Tells How to Deal With Official Corruption
AUTHOR: By Guy Faulconbridge
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW —A 16-page booklet unveiled Wednesday tells Russians what to do when faced with a corrupt official bent on extracting a backhander."Over the past 10 years, the number of bribes has increased by 10 times," said Andrei Przhezdomsky, the booklet's author and a member of the Public Chamber, set up by President Vladimir Putin to improve links between government and society.
Putin has made fighting corruption a key priority, and analysts say privately that the crackdown on corruption and official privileges is emerging as a major issue ahead of the 2008 presidential election.
"If you don't oil the wheels you get nowhere," he added, reflecting on the everyday reality of life for millions of people forced to reach into their pockets to steer their way through officialdom.
The booklet says it is a citizen's moral obligation to report anyone asking for a bribe to police or security services and provides advice on what details to report. It also gives an example of the statement to fill out at the police station.
The publication adds that those facing corrupt officials can either end all discussion once a bribe is mentioned or hear the official out, carefully remembering and then recording the details of the demand.
It also warns readers that officials fishing for a backhander often hide behind vague or complicated phrases.
The booklet begins with quotes from the Bible, the Prophet Mohammed and the Torah and then gives a detailed description of bribes, which it says range from money to shares, cars, apartments, houses, dachas, plots of land and even food.
Traffic police rank among the most obvious bribe-takers, and few Russians manage to get away after being stopped by a patrol car without parting with at least 100 rubles ($3.75).
But at a higher level, millions of dollars are paid out to corrupt civil servants to get them simply to shift paperwork on a project from their in-tray to their out-tray.
"How can we break out of this vicious circle? We think that if we arm every citizen with knowledge of their rights and possible actions, it is an opportunity society must of course use. This booklet serves this," Przhezdomsky said.
The booklet has a first run of just 100,000 copies.
Officials acknowledged that the slender publication was a very modest first stab at tackling corruption.
"We must ask ourselves: Do we live in a society where corruption is a moral perversity to the normal flow of things, or is it the main part or even the spinal cord of the system of administrative management in the country?" ombudsman Vladimir Lukin told reporters at the presentation.

TITLE: Bureaucratic Worries Cost Russia Its Competitive Edge
AUTHOR: By Anna Smolchenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Russia lost some of its competitive edge over the past year due to investor worries about bureaucratic favoritism, restrictions on foreigners and unethical corporate behavior, according to a new report.Russia fell nine places to 62 in an annual Growth Competitiveness Index of 125 countries by the World Economic Forum. Last year, Russia dropped five places.
"While others move faster, Russia falls back," said Margareta Drzeniek, a senior economist with WEF.
The Russian economy this year was judged less competitive than the growing economies of China (54) and India (43) but better than Brazil (66).
"Even if there have been changes, they need to trickle down to business," Drzeniek said by telephone from Geneva.
Eating into Russia's competitiveness were old problems like weak institutions, including favoritism in government decision-making, unethical behavior by firms, poor infrastructure and foreign ownership restrictions.
Alexei Prazdnitchnykh, WEF's representative in Russia, said the country's competitiveness also deteriorated because the study surveyed for the first time this year local firms from more than 10 regions, including Krasnodar and Primorye.
"Before, the survey was carried out in more hospitable regions," Prazdnitchnykh said.
The study polled 553 leaders in Russia this year, up from 473 in 2005, he said. In all, the study polled more than 11,000 business leaders around the world, and the results also took into account individual country's economic indicators.
"Our traditional advantages, like an innovative potential and the quality of education, are also getting worse," said Prazdnitchnykh, who is partner with BaumanInnovation, a consultancy.
The country's ranking in capacity for innovation fell to 49 from 42 in 2005, while the quality of math and science education plunged to 43 from 21, he said.
WEF's chief economist chided Russia for not using its energy riches to increase competitiveness.
"Judicious use of bountiful budget revenues could boost productivity when invested in education, health and infrastructure," the economist, Augusto Lopez-Claros, said in a statement.
"The country needs to get back to the illustrious path of scientific and technological innovation, which was a hallmark of its development in decades past."
Russia's judicial independence — ranked 110 out of 125 — is "time-consuming, unpredictable and a cost burden to enterprises," the report said.
The situation with property rights is "extremely poor and worsening," it said. The country's ranking in this indicator in the last two years fell from 88 in 2004 to 114 in 2006 and is among the worst in the world.
The country's standing in other areas is among the worst. Russia placed 116 in the soundness of banks; 114 in inflation; 107 in public trust of politicians and 82 in the business costs of crime and violence.

TITLE: Crime And Punishment
AUTHOR: By Masha Gessen
TEXT: A court in Chelyabinsk has sentenced Sergeant Alexander Sivyakov to four years in prison for causing Private Andrei Sychyov to lose his legs and genitals. On Tuesday, the court ruled that the sergeant had forced Sychyov to sit, with his legs half bent, for so long that the private's veins became blocked, leading to gangrene and the catastrophic surgeries. With consideration for time served and the likelihood of early release, the sergeant will probably have to serve a couple of years. The private, who is still in the hospital nine months after the incident, will require care and assistance for the rest of his life. As a severely disabled person living in this country, he is certainly not going to have much of a life. And he will never have children.I am not a proponent of eye-for-an-eye punishment or of show trials intended to frighten potential criminals. Neither approach works. But this sentence strikes me as incredibly mild. The judge did something quite rare in the Russian courts: He rendered a guilty verdict but a lesser sentence than the prosecution had requested. The prosecutor had asked for six years' imprisonment for Sivyakov. The maximum sentence possible considering the charges was 10 years. So the judge clearly did some math.
The math went something like this: I have to punish the guy to show that something was done, because I am under pressure to do that, but at the same time I am under pressure to go easy on the Defense Ministry, so that means I'll find him guilty and give him a serious sentence, but not too serious. Or something like that. I have no way of getting inside the judge's head to read his thoughts. But, as sometimes happens, as a result of adding and subtracting different kinds of variables, the judge calculated a different sort of value: He rendered a verdict on the cost of a soldier's life.
Let's look at some other recent high-profile cases that actually have a monetary value assigned. In April of this year, Svetlana Bakhmina, a lawyer who worked at Yukos, was sentenced to seven years in prison. She was convicted of helping her boss, Dmitry Gololobov, to embezzle roughly 8 billion rubles, about $289.5 million, from a company called Tomsneft-VNK and avoiding paying her own taxes in the amount of roughly 600,000 rubles. During the course of the trial, Tomskneft representatives testified that the stocks that had supposedly been embezzled had been restored to their rightful owners and that the company had no claim against Bakhmina. It would follow that Bakhmina got seven years of jail time for failing to pay 600,000 rubles, or just over $20,000, in taxes.
In May of this year, Olga Kudrina, a member of Eduard Limonov's unregistered National Bolshevik Party, was sentenced to three and a half years in prison for scaling the side of the Rossiya Hotel and hanging a banner saying "Putin, go away on your own" on the side of the tower facing the Kremlin. She was charged under two articles of the Penal Code: "Intentional infliction of damage to property" and "Conspiracy to commit hooliganism." I don't know what kind of damage she inflicted on the Rossiya Hotel — which, incidentally, is currently being razed — but I am assuming that it was the sort of surface dents and scrapes rock-climbing equipment can cause. There were no windows broken.
This was not the first time a member of the NBP received an excessive sentence ostensibly for damaging property: Two years earlier five activists were sentenced from three to 3 1/2 years for damaging furniture in the Health Minsitry, where they staged a protest. Ministry staff, however, testified that they mostly just moved furniture around.
So there you have it. The life of a Russian conscript is worth much less than $20,000 and a bit more than the wall surface of a condemned hotel or the furniture arrangement in the Health Ministry.

Masha Gessen is a Moscow journalist.

TITLE: Unpopular Democracy
AUTHOR: By Ivan Krastev
TEXT: Europe's best-kept secret is not that old Europe has second thoughts about the euro. Its best-kept secret is that new Europe has second thoughts about the merits of democracy. Of all the world's regions, Central Europe is most skeptical that it's the best form of government out there, according to "Voice of the People 2006," an international poll conducted by Gallup International in May.Not that Central Europeans dreamily hope for the return of communism or any other form of authoritarianism. But a large majority says their countries aren't run according to the will of the people. Almost two-thirds of the publics in the eight recent EU entrants from the region plus Bulgaria and Romania judge that elections in their countries have not been free and fair. Surprised at how post-communist societies have soured on politics? Don't be. Recent events in Poland, Slovakia and Hungary show that the people there have a point.
Poland sent the first warning signal that strange doings were afoot. Last fall, the Law and Justice Party — led by the identical twins Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski — swept into the presidency (held by Lech) and the government (in which Jaroslaw is prime minister) promising a moral revolution against cronyism and the gap between winners and losers that they blamed on post-communist elites.
As it turned out, the Kaczynskis' radicalism was directed more at rewriting the past than at solving the problems of the present. The enemies of choice turned out to be not so much the former communists who lost power last year, or bad governance, but the "liberal" media, the independent Central Bank and the European Union. The twins' year in power has been marked by an addiction to conspiracy theories and the return of nationalistic rhetoric. Listening to the new Polish leaders, you get the feeling that World War II isn't over.
On Friday, resisting pressure for more social spending, the prime minister expelled the Self-Defense party from the government. The prospect that the Peasant Party will join the coalition isn't inspiring. So the Polish public will be stuck either with early elections that offer an unappetizing menu of parties or a more unstable government. Is it any wonder that Poles are losing their enthusiasm for democracy?
The Slovak elections earlier this summer were next. For the last eight years, Slovakia has been Europe's favorite success story. It introduced a flat tax, managed to attract more foreign investment (per capita) than any other former communist country and get into NATO and the EU, all the while making the world forget about its flirtation with authoritarian populism early on in its life as a free state. Or so we thought, until in June voters returned to power the nationalist parties that had turned Slovakia into a beer-swilling Belarus in the 1990s. Not such a happy ending, after all.
Now in Hungary, thousands are on the streets demonstrating and burning cars. The largest protests there since communism fell in 1989 were triggered by a leaked tape of Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany addressing top Socialist Party officials in May. In his speech, he admitted that the party had consistently deceived the public about the state of the economy to win re-election the previous month. It is hard to ask Hungarian, or any, voters to make sacrifices and endorse an austerity package, as Gyurcsany wants them to, when their prime minister is deliberately trying to deceive them about the state of the economy.
So it's not surprising that so many in Central Europe think democracy doesn't work for them. The pressure of the new globalized world has sharply divided societies between winners and losers. After decades of grim stability, people in the region have to get used to permanent insecurity. The last decade was also an age of comparisons. People weren't satisfied with living better than yesterday; they wanted to live like those in most developed countries.
The process of joining the EU changed the nature of these fledgling democratic systems for the worse. Governments preferred to consult on their policy agendas with Brussels, not voters. The outcome is that the dividing line between left and right has been blurred and the only real divide left is between "the corrupt elite" and "the people." The fact that the winners in the new system turned out to be the old party apparatchiks and secret police collaborators also did not contribute to the legitimacy of the new order in Central Europe.
The tragedy is that voters are forced to choose between so-called reformers, who are not so secretly becoming anti-democratic, and the populist movements that are openly anti-reformist and anti-liberal. If you are a voter in the new European democracies you can either opt for a "Gyurcsany cocktail" — mix "noble lies" with neglect for public concerns while fulfilling the EU's dictums — or for the "populist cocktail" of anti-communism, nationalism, cultural conservatism and excessive social spending.
Brussels faces a bad choice, too. Demonizing populists is easy but dangerous. Populist movements are ugly and anti-liberal. In truth, though, they represent not an attack on democracy but a demand for democracy. Europe's attempt to punish populists, to isolate them and to endorse "reformers" like Gyurcsany, will only increase the public's mistrust of both the EU and the democratic process.
Ignoring the current moral and political crisis in Central Europe will not work either. Populist parties don't simply oppose the existing elites; they oppose the very consensuses that made the EU possible: a rejection of nationalism and economic protectionism, political tolerance and moderation. But old Europe can't be too critical of the newcomers when economic protectionism and populism is thriving in its half of the continent as well.
What Central Europe needs today is not just reformist policies but reformist politics. It is not enough for governments to implement reform policies; they should make an effort to get the people on board. The time when it was enough to say that "we are doing it because of the EU" and expect the people to buy it is over. Without more respect for the demands of the voters, Europe risks falling victim to more populist primitivism, and faces hard days ahead.

Ivan Krastev is chairman of the Center for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, Bulgaria. This comment was published in the The Wall Street Journal.

TITLE: Chasing Portugal
TEXT: Early in his first term, President Vladimir Putin repeatedly said that Russia had to overtake Portugal. While he was speaking about economics and has not mentioned this goal in recent years, Portugal might not be a bad place to start when it comes to traffic safety.In 2004, when the World Health Organization made traffic safety its focus for the year, Portugal was singled out as having the worst road fatalities record per capita in Europe. The attention to the issue spurred the government to action: Instituting stricter policing of existing road rules, significant increases for speeding and other traffic violations — particularly in urban areas — and targeted drunk driving in particular.
Such a campaign here would be welcome.
Cynics might point out that the effects of such a policy would be lessened in Russia, given the propensity of traffic police to spend more time looking to collect bribes than to enforce the rules.
But police usually determine the amount of the bribes they extort from drivers as a percentage of the actual fine for the given offense. By definition, the amount of the bribe charged for driving offenses would rise as well. A strict cost-benefit analysis would suggest that the increased possibility to line their pockets would actually lead police officers to pay closer attention to what drivers are doing.
It would not lessen corruption. The authorities need to do much more to battle this evil, especially when police officers are bribed to let drunks drive home.
But the fact that police are corrupt shouldn't prevent the government from trying to make the roads safer.
Putin ordered Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev earlier this month to cut the number of cars permitted to use special blue warning lights. Cars with these signals, Nurgaliyev said, had been involved in 215 accidents over the previous month.
State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov quickly jumped on the toss-the-lights bandwagon, calling on all members of his United Russia faction to ditch their warning signals. On Tuesday, Gryzlov went a step further, saying that regional leaders and lawmakers should also volunteer to give up this privilege.
From a safety standpoint, this is all very refreshing. Putin drew attention to the unacceptably high number of road deaths in his state-of-the-nation address last year, pointing out that an average of 100 people are killed in traffic accidents every day.
With a commitment to increased penalties and stricter policing, Portugal has put itself on the road to fewer traffic fatalities. If the campaign works out in the long run, it will leave Russia with more distance to make up on Portugal when it comes to traffic safety. Ironically, one of the best ways to close the gap will be to force people to drive more slowly.

TITLE: Swiss story
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The walls tell stories in the picturesque Swiss town of Lucerne.LUCERNE, Switzerland — Engulfed in frescoes and murals, Lucerne is a town of noble pastimes. Classical concerts, art vernisages, panoramic boat trips, idyllic promenades and fine dining define the circle of Lucerne's premier temptations. The beauty of this 900-year-old city is known to have healed Russian composer Alexander Scriabin's toothache, and even its ornate signboards are inspiring: one of them is featured in a verse by Goethe.Classical music audiences flock to this Swiss town in August and September, when Lucerne hosts its world-renowned festival, a premiere international attraction in itself, in the same league as Austria's Salzburg Festival, Germany's Bayreuth and Britain's Glyndebourne.
Valeurs sures (classical favorites) reign at the Lucerne Festival, which was launched by Arturo Toscanini in 1938 and inaugurated with a premiere of Wagner's "Siegfried Idyll." Its orchestras-in-residence at this year's event were Amsterdam's Royal Concertgebouw, The Cleveland Orchestra, The San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and The Philadelphia Orchestra from the U.S., and the Wiener Philharmoniker of Austria. Each of them gave three concerts at the festival, including performances by Concertgebouw under the baton of Mariss Jansons and the Wiener Philharmonic conducted by St. Petersburg's Valery Gergiev.
Lucerne's top-notch infrastructure caters to the needs of music-lovers.
For instance, the five-star Palace Luzern, the city's most fashionable hotel, organizes transfers to festival concerts exclusively for its guests on a specially arranged boat traveling across one of the five petals of Vierwaldstaetter lake.
Mozart, Haydn, Mahler, Schumann and Debussy dominated the listings but the festival is expanding its gaze beyond the past centuries. With contemporary music in mind, renowned conductor Claudio Abbado set up the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, while Pierre Boulez and other conductors are rehearsing — and performing — new music with the Lucerne Festival Academy.
Lucerne's historical center is best enjoyed during a stroll through a maze of winding medieval streets, with mansions covered with murals and frescoes from top to bottom. Deciphering the painted messages is good fun, and hugely captivating. One can guess the possible occupations and passions of the former owners — hunters, warriors, bakers, pharmacists and watch-makers — from the paintings on the facades.
At first glance of a green building adorned with images of playful Cupids, less-attentive tourists may get the wrong idea about the possible occupation of the former owner. But once they spot the golden rings topped with precious stones that the Cupids are tossing around, it becomes clear that the owner was a jeweler.
Some of the pictures are more easily read, but to interpret others you need a good local guide.
True to its Medieval origins, Lucerne is believed to have a few of its own long-established ghosts. One of them is said to cosy up around one particular street, Furrengasse. When last seen, the ghost was described as a very tall skinny man with a long tail dragging behind him.
Very few visitors manage to avoid this street: at No. 21, there is a Picasso Museum, renowned for its impressive collection of the artist's sensual late drawings and a rare series of engaging personal photographs.
The frescoes decorating the facade of Hotel Balances tell much about period fashions, and Lucerne mythology is abundantly and vividly present on the facades. A lively gang of gnomes makes curative concoctions on one fresco at the heart of Lucerne, and any well-informed local would nonchalantly point to the artist's mistake: local gnomes, they would say, have goose feet and do not wear boots.
For a drop-dead gorgeous view of Lucerne, head to the Nine Towers, or Museggturme, dating back to 14th century. Connected by the 800-meter-long Musegg Wall, the three central towers are open for climbing in the warmer months of year, from early May until the end of October. Sightseeing here is free of charge.
An absolute must-see is Bertel Thorvaldsen's Dying Lion monument dating back to the early 1800s. Dedicated to the memory of Swiss mercenaries who died defending the Tuileries during the French Revolution, the 9-meter-wide sculpture portrays a dying lion lying across broken symbols of the French monarchy.
Lucerne's signature landmark is Kapellbrucke, or Chapel Bridge over the river Reuss, with the octagonal Water Tower standing nearby, which once served for imprisonment, torture and executions. Built in 1333, this covered wooden pedestrian bridge, caught fire in 1993, and although it has since been restored, most of its 122 paintings on triangular panels hanging from its ceiling perished in the flames.
But further upstream stands the 1407 Mill Bridge, that received its name from the chaffs of wheat that were thrown into the river at this point, with the full set of paintings — known as The Dance of Death — still present under its arched roof. These macabre scenes trace death's victorious and voracious claim on human life. Unknown to pity, death reaps harvest even during a wedding. The poor and the wealthy fall victim, and the only hopeful painting shows a rosy-cheeked toddler with an apple in his hand. Death is hesitantly stretching its hand towards the boy but the decision, obviously, is not yet made.
Classical music fans pay inevitable pilgrimage to Villa Tribschen, once the home of Richard Wagner, where the composer spent some of the happiest years of his life and composed the "Siegfried Idyll," and St. Mateus Church, where Wagner married Cosima and baptized their son Siegfried. The church is almost always closed, and the best way to arrange a visit is to make a private inquiry. Among other curia, the church conceals a remarkable painting depicting Cosima's father, the composer Ference Liszt, and the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche dining with the Wagners.
Posters and brochures advertising Pilatus mountain trips tempt one to head for the mountains for a day. Begin with a 90-minute boat trip to Alpnachstad and continue with a journey on the world's steepest cogwheel railway, on some places angled at 49 degrees, to the top of Dragon Mountain, which, at 7,000 feet boasts an unbeatable all-round Apline view and is surrounded by numerous legends. To descend, use the panoramic gondolas to Kriens, and then take a ten-minute bus ride back to the center of Lucerne.
Pilatus used to be a strictly forbidden place to visit. As one medieval legend has it, the corpse of procurator Pontius Pilate was thrown into Lake Lucerne by the mountain.
Amor medicabi lis nullis herbis (there is no cure for love) reads a note at a medieval herbalist's former house in central Lucerne. In 1530, the owner was among the first pharmacists to receive official permission to pick herbs on Pilatus.
One more recently painted, somewhat hippyish brightly-colored facade makes a reference to the famous Lucerne carnival that happens each year in February and revolves around the 500-year-old character Brother Fritschi. Carnival masks are still made by hand in the neighboring town of Kriens.
One of the central images on that facade is a jolly lady who is reminiscent of the Russian folk character "Baba Yaga." With a broom in her hands, this hook-nosed figure swirls in a fiery dance, her heels high up in the air. This is a take on the ordinary Medieval Lucerne laundress.
Many centuries ago, job-seeking women from the nearest villages came to Lucerne to look for laundry work with few alternatives available. To demonstrate proof of their qualifications, the most enthusiastic candidates lifted their skirts to expose snow-white laced underskirts and pantaloons.
The reason why Lucerne bakers chose to decorate their premises on Kornmarkt platz — now home to popular restaurant Zunfthaus zu Pfirsten —with grapevine leaves, rather than pastries, remains obscure. Yet with all their respect for Bacchus, they left future generations a hint: a shiny pretzel-shaped signboard above the entrance dispels all doubts.
At Hirschenplatz, a fresco version of Goethe looks at a sophisticated sign — a golden deer in a falcon's beak — across the square from the Goldener Adler hotel his portrait decorates, with fascination. In 1779, Goethe stayed at the Goldener Adler, and one of his verses on that visit was inspired by the ornate sign.

TITLE: Noisy neighbors
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Promoter Tusovka invites Finnish rock acts and DJs in the spirit of cross-border musical co-operation.Short distances notwithstanding, Finnish rock music went virtually unheard in St. Petersburg even as recently as 10 years ago. Russian rock music was also a mystery to Finland. This situation has been slowly improved by such organizations as Helsinki-based promoter Tusovka.Called after a Russian slang word meaning, "scene," but also a "noisy gathering," among other things, Tusovka has been promoting Russian bands in Finland and vice versa for eight years. Its main event is the annual three-day Tusovkarock festival in Helsinki.
This week, Tusovka is coming to St. Petersburg with Finnish bands Kastor and Puppa J. and Tasottavat, which will perform at Red Club on Saturday. The local scene will be represented in concert by the local ska-punk band Spitfire, whose members also perform with the St. Petersburg Ska-Jazz Review and arguably the city's biggest band, Leningrad.
Coming on the strength of its debut album, "Morobless," the 10-member Puppa J. and Tasottavat is into dancehall, reggae and hip-hop, while Kastor concentrates on synth-fueled indie pop.
The event was originally planned to be an all-nighter, but Finnish DJs pencilled in for the event reportedly turned out to be "not house enough" for Red Club, notorious for kicking the public out of the place as soon as concerts are finished to make space for a late-night disco crowd. Eventually, the all-night party had to be moved to Mod, the newly-opened extension of the indie bar Novus.
DJs to perform are Keylo, who specializes in different styles of "soulful rhythm music," and Kasio who also came to St. Petersburg as the keyboard player of the electro-funk/hip-hop/dub band Giant Robot in 2004.
Kasio, whose real name is Kim Rantala, is also a co-founder of Club Bundolo, the DJ project responsible for many indie parties in Helsinki. He performs a mix of soul, disco, jazz and fusion.Tusovka mini-festival with Kastor and Puppa J., Tasottavat and Spitfire at Red Club at 8 p.m. on Saturday. The afterparty with DJs Kasio and Keylo at Mod at midnight on Saturday. www.tusovka.fi

TITLE: Chernov's choice
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
TEXT: The Kaiser Chiefs played in Moscow back when the now-huge band had released only its first single and was obscure even in the U.K. New York-based Scissor Sisters, which recently topped the charts in the U.K. and added a third concert to a couple of sold-out Wembley dates, played in Moscow just after it had released its infectious recording debut. The Fall, seen by many as the U.K.'s all-time best band, has played in Moscow twice.None of these relevant bands have ever performed in St. Petersburg, where music promoters seem to be focused on throwaway lounge electronic acts, danceable and the drink-happy Slavic sound of such bands as Goran Bregovic and His Wedding and Funeral Band or, of all things, a gastronomic festival.
Now, as Moscow's B2 club announced this week, comes Babyshambles. The notorious British band will perform its only Russian concert at that venue in the capital.
Once again, no local promoter seems to have expressed any interest — believing either that the band is a risky commerical proposition or that the local public is just too ignorant.
According to its Moscow promoter, Caviar Lounge, the ex-Libertine Pete Doherty's band, which had a massive success with the song "Fuck Forever" earlier this year, will perform as part of B2's fifth anniversary celebrations on Nov. 26. St. Petersburg will continue to be looked down upon as a musical province.
Locally, a bar called Mod, which was launched last week as an extension of the popular student bar Novus, got off to a shaky start; on the opening night the background music was too pop, the live sound was too poor, and the place was a little uncomfortable. On Saturday, Mod will host an after party for the Tusovka mini-festival that will bring two Finnish bands and two Finnish DJs to Red Club earlier that night. See article, this page.
Tusovka's Russian band will be Spitfire, whose members perform as the St. Petersburg Ska-Jazz Review at Red Club on Friday. Jennifer Davis, the singer for the band, said this week that the band, whose 2005 debut album, "Too Good to Be True," was released in its previously-unavailable full version on The Toasters' Megalith label and is now available in the rest of the world, is again in full swing, having written five new songs with her vocals.
"The ska-jazz name is a little deceiving as I think they have a lot more upbeat energy and tempos than most 'ska-jazz' acts," a review on CDBaby.com reads.
"They remind me of the Scofflaws, if they moved to Russia and got a female vocalist to front the band.
"She has a very refreshing style, sounding like a flopper from the 40s. [...] With a good mix of instrumentals and vocals, this release doesn't let ears go to sleep and keeps the feet moving on the dance floor till the party's over!"

TITLE: Weird and wonderful
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A host of international, experimental, avant-garde and simply weird artists will land in St. Petersburg to take part in the APosition Music Forum this weekend, but there will be also a room for a political statement.In its second year, the music event is promoted by APosition, also known as APositsia, a local association founded by musician Alexei Plyusnin that deals with all kinds of experimental and improvised music.
Originally held at the staid state-owned Cappella to stress the academic value of the artists taking part — and to mark its difference from SKIF, the city's biggest and notoriously chaotic left-field music festival held in the spring — the event has now moved to the Students' Theater on Mokhovaya Ulitsa.
This year, the most-talked-about participant is Bill Drummond, the former pop star and the co-founder of British pop act KLF, who later grew infamous for provocative public actions, including burning a million pounds in 1994.
Drummond is bringing his current performance art project, The17, to the city. It features 17 locally-selected participants who act as both performers and (the only) audience of the event.
This year's Forum also features trumpet player Markus Stockhausen, the son and collaborator of German avant-garde composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, and modern electronic music pioneer J.G.Thirlwell, better known as Foetus, who has worked with a wide range of acts, from Lydia Lunch to Marc Almond.
Dedicated to artistic freedom, the event will also make a statement which is as much political as it is artistic.
Nikolai Galen, which is the stage name of Istanbul-based British music promoter Nick Hobbs, will perform a song called "Timur Kacharava" that he wrote in response to the murder of the 20-year old anti-fascist activist, student and musician of that name who was stabbed to death by a gang of neo-Nazis in the center of St. Petersburg last November.
"I loathe racism, I loathe nationalism, especially ultra-nationalism, and I loathe the wanton violence that can kill a bright, life-loving 20-year-old for no other reason than he dared to be different," wrote Hobbs in an email this week.
"Timur was a musician and perhaps — I never met Timur — something a bit like I was when I was 20 — so of course I identify with him, and I have enormous respect for the courage he showed to be the way he was in a town — St. Petersburg — where such behavior is much more dangerous than it ever was in any British city," wrote Hobbs who also criticized the Russian authorities for disguising political murders as manifestations of "hooliganism."
"It's people like Timur who speak out and it's people like Timur who deserve our strongest support — they are our conscience, if we forget them we kill something in ourselves."www.aposition.org

TITLE: Art and the market
AUTHOR: By Andrei Vorobei
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Earlier this month the State Hermitage Museum hosted an important international symposium on the role of the museum in the contemporary art market.Raising curatorial issues about modern art collections with the directors of some of the world's most important classical museums, including Hermitage director Mikhail Piotrovsky, "The Museum and the Art Market" event also invited experts from the commercial art market including dealers, auctioneers and critics.
Papers were presented about galleries operating in the "primary" modern art market and how these have developed in Eastern Europe and Asia since 1990s, as well as in New York — still the capital of the modern art world.
Aidan Salakhova, director of Moscow's Aidan Gallery, recounted the history of the first gallery in Moscow, which she ran. According to Salakhova, there are about 200-300 serious art collectors in Russia and the scene is growing.
Vladimir Ovcharenko, director of the Moscow Regina Gallery, another prominent figure on the art scene, said that Russian galleries have started to offer buyers work by foreign artists as its price has become more attractive against the background of the growing price of a number of Russian artists abroad. However, because of an unfavorable tax regime much of the art market remains shady in Russia, he said.
Jeffrey Deitch, director of the Deitch Projects in New York, spoke about the changes in the structure of gallery spaces, which are becoming "art environments" rather than just walls for hanging objects on. A number of papers were dedicated to the "secondary" art market of galleries and auction houses. Amy Capellazzo and Katharine Burton — respectively the representatives in New York and London of the auctioneer Christie's — spoke about how auction prices affect artistic reputations.
"The experience of looking at art is something that happens very slowly," Capellazzo said. "The experience of coming to the painting, spending time with it, understanding it, is a very slow experience by its very nature, as is the experience of making a work of art. That's kind of old-fashioned but still it's the idea that generates prices. The experience of the market is about speed."
"Society makes art not artists," Burton said. It was suggested that the role of the market and auctions must not be overstated. But without the market there is no liquidity and transparency in art, according to Capellazzo's argument.
The unavoidable commercialization and unification of the world of art is often disturbing to professionals, particularly among theorists and curators.
Jeffrey Hoffeld, a New York-based curator and art dealer said: "There is a risk in not asserting strongly enough the intelligence, education and know how of knowledgeable curators."
Robert Storr, commissioner of the 2007 Venice Biennale and dean of the Yale School of Art, commented that "some of the most interesting catalogs to read these days are actually auction catalogs since now a great deal of money is spent on the high quality reproductions and on research into works of art."
Still according to him, it is a pity that auction houses try to say that something is the best version of the thing they have, "whereas actually the best work of its time and the best of that artist is another story entirely."
As an example, Storr mentioned "The Boy with the Pipe," which was recently sold for $100 million and broke the record for the price of a painting by Pablo Picasso.
"It's in fact, to my eye anyway, a rather sentimental, beautifully painted but intellectually not very interesting picture. It certainly doesn't change the language of art. It certainly doesn't change the way we see the world," Storr said."It is not a picture that makes Picasso Picasso... in that sense the valuation of the market may have nothing to do with valuation of the art history."
"The truth of the matter is that most of all money likes to talk about itself," while "art is able to talk about the world, how it is perceived, how the world is made by visual language, how forms are culturally acquired and transformed. Art talks about as many things as an artist can possibly think of."
"The Museum and the Art Market", International Symposium on Contemporary Art took place at The Hermitage Theater on Sept 14-15.Links: www.hermitagemuseum.org

TITLE: Museums of modern art
AUTHOR: By Andrei Vorobei
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Despite numerous complaints by city residents, the Sixth "Contemporary Art in the Traditional Museum" Festival opened without a hitch last weekend.To be fair, the complaints were part of the opening event, in the form of one of the works of art — a performance by the "Complaints Choir" of St. Petersburg.
The idea of Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen, the choir's song (written by Russian composers Pyotr Pospelov and Alexander Manotskov) was composed of grumbles submitted by citizens and performed by amateur singers.
"Contemporary Art in Traditional Museum," the Proarte Institute's the most recognisable and longstanding event, is based on the simple idea of putting contemporary art exhibits in some of St. Petersburg's most obscure and out-of-the-way museums.
This year the festival features eight projects, some of Dutch and Finnish origin, in seven venues.
In one of the imposing walls of the Peter and Paul Fortress there is the gloomy and dank tunnel, known as the Poterna, which is the venue for two projects, one Dutch and one Russian, under the title "Historical Sensation."
One of them is Kerim Ragimov's photo-based painting series of metro station buildings. The works are taken from the grandiose "Metro Project," which included 54 pictures (the number of stations on St. Petersburg's network), dating from 1993-2002. The show employs a lot of fascinating tricks and visual speculations regarding the social and cultural character of the stations.
For instance, Ulitsa Dibenko station is produced in "obratnaya perspektiva" (reverse perspective), a fundamental method in Russian icon-painting tradition, which turns the whole story of the underground entrance into a Biblical drama narrative with gates, the netherworld, and so on. Other paintings recruit witty citations, like the U.S. painter Edward Hopper's "Nighthawks" in the image of Frunzenskaya station, or the use of visuals familiar to computer games. Dutch artist Irene Janze's quite obscure urban maps, displayed on the opposite side to Ragimov's work, lose out in originality.
But happy Dutch art is to be found at the Museum of Printing — premises famous for publishing the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda from March to July 1917 between the February and October Revolutions. The light and spacious printing house is now occupied by two laughable cartoon freaks — Fokke & Sukke, the renowned Dutch duck and canary from comic strips that feature in the Dutch quality daily newspaper NRC Handelsblad.
There are two confusions related to these creatures created by John Reid, Bastiaan Geleijnse and Jean-Marc van Tol. One of them deals with their names.
"From the moment Fokke & Sukke were born, in 1993, their names have caused a multitude of giggles among our English-speaking friends, most of whom won't believe that the resemblance with certain English verbs is simply a coincidence," the artists explained.
Fokke and Sukke are in fact common Dutch male and female names respectively but they acquired the politically reliable international nicknames Duck & Birdie.
The second confusion relates to Duck & Birdie's little tails.
"In the frontal shots, the tips of these tails appear between the legs of our heroes. Somehow, people mistake them for penises. Birds with penises, right! How the human mind works..." the artists wondered.
All these peculiarities, along with dozens of obscene, silly and intelligent jests and comments on politics, society and culture, translated from Dutch into Russian, can be viewed and read on the white boxes hung in mid-air next to elegant printing presses and Russian political and social caricatures from the turn of 19th century in the museum's collection.
Falling a little bit outside of the festival's format, the project "Ballet Royal: Arithmetic of the Ideal" is, apparently, the most anticipated production of the event.
This photography exhibition is the scholarly and refined product of a collaboration between photographer Yevgeny Mokhorev, a couple of dancers from the Mariinsky Theater ballet troupe and two curators, Pavel Gershenson, assistant to the head of the Mariinsky Theater Ballet Company, and Arkady Ippolitov, a senior researcher at the State Hermitage Museum, among others.
The project evolved from a commission Mokhorev received from the theater to photograph its dancers for a series of posters advertising the Mariinsky Ballet Festival which took place this spring.
The brilliant posters of the Mariinsky's male soloists caused a scandal because of their graphic depiction of the dancers' bodies, but the reaction prompted its creators to go further than the PR campaign and produce a self-dependent artistic statement.
The whole project revolves around the proposition that in ballet history everything rests upon the five elemental positions of the feet.
Mokhorev, like in the famous 16th-20th century dance treatises and manuals with graphic tables, masterly captured these major male dance figures as well as all the possible related modifications, suggesting, according to the curators, an updated manual of the same kind.
By displaying the exposition at the Museum of Theatrical and Musical Arts, the curators resourcefully employ some rarities from the Theater Library, such as Pierre Rameau's dance manual "Le MaΤtre Θ danser" (Paris, 1725), the engraved tables in the manuals by Rameau, Feuillet, Arbeau, Blasis, and so on.The Sixth "Contemporary Art in Traditional Museum" Festival runs through October 22.

"Ballet Royal: Arithmetic of the Ideal" runs through October 14.

www.proarte.ru
www.ragimov.ru
www.foksuk.nl (in Dutch only)
www.duckbirdie.com (English version)

TITLE: Inzamam Cleared Of Cheating
AUTHOR: By Sam Sheringham
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: Pakistan cricket captain Inzamam- ul-Haq was Thursday cleared of cheating during a match against England. The 36-year-old still received a four-match ban for leading a protest against allegations that plunged the sport into crisis.Inzamam was found guilty of bringing the game into disrepute after his team staged a sit-in protest against the umpires' decision to penalize it for illegally altering the surface of the ball during last month's final Test at The Oval, southeast London.
ICC match referee Ranjan Madugalle, who adjudicated the two-day hearing at The Oval, said he took into account an apology from Inzamam in issuing the minimum ban of four one-day internationals, instead of the maximum ban of eight one-dayers and four Tests.
Madugalle found no evidence that any member of the Pakistan cricket team had cheated by tampering with the ball. The ruling may cast doubt over the future of umpire Darrell Hair, who made the accusation during the afternoon of the fourth day and later offered to ease tension by quitting in return for a payoff.

TITLE: Attacks Up on Afghan Border
AUTHOR: By Robert Birsel
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: KABUL — Militant attacks in eastern Afghanistan, near the border with Pakistan, have tripled in some areas, the U.S. military said on Thursday, despite a peace agreement on the Pakistani side meant to end the violence.A Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan has spawned the worst violence since U.S.-led forces toppled the hardliners in 2001.
It has also soured relations between Kabul and Islamabad, crucial allies in the U.S.-led war on terrorism that are both battling Islamist militants.
President Bush urged the Afghan and Pakistani leaders on Wednesday to improve cooperation in fighting terrorism as he mediated talks between them in Washington.
Afghanistan is angry about the support a resurgent Taliban can get in Pakistan and is suspicious of a peace agreement struck in Pakistan this month.
The pact is meant to end violence by pro-Taliban militants in Pakistan's North Waziristan border region. It is also meant to choke off cross-border attacks into Afghanistan.
But the number of attacks on the Afghan side of the mountainous border, in the provinces of Paktika and Khost, had risen since the pact was signed, the U.S. military said.
"There has been an increase in activity, certainly along the border region, especially in the southeast areas across from North Waziristan," a U.S. military spokesman, Colonel John Paradis, told a news conference.
Referring to accounts from soldiers on the ground, Paradis said: "They have seen, in some cases two-fold, in some cases three-fold increases in the number of attacks."
The greater number of attacks was partly a result of more extensive operations by U.S.-led coalition and Afghan forces, he said. He did not say if the U.S. military thought the attacks were being carried out by infiltrators from Pakistan.Many al Qaeda and Taliban militants fled to semi-autonomous ethnic Pashtun lands on the Pakistani side of the border after U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban. Musharraf has been trying to clear them out.Fighters have been drawn to the area since the 1980s, when the United States and Pakistan encouraged them to battle Soviet invaders in Afghanistan.
Bush and Afghan President Hamid Karzai have said they do not want to prejudge the North Waziristan pact, struck after many months of fighting between militants and the Pakistan army.
Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is believed to be hiding along the remote, rugged border. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and Karzai have each said bin Laden was in the other's country.
Pakistan used to support the Taliban, who emerged from Pakistani religious schools in the 1990s. The Taliban still enjoy the support of Pakistani religious parties in charge in some border areas.
Pakistan is worried about the influence of arch-rival India in Afghanistan.
NATO members with troops in Afghanistan are watching the row.
NATO troops have met fierce Taliban opposition since the alliance took over in the south in July. NATO will soon take over responsibility for the east when U.S. coalition troops there come under its command.

TITLE: Opera Head Refusing The Chop
AUTHOR: By Catherine Hickley and Shirley Apthorp
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: BERLIN —Kirsten Harms, the director of Berlin's Deutsche Oper, is sticking to her guns.In an interview with Stern TV last night, she refused to reinstate a production of Mozart's "Idomeneo'' unless Berlin security authorities "change their assessment of the situation.''
Harms, a slim, 50-year-old blonde, canceled four November performances of the opera after officials warned her it risked offending Muslims. The production, directed by Hans Neuenfels, ends with a blood-spattered King Idomeneo placing the four severed heads of Poseidon, Jesus, Buddha and Mohammed on chairs.
Chancellor Angela Merkel cautioned artists against self- censorship. Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble called Harms's decision "crazy'' and urged her to reverse it.
"Kirsten Harms has been given a very nasty test, and I'm afraid I think she's failed it,'' David Pountney, who directed Ruggero Leoncavallo's 1892 opera "I Pagliacci'' at the Deutsche Oper last season, said by phone from the Ruhrtriennale festival.
"It sets an appalling precedent. An opera house is an amphitheater in which the battle of ideas should be taking place. Every belief is a free subject for questioning, criticism.''

TITLE: Majority of Agents Corrupt
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: LONDON — Colin Gordon, the agent of England coach Steve McClaren, said the majority of his profession is corrupt, newspapers including the Sun and the Independent reported.Gordon, who also represents Arsenal striker Theo Walcott, said the public was right to consider agents as the "scum of the earth'' and added that English ones are worse than their European counterparts.
"We pretend we are holier than thou but I've spoken to people abroad and the English game is considered the dirty man of Europe,'' Gordon said.
Agents can make as much as 2.5 million pounds ($4.7 million) from a single transfer, said Gordon, who runs Midlands- based agency Key Sports.
Gordon's comments came eight days after a BBC television program showed three agents saying Bolton boss Sam Allardyce took kickbacks to ease the movement of players to and from his club.

TITLE: Beijing To Allow Roaming
AUTHOR: By Grant Clark
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: Beijing Olympics organizers said journalists attending the 2008 games will be allowed to travel freely in China, reaffirming a pledge to ease restrictions on foreign reporters during the event."With a visa, you can go everywhere you want and travel inside China,'' Sun Weijia, the Beijing Organizing Committee's deputy director of communications, told reporters in Beijing today. "We have no restrictions on travel for accredited journalists.''
China has tightened controls on foreign and domestic media in recent months, jailing journalists for two overseas newspapers and announcing rules that give the state-run Xinhua News Agency the power to censor foreign news agencies. Premier Wen Jiabao said on Sept. 13 that the rules had been misunderstood and the government will ensure the freedom and rights of overseas media.
"China is a country of credibility and the Chinese government is a responsible government,'' Liu Qi, president of the organizing committee, or Bocog, said at a media briefing. "The government will take it seriously to respect its commitments made in the bid process.''

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: EU-Iran ProgressnBERLIN (Reuters) — Europe failed to reach a deal with Iran on halting nuclear enrichment during talks in Berlin on Thursday, but progress was made and further discussions will take place, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said.
"We have been progressing," Solana told reporters after discussions with Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani. "We still have some issues that have not been closed," he said. Solana said he hoped to renew contact with the Iranians in the middle of next week.
The United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China have offered Tehran economic and political incentives if it suspends uranium enrichment, which the West believes is part of a nuclear weapons program. Tehran says its nuclear enrichment activities are aimed at generating electricity and has so far refused to halt them.Hostage DramanCOLORADO (AP) — A 16-year-old girl died Thursday after a gunman shot her and then killed himself as commandos stormed a Colorado high school where he'd taken six students hostage. Police said the unidentified gunman opened fire as officers stormed a second-floor classroom where he'd been holed up with two schoolgirls.
He shot one of the girls, who later died, before turning the gun on himself at the Platte Canyon High School in Bailey, 56km south of Denver. The second student was not hurt. Earlier, the gunman released four other girls he had taken hostage and used as human shields.

TITLE: Chargers' Kiel Arrested For Trafficking of Drugs
AUTHOR: By Mason Levinson
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: SAN DIEGO — Terrence Kiel, a starting safety for the San Diego Chargers, was arrested yesterday for trafficking prescription drugs by U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents.Kiel, 25, was arrested at the team's practice facility and charged with two counts of transporting Codeine-based cough syrup and three counts of possession with intent to sell the controlled substance, the agency said in a statement.
Kiel admitted to shipping to Texas two packages containing the substance, according to the release. He was released on $150,000 bond, said DEA spokesman Dan Simmons, and will be arraigned in District Court on Oct. 3.
"How unfortunate, once again, that a professional athlete makes a choice which detracts from his talent and ability, drawing attention instead to poor decision making,'' DEA Special Agent in Charge John Fernandes said in a statement. "Actions like those of Mr. Kiel simply add fuel to the already raging fire of prescription drug abuse in our country.''
"Due to the personal nature of the ongoing legal investigation, the Chargers are withholding further comment until the matter is resolved legally,'' the team said in a statement.
The DEA in Texas said there has been widespread abuse of Codeine-based cough syrup. When mixed with soft drinks, a pint bottle, known as "lean,'' can cost between $200 and $325 on the street, the DEA said in its release.
Kiel, a fourth-year veteran out of Texas A&M and a native of Lufkin, Texas, was the Chargers' fourth-leading tackler last season despite missing four games with an ankle injury. It's the second time this month a Chargers' player has been involved in an off-field incident. On Sept. 3, linebacker Steve Foley was shot three times by an off-duty police officer who suspected him of driving under the influence of alcohol.

TITLE: Blatter Against 'Tragic' Finale
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: LONDON — FIFA President Sepp Blatter said he doesn't want any more World Cup finals to be decided on penalty kicks, the Sun said. Blatter suggested that the final could be replayed in the event of a draw or that the number of players on each team could gradually be reduced until a goal is scored.Italy defeated France on penalties after the final in Berlin had finished 1-1 after extra-time in July. It was the second time the trophy has been decided in a shootout.
"When it comes to the World Cup final it is passion, and when it goes to extra time it is a drama,'' Blatter was quoted as saying. "But when it comes to penalties it is a tragedy.'' FIFA is looking into making changes in time for the 2010 tournament in South Africa.

TITLE: Drogba Hat-Trick Keeps Chelsea On Top
AUTHOR: By Trevor Huggins
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Holders Barcelona left it late to snatch a 1-1 Champions League draw at Werder Bremen while a Didier Drogba hat-trick guided Group A rivals Chelsea to a convincing 3-1 win over Levski Sofia on Wednesday.The place to be for excitement, though, was Anfield where Liverpool led Galatasaray 3-0 early in the second half before squeezing home 3-2 in a heart-stopping finale.
Inter Milan had two men sent off as they slumped to their second consecutive defeat with a 2-0 loss to Bayern Munich at San Siro, Serie A rivals AS Roma went down 2-1 at Valencia and PSV Eindhoven came away with a 1-0 win at Girondins Bordeaux.
The first Champions League match on an artificial pitch finished with Spartak Moscow drawing 1-1 at home to Sporting Lisbon while Shakhtar Donetsk drew 2-2 with Olympiakos Piraeus.
It was not a happy night for Barca, who trailed to a 56th minute own goal by captain Carles Puyol and then lost Cameroon striker Samuel Eto'o to a knee injury in a game where Werder had the upper hand.
Argentina teenager Lionel Messi spared the European champions' blushes a minute from time, working a one-two with Deco before threading the ball past goalkeeper Tim Wiese.
Barcelona coach Frank Rijkaard said: "We fought hard and right up to the end and managed to come away with a good result...it was deserved."
Drogba's hat-trick put Chelsea firmly on course for the knockout rounds, leaving them on six points — two more than Barca and five clear of luckless Werder.
The Ivory Coast striker volleyed home a loose ball in the 39th minute, squeezed a shot beneath keeper Georgi Petkov after the break and turned in the third off a shot by Frank Lampard.A late Levski rally brought a consolation goal for Mariyan Ognyanov but Chelsea coach Jose Mourinho was satisfied. "It was cool, calm and composed although we are still not playing very, very well," he said.Liverpool and PSV have four points after the second round of games in Group C, although their wins on Wednesday could not have been more different.
Two goals by lanky England striker Peter Crouch and a Luis Garcia header gave Liverpool a seemingly unassailable lead with just over half an hour to play — only for substitute Umit Karan to score twice in six minutes with a couple of headers. Liverpool, Champions League winners in 2005, could even have been held to a draw as the rampant Turkish side poured forward.
A single goal was enough for PSV, scored by Finn Mika Vaeyrynen, though they had to play the last five minutes with 10 men after a red card for defender Michael Lamey.
Things are clearly not working out for Serie A leaders Inter, who had Sweden striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Italy defender Fabio Grosso sent off in captain Javier Zanetti's 500th appearance for the club.
Late strikes by Claudio Pizarro and Lukas Podolski secured the points for the Bundesliga champions in Group B, which Bayern lead with six points — two more than Sporting.
First half goals from Miguel Angel Angulo and David Villa, either side of a Francesco Totti penalty, gave Valencia their second successive victory and top slot in Group D.

TITLE: Pujols Blast Lifts Cardinals
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: NEW YORK — Albert Pujols smacked an eighth inning three-run homer as the faltering St. Louis Cardinals snapped a seven-game losing skid with a 4-2 win over the San Diego Padres on Wednesday.The Cards maintained their slim lead atop the NL Central as the Houston Astros extended their victory streak to eight games with a gritty 15-inning 7-6 comeback win over the Pittsburgh Pirates.
The Astros sit just 1 12 games back with four to play.
Despite the loss the Padres continue to lead the NL West by a game over the Los Angeles Dodgers, who were 6-4 winners over the Colorado Rockies.
The Philadelphia Phillies also remained in the post-season chase, taming the Washington Nationals 8-7 in 14 innings to sit one game back of the Dodgers in the NL wild card race.
Pujols' game-winning blast soothed frayed nerves among St. Louis supporters.
Leading the division by seven games with 13 to play, Cardinals fans had been looking forward to the playoffs until a late collapse left the St Louis post-season hopes hanging by the slimmest of threads.
Trailing 2-1 with two out in the eighth, the NL MVP came to the Cardinals rescue, taking a 1-0 offering from Cla Meredith and parking it in the left field bleachers for his 47th homer of the season.
"That's my job," Pujols told MLB.com. "That's why I get paid. I get paid to drive runs in. I can't steal 100 bases or 60 bases.
"My job is to drive some runs in and help my team out to win any way that I can."
Pujols's blast gave Tyler Johnson (1-4) his first career.Johnson came on in the eighth to record the final out of the inning while Adam Wainwright tossed a scoreless ninth to nail down a big win and his ninth save of the season.Scott Rolen drove in the other St. Louis run.
"It seems like we've had a lot of times this year when the bounces aren't going our way," Wainwright said. "Pitches are thrown in the right spots, but broken-bat hits are beating us.
"Eventually, the odds, it seems like, have got to turn."
In Pittsburgh, Brad Ausmus's 15th-inning sacrifice fly scored Craig Biggio with the game-winning run as the Astros continued to stalk the Cardinals.
Trailing 6-1 after five innings, the Astros launched their comeback with a four-run burst in the sixth, keyed by a two-run homer from Lance Berkman to trim the deficit to 6-5.
Down to their final out, Luke Scott stroked single to centre, scoring Willy Taveras to tie the contest and force extra innings.

TITLE: From Waste Dump to European Tour
AUTHOR: By Gennady Fyodorov
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Ivan Ivanovich Sergeyev, known as the father of Russian golf, remembers a time when he was unable to even talk about his sport."Forget about playing it, it was forbidden even to mention such a word," Sergeyev told Reuters in an interview.
"Like tennis, it was considered a bourgeois game, not worthy of the clean-living image of a Soviet citizen."
Now Moscow is a stop on the European Tour and Sergeyev, 65, is chairman of the Moscow Golf and Country Club (MGCC), which has Russia's best-known golf course.
Things began to change in the mid-1970s when Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev asked U.S. businessman Armand Hammer what was needed to lure American capital into the Communist country.
"'You have to buy Rolls Royces and build golf courses', was Hammer's response," recalled Sergeyev, who as a former deputy Foreign Minister knew most Soviet leaders from Brezhnev onwards.
"Hammer donated $150,000 and asked the famous American golf designer Robert Trent Jones Sr. to design a course here. Still, Hammer could not convince the Soviet leadership that golf was really needed here."
It took another decade and a half before the game was finally introduced to the Soviet masses."In June 1988 when Mikhail Gorbachev met Ronald Reagan in Moscow, we signed an agreement with Hammer to develop golf in our country," Sergeyev said. "Of course, times have changed. It was the 'perestroika' period in our country and we were able to follow new trends from the West."Later that year, Sergeyev visited the United States, where he was introduced to golf first-hand.
"We crossed the country from Minnesota to Miami and everywhere we went, we witnessed beautiful golf courses," he said. "We also understood what the game really meant to the Americans, from a business and social point of view."
Sven (Tumba) Johansson, former Swedish ice hockey great and an avid golfer, also tried to convince the Moscow authorities to build a course.
In 1988, the Swede met then Moscow Communist Party Chief Boris Yeltsin, who later became Russia's first President.
"Tumba persuaded Yeltsin to give a small plot of land in the south-western part of Moscow for his project," Sergeyev said. "Actually, it was a large garbage dump, no one was using it so Yeltsin easily gave it away."
Russia's first golf course was built in 1989.
"It only had nine holes but it was the start of something big," said Sergeyev, who quickly realised golf's money-making potential in the new Russia.
He started work on a project to build a second course in suburban Nakhabino, north of the capital.
"In 1986, we stopped receiving state subsidies so we had to make money ourselves and building a golf course looked like a perfect way to do it," he said. "We built the first nine holes in 1993, then the other nine the following year."Designed by Robert Trent Jones Jr. — the son of Trent Jones Sr. — the picturesque course, surrounded by centuries-old pine trees, has quickly established itself as one of the best in Europe.In 1993, the MGCC hosted the first Russian Open and after three years it became part of the European Challenge Tour. The event, which now pays out one million euros in prize money, has been part of the main European Tour since 2003.
"In just 10 years we grew from a small, strictly amateur event to a tournament worthy of being on the main Tour," Sergeyev said proudly. "For example, it took the Italian Open, one of the oldest and most prestigious tournaments in Europe, almost 50 years to make that journey. We did it in 10.
"We started with just a few club members, now we have more than 850. Three years ago we stopped accepting new members simply because we don't have enough space for all of them."
Sergeyev says golf, unlike tennis, is still not fully accepted as one of the big sports in Russia and must shed its image of being a pastime for the rich.

TITLE: Mirza Battles Past Hingis In Korea
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: SEOUL — India's Sania Mirza rallied past top seed Martina Hingis 4-6 6-0 6-4 in the second round of the Korea Open on Thursday, gaining quick revenge on the former number one for a defeat in Kolkata last week.After losing the first set in which both players struggled to hold serve, Mirza raised her level of play and was able to push the Swiss world number eight around the court with her powerful groundstrokes.
Easing through the second without dropping a game, the world number 59 broke her opponent in the ninth game of the deciding set and held on to deny Hingis a chance of a third title this season.
Hingis beat Mirza in the semi-finals on her way to a Kolkata Open victory on Sunday to go with an Italian Open success earlier this year.
The 25-year-old five-time grand slam winner retired in 2002 due to foot and ankle injuries, but made a full-time comeback in January.
Mirza moves on to a quarter-final against Indonesia's Angelique Widjaja, who advanced with a 6-4 6-3 victory over Virginia Ruano Pascual of Spain.