SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1211 (77), Tuesday, October 10, 2006
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TITLE: Putin Speaks Out On Politkovskaya Murder
AUTHOR: By Maria Danilova
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin broke his silence Monday about the brazen daylight murder of investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya, pledging the authorities would do everything to find the killers of the fierce Kremlin critic.In a phone conversation with U.S. President George W. Bush, Putin pledged that "all necessary efforts will be made for an objective investigation into the tragic death" of the journalist, the Kremlin said.
Putin's remarks were his first statement on the slaying, since Politkovskaya, a 48-year-old award-winning reporter who uncovered abuses against civilians in Chechnya, was gunned down in her apartment building Saturday in an apparent contract killing.
Her newspaper has offered a million-dollar reward for information that would help solve the crime, which provoked worldwide condemnation and shone the spotlight on Russia as one of the most dangerous countries for journalists.
Her colleagues said she had been working on a story about torture and abductions in the war-ravaged southern province — abuses she blamed on Moscow-backed Chechen Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov. "I dream of seeing him tried," she said in an interview several days before her death.
The semiweekly newspaper Novaya Gazeta, where Politkovskaya had worked, on Monday published a special edition, listing Politkovskaya's major publications and inquiring into the cause of her killing.
The paper also said in a statement that the killing was either revenge by Kadyrov or an attempt to discredit him.
Kadyrov expressed condolences over Politkovskaya's death, and denied any "Chechen trace" in the killing.
"It is hearsay and rumors, which don't show either politicians or the media in a good light," Kadyrov was quoted as saying by the Vremya Novostei daily.
Prosecutor-General Yury Chaika has taken personal charge of the investigation, but Politkovskaya's colleagues have expressed doubts the murder will ever be solved.
Russia is the third most deadly country for journalists, after Iraq and Algeria, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, which says Politkovskaya was at least the 43rd journalist killed for her work in Russia since 1993.
Novaya Gazeta announced a 25 million ruble ($929,700) reward for information on the slaying and pledged to conduct an independent probe.
Investigators had originally said the attacker was believed to have acted alone, but Kommersant reported Monday he possibly had an accomplice, a woman in her thirties, who helped him follow the victim from the grocery store.
Coroners possessed a composite sketch of the killer, who was wearing a cap, based on footage recorded by a security camera at Politkovskaya's apartment building and police were hunting for the suspects Monday.
U.S. President George W. Bush joined the international chorus of condemnation.
"Like many Russians, Americans were shocked and saddened by the brutal murder of Anna Politkovskaya, a fearless investigative journalist, highly respected in both Russia and the United States," Bush said Sunday.
"We urge the Russian Government to conduct a vigorous and thorough investigation to bring to justice those responsible for her murder."
Among others, the European Union and the Council of Europe rights watchdog have also expressed their condolences and called for a far-reaching probe.
In Germany, where Putin heads Tuesday for a summit with Chancellor Angela Merkel, Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Jaeger said the killers and those behind the slaying must be found and punished. "Beyond that ... it is the task of a government to ensure that a climate of fear in which press freedom cannot develop does not arise in a country," he said.
Politkovskaya's death was the most high-profile slaying of a journalist in Russia since the July 2004 assassination of Paul Klebnikov, the U.S.-born editor of the Russian edition of Forbes magazine.
Politkovskaya, whom Vremya Novostei described as a member of a disappearing breed of courageous investigative reporters, will be buried in Moscow on Tuesday.

TITLE: Crisis Over N.Korea Nuclear Test
AUTHOR: By Edith Lederer
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: UNITED NATIONS — The United States said Monday it will seek UN sanctions to curb North Korea's import and export of material for weapons of mass destruction, as well as its illicit financial activities. U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said Washington wants a resolution under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter that goes beyond the resolution adopted by the council in July after North Korea conducted seven missile tests.He said the U.S. wants to make it tougher for North Korea to produce or export nuclear, chemical or biological weapons and the means to deliver them, and to impose financial sanctions for what the U.S. contends is Pyongyang's counterfeiting and money laundering.
Members of the UN Security Council on Monday condemned North Korea over its claim of a nuclear test, and they demanded at an emergency meeting that the communist nation return to six-party talks on its weapons program, Japan's ambassador said.
The Security Council will now discuss "appropriate measures" to respond to the test, which was a threat to international peace and security, Ambassador Kenzo Oshima said.
North Korea was added to the agenda of an already scheduled council meeting that officially nominated South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon as the next secretary-general, and he said he would work to resolve the North Korean crisis.
If appointed to the top job, Ban said he would "contribute as much as I can to the resolution of all kinds of problems including the North Korean nuclear issue that may threaten international peace and security."
President Bush said North Korea's action deserves "an immediate response by the United Nations Security Council."
Japan and the United States are expected to press for tough sanctions, which might involve economic measures, breaking diplomatic ties and banning the import or export of military equipment or even a naval blockade.
The French and British ambassadors to the UN said the Security Council should pass a resolution on North Korea under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which includes the threat of sanctions and is militarily enforceable.
The diplomats said North Korea's nuclear test was a threat to international peace and security, and the council must follow up on the warning it made Friday urging North Korea not to go ahead with it.
"The council has warned North Korea last week, so the council has to be up to its responsibility," France's UN Ambassador Jean-Marc de La Sabliere said, adding that the "time has come" for a Chapter 7 resolution.
North Korea's UN ambassador said the UN Security Council should congratulate his country instead of passing "useless" resolutions or statements.
Ambassador Pak Gil Yon told reporters he was proud of the North Koreans who conducted the test and said it will contribute "to the maintenance and guarantee of peace and security in the peninsula and the region."
The timing of North Korea's test is certain to increase speculation that North Korea wanted to express its displeasure and opposition to Ban's selection as the Security Council's candidate to succeed Kofi Annan.
Ban has said in the past that one of his first acts would be to go to North Korea.
Under the UN Charter, the 15-member Security Council makes a recommendation for the next secretary-general to the 192-member General Assembly, which must give final approval.
Ban will be the only name on the ballot.
Ban, 62, topped four informal polls in the council, and in the last one he was the only candidate not to get a veto by one of its five permanent members. After that result, the other five candidates dropped out of the race.
In Monday's straw poll, Ban won 14 favorable votes and one expressing no opinion. Most importantly, he won the support of the council's five veto-wielding nations — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.
If Ban prevails, his selection will have been marked by unprecedented speed, consensus and calm. In years past, the choice of a UN chief, including Annan, has often meant rancorous negotiations, numerous ballots and handshake deals.
From the beginning of the search for a new UN chief, Security Council members have said they wanted Annan's successor chosen by the end of October so he or she would have a two-month transition before taking over the secretary-general's job on Jan. 1.
Ban would be the eighth secretary-general in the United Nations' 60-year history, overseeing an organization with some 92,000 peacekeepers around the world and a $5 billion annual budget. The world body's mandate, however, is much broader than peace and security issues and includes fighting hunger, helping refugees, slowing the spread of HIV/AIDS and promoting education, development and human rights.
By tradition, most countries agree that the next secretary-general should come from Asia because of a tradition that the post rotate among the regions of the world. The last Asian secretary-general was Burma's U Thant, who served from 1961-71.
U.S. Ambassador John Bolton lobbied unsuccessfully to drop the rotation system and choose the best qualified candidate. He and other council members lamented that there were only seven candidates — and that none had served as leader of their country.
The other candidates in the fourth straw poll were UN Undersecretary-General Shashi Tharoor of India, who came in second, Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga, former Thai Deputy Prime Minister Surakiart Sathirathai, Jordan's UN Ambassador Zeid al-Hussein and Afghan Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani. Sri Lanka's Jayantha Dhanapala, a former UN disarmament chief, withdrew after a poor showing in the third informal poll.
Nonetheless, Bolton said the United States has "a lot of respect" for Ban.
"We know him well from his service in Washington and here in New York, and think very highly of him professionally and personally," Bolton said last week. "One of the reasons that we're looking forward to his becoming secretary-general is he'll bring new eyes and new thoughts to a lot of different issues."
Ban has been South Korea's foreign minister for more than 2 1/2 years and served as national security adviser to two presidents — jobs that focused on relations with North Korea. He has served as a diplomat for nearly 40 years.
He has said he would focus primarily on being the world's top diplomat and leave the UN's day-to-day operations primarily to a deputy though he would maintain overall responsibility. He has said he wants to continue the reforms started under Annan to make the United Nations better able to deal with the challenges of the 21st century, to focus on development and the fight against poverty, and to promote peace in the Mideast and elsewhere.
Some diplomatic observers have expressed concern that Ban is not forceful enough and that the United Nations needs a strong chief.
Ban said sometimes he might look like a weak leader, but he has "inner strength" and is confident he will be able to demonstrate leadership while maintaining his "strong commitment of responsibility for the public good" and helping others.

TITLE: A Career Uncovering Corruption, Abuses
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Anna Politkovskaya, one of Russia's best-known journalists, was born in New York in 1958 into a family of Soviet diplomats.After graduating from the journalism department at Moscow State University in 1980, Politkovskaya began her career at Izvestia. She went on to write for an Aeroflot in-house publication and the tabloid Megapolis-Express.
In 1994, Politkovskaya joined Obshchaya Gazeta, then a leading liberal newspaper, and rose through the ranks to become deputy editor in 1999.
Politkovskaya then moved to Novaya Gazeta as a special correspondent covering the second war in Chechnya. It was there, in the North Caucasus, where Politkovskaya made her name with hard-nosed reporting about atrocities committed by federal troops against civilians, the plight of the region's refugees and the excesses of the Moscow-backed regime in Grozny.
The reporter's first book, "A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya," appeared in 2000, followed one year later by "The Dirty War." Her book "Putin's Russia: Life in a Failing Democracy" was published in 2004.
She received a number of international awards from such organizations as Amnesty International, Reporters Without Borders and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
Politkovskaya's relationship with the military and security services — the main subject of her investigative articles — was always tense.
She fled to Austria for several months in 2001 after receiving threats by e-mail from a veteran intelligence officer in Chechnya.
Politkovskaya wrote about an incident in February 2002, in which she was detained by military officers in Chechnya and intimidated and abused for several hours before being freed by local military prosecutors.
During the Dubrovka hostage crisis in October 2002, Politkovskaya volunteered to serve as a negotiator and met with the terrorists inside the theater.
On Sept. 1, 2004, Politkovskaya boarded a flight to North Ossetia after terrorists seized a school in Beslan. She was hospitalized upon arrival, unconscious and suffering from poisoning.
Politkovskaya is survived by her son, Ilya, 28, and daughter, Vera, 26. She was divorced from television journalist Alexander Politkovsky in 2000.
"Yes, I went beyond my journalistic role," she said in an interview two years ago. "By setting aside my role as journalist I learned so much that I would never have found out being just a plain journalist, who stands in the crowd along with everyone else."

TITLE: Police Seek Lists of Georgian Children in New Crackdown
AUTHOR: By Anastasiya Lebedev, David Nowak and Catherine Belton
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Moscow police are asking schools to turn over lists of children with Georgian-sounding last names, raising fears that a state campaign against Georgians is spinning out of control.With 132 illegal Georgian migrants being deported by plane, Russia's weeklong campaign had expanded by Sunday to envelope Georgians of all ages and walks of life, from purported thieves and mafia bosses to refugees, celebrities and schoolchildren.
Georgian Foreign Minister Gela Bezhuashvili condemned the continuing sweeps in Moscow and in other cities as "ethnic cleansing."
Several Moscow schools received police orders on Thursday and Friday for lists of suspect students, ostensibly to locate Georgians living here illegally.
Teachers at two Georgian schools in the capital told children Thursday to stay home Friday, a priest at a downtown Georgian church said. The priest said he learned of the warning through his son, who attends one of them, School No. 1331 near the Novoslobodskaya metro station.
City Hall distanced itself from the police initiative, saying it did not support it and that all schoolchildren were equal, regardless of ethnicity or religion. Schools that received the request did not turn over lists, said Alexander Gavrilov, a spokesman for Moscow's Department of Education.
Police spokesman Yevgeny Gildeyev downplayed the initiative, blaming it on several zealous police officers who had "incorrectly evaluated the situation in Moscow." He said the only schools that had received orders for lists were located near the two or three police stations where the officers worked.
Kommersant, citing a senior law enforcement source, reported Friday that the Interior Ministry had ordered all Moscow police stations to track down illegal Georgian migrants and advised them that going through schools would be the easiest way to find them.
Schools Nos. 223 and 1680, both of which offer classes in Georgian, said Friday that they had not received a request from the police.
Officials at Schools Nos. 658, 554, and 1847 — which Kommersant reported had received police orders — denied receiving orders and refused to give their names.
Police began raiding Georgian-owned businesses last week, cracking down first on casinos and then targeting Georgian-owned restaurants. Russia said the efforts were part of a drive against Georgian organized crime following last weekend's standoff with Georgia over Tbilisi's arrest of four Russian officers on spying charges. The officers were quickly released, but Russia pressed ahead with sanctions, severing all transportation and postal links.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or OSCE, and the U.S. State Department urged Moscow to reconsider the sanctions, but President Vladimir Putin on Friday laid all the blame on Georgia.
Putin said the OSCE should focus on "stimulating a cardinal correction in the course of Georgia's current leadership, which is aimed at inflaming tension."
Until late last week, Putin and other officials trod a careful line, supporting nationalist parties such as Rodina but refraining from making inflammatory statements about Russia's ethnic groups. On Thursday, however, Putin called for tough new migration laws that would protect the interests of "the native population."
"I did not believe my ears when I first heard this," said Vladimir Pribylovsky, an analyst who tracks Kremlin politics at the Panorama think tank. "There has been a lot of nationalism, but there has not been any ethnic nationalism until now. ... This is a very dangerous game."
Putin's use of the term "native population" gives a green light for the radicalization of nationalist groups, said Galina Kozhevnikova of Sova, a nongovernmental group that studies xenophobia.
Vyacheslav Volodin, a senior official with United Russia, also appeared to back a state campaign against non-Russians late last week, telling reporters that markets should be cleared of "half-criminal elements" and "illegal immigrants."
Police swept Moscow outdoor markets for illegal migrants, and authorities deported 132 illegal migrants from Moscow and the Moscow region on an Emergency Situations Ministry plane. The Georgian Embassy complained that some of the migrants had not been in court when their deportations were ordered, Interfax reported.
Federal Migration Service spokesman Denis Soldatikov said all due procedures for deportation had been observed.
In St. Petersburg, Federal Migration Service employees checked documents at Georgian restaurants and deported an intern and a visitor with expired Russian visas at one of them, Fontanka.ru reported.
Also, investigations surfaced involving several prominent Georgians.
The federal Audit Chamber said the Russian Art Academy, headed by Georgian-born sculptor Zurab Tsereteli, had spent 2.1 million rubles ($78,397) for unauthorized purposes. It said it discovered the problem during a scheduled audit.
Popular novelist Boris Akunin, an ethnic Georgian whose real name is Grigory Chkhartishvili, told Ekho Moskvy radio that tax police had been questioning him for the past two days about his income. He characterized the raids as "ethnic cleansing."
The Civic Assistance Committee, a nongovernmental organization aiding refugees and displaced persons, extended its hours Friday to accommodate an influx of Georgian refugees from Abkhazia with complaints about harassment.
Anti-organized crime police inspected the documents of people in the offices of the Moscow Georgian Community, a social and educational organization, on Wednesday and searched the offices Friday, said the group's vice president, Roin Konjaria. "I have no idea what they were looking for, but whatever it was, they didn't find it," he said.

TITLE: EUSeeks to Build Ties With Russia
AUTHOR: By Judy Dempsey
PUBLISHER: INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE
TEXT: BERLIN — The German Foreign Ministry is preparing a new policy toward the east that aims to tighten ties between Russia and Europe but does not address human rights, a theme dear to German Chancellor Angela Merkel.Foreign Ministry officials cited President Vladimir Putin as saying he had been informed of the policy and liked it.
Putin will visit Germany on Tuesday for a meeting of the Petersburg Circle, a group established five years ago to promote economic, cultural, social and youth links between Russia and Germany.
The policy is described in an internal paper prepared by the ministry. The subtext is clearly Europe's increasing dependence on Russia to meet its energy needs.
But Merkel won support from the German public last year by promising a more critical approach toward Russia, and her advisers say she prefers an approach to the east that takes into account the interests of Poland and the Baltic states.
"The view of the chancellery is that we have to take care of Poland, Ukraine and the immediate neighborhood," said Jorg Himmelreich, a regional expert in the Berlin office of the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
The Foreign Ministry paper advocates the adoption of this policy by the European Union during Germany's six-month presidency of the bloc, which begins Jan. 1.
The gap in the approaches is, at least in part, a reflection of the power-sharing arrangement created after inconclusive elections last September.
To create a governing coalition in the parliament, Merkel crafted a deal between her Christian Democratic Party and the rival Social Democratic Party in which they split the posts in the 16-member cabinet and she became chancellor.
The Foreign Ministry's paper, titled "The German EU Presidency: Russia, European Neighborhood Policy and Central Asia," states that "Russia will play a central role in the German EU presidency."
The ministry envisioned this policy would actively engage Russia and the former Soviet states to bring them closer to Europe.
The section on Russia highlights the energy ties with Europe that were strengthened by former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder, a Social Democrat, from 1998 to 2005.
Schroder developed a friendship with Putin. Upon losing to Merkel last year, Schroder was immediately appointed to head a German-Russian gas consortium dominated by Gazprom.
Some analysts call the Foreign Ministry's outlined policy shortsighted because it does not alter energy relations.
"Germany is becoming increasingly dependent on Russia for its energy," said professor Claudia Kempfert, an energy expert at the German Institute for Economic Research. "This dependence is dangerous, given how Putin is trying to push foreign investors out."
Other experts noted it was uncertain that the policy described in the Foreign Ministry paper would lead to better relations.

TITLE: Thousands of Chechens Attend Putin's Birthday Demo in Grozny
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: GROZNY — Several thousand youths clad in T-shirts emblazoned with portraits of President Vladimir Putin and waving Russian flags rallied Saturday in the Chechen capital to celebrate Putin's 54th birthday.The activists, mostly high school and college students, also held banners wishing Putin "health, happiness, and success in work" and chanted "Putin, congratulations!"
The tightly choreographed rally, organized by Chechnya's Moscow-backed authorities eager to demonstrate their loyalty to the Kremlin, included a student reading a poem, in which he asked Putin to remain in power after his second term expires in 2008.
Many students said they had been forced to attend the rally in Grozny. A Chechen girl had called a local radio station earlier this week, telling the host that she and fellow students were being forced by education officials to come to Grozny on Saturday, and asking the presenter whether he knew where the students were being taken.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Georgian Bases AxednMOSCOW (AP) — The State Duma ratified an agreement Friday on the withdrawal of the country's two remaining military bases in Georgia, in a vote that came amid a bitter dispute between the countries.
Duma deputies approved the base pullout 375-26 with 16 abstentions. The agreement must also be endorsed by the upper house, the Federation Council.
Russia, whose relations with Georgia have become increasingly fraught since pro-Western President Mikheil Saakashvili came to power in 2003 with the goal of NATO membership, agreed last year to close the bases in Akhalkalaki and Batumi by the end of 2008.Saakashvili WinsnTBILISI, Georgia (AP) — Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili claimed victory for his party in local and regional elections, but opposition leaders said the vote was riddled with fraud.
International monitors said the balloting was conducted "with general respect for fundamental freedoms."
The vote was seen as an important test of the pro-Western government's popularity at a time when the country faces a worsening confrontation with neighboring Russia.

TITLE: Medicine Fails to Reach Patients
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Russian cancer patients have gained extraordinary access to a break-through Western medicine that combats cancer by stopping the growth of blood vessels in the tumor, but critics are concerned that many months will pass before the news reaches potential recipients, especially those living in the country's more distant provinces.At an international conference on cancer treatment in St. Petersburg in late September, it was announced that about 1,000 Russian patients are receiving Avastin, a new innovative medicine designed to inhibit tumor angiogenesis, preventing tumors from getting oxygen and nutrients. The drug was approved for use just over a year ago.
Angiogenesis is a process that creates the new blood vessels required for tumors to develop and spread. "The therapy thus helps in turning cancer into a chronic rather than terminal condition," said Vera Gorbunova, head of the chemotheraphy department of the St. Petersburg Research Institute for Clinical Oncology. "Patients will be able to live with cancer for many years, undergoing a therapy course only when it recurs. This anti-angiogenic therapy is a sensation."
Initially designed for colorectal cancer — one of top four most common forms of cancer — the drug is now being successfully tried against other forms of cancer, including breast cancer, in Europe.
The cost of treatment amounts to $4,000 to $4,500 per month but if prescribed by a doctor, Russians can receive the medicine free.
Dmitry Borisov, executive director of the Russian oncology program "Equal Right To Live", said that with the arrival of Avastin Russia's patients have gained access to the latest break-through treatment almost at the same time as cancer-sufferers in the West. But he stressed that further work is needed to inform provincial doctors about the newest drugs and their availability.
"Our program is working on a system of regular missions of the country's top specialists in the regions to keep other doctors up to date with the latest developments, especially now that the government is funding a greater proportion of anti-cancer therapies," he said.
About 1,000 patients with colorectal cancer are receiving Avastin in Russia, while doctors estimate that between 17,000 and 25,000 cancer-sufferers are in need of it.
According to official statistics, Russia has 2.3 million cancer patients. More than 450,000 new cases are registered annually, and about 300,000 Russians die of cancer every year. The average age of cancer patients in Russia is 63.3 for men and 62.9 for women.
"The difference between conditions in Moscow's clinics and the hospitals in small towns in other regions is staggering and depressing," said Hans-Joachim Schmoll, a professor at the Martin Luther University in Wittenberg and head of the German Association for Medical Oncology. "The difference is felt on all levels, from equipment to training. I will be sure to raise that topic during my next meeting with members of the European Association of Oncologists."
It is widely accepted that in many Russian provinces, especially the less prosperous regions, the healthcare infrastructure dates back to the 19th century, with people living hundreds of kilometers from hospitals that are equipped with only basic facilities.
Cancer is widely seen in Russia as an untreatable illness.
Many people postpone seeing a doctor until it becomes absolutely impossible to ignore the symptoms and the disease progresses to its final stages.
Borisov said that to get Avastin, all that is needed is a prescription.
But in some instances getting the needed treatment is not as simple as that.
St. Petersburg doctor Stanislav Dyomin, head of the charitable foundation "Stary Gorod", says a worrying number of Russians have to resort to bribes in order to receive the treatment they are entitled to. "If you fall ill or need an operation, the cost of getting yourself into a well-equipped hospital can be from $1,500 to $3,000," Dyomin said. "In some clinics, relatives have to pay to get the most feeble patients washed and their bed-linen changed. They are charged for syringes and injections, for treatments and medicines."
Dyomin said the list of treatments, therapies and drugs that must be given for free to all Russian citizens is regarded as a classified document by the authorities in Russia. "This document should be posted on the walls of every clinic and printed in large numbers so that anyone who is interested can have a copy, but you can walk your feet off trying to get hold of a copy," he said. "Needless to say, the hotline of the state-run Obligatory Medical Insurance Fund is constantly engaged, if it is working at all."
According to research conducted by the Moscow-based corruption watchdog Stary Gorod this year, half of all bribes in Russia are paid to doctors, and more than 20 percent of Russians have reported not being able to get the treatment they need because they could not afford the bribe for it.
According to recent statistics collected by Happy World charitable foundation, in Western Europe 90 percent of children with acute leucosis survive, while in Russia, that figure is only 50 percent. Similarly, in Western Europe, up to 85 percent of children survive brain cancer whilst in Russia only about 35 percent win their battle against the illness.

TITLE: State Moves To Tighten Up Control on Schools, Muslims
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — A measure giving the federal government extensive control over educational and cultural institutions cleared a critical hurdle Friday in the State Duma.The measure, which passed a second reading 342-71, would amend the proposed law on independent institutions. That bill is still being debated.
The independent institutions bill would cut financing to many secondary schools, universities and museums, forcing them to become essentially independent entities that fund their own operations. This has prompted fears that free schooling and cheap museum trips may soon end.
The new amendment would also strip the local heads of these educational and cultural institutions of any real control over their organizations. That power would go to federal authorities.
Meanwhile, the amendment would exempt authorities from any liability or debts related to the institutions. And it would give them the power to decide how these institutions would use their assets — school facilities, paintings and so on — to raise money.
Like the amendment, the independent institutions bill passed a second reading in the State Duma on Sept. 22 and is awaiting a third and final reading. Both the bill and the amendment to it are widely expected to become law.
Some of those who may soon become the heads of independent — and unfunded — schools, galleries and other institutions are voicing little enthusiasm for the new legislation.
"This will mean an end for us as a museum," said Inna Berezina, director of Moscow's Glazunov Gallery, which is owned by the city government. "If the state pulls out, we will have to increase entrance fees at least eight times to cover our costs. No one will come here."
Similarly, Vera Ilyukhina, the principal of School No. 2006 in southern Moscow, said the new legislation would wreak havoc.
"Renting away a classroom to a shop that will sell, say, pantyhose would be much more profitable for schools than teaching kids there, even for a fee that their parents would be able to afford," Ilyukhina said.
Compounding troubles for the school and other institutions affected by the legislation, Ilyukhina speculated, the new system would create the potential for far more corruption, with government officials pressing local institution heads to rent away space to businesses in exchange for kickbacks.
Senior Communist lawmaker Ivan Melnikov has called for junking the independent institutions measure, but it has sailed through the Duma with the support of Pavel Krasheninnikov, chairman of the Duma's Legislation Committee. United Russia, which Krasheninnikov belongs to, controls two-thirds of the parliament.

TITLE: Nations Debate Iran Sanctions
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON — Six world powers have agreed to discuss sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program, but shied away from demanding that Tehran be punished by the UN Security Council.The United States, Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia said in a joint statement Friday night after talks in London that they were "deeply disappointed" by Tehran's refusal to suspend uranium enrichment, a key step toward making nuclear weapons.
U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns said work on a new UN Security Council resolution under Article 41 of the United Nations charter, which allows for sanctions, would start next week.
"I am quite confident that we are now heading toward a sanctions resolution," he told BBC radio. "There will be tough negotiations ahead to define the specific nature of those sanctions. This is always a complex business."
Reading the diplomats' statement, British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said Iran had two choices when the United Nations demanded it halt enrichment. "We regret that Iran has not yet taken the positive one," she said.

TITLE: Pulkovo Announces $1 Bln Expansion Plans
AUTHOR: By Evgenia Ivanova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Pulkovo Airport is to undergo a $1 billion reconstruction as part of City Hall's ambitious plans to become "one of Europe's top five tourist destinations," the airport's administration said Monday by email.Pulkovo hopes a new terminal near Pulkovo I will make the airport a major transport hub, Olga Antipova, press secretary for Pulkovo Airport confirmed Monday.
The existing Pulkovo I and Pulkovo II terminals are to be "redesigned for different purposes" by 2012 and 2025 respectively, an advisor to Pulkovo's head of development Viktor Konyaschenkov said Wednesday.
According to the project's planner Hochtief Airport, or HTA, a division of the biggest German builder Hochtief, the main idea behind the revamp is to accommodate increasing numbers of passengers.
"Passenger numbers through Pulkovo are increasing very fast, the terminals are very small and so Pulkovo asked us to develop a plan to host these new passengers," Communications Director of HTA, Donatella Gasser, said in a telephone interview with The St. Petersburg Times.
Although, according to Antipova, the $1 billion cost of reconstruction was based on HTA estimates, Gasser declined Monday to confirm the project cost, citing its confidentiality.
Pulkovo is the third largest airport in the country in terms of passenger turnover, but according to the company's data, it currently operates only 43 check-in counters, 47 air vessel parking facilities and four boarding bridges. The two terminals, Pulkovo I (mainly servicing domestic flights) and International Pulkovo II, have no connecting building.
By 2010 the number of tourists visiting the city will increase 40 percent (compared to 2006 figures) up to five million people, a statement from Pulkovo Airport said September 4, citing the local government's "Program of development of St. Petersburg as a tourism center for the years 2005 2010."
The airport is the gateway to St. Petersburg, one of the most visited tourism centers not only in Russia, but in Europe. The program's aim is to turn St. Petersburg into "one of Europe's five major tourism destinations," and will have a notable impact on traffic through Pulkovo Airport," said the statement.
Hochtief, which was also chosen as general constructor to upgrade Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport, stressed their involvement with Pulkovo is only in the capacity of a consultant.
"Our work with Pulkovo, which is nothing to do with ownership or concessionary, only concerns the development of a master plan," Gasser said.
Aviation experts met Pulkovo's plan to become a hub with some skepticism.
"If we are talking about the model of the hub, where the airport is used as a point of departure from local destinations before their long-haul flights, then the potential of the city is not very high," Alexei Komarov, the chair of the editorial board of the Moscow-based monthly "Aviatransportnoe Obozrenie" said in a telephone interview with The St. Petersburg Times.
"The geographic position of St. Petersburg in the Northwest corner [of Russia] doesn't imply a major supply of passengers — Moscow is nearby and it draws the main streams of passengers," Komarov said.
"As for being a transfer hub, obviously passengers choosing a transit flight over a direct one would have to benefit somehow from this decision.
"One of the straightforward benefits is the large number of flights to choose from. Thus a large number of carriers, not only Pulkovo Airlines, would have to be able to fly from Pulkovo," Komarov said.
"Until recently Pulkovo Airport and Pulkovo Airlines were part of the same company and you could count on the fingers of one hand the other companies that were allowed to fly there,"
"After their separation the situation should change, but at present, the process is still in its infancy," Komarov said.

TITLE: Oil Exchange Plan Appearing Crude
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The government has developed guidelines to establish a crude oil and oil product exchange, President Putin said Saturday, suggesting his native city of St. Petersburg as its possible location."The government has practically completed the concept of such an exchange," the Prime-TASS news agency cited Putin as saying at a meeting with the city governor, Valentina Matviyenko, at the Konstantinovsky Palace.
"One of the places where the exchange could be located is St. Petersburg. I have talked today to the presidents of Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, who are interested in taking part in this project. I think it would be a key development for the whole country and for the city of St. Petersburg," Putin said.
Matviyenko replied that "there is no better place to locate such an exchange than in the city's historical Stock Exchange building."
At the moment this building houses the Naval Museum. Matviyenko said the museum could be relocated to another building, and the Exchange would, after reconstruction, again fulfill its original function.
"I don't believe that this oil exchange will work," said Yelena Savchik, analyst for oil and gas at Renaissance Capital investment company.
"When one takes into account the fact that there is no real market for oil in Russia, that a couple of large companies control the whole industry, the idea of an oil exchange is unlikely to be realized any time soon," she said.
As for locating the oil exchange in St. Petersburg, Savchik was of the opinion that, since "all actions in the stock exchange are effectively virtual, the location of the exchange is really of no importance."
The only outcome of locating the oil exchange in the city would be the "redistribution of taxes to the local budget," Savchik said.
Matviyenko has already succeeded in poaching large taxpayers from all across Russia. Recently Transnefteprodukt, Sibur Holding, Sibneft, Transaero, Gazpromneft, Vneshtorgbank and Rostelecom have reregistered in St. Petersburg. Sovkomflot is soon to follow their lead.
Mikhail Zak, head of analysis at Veles Capital investment company, also suggested that the choice of St. Petersburg could result from "the desire to redistribute cash flows between the two capitals."
Proximity to oil pipelines and transport hubs is an advantage, but not the decisive factor, Zak indicated.
Trading rules are still unclear, so small and medium companies would not show much interest, Zak said, while large consumers are unlikely to break their direct ties with suppliers.
Zak did suggest, however, that the oil exchange would improve oil pricing inside Russia.
"At first this exchange will work in vain, but gradually its status will improve, especially if reinforced by legislation," he said.
Another analyst was generally more positive about the proposed project.
"It makes sense to create an oil and gas exchange in St. Petersburg," said Anton Gadeudin, analyst at Brokercreditservice.
"St. Petersburg is close to Europe and to that consumer market. The North European Gas Pipeline is under construction and the volume of gas it plans to transport is significant.
Foreign consumers need something like an exchange to get quoted future contracts," Gadeudin said.
Gas and oil are closely related, so it makes sense to introduce them both on the same exchange, Gadeudin concluded.
About 25 percent of oil exports go through the Northwest region, he said, while the volume of gas exports is even higher.
The RTS (Russian Trading System) and the St. Petersburg Stock Exchange introduced oil futures some time ago, however only speculative traders have so far used this option, Gadeudin said.
"Large suppliers must make an effort to attract large consumers to this exchange, if it is to offer not only speculative futures but real delivery of oil."

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Stockmann PicknST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — Stockmann Oyj, a Finnish department-store company, has picked Kitai Stroi to build a 120 million euro ($150 million) shopping mall in St. Petersburg.
The 100,000 square-meter mall will include one of Stockmann's own department stores as well as outlets operated by the Helsinki-based company that will sell products such as Nike sport shoes, according to a statement Monday from Stockmann.
The building is due to open in Nov. 2008 on the corner of Nevsky Prospekt and Vosstanya Ulitsa.Lenta LoannST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — City-based retail chain Lenta has been granted a $50 million loan from the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development, a company press release said Monday.
The six-year unsecured loan will support Lenta's expansion across Russia.
The ERBD provided Lenta with an earlier $30 million loan in July 2004.Generating CashnST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Finnish company Fortum has acquired a 12.5 percent stake in the Petersburg Generating company, Interfax reported Monday.
The stake was sold for 4.08 billion rubles ($153 million). As a result, Fortum will possess a blocking stake in Territory Generation Company - 1, which is created on the base of regional generating companies.

TITLE: RTS Edges Up Even as Oil Price Weakens Before Cold
AUTHOR: By William Mauldin
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — The RTS ticked up 0.32 percent last week as gains in Gazprom and several non-commodity stocks marginally outweighed the effects of a declining oil price.The index closed at 1,555, up from 1,550 the previous Friday. Oil futures on the NYMEX closed at $59.76 on Friday, down 5 percent over the week.
"Overall, I think the situation is stable, and we're at the equilibrium point with oil around $60," said Ovanes Oganisian, strategist at Renaissance Capital. "I think that's positive news for the RTS."
Oganisian said energy traders would focus more and more on the upcoming winter heating season, which could boost oil prices, not to mention Russian equities.
The country's stock market remains closely correlated to oil prices, and the temporary rise in oil prices on Thursday was enough to send the RTS up 3 percent, its biggest one-day gain since July 27.
Last week, TNK-BP (TNBP) fell 5.8 percent, LUKoil (LKOH) 2.9 percent and Surgutneftegaz (SNGS) 2.6 percent. Rosneft (ROSN) rose to $7.93 after it reported earnings and announced the final consolidation of its Yuganskneftegaz unit, formerly a part of Yukos.
Bank stocks rose over the week, with Sberbank (SBER) closing at $2,210, up 1.4 percent; Vozrozhdeniye (VZRZ) closing at $37, up 15.6 percent; and Rosbank (ROSB) closing at $5.85, up 14.7 percent.
UBS highlighted state banking giant Sberbank among its 50 top picks in emerging markets worldwide and touted the Russian financial sector.
The biggest gain on the RTS came from oil pipeline monopoly Transneft, whose preferred shares (TRNFP) rose 12.3 percent over the week to close at $2,145 on Friday. Oganisian said investors were returning to the stock after it had languished in the bargain bin for months.
"This outperformance, in our view, only proves that the stock is driven predominantly by momentum rather than fundamental factors," Deutsche UFG said in a research note.
Erik DePoy, a strategist at Alfa Bank, said Transneft shares had "long been a conundrum," but he attributed this week's rally to speculation about changes in the state-controlled company's future.
"The government may have a view toward making the company more transparent and investor-friendly with a view to accessing capital markets," DePoy said.
Late Friday, the RTS declined 10 points after the U.S. Department of Labor released a mixed economic report: Across the United States, there were just 51,000 new jobs in September, far less than economists had expected, but this was offset by a decline in the official unemployment rate to 4.6 percent.
"The upshot is that there was enough for the bears and the bulls," DePoy said.
An economic slowdown in the United States could prompt the Federal Reserve to cut U.S. interest rates, which encourages investors to pursue riskier assets in emerging markets such as Russia.
On the other hand, a severe U.S. economic slump could spread around the world and lead to a decrease in the demand for oil.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: SUV SalesnPEONGTAEK, South Korea (Bloomberg) — Ssangyong Motor Co., South Korea's fourth-largest automaker, and Severstal-Avto signed a $1.39 billion deal to make sport-utility vehicles in Russia.
Ssangyong will ship 79,000 Kyron SUVs to Russia in kit form between 2007 and 2011, which Severstal-Avto will assemble, the South Korean automaker said in a statement Friday. The Peongtaek, South Korea-based company is aiming for a 10 percent share of Russia's SUV market by 2011, it said.Power ImportsnMOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia will need to import electricity to overcome energy shortages in the coming heating season, said Anatoly Chubais, chief executive officer of Unified Energy Systems.
"This winter, our priority is the domestic market,'' Chubais told a meeting of top Unified Energy managers Friday, according to a transcript of his speech.
An "unprecedented" 4.6 percent increase in demand for electricity in the first nine months of 2006 means Unified Energy will have to buy electricity abroad and burn heavy fuel oil in power plants, Chubais said.Enel ImportsnROME (Bloomberg) — Enel SpA, Italy's largest utility, will increase the amount of natural gas it imports from Russia in 2007 to help alleviate the possibility of shortages in coming months, Chief Executive Officer Fulvio Conti said.
The Rome-based company Oct. 5 struck a deal with Gazprom, the Russian gas monopoly, to boost its imports by 130 million cubic meters, Conti said in an interview late Sunday.
He spoke in Capri, southern Italy where he was attending a conference hosted by the nation's biggest employers group.
"This will help counter the risk of shortages during the winter," Conti said.
Italy had to tap gas reserves in the first quarter of this year when a cold snap in Russia and Gazprom's dispute with Ukraine slashed supplies to European Union states including Italy, France and Hungary.Import SqueezenMOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia will check imports of juice and products for juice production from Georgia and Moldova to determine their legality, Interfax reported Monday, citing the head of Russia's consumer rights group.
The watchdog, known as RosPotrebNadzor, began an "expert evaluation'' of the imports, Gennady Onishchenko told the news service Sunday.Altimo StakenMOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Altimo, a Russian telecommunications company, is seeking to swap its assets in Russia and abroad for a 20 percent stake in an international telecommunications holding company, the Vedomosti newspaper reported Monday, citing chief executive officer Alexei Reznikovich.
Moscow-based Altimo, which holds 32.9 percent in VimpelCom, Russia's second-largest mobile phone company, is in talks with three to four companies to form an international holding company in the next 18 months, he told the newspaper.Russian SalesnMOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Henkel KGaA, the German maker of Persil detergent and Right Guard deodorant, expects sales growth in Russia to drop to 20 percent this year.
Investment in Russia will decline to between 15 million euros ($19 million) and 18 million euros this year from 18.5 million euros in 2005, Christian Harten, president of Henkel Russia, said Monday at a press conference in Moscow. Revenue in the country gained 40 percent annually over the past four years, he said.Ministry OppositionnMOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia's Natural Resources Ministry opposes a uranium-mining project between Techsnabexport, the state-owned nuclear fuel company, and Japan's Mitsui & Co., Kommersant said Monday, citing spokesman Rinat Gizatulin.
The ministry "regrets'' it hasn't yet gotten a new law passed that would prevent Mitsui from taking a stake in the Yuzhnaya field, the newspaper reported, citing Gizatulin.
The ministry's proposed law would ban foreign companies from uranium mining, Kommersant said. The Yuzhnaya field is part of Elkon, the country's largest uranium deposit.TNK-BP LoannMOSCOW (Bloomberg) — BP's Russian unit, TNK-BP, picked a group of banks to organize a $1 billion loan, Interfax reported Monday, citing an unidentified banking official. The banks are BNP Paribas SA, Mizuho Bank Ltd, Barclays Capital and Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, the Russian news agency said. The five-year loan will be used for general company needs.

TITLE: Severstal's Offering Part of Global Offensive
AUTHOR: By Michael Smith and Robin Paxton
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: Severstal plans an initial public offering in London this year ahead of a global offensive to grow into the world's second-largest steelmaker, the company said Friday.Alexei Mordashov, who owns 90 percent of Severstal, said he expected the IPO would help the company pursue major acquisitions and partnerships in a consolidating industry.
"Our ambition is to become a global leader in steel, at least No. 2, not only by volume but more importantly for us by margins," Mordashov said by telephone.
In August, banking sources said that Severstal was seeking to raise up to $1.5 billion in a London share offer this month or in November.
Bankers close to the plan have said the float was expected to value Severstal at $12 billion to $15 billion, up from its current Russian market capitalization of $11.7 billion.
The company currently ranks sixth in the world in terms of core profit.
Mordashov declined to comment on the expected size of the float which is scheduled by the end of this year. Severstal has appointed Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and UBS as joint coordinators and bookrunners for the IPO.
When asked if he would reduce his 90 percent stake, Mordashov said he did not envisage major changes to the company's shareholder structure.
Mordashov's attempt to merge Severstal with Arcelor this year was trumped by a $32 billion offer by world leader Mittal Steel, but thrust Russia into the spotlight at a time of consolidation in the global steel sector.
Mordashov said he was eager to grow both in Russia and other parts of the world but declined to comment on whether he was currently looking at any specific targets, including British-Dutch Corus Group.
"Everybody talks to everybody, but I don't have any specific commitment to announce today," he said.
"We should expect intensive consolidation in the steel industry, and after the IPO I am sure we will be much more able to participate successfully."
At $1.5 billion, the IPO would be Russia's third-largest after state oil firm Rosneft's $10.4 billion listing in July and Sistema's $1.6 billion in February 2005.
Severstal plans to invest $4.5 billion by 2016, upgrading its main plant in Russia, the country's second-largest stand-alone steel mill.
The company has also said it would invest $1 billion from 2006 to 2010 at its North American operations and boost spending at its iron ore and coal mining units.
Severstal announced a new corporate governance program Friday that it hopes will make it more attractive for deals with foreign partners.
It plans to install an independent chairman who is not Russian and is well-known in the investment community, along with a board of directors.

TITLE: Exxon's Sakhalin-1 Broke PSA
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Audit Chamber said Friday that the ExxonMobil-led Sakhalin-1 energy project had broken many terms of its production sharing agreement.The agency, which supervises the use of government finances, said in a statement that the group had started oil production two years later than expected and still had no clear gas export plans.
The agency has no enforcement powers but can send its conclusions for further investigation by prosecutors. It said it had sent a letter to President Vladimir Putin.
The agency has repeatedly criticized the neighboring Sakhalin-2 project, led by Royal Dutch Shell, which has run into trouble after telling the government last year that it would double costs to $20 billion. But this is the first time the agency has released a major statement on Exxon's Sakhalin-1, whose activities have been seen until recently as much safer than those of Shell.
In recent months, Russian officials have told Exxon they would not approve a cost increase to $17 billion from the previous $12.8 billion. They also said the company had to undergo more checks at its De Kastri terminal on the Pacific before beginning commercial crude exports of up to 250,000 barrels per day from next year — an eagerly awaited addition to Asian Pacific markets.
Exxon has, however, started loading crude at De Kastri and the first tanker is due to sail next week.
nOil output from the Exxon Mobil-led Sakhalin-1 project will peak in 2007 and start to decline immediately afterwards partly because it failed to agree with Russia to extend the field's territory, a project member said on Monday. Lev Brodsky, head of Sakhalin projects at Rosneft, told a news conference Monday the failure to agree the extension of license territory would cut the projected output by around 10 percent.

TITLE: Russia's Deripaska Creates Biggest Aluminum Maker
AUTHOR: By Samantha Shields
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian Aluminium agreed to buy smaller producer OAO Sual Group, creating the world's biggest aluminum company by output and increasing Russian President Vladimir Putin's sway over world metals prices.Russian Aluminium, also known as Rusal, will own 66 percent of the new company, gaining control of Sual and aluminum assets held by Swiss trader Glencore International AG, Sual owner Viktor Vekselberg said Monday in Moscow. Sual, valued at $2.7 billion on Russian exchanges, will make up 22 percent of the company. That would value the new company at $12.3 billion, based on Sual's price Sept. 11, when its shares last traded.
By adding Sual and Glencore's assets, 38-year-old Rusal owner Oleg Deripaska will create a company pouring more aluminum than Alcoa Inc., now the world leader. Putin, who approved the deal in August, has been consolidating the energy and metals industries under state-aligned companies as surging oil and commodities prices underpin Russia's eight-year economic boom.
"The Rusal merger is a key step as Deripaska seeks to properly price and protect valuable assets by creating a national champion, and he can't do something like that without Putin's involvement,'' said James Fenkner of Red Star Asset Management in Moscow.
The new business, which will be known as United Company Rusal, will produce about 4 million tons of aluminum a year, surpassing New York-based Alcoa, which had output last year of the 3.55 million tons to be the largest aluminum maker in 2005.
Rusal will also produce 11 million tons a year of alumina, a semi-product used to make aluminum.
The partners may sell about 20 percent of the company through an initial public offering in London, Vekselberg said today. The merger should be completed by April 1 and Glencore will own 12 percent of the company, he said. Rusal and Glencore are closely held companies whose shares don't trade.
Russian billionaire Deripaska will control a national industry that in the 1990s caused aluminum prices to plunge to a record low when the Soviet Union flooded markets with supplies. U.S. President Bill Clinton responded to that drop by forging an agreement in 1994 with Russia, Canada, Australia and Norway after the metal traded at less than $1,100 a metric ton. Aluminum closed at $2,585 a ton in London on Oct. 2.
The partners initially agreed Deripaska would have 64.5 percent, Vekselberg 21.5 percent and Glencore 14 percent, the Financial Times reported Aug. 30.
Russia is the world's second-biggest aluminum producer, behind China. The former Soviet state is also the world's biggest nickel producer, fourth-biggest steelmaker and No. 6 copper producer.
"This is a mutual decision of the state and the businessmen involved,'' said Kyrill Chuiko, a metals analyst at UralSib Financial Corp in Moscow.
"It leaves them well placed to buy assets abroad, they'll have political support at the top level.''

TITLE: Russian TV to Target "Ethnic Niche" in Britain, Via the Web
AUTHOR: By Simon Shuster
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW —A new television service will soon allow Russians in Britain to feel as though they never left home. Targeting a growing "ethnic niche" of Russian emigres, London-based Aggregator will allow viewers to access a huge library of Russian-language content — from news to films to documentaries — through a broadband Internet connection by the end of this month.Over the past decade, the growth of the Russian community in Britain has been tremendous. In 2000, Britain granted some 114,000 visas to Russians, a number that had grown to more than 173,000 by 2003, according to figures from the Russian Embassy in London.
But the broadcast industry "has not been catching up" to the pace of this growth, Aggregator CEO Martin Goswami said.
Russian television has long been available in Britain through satellite connections, and more recently, through broadband television providers such as JumpTV, which streams Russian channels in real-time to viewers worldwide.
"If you want to catch the news, that's fine," Aggregator programming director Chris Griffin said. "But if you want to sit down at 7 p.m. and watch a movie, that's not so good."
Griffin and Goswami said they saw this hole in the market five years ago, and raised $9 million from three venture capital firms — two British and one U.S. — to get their idea off the ground. The goal of the company is to create a searchable library of Russian television content for viewers in Britain. Every month, the library will be "refreshed" with hundreds of hours of programming from Aggregators' 20 partner channels, which include NTV, RenTV, Mosfilm and MTV Russia.
"You will choose what content you want to see, and when you want to see it," Goswami said.
Alex Mackey, adviser at rival JumpTV, expressed doubt that the new service would prove financially viable. He said Aggregator's "cherry-picking" approach might cost more in broadcasting fees than the method his company uses.

TITLE: Good-bye Corporate World, Hello Adventure
AUTHOR: By Kathrina Szymborski
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Brave the rapids of Chile's Futaleufu River, go on safari in the Makgadikgadi Pans of Botswana, dig for dinosaurs in the Gobi desert — for Annette Loftus, it's all in a day's work.As the founder of adventure travel company Aspera Explorations, Loftus, 36, has the world at her fingertips, and for a small fortune she'll serve it up to you on a silver platter. Or if you prefer, forget the silver platter; the concept is for trips to be custom designed to a client's specific whims.
"We don't sell anything we haven't tried ourselves," Loftus said. "Most loyal clients are willing to pay for us to go and check everything out. We have some demanding clients."
For Loftus, this translates into a lot of business trips. She spends roughly half of each year abroad, scouting local personnel, testing accommodations and flight connections and sampling activities.
Her wandering lifestyle, she says, has raised some eyebrows.
"My sister couldn't get in touch with me, and it came into her mind that I can't be running a travel company," Loftus said. "It must be a cover-up. I must be in the CIA."
She laughed loudly at the memory and added, "At least then I'd be making some money!"
The expense of designing each trip amounts to a less-than-efficient business practice, but Loftus has concocted her own microeconomic theory, complete with relevant industry jargon: She calculates profit in experiences, not dollars, and the bottom line at Aspera reflects what she calls a "gross happiness" quotient.
"The value is all in the experience," she said. "That's how I organize my life."
There was a time, however, when Loftus fit nicely into a typical corporate environment, working her way up the ladder and measuring returns in hard cash like any other exec.
She came to Russia after graduating from Yale University with a double-major degree in Soviet and East European Studies and Art. She had planned to stay for just a summer as an intern at the Hermitage Museum, but soon landed a position at a consulting firm, Business Link.
"I got to work on some really interesting things there," she said. "We did PR for the privatization process, for example."
One of her clients offered her a job at tobacco company RJ Reynolds, and she accepted.
"It was a lot more money," she said. "It was a matter of necessity."
At RJ Reynolds, she embarked on what she called "the traditional brands career path," starting as brand assistant. But soon her wanderlust kicked in.
"I got sick of Russia," she said.
In 1996, she began pestering RJ Reynolds to transfer her, while looking into outside options as well.
"I would roll the dice every morning," she said. "Actually, the final decision was made by my fortuneteller." Following a mystic's advice, she quit RJ Reynolds to join Coca-Cola in Bucharest, Romania.
"I was very much focused on my marketing career," she said. But after spending two years in Romania and another two with Coca-Cola in Croatia, Loftus started to become aware of her true passion.
"I realized at this point that what I liked about my job was the ability to go everywhere," she said.
"I had a realization about myself: I didn't want to be a manager. I was way more interested in international travel."
In a tent in the Nepalese Himalayas in 2000, where she took her next vacation, late night whispers between Loftus and her friend Jennifer Neufeld sowed the seed that became Aspera.
"We spent 27 days trekking," she said. "I became really passionate about the idea of starting an adventure travel company.
"And in the process, we thought, we'll find really cool husbands!" she added.
Neufeld wasted no time fulfilling that part of the plan; she fell in love with the guide on the Himalaya trip and married him later that year. As for Loftus, she has what she calls the perfect job, but has yet to find the perfect man.
"I have a boyfriend on each continent," she said.
And a few minutes later, as she finished the last drop of her latte, she apologized for rushing off: "I'm flying to Namibia later today and I have to go get my nails done," she said sheepishly.
"I'm going to see an ex-boyfriend while I'm there."

TITLE: Dacha Season Reaps Hot Mobile Ringers
AUTHOR: By Natalya Chumarova, Alexander Yankevich
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The city's mobile phone operators turned their attention to Leningrad Oblast this summer, in particular to the region's dacha-owners. According to experts, mobile phone traffic increases by 30 percent in the region during the hot season, and, to take more advantage, companies began offering anything from discounts on calls to new service centers and 'pretty' numbers.Busy Bees
One of the most active firms was VimpelCom (under its Beeline trade mark). As early as May this operator launched the campaign '50 percent Discount on calls in Leningrad Oblast,' where all out-going calls crossing Oblast boundaries were half price. From autumn to the end of the year this offer will only apply to calls within the Oblast.But for the operator this offer is considered supplementary to a new service that allows it to establish the whereabouts of a subscriber. The latter uses Cell Info technology, or a 'mobile index,' which comprises the functions of the GSM network, allowing operators to deliver a variety of information to the subscriber's mobile, depending on their location. The technology is realized using Celltick, which tracks the movement of a subscriber by transmitting a signal from one base station to another.
Messages are circulated by separate channels, not using commercial frequencies, appearing on the phone as captions or running text. In this particular case, on the mobile phones of all of the city's Beeline subscribers is displayed the caption PETERSBURG or LENOBLAST, depending on the tariff zone where the base station is located.
According to VimpelCom's press secretary in St. Petersburg, Yevgenia Aleshko, the Cell Info project has increased company sales in Leningrad Oblast from 500 to 1,400 contracts a day, and the company's share of the Oblast market from 22 percent to 29 percent.
"Other things that stimulated sales included adverts starring Andrei Arshavin, a well-known player at Zenit, St. Petersburg's premier league football club, as well as additional campaigns at the point of sale," Aleshko said.
"Throughout the summer, from May to September, the tariffs 'Speak easier' and 'Your time - Oblast' drove the company's sales. Connections grew by 85.8 percent over the summer, compared to 24 percent over the same period last year," he said.Silver Polish
Another company that looked to gain from the seasonal rise in Oblast traffic, was MegaFon Northwest. From the first half of June till mid-August the company offered the gift of a 'Silver number.' On connecting to MegaFon Northwest in one of five regional centers (Podporozhe, Sosnovi Bor, Luga, Volkhov and Slantsi) the subscriber may choose a 'silver' number with a federal code. According to the company, the campaign was important more in terms of its image, aimed at raising awareness of their new service centers in Leningrad Oblast.Margarita Gorbacheva, head of MegaFon Northwest's press service, identified the opening of the company's Vyborg service center in 2004 as the beginning of MegaFon Northwest's efforts at serving regional subscribers.
"Today we have already opened 11 such centers, with another two due to open this year," she said.
According to her, 'Silver number' was the first such regional campaign and worked quite well.
"The number of those connecting at service centers taking part in the promotion increased on average one and a half times. Apart from that it raised awareness of our centers, and visitors numbers increased a number of times," Gorbacheva said.
As far as simple discounts were concerned, for the fourth year in a row everywhere under MegaFon Northwest's coverage, including Leningrad Oblast, received throughout the summer the service 'White Nights.' This offers free calls between MegaFon Northwest subscribers every day from midnight to 8 a.m.Mobile Technicalities
As for the last of the 'big three' mobile phone firms, Mobile Telesystems, or MTS, focused their activity on the development of technical infrastructure. Already in March the company released new equipment in almost every area of Leningrad Oblast. As a result, the capacity of the operator's network increased to 3.7 million numbers, which, among other things, allowed the provision of continuous access to additional services, including SMS, MMS, and the transmission of data. It is worth noting that such modernization was aimed both at Oblast and city residents passing the summer at dachas and used to the convenience of their mobile phones.Sky Access
In the Leningrad Oblast the company Sky Link traditionally organizes events selling the merits of its mobile internet services.Many of Sky Link's subscribers live in St. Petersburg, but regularly travel, for business or pleasure, into the Oblast.
"This summer we advertised both on the beach and at events both in the city and Oblast, with the accent always placed on our competitive advantage mobile internet," said the head of PR at Delta Telecom (Sky Link St. Petersburg), Kirill Voloshin.
Of particular note this summer was Sky Link's services at the musical open air Castle Dance Ice Edition 2006, that took place in June in Vyborg. The company set up an internet tent, where they demonstrated their services and provided internet access for the festival's press.
Depending on a client's monthly expenses, each receives 'Silver,' 'Gold,' or VIP status, affecting the amount of supplementary discounts and reductions on the acquisition of new Sky Link terminals.

TITLE: Music Web Site Blocking WTO Bid
AUTHOR: By Anna Smolchenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW —U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab has singled out the Russian music site www.allofmp3.com as a key stumbling block to Russia's ascension to the World Trade Organization.The site's owners, however, say that they are having the last laugh.
"They are promoting us," Vadim Mamotin, general director of Mediaservices, which operates the site, said Thursday. He said the site was signing up thousands of new clients after the U.S. criticism.
Schwab said Wednesday that Russia must shut down the site — which Washington considers to be one of the world's largest sources of pirated music — to get the United States' blessing to enter the world trade body.
"I have a hard time imagining Russia being a member of the WTO with a web site like that operating,'' Schwab told reporters in Washington.
The United States is the last main obstacle between Russia and the WTO. Moscow had hoped that Washington would sign off on its bid in July, but negotiations broke down over meat. With Schwab's remarks, it is clear that intellectual property rights is a major issue as well.
But neither Russia nor the United States appear to have a crystal-clear case when it comes to www.allofmp3.com.
Set up by a handful of programmers in 2000, the site now has 5.5 million subscribers and is signing up 5,000 new users daily, Mamotin said through a spokesman. He said the programmers conceived the site for their own use and had never expected it to become very popular.
The site charges 15 cents to 30 cents per song, compared to about $1 per song on most music industry-sanctioned sites, including Apple's iTunes store.
The site pays a percentage of each download fee to the Russian Organization for Multimedia and Digital Systems, or ROMS, an industry group that manages property rights in Russia. ROMS, which has licensed the site, then forwards money to the copyright holders.
Western music companies, however, say ROMS has no right to represent them and are refusing to collect.
"They are boycotting this money," ROMS chief Oleg Nezus said. "Maybe it's not a lot. I won't argue with that."
A representative of the Federation of the Phonographic Industry, a lobby group representing EMI, Warner and Universal, said Thursday that the site was operating illegally and that it was seeking to sue Mamotin and Denis Kvasov, another site director.
But Mamotin said the music industry was losing a lot more money in peer-to-peer swapping networks, in which people trade songs for free. "We are offering a model under which people will walk away from piracy," he said. He called $1 per song too costly for Russians and denied violating the law, pointing to the site's registration with ROMS.
Russian Newsweek recently put the site's annual revenues at $30 million.

TITLE: A Muddled and Unclear Energy Strategy
AUTHOR: By Sebastian Vos
TEXT: Energy is seldom out of the headlines these days. Oil prices are at an all-time high, Russia caused a scare earlier this year when it cut gas supplies, and a number of European Union member states have broken ranks by heading off cross-border energy mergers with "national solutions." These are all developments that have revived Europeans' common interest in energy and put it back at the top of the EU agenda. The European Commission and the member states have recognized the need for action and in March and again in June the European Council stressed the need for an "Energy Policy for Europe." A coordinated EU policy is clearly needed, but what should it be?Realizing somewhat belatedly that energy is a key to EU competitiveness, the Commission has initiated two waves of liberalization in the last decade containing gas and electricity directives aimed at opening up national energy markets that have changed the energy landscape. This liberalization drive is intended to bring about a full opening of energy markets through greater competition and lower prices while at the same time safeguarding high standards of public service and ensuring a universal service obligation. In other words, more competition with more consumer protection. But has it worked?
To determine how competitive the EU energy market really is, the Commission is currently working on a "Competition Enquiry" into the whole energy sector. Its final report is due in December, but draft conclusions show that, although in theory market forces should lead to a more efficient allocation of resources, the EU's liberalizations have not delivered the desired innovation, openness and low prices. Are member governments to blame, or is it the newly privatized companies that are holding things back? The Commission seems to think both are responsible.
Last April, the Commission mounted one of its biggest judicial assaults to date by starting infringement proceedings against all member states except the Netherlands for not meeting their energy market obligations. The charges in hundreds of separate cases vary, but all relate to EU governments' failure to abide by EU legislation on the opening up of their gas and electricity markets. France and Spain are two of the worst culprits: Both governments have taken steps to prevent the takeover of national energy suppliers by competitive international companies.
There is a long-standing argument that some areas of a national economy embody strategic or public security interests that require governments to intervene. But these moves to thwart cross-border mergers and acquisitions have raised EU-wide concerns that a new mood of economic nationalism — meaning protectionism — is taking root.
The energy companies have not escaped criticism either. European competition commissioner Neelie Kroes has said that the energy sector's market structure is still excessively concentrated and that this reflects the "old market structure of national or regional monopolies." Surprise inspections carried out in May on the headquarters of some of Europe's largest energy utilities revealed that a number of them were blockading their home markets against other European competitors and keeping prices artificially high. The investigations are ongoing, but it is no secret that the Commission feels that many of Europe's energy companies could do much more to ensure that the benefits of liberalization are shared with consumers.
The good news, however, is that big energy companies across Europe are increasingly willing to go head-to-head with EU member governments that try to stand in the way of their cross-border merger plans. The single market rules, together with the EU's merger regulation, also give the Commission the considerable power it needs to deal with recalcitrant member governments like those of Spain and France, and the body, under European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, now seems keen to expand them further.
In its green paper on energy policy, the Commission called for a common approach to dealing with foreign suppliers, compulsory gas storage, more green energy and a powerful European energy regulator. These proposals received a mixed reception from national governments but they clearly demonstrate the Barroso Commission's determination to use energy policy to unite Europe's free marketeers with the integrationists.
The EU would clearly benefit from a coherent external energy policy. Although the Union as a whole is the world's largest importer of oil, gas and coal, energy relationships with third countries are a matter of national sovereignty and remain within the competence of member states. Formulating a common external energy policy that draws on the full range of the EU's internal and external capabilities would substantially reinforce Europe's position when speaking to key suppliers such as Russia and OPEC.
Compulsory gas storage would also make sense. All members of the International Energy Agency have to hold minimum oil reserves but there is no such system for gas. Most EU member states have at least several months' gas supply but others like Ireland, Sweden and Finland have no gas stocks at all. This makes not only those countries vulnerable but also those around them.
An EU-wide electricity grid and network of gas pipelines could in the longer term also contribute to better energy management and improve security of supply. Since all power systems need spare capacity in case of supply disruptions or surges, the bundling together of Europe's separate national and regional networks and the sharing of spare capacity could yield substantial efficiencies.
The EU's member states have made it clear, though, that they are not ready for a European regulator, that the choice of "energy mix" will remain a national decision and that they do not want to be told what kind of energy they should use. The Commission could, however, encourage the drafting of EU-wide safety standards for nuclear energy so that when countries do decide to go nuclear their neighbours would at least have fewer worries. The EU could also look more seriously at taxation policies that favor environmentally friendly investment and innovation, thus spurring market forces rather than obstructing them with unnecessary legislation.
That the EU is now making a renewed push for liberalization in the hope of pushing energy prices lower is a positive development. And that it is looking to enhance efforts in other areas of energy policy is also good. But it is one thing to curb bad behavior and quite another to bring about good behavior. In tackling issues related to security of supply there are gains to be had from the Commission and EU member states joining forces. But in developing a new policy, the third key ingredient, market forces, must not be forgotten. Market forces will be crucial to attaining the goal of an affordable, sustainable, competitive and secure energy supply for Europe.Sebastian Vos is a lawyer with Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in Amsterdam. The full version of this comment will be published in the Autumn issue of Europe's World (www.europesworld.org).

TITLE: EIT Is a False Dawn
AUTHOR: By Gideon Rachman
TEXT: The potted biography that Google provides for Sergey Brin, the company's co-founder, notes rather charmingly that he is "currently on leave from the Ph.D. program in computer science at Stanford University." Given that Brin is now thought to be worth more than $12 billion, one wonders whether he will ever get around to handing in his dissertation.Google's nod in the direction of Stanford is, however, entirely fitting. Brin met Larry Page, Google's co-founder, when they were both graduate students at Stanford and together they worked on the project that became Google. Yahoo, Google's arch rival, has a very similar history. Jerry Yang and David Filo, its founders, also met as graduate students at Stanford.
When Tony Blair, the British prime minister, recently visited Silicon Valley to try to find the magic elixir for high-tech economic growth, he met Jonathan Schwartz, chief executive of Sun Microsystems — yet another Silicon Valley company with strong Stanford connections. (Sun originally stood for Stanford University Network.) Schwartz said he had no doubt Blair would "take away from this meeting Sun's relationship with Stanford University."
Blair is not the only European politician fascinated by the way in which U.S. universities have acted as incubators for many of the world's leading technology companies. Later this month, the European Commission in Brussels is scheduled to unveil plans for a "European Institute of Technology." The commission's scheme is said to be inspired more by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology than by Stanford. This could be because MIT has also been a formidable incubator of high-tech businesses, although one suspects that it may actually have more to do with the idea that creating an EIT to match MIT sounds rather appealing to a politician's ear.
Whatever the verbal gimmickry involved, it is laudable that Jose Manuel Barroso, the president of the Commission, wants to do something to foster high-tech growth in Europe. But there are problems with his pet project. One of them was pointed out to me by one of Barroso's senior colleagues over a year ago, when the idea of an EIT first began to do the rounds in Brussels. "It will just degenerate into a battle about which country the EIT is going to be based in," he groaned.
The commission has come up with an ingenious idea to get around the problem. The EIT will be a virtual university, issuing degrees and pursuing research projects, but without a single large campus. Gίnter Verheugen, the commissioner for enterprise, says that instead it will be "a network of centers of excellence."
The idea of a networked EIT is a neat way of avoiding an unseemly political squabble. But it also ignores one of the main things that makes universities such as Stanford and MIT such formidable generators of new ideas and businesses: The very idea of a high-tech cluster suggests physical proximity. You need a place, a faculty, a campus and a neighborhood where bright, like-minded people can congregate.
It is not just the research scientists who matter. Stanford's campus is bounded on one side by the silicon factories of Apple and Intel, and on the other by the venture capitalists of Sand Hill Road. An EIT that was spread out all over Europe for political reasons would never have a chance to develop a similar cluster of brains, business and finance. A networked EIT with outposts in every one of the EU's 27 member states would also risk frittering away research money, since each EU member would doubtless demand its share of the spoils for its own technology institute.
Rather than creating a new institution such as an EIT, the countries of the EU would do best to foster the ones that they already have. There are already some modest success stories. Over the past decade, a high-tech cluster, Silicon Fen, has developed around Cambridge in Britain. Another has grown up in Finland, fostered by the presence of Nokia and the Helsinki University of Technology.
But Europe's universities need more help. They are losing the battle to retain the world's finest minds. As a recent report from the Centre for European Reform notes: "Between 1901 and 1950, 73 percent of Nobel Prize winners were based in what is now the EU. Between 1951 and 2000, the share dropped to 33 percent, while in the period from 1995 to 2004, the figure was down to just 19 percent."
Over the long term, the fate of European universities may depend on their ability to raise more money for salaries and basic research. That will surely mean liberating more universities from state control — making it easier for them to charge fees, raise private money and control their admissions policies.Gideon Rachman is a columnist for the Financial Times, where this comment was published.

TITLE: Politkovskaya Had One Aim: To Tell the Truth
AUTHOR: By Yevgeny Kiselyov
TEXT: Anna Politkovskaya, who was gunned down Saturday outside her home in central Moscow in what appears to have been a contract hit, was not just a famous journalist. She was a symbolic figure, the incarnation of all that makes people both love journalists and hate them.For me, Politkovskaya's bravery, single-mindedness and readiness to get the story no matter what the risks involved, put her up there with Veronica Guerin of The Irish Times, who was killed by Dublin drug dealers in 1996 as revenge for her investigative articles.
Many will remember Joel Schumacher's film about her story, with Guerin played by Cate Blanchett. The film was slammed by many critics for portraying the deceased journalist as highly ambitious and interested only in glory and celebrity. In fact, Guerin was completely different — modest and concerned only with telling her readers the truth. I once met Veronica and can vouch for this personally.
Politkovskaya was from the same mold. If anything, she was even less interested in money. She was more ascetic, more of a human rights activist. She had one main theme: human rights violations in Chechnya. She not only wrote about this, but tried to help people whose rights had been violated, to get them out of torture chambers and back on their feet. This was where the royalties from her articles and books went.
Contrary to the common perception that renowned journalists earn a lot of money, Politkovskaya lived very modestly, like the overwhelming majority of her colleagues. She drove an old beat-up Lada and rented an apartment in an old building.
People like Politkovskaya are crusaders. She was a study in fanaticism and obsession. Sometimes it even seemed as though she was cloaked in an aura of saintliness, like many people who believe they have a mission in life that must be pursued every hour of every day and in every way possible. Politkovskaya believed that fate had given her a mission: to tell people the truth about what was actually going on in Chechnya.
This was why she spent almost every day investigating human rights violations and other crimes committed by federal forces and their Chechen allies during a war that, according to opinion polls, most Russians had not supported for years. It is a war that swept the man who started its latest phase into the Kremlin. President Vladimir Putin regards criticism of the war as a personal affront.
The criticism that Politkovskaya expressed in her articles drove many to distraction, including the authorities in Moscow and their appointees in Chechnya, as well as many ordinary people who did not enjoy hearing unpleasant news. This frustration grew into hatred.
Politkovskaya was a silent rebuke to many of her fellow journalists, who accepted the rules of the game as laid down by the authorities, rules that have cowed journalists into looking out for themselves, their careers and peace of mind above all else while subjecting themselves to relentless self-censorship.
Politkovskaya was not an easy person to get along with. It was impossible to convince her not to publish certain information or to get into her good graces by offering her an exclusive.
Those in power, both political and military, tried to avoid her. A colleague of mine once told me how, in the Caucasus, a general known for his fearlessness — someone who had looked death in the face — ran into Politkovskaya on a mountain road, then turned his jeep around and sped off home so that the chance encounter would not turn into an interview.
Politkovskaya was not only a difficult person for those whom she exposed or asked pointed questions, but occasionally for those who agreed with her.
At this point I should make a confession. A few years ago, when I was hosting the political talk show "Glas Naroda," or "Vox Populi," on NTV — when the channel was not yet under de facto state control — even when we had already discussed events in and around Chechnya, I still felt uneasy whenever Politkovskaya was in the studio audience.
I knew that if she had the microphone she could tear to pieces any opponent, accusing him or her — without mincing her words — of lying or withholding information. In other words, she could generate an outright scandal. She was extremely temperamental, but she never had a hidden agenda — just the desire to tell the truth.
Politkovskaya long ago disappeared from our television screens. The media, and television in particular, is increasingly becoming a business, and business is often incompatible with critical opinions from journalists who cast doubt on statements made by government officials. This is happening everywhere, but unfortunately, as often happens, it becomes monstrous, grotesque and rampant in Russia. There is less and less space for journalism, particularly of the investigative kind.
Some journalists had apparently started a muttering campaign against Politkovskaya, asking why she kept hammering away about Chechnya and nothing else. Nothing can be done, they said. Everyone is fed up with Chechnya, people don't want to hear about it and readers are deserting her newspaper. But she stuck to her guns. In the end she paid with her life.
As the boss of a respected Moscow newspaper said cynically, "She kept on asking for it, and she fell."
Politkovskaya's murder was clearly ordered and was clearly political. It is unimportant whether she was murdered out of revenge, as a warning to others or to prevent the publication of potentially damaging material. The last option seems least likely, because in recent years numerous journalistic exposes have, alas, come directly from the hands of venal officials and lying politicians.
I feel embarrassed for many of my colleagues. Alexander Mamontov, the editor of Russia's oldest and still-respected newspaper, Izvestia, which recently has taken an increasingly pro-government line, said that Politkovskaya's professional activities "had not the slightest thing to do with what happened to her." This was just hours after the murder, when no one knew any details of the crime. I wonder what he knew that enabled him to make such a categorical statement.
Meanwhile, people have been found to say, obligingly, that Politkovskaya's murder was a provocation by enemies of the regime. But you could just as easily accuse enemies of the opposition and say that they organized this horrible crime in order to point the finger at the regime's critics.
It is unlikely that the killer and — more importantly —whoever ordered the murder will ever be found, just as the killer of former Channel One boss and television journalist Vladislav Listyev — shot to death in his home in 1995 — has never been found. This is the rule rather than the exception in these cases.
Much will also be said now about how the murder of a journalist should be seen as no less serious a crime than the murder of a politician; that journalism is a public profession and, as such, journalists should be untouchable. I agree completely. But the professional immunity of journalists must be guaranteed before their physical safety.
This immunity does not exist in Russia today, because the state has no respect for journalists' rights to freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Everything springs from this. And for this, the authorities are definitely to blame.

Yevgeny Kiselyov is a political analyst.

TITLE: An Indigenous Mistake
TEXT: President Vladimir Putin on Thursday made an astounding statement for the leader of a multi-ethnic federative state. Putin called on regional authorities to "protect the interests of Russian manufacturers and Russia's native population" in the country's outdoor markets. He cited recent ethnic violence in Kondopoga as evidence of the problems resulting from poor regulation and law enforcement in this area.Putin did not name any particular ethnic group, but it is no secret that natives of the Caucasus, particularly Azeris, are responsible for the majority of trade in Russian outdoor markets.
It was a conflict between an Azeri bartender and his Russian customers that ended so badly in a Kondopoga cafe in late August. Chechens — who purportedly provided protection for the Azeri-owned restaurant — stabbed two Russians to death.
True, Azeris cannot be described as native to modern Russia, but more than a million of them live here, including hundreds of thousands who hold Russian passports.
Chechens, meanwhile, are the native population of Chechnya, a region that Russia has fought two wars to keep in the past 12 years.
Kondopoga's native population is Karelian, as the town is located in the republic of Karelia, which first became part of Russia in 1721 and belonged to Finland between the two world wars.
So which native population did Putin have in mind when he called for the cleaning up of the markets and the protection of the population's interests?
Even if he was thinking primarily of Azeris, Chechens and Karelians when he made his speech to the council for national projects, that is not necessarily the way it will be heard. Recent events are more likely to conjure up thoughts of protecting Russia's native population from the Georgians. This is the clear impression state television is giving as it reports about raids on businesses that police say are owned by Georgian criminal groups and shows the apprehension and deportation of illegal Georgian migrants.
Georgians are paying a high price for their president's decision to arrest purported Russian spies, perhaps in hope that a heavy-handed Russian retaliation would force the West to side openly with Tbilisi in its struggle with pro-Moscow separatist regimes in South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
But in its retaliation, the Kremlin's zeal has reached far beyond Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and his regime.
The past few days have seen unprecedented harassment of individuals whose only crime was being a Georgian citizen or of being born in Georgia. Even the best-selling author Georgy Chkhartishvili, who writes under the pen name Boris Akunin, has complained of being targeted over his taxes.
This campaign of racial profiling and selective application of the law contains elements reminiscent of ethnic cleansing, with 132 Georgians being deported Friday, even though they account for only a fraction of all foreigners living here illegally.
Even more outrageously, Moscow police are demanding that schools provide them with lists of students with Georgian-sounding last names to help the authorities find Georgians who are living in Russia illegally.
All people, regardless of their ethnic background, should take a stand against this campaign and condemn the practice of racial profiling. Even those who are convinced they are safe because they are from the "right" ethnic background would do well to remember the words of Martin Niemoller, the anti-Nazi theologian who's famous poem "First They Came ..." ends with the sobering line, "When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out."

This comment first appeared in The Moscow Times.

TITLE: Ramadan a Time to Reflect on Islamic Revival
AUTHOR: By Ali Nassor
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: From behind hundreds of local Muslims waiting to perform Friday prayers in St. Petersburg's only mosque near Gorkovskaya metro station appear two young men carrying an elderly man to a special location in the front row.Unlike other days, the mosque is full to capacity. But today Sheikh Abdulhafiz Hazrat-Mahmoud appears content despite the difficulties he has finding his way to his usual spot.
He is happy because it is a Friday in the holy month of Ramadan "when Muslims tend to forfeit other commitments for prayers in the mosque," as he puts it.
In a show of respect for the 67-year-old ex-imam of St. Petersburg's mosque and former head of the local Muslim community, worshippers have reserved a special place in the congregation for Hazrat-Mahmoud in the front row near the serving imam, or prayer leader.
During his tenure of office in the Soviet era, Hazrat-Mahmoud was admired by some local Muslims because of his wide religious knowledge but, he believes, disliked by others for what they saw as "his inability to influence the public."
Hazrat-Mahmoud suffered the negative consequences of his outspokenness against the Communist system.
"Due to his wide knowledge of Islam he was summoned from [the Bashkirian city of] Ufa by the State Department of Religious Affairs to lead us in Leningrad, but he was too reserved to have his voice heard where necessary," said Mukhlisa Zaripova, 70, the daughter of a former imam of a village mosque near Nizhny-Novgorod who currently leads the St. Petersburg Tatar Diaspora association.
Zaripova said she has known the now wheelchair-bound clergyman since 1972, when he was appointed imam.
When restrictions on religious expression were relaxed during perestroika in the mid-1980s, Hazrat-Mahmoud thought it was the end of persecution he alleges he endured as a devoted Muslim in the atheistic Soviet Union. But it was too early to celebrate.
"As the outside world was unveiled to the newly born democratic Russia, and as the nation became indiscriminate in its absorption of values from this world, I realized that, as a forgotten imam, I had to lead my younger flock to face the new challenges," Hazrat-Mahmoud said.
In 1977, after serving eight years as an imam, Hazrat-Mahmoud, was stripped of his clerical position by the Soviet authorities for being a "Muslim fundamentalist."
"The selected few were branded fundamentalists for speaking in favor of spiritual values, but in the new Russia, we are indiscriminately frowned on as society has been programmed to see demons and terrorists in us," Hazrat-Mahmoud said.
The challenge, he implied, was what is now known as Islamophobia.
But unlike other Muslims "who invent an enemy from outside the folds of their religion," Hazrat-Mahmoud believes it is primarily Muslims who are to blame for the demonized image of their religion.
"Islamophobia is a product of ignorance on Islam, and to a greater extent, by Muslims themselves rather than by non-Muslims," he said.
Having vowed to face the challenges including fighting negative stereotypes, following reinstatement of his citizen's rights in 1993 after the collapse of the U.S.S.R. and the return of freedom of religion under the new Russian consitition, the once-embattled cleric founded a religious education, counseling and charity organization, Al-Fath.
"This was a country where the mere mention of God was a taboo, where religion was branded 'the opium of the public,' and religious leaders were 'enemies of the State," Hazrat-Mahmoud said.
Hazrat-Mahmoud recalled a time in the late 1970s when he and his wife were repeatedly detained in solitary confinement in mental institutions in Leningard and Moscow for using the mosque to conduct sermons regarded detrimental to the atheistic values.
"I had my registration revoked, my passport seized, was rendered homeless and jobless, deprived of my pension and wages. I resorted to cleaning the streets to earn my living," Hazrat-Mahmoud said about the 15 years he was unable to preach. During this time he claims to have lost count of the number of times he was arrested and detained on his way to or from the mosque.
"We are superficially free to worship now as we are attacked from all directions — from the world's media and the world community in general," says Hazrat-Mahmoud. Islamophobia has, he said, arisen in St. Petersburg where citizens of the Russian Federation who are Muslim are the target of 'xenophobia.'
"Imagine a situation where you are a terror suspect just because you are a non-Slavic young man dressed like a Muslim, not to mention what your name might be," he said.
Hazrat-Mahmoud believes that local Islamophobia is partly rooted in world trends, citing a remark made last month by Pope Benedict XVI, quoting the 14th Century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologos. Although the pope has apologized for offending Muslims by using the quote to make a theological point, Islamic reaction was swift to condemn its negative characterization of the concept of Jihad, or the holy war.
Using the quote, the Pope said to an academic gathering in Germany: "Show me what Mohammed brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."
Hazrat-Mahmoud said the quotation was used in the given context "to prove the Pope's intention to portray Islam as a gruesome religion, making his latter apology look more a sham than genuine."
"Of course as a Muslim I'm deeply offended by the remark, but I think we Russian Muslims are facing a different challenge — to put our ouwn house in order before going out there to condemn what would have been expected from the Pope, anyway," he said, insisting that Islam in Russia is still experiencing a revival.
"I wonder why demonize Islam? ... It looks like people have lost all sense and forgotten everything to do with history," said Tartar leader Zaripova about the Pope controversy.
"Don't they know that Hitler used the Biblical assertion of Jews having allegedly crucified Jesus to justify the Holocaust? I wonder why they don't brand Hitler, 'Christian fascist,'" Zaripova, a graduate of the St. Petersburg State University's faculty of Oriental Studies who now runs an Arabic and Tatar language religious school in the city, said.
"In fact, all the worst tyrannical rulers now and in the past had nothing to do with Islam," she said.
However, Hazrat-Mahmoud believes the impact of the Pope's remark has been highly exaggerated. He wonders why Muslims do not take advantage of the holy month of Ramadan to promote a positive image of Islam and the notion of holy war.
"Fasting is like a rehearsal for a year-round self struggle against evil temptations, for promotion of love in search for peace and harmony with God and His creation, which is what Jihad is in its wider sense," he says, adding, "it is a practical experience to taste hunger, thirst and all kinds of hardships... [to raise a]... spirit of love and charity."
Muslims believe that fasting is an act of worship primarily based on refraining from sinful deeds and immoral undertakings as prescribed to followers of other monotheist religions, namely Judaism and Christianity which share their roots in the teachings of Abraham.
Unlike the voluntary Christian fast based on dietry selections and its limitation to 40 days, the Muslim fast has adopted a stricter form that ordains abstinence from debauchery, violence, unpleasant sights and speech as well as abstaining from food and drink from sunrise to sunset during Ramadan.
While Hazrat-Mahmoud hopes that Ramadan, which lasts until the third week of October, is an opportunity to counter Islamophobia, other Muslim leaders question its depth in St. Petersburg today.
"Do you really expect Islamophobia in a city where hardly a handful of Muslims are devoted to the faith they profess?," the mufti of North West Russia, Imam Jaffar Ponchayev, said.
"As paradoxical as it may sound, we owe our revival and existence in this city mostly to non-Muslims," said the mufti, citing the example of the ongoing construction of the city's second mosque thanks to donations from non-Muslims.
"Unlike our Jewish brethren, who experience regular vandalism and Anti-Semitic attacks, there have been no reports of serious violent assaults on Muslims," Ponchayev said. "Russian Muslims enjoy the support of the state."
"[Islamophobia] would be the last thing you would expect in St. Petersburg, traditionally reputed for its tolerance to Muslims," Ponchayev added.
But Galina Kozhevnikova of the Moscow-based SOVA information analysis center says there have been reports reflecting the growth of Islamophobia, particularly after the Beslan terrorist attack in September 2004.
In an anthology of Discrimination and National-Extremism Monitoring, Kozhevnikova wrote that the Russian media encourages anti-Muslim sentiment with punitive use of remarks and a deliberate distortion of terminology attributed to Islam.
In another incident, a St. Petersburg Muslim woman told a newspaper that she was forced to mention her religion on a job application form, "only to miss out because I belonged to the wrong faith," she said.

TITLE: The Aleuts of Alaska Help To Keep The Russian Faith
AUTHOR: By Sam Howe Verhovek
PUBLISHER: LOS ANGELES TIMES
TEXT: TATITLEK, Alaska — Steve Totemoff keeps faith alive in this tiny Alaskan village — the Russian Orthodox faith.Totemoff, a native Aleut, keeps the faith when he caulks, paints or replaces the wood of the St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church after it is cracked by ice heaves or pulverized by the driving, salty, sleet-filled winds that come in from Prince William Sound.
Because of the work he and other Aleuts do, the 100-year-old church still stands.
Its three onion domes, each painted robin's-egg blue and topped by the three-bar Orthodox cross, grace the simple wooden building that looms above the steel-gray harbor in Tatitlek and sets off the misty green stretches of spruce trees with its own vivid burst of color.
Today, while the statewide Russian Orthodox diocese has 30,000 adherents and 40 ordained priests — both all-time highs, the church says — it is nonetheless struggling to preserve some of its most iconic landmarks: the historic chapels in poor native villages such as this one, about 145 kilometers southeast of Anchorage.
In nearly 100 villages and towns along the Alaskan coast, from the tip of the Aleutian Islands to the one-time Russian-American capital of Sitka, the Russian Orthodox churches remain the most visible — often the most colorful — man-made landmarks.
Forty of the buildings are on the National Register of Historic Places or designated as National Historic Landmarks. Some are meticulously maintained; a few are "literally ready to collapse," warned a report last year by Russian Orthodox Sacred Sites in Alaska, a nonprofit preservation group.
Most, however, are like Tatitlek's: battered by time, weather and wind, but still standing as a focal point of faith in the community, and kept alive by a lay congregation.
"We keep holding on,'' said Totemoff, 55, a powerfully built Vietnam War veteran with a big mustache. He wore a thick black work jacket, with a logo proclaiming Tatitlek to be "God's Country, U.S.A.," both to church and to his day job as the village's water-treatment plant operator.
"I could tell you what the church needs," he added with a shrug, listing a new heater, a new fuel tank and yet another coat of paint. "But I prefer to think about what we have. To me, the miracle is that our church is still here at all."
Although many of the people who care for the churches have names like Totemoff, Kompkoff, Gregoriev and Vlasoff, they do so with a curious distinction: They have little or no Russian blood.
"Many of us have never even seen a Russian,'' said Gary Kompkoff, the elected village chief in Tatitlek. "Most of us are full-blooded Aleut. It was very long ago that the Russians were here, of course."
The diocese's modest growth is almost all in the Anchorage area, where it has opened five new churches in the last decade, as well as a museum that tells the tale of the faith in Alaska.
The church's leader here is the Right Reverend Bishop Nikolai, the bishop of Sitka, Anchorage and Alaska. He came here five years ago after spending 22 years in Las Vegas, where he founded two parishes and served as chancellor of the Western diocese that includes California. He also worked outside the church as a juvenile parole and probation officer in Las Vegas.
The bishop, who formally uses just one name, said the Alaska diocese also has invested in its St. Herman seminary on Kodiak Island.
It is named after a man who was among the first 10 Russian monks to come to Alaska, in 1794, and who became North America's first Orthodox saint. His name is still recalled in the special prayers of the faithful for the diocese, such as this one:
"Beset by hardships in this far northern land, we are lifted up by the faith our Father Herman instilled in us, and by the prayers of Our Lady of Sitka we take upon ourselves, with hope and fortitude, the Cross our Lord has given to each one of us …"
At the seminary, four of every five graduates are from native Alaskan groups: the Aleut in the south, the Yupik Eskimos in the west and the Tlingit of the southeast.
Those who become priests sometimes mix three languages into a service: English, Slavonic (an old form of church Russian) and their native Alaskan tongue.
The Russian empire arrived in Alaska in 1741 with the voyage of explorer Vitus Bering, for whom the Bering Strait is named. It laid claim to the Alaskan wilderness, and hundreds of seal- and otter-fur trappers and traders quickly followed, working their way along the Alaskan coast and eventually to Northern California.
Monks and missionaries came as well, and onion-domed Orthodox churches were erected along with the military outposts that protected the colony.
As with almost any story of colonization, there is a brutal side of history to be told of Russian Alaska: military subjugation; smallpox epidemics; couplings that were forced on native women by Russian men, creating an Alaskan class of Creoles.
Even natives with no Russian blood, who generally called each other by just one name, were assigned Russian family names that their descendants use to this day.
The Russian era here came to an abrupt end in 1867, when Tsar Alexander II, consumed with other details of his overextended empire, sold Alaska.
Many of the estimated 900 or so Russians in the Last Frontier at the time sailed back across the Bering Strait.
But the Orthodox tradition remained, in part because the church had found ways to adapt to the natives, scholars say. Missionaries had made considerable effort to learn native languages, and had given the natives wide latitude in conducting church affairs.
"It's very easy to stereotype missionaries'' as having imposed a completely foreign religion on natives here, said Richard Dauenhauer, the president's professor of Native Languages and Culture at the University of Alaska Southeast in Juneau.
"But there was actually a lot of synthesis of Orthodoxy with the Aleutian culture,'' Dauenhauer said. "A lot of what happened in the native tradition was baptized into the church, is their way of looking at it. So when you define ancestry, the church is very much part of that."
Indeed, tradition is what many native Alaskans cite as a big reason for remaining true to the faith. The paradox remains, that it is a religion imported from afar that many natives say keeps them most attuned to the spirit of their ancestors here.
"I think for many, the Orthodox church is very... comforting, actually,'' said Totemoff, carefully searching for the right word.
"It is the traditional way," added Totemoff, who leads services here as a lay reader. "There is a sense of connection. It is how our ancestors worshiped."
"We were brought up this way,'' said Eleanor Tomaganuk, 44, one Sunday morning just after services at St. Nicholas, where she had come with her two young children.
"There's very much a feeling that this is our church."
With 40 ordained priests today, the number exceeds the 32 clergy on record at the height of Russian influence in the mid-1800s, said Barbara Sweetland Smith, an Alaskan historian who is also vice president of the nonprofit "sacred sites" group dedicated to preserving the old churches.
Even with that growth, however, many small parishes such as Tatitlek's continue to function as they have for decades — with lay leaders conducting the services most of the time, since traveling priests can come only once every several weeks.
"In many of these villages, the strong message of the church is this: 'We're still here,'" said Bishop Nikolai, who frequently travels to the remote chapels. "This faith is very much alive in Alaska."

TITLE: Hunt for Icons On The Black Market
AUTHOR: By Brian Murphy
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ATHENS, Greece — She first noticed the slivers of glass. Strange, the nun thought, we always sweep the floors after the last pilgrims and miracle-seekers are ushered out before dusk. Then it all became terribly clear.A smashed window. Candles toppled over. And an arch-shaped hole where the Elona Monastery's greatest treasure had been pried from its cradle of pine and resin.
The Mother Superior ran to the Greek Orthodox priest assigned to the monastery for the busy week around the Aug. 15 feast day of the Virgin Mary — when thousands come to see the 700-year-old icon of the Madonna and Child that some believe has graced their mountainous patch of southern Greece with miraculous powers.
"It's gone," she gasped. "Our icon is gone."
Police arrived within minutes. Nervous local politicos soon joined them. The sunrise was just cresting the Aegean Sea horizon, making the cinnamon-hued limestone cliffs around the monastery blush apple red. A mountaineer's rope hung limp against the rock face. Down it went — 130 feet — to a thicket of chestnut trees, holly bramble and shepherd paths.
Somewhere in these woods during the night — aided by the weak light of a quarter moon — the thief slipped away with the icon, police say.
"When the icon was gone," said the Mother Superior, "the monastery became like a cemetery."
In the dark world of art theft, religious items are some of the hottest commodities — driven partly by the same, insatiable interest in mysteries of faith that catapulted "The Da Vinci Code" to international fame and created a sensation around the recent "Gospel of Judas."
Experts in art theft say the best chance for recovery is before an object enters the international black markets, which are awash in objects from every major faith and culture.
Such crimes have been going on since the tomb raiders and relic traders of antiquity. Yet now there's a borderless buyers' market with deals being made on mobile phones and e-mail.
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the Yugoslav wars brought a flood of looted Christian works — including icons, chalices, crosses and gilded iconostases, or altar walls — into a black market already heavy with objects from places such as Eastern Europe and Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan drew an unprecedented wave of Muslim and pre-Islamic artifacts and cultural patrimony. Recently, investigators have noticed a surge in stolen works from Latin America and Southeast Asia, such as Buddhist ceremonial figures and pre-Colombian sacramental pieces.
"It's a phenomenon that is now so widespread," said Jennifer Thevenot, a spokeswoman for the Paris-based International Council of Museums, which works with Interpol and other agencies on art theft issues. "It affects all regions and all religions."
Interpol and the UN cultural heritage agency UNESCO call stolen art the No. 3 illegal market behind drugs and arms trading. The McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research in Britain estimates at least $3 billion in art and artifacts are stolen each year around the world, but cannot give a breakdown for religious-inspired works.
Interpol statistics offer some guidance. For 2004 — the most recent data available — nearly 1,800 thefts were reported from places of worship, led by Italy and Russia. For the same period, there were 334 museum thefts and 291 from dealers or galleries.
Many museums and important cultural sites have steadily improved surveillance and safeguards of their collections. But places of worship and religious reflection — often holding unique treasures — face a quandary: How to maintain sanctity without becoming too sterile or controlling?
"At some villages, there is not enough money for any security at all," said Yevgeny Mikhailovich Strelchik, an expert in efforts to protect Russia's religious art heritage.
Some Russian churches, he said, have followed examples in Europe and imposed museum-grade security on it's main treasures. A new proposal calls for placing identity chips in icons and other important religious objects that would allow agents to track items with auction houses and dealers.
Expanded international cargo checks and cooperation since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks also have made it harder to move stolen works, officials say. There have been some notable successes.
Since late 2002, more than 250 stolen Russian icons and other religious objects were returned by Italian authorities. But the lure of the black market remains strong.
An icon was among more than 200 items reported stolen from St. Petersburg's famed Hermitage Museum in July. The icon was later found in a trash bin as police pressure mounted.
In the United States, there's evidence of greater traffic in religious antiquities from Latin America and pre-Islamic artifacts from Iraq looted in the lawlessness after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
In April 2004, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents seized a 500-year-old altarpiece stolen in 2001 from a convent in Puebla, Mexico.
It was being sold for $225,000 in an art consignment shop in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Authorities in the United States, Jordan and other nations have seized more than 5,000 objects looted from Baghdad's National Museum in 2003.
Pressure has also increased on curators, dealers and auctioneers to determine whether an object is stolen. The London-based Art Loss Register, a global clearinghouse of stolen works, has grown to nearly 180,000 entries going back to World War II. About 10 percent are religious pieces.
"There's a lot more sensitivity about making all efforts to find out whether an object is stolen," said Mieke Zilverberg, chairwoman of the International Association of Dealers of Ancient Art based in Amsterdam. "There will always be a black market. We are trying to make it smaller."

TITLE: Valuyev Downs Opponent, Keeps Crown
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ROSEMONT, Illinois — Undefeated Nikolai Valuyev retained the WBA heavyweight championship Saturday, stopping Monte Barrett in the 11th round.The largest heavyweight champion ever, the 2.13-meter, 150-kilogram Valuyev, who is based in St. Petersburg, knocked down Barrett twice in the 11th, and the fight was stopped two minutes, 12 seconds into the round after a left jab left the challenger glassy-eyed and staggering against the ropes.
"This victory wasn't easy," Valuyev said. "Monte really tried hard. I knew after the fourth or fifth round I would win."
Valuyev floored Barrett in the eighth and pounced on the challenger in the 11th after he tripped. Barrett (31-5) quickly found himself back on the canvas after being knocked down, but got up. He rose again after the second knockdown of the round.
Valuyev continued the barrage, and the fight ended when trainer James Ali Basheer jumped into the ring.
After winning the belt on a disputed decision over John Ruiz in Berlin last December, Valuyev stopped Jamaican challenger Owen Beck in the third round in Hannover, Germany, in June. He was fighting for just the third time in the U.S. and making his first appearance in the country in more than five years. So, he considered this an introduction.
As impressions go, this one was not bad.
Barrett, wearing pink gloves that will be auctioned to raise money for breast cancer charities, landed a solid left to Valuyev's head in the fourth. Valuyev's mouth was bleeding after taking a series of punches in the sixth.
But most of the solid punches Barrett landed barely fazed Valuyev.
The champion landed a solid jab in the seventh — something he hadn't really done to that point — and caught Barrett with several rights as he tried to get away from the corner later in the round.
Barrett staggered into the ropes after a right in the eighth and went down for an eight count with about a minute left in the round after a left and right hook.
Barrett had not fought since a unanimous 12-round loss to his friend Hasim Rahman in a lackluster bout at the United Center in August 2005, and he had not fared well against tall fighters.
He dropped a split decision to the 2.06-meter Lance Whitaker in 1999 and suffered a technical knockout against 1.98-meter Wladimir Klitschko in London the following year.
On Saturday, he was trying to break the former Soviet Union's monopoly on heavyweight championships — one that developed this year when Klitschko won the IBF belt, Sergei Liakhovich took the WBO titles and Oleg Maskayev claimed the WBC strap.

TITLE: World Reacts as North Korea Tests A-Bomb
AUTHOR: By Burt Herman
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SEOUL — North Korea faced a barrage of global condemnation and calls for harsh sanctions Monday after it announced that it had set off an atomic weapon underground, a test that thrusts the secretive communist state into the elite club of nuclear-armed nations.The UN Security Council scheduled a meeting for today, a U.S. official said. And Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and President Bush agreed during a telephone call today that the UN Security Council must take "decisive action" against North Korea.
The council had scheduled a meeting to vote on a successor to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, with South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon virtually certain to be the council's candidate.
A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the meeting had not been officially announced, said North Korea had been added to the agenda of the meeting.
The United States, Japan, China and Britain led a chorus of criticism and urged action by the United Nations Security Council in response to the reported test, which fell one day after the anniversary of reclusive North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il's accession to power nine years ago.
South Korea's spy chief said there were possible indications the North was moving to conduct more tests.
The Security Council had warned North Korea just two days earlier not to go through with any test, and the Pyongyang government's defiance was likely to lead to calls for stronger sanctions against the impoverished and already isolated country.
White House spokesman Tony Snow said the U.S. government had not confirmed whether the North's claims of an underground nuclear test are true. But he said "a test would constitute a provocative act in defiance of the will of the international community and of our call to refrain from actions that would aggravate tensions in Northeast Asia."
A U.S. government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the political sensitivity of the situation, said the seismic event could have been a nuclear explosion, but its small size was making it difficult for authorities to pin down.
There were conflicting reports about the size of the explosion.
South Korea's geological institute estimated the force of the explosion to be equivalent to 550 tons of TNT, far smaller than the two nuclear bombs the U.S. dropped on Japan in World War II. But Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said it was far more powerful, equivalent to 5,000 to 15,000 tons of TNT.
The head of South Korea's spy agency said the blast was equal to less than 1,000 tons of TNT, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported. National Intelligence Service chief Kim Seung-kyu also told lawmakers there were signs of suspicious movement at another suspected test site, Yonhap said.
The U.S. Geological Survey said it recorded a 4.2-magnitude seismic event in northeastern North Korea. Asian neighbors also said they registered a seismic event, and an official of South Korea's monitoring center said the 3.6 magnitude tremor wasn't a natural occurrence.
Nuclear blasts give off clear seismic signatures that differentiate them from other explosions, said Friedrich Steinhaeusler, a professor of physics at Salzburg University. Even if the bomb the North Koreans detonated was small, sensors in South Korea would likely be close enough to categorize the explosion as nuclear, he said.
"I think we have to take them at their word. They're not the type of regime to bluff," said Peter Beck, Seoul-based analyst for conflict resolution think tank International Crisis Group.
Only Russia said the blast was a nuclear explosion but the reaction of world governments reflected little doubt that they were treating the announcement as fact.
Although North Korea has long claimed it had the capability to produce a bomb, the test was the first manifest proof of its membership in a small club of nuclear-armed nations. A nuclear armed North Korea would dramatically alter the strategic balance of power in the Pacific region and would tend to undermine already fraying global anti-proliferation efforts.
"The development and possession of nuclear weapons by North Korea will in a major way transform the security environment in North Asia and we will be entering a new, dangerous nuclear age," Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said at a news conference in Seoul after a summit with the South Korean leader.
Abe, facing his first major foreign policy test since his recent election, called for a "calm yet stern response. Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso warned such a test would "severely endanger not only Northeast Asia but also the world stability."
South Korea said it had put its military on high alert, but said it noticed no unusual activity among North Korea's troops.
China, the North's closest ally and the impoverished nation's main source of food, expressed its "resolute opposition" to the reported test and urged the North to return to six-party nuclear disarmament talks. It said the North "defied the universal opposition of international society and flagrantly conducted the nuclear test."
British Prime Minister Tony Blair said the test was a "completely irresponsible act," and its Foreign Ministry warned of international repercussions.
The North has refused for a year to attend six-party international talks aimed at persuading it to disarm. It pulled out of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 2003 after U.S. officials accused it of a secret nuclear program, allegedly violating an earlier nuclear pact between Washington and Pyongyang.
The North's official Korean Central News Agency said the test was successful, with no leak of radiation.
North Korean scientists "successfully conducted an underground nuclear test under secure conditions," the government-controlled agency said, adding this was "a stirring time when all the people of the country are making a great leap forward in the building of a great prosperous powerful socialist nation."
"It marks a historic event as it greatly encouraged and pleased the ... people that have wished to have powerful self-reliant defense capability," KCNA said. "It will contribute to defending the peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in the area around it."
South Korea said the test was conducted at 10:36 a.m. local time in Hwaderi near Kilju city on the northeast coast.

TITLE: Victorious CSKA Dunks LA Clippers
AUTHOR: By Carl Schreck
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — In the most lopsided victory ever by a European club over an NBA team, CSKA Moscow rolled to a 94-75 win over the Los Angeles Clippers in an exhibition game Saturday afternoon.Roared on by a sellout crowd of 5,000 fans at the CSKA Universal Sports Complex, CSKA controlled the game throughout, allowing the Clippers only a single-possession in the first half.
"It was a big moment for CSKA because, after many years, an NBA team finally came back to Russia," said CSKA guard Theodoros Papaloukas.
The Clippers, who defeated Khimki Basketball Club 98-91 on Friday evening as part of the NBA Europe Live Tour, became the first NBA team to play in Moscow since 1988, when the Atlanta Hawks played a three-game series against the Soviet national team during a tour of the Soviet Union.
A 31-19 difference in the second quarter, pushed along by the play of young newcomer Anton Ponkrashov, supplied CSKA with a double-digit lead that it would not relinquish for the rest of the game.
Trajan Langdon led seven CSKA double-digit scorers with 17 points. Tomas Van Den Spiegel scored 16 points for the defending Euroleague champions, and Matjaz Smodis and David Vanterpool had 14 each. Ponkrashov scored 11 points, while Papaloukas added 10 to go with 9 assists, seven more than the entire Clippers team.
CSKA was credited with 17 assists to just 2 for the Clippers, who got a double-double of 15 points and 11 rebounds from Chris Kaman.
"We showed we were a very good team, even though both teams are at the beginning of the season," Papaloukas said. "This was a big chance for us to play an NBA team, and I think everybody was concentrated and focused. Right now we're going to celebrate and rest tomorrow, because it's not often you beat an NBA team, and we have to go to Cologne to finish this tournament."
CSKA continues its NBA Europe Live run, with games Tuesday and Wednesday in Cologne, Germany. It will take on Maccabi Tel Aviv, in a rematch of last season's Euroleague title game, in the semifinal of the four-team tournament. The Phoenix Suns will play the Philadelphia 76ers in the other semifinal.
CSKA's win Saturday was the second victory by a Euroleague team in the NBA Europe Live tour. Winterthur FC Barcelona beat the 76ers 104-99 in Barcelona on Thursday.
"We knew exactly what they could do, and unfortunately for us, they did it," Clippers' all-star forward Elton Brand said. "It's still early for us, and we have lots of work to do. We tried hard, but they executed extremely well."
Brand, a member of the U.S. national team that finished third at the world championships in Japan last month, denied there had been additional pressure on the Clippers in Moscow after Team USA's disappointing finish.
"There were definitely flashbacks with Papaloukas," Brand said of the CSKA guard, who helped lead Greece to a semifinal win over the United States in Japan. "He really distributes the ball to guys. It's uncanny."

TITLE: Annan's Job Filled Amid Nuke Crisis
AUTHOR: By Evelyn Leopold
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: UNITED NATIONS — South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon will be formally nominated as UN secretary general on Monday, ironically only hours after North Korea defied the world body by announcing a nuclear test.The UN Security Council will cast its votes, effectively anointing Ban as the successor to Secretary General Kofi Annan whose 10 years in office expire on Dec. 31. Six other candidates withdrew, leaving members to vote for Ban only.
The 192-member UN General Assembly must give final approval to Ban's nomination, which usually follows within a week or two. The vote is expected to be positive.
Some diplomats, including Japan's UN Ambassador Kenzo Oshima, have speculated that North Korea's announcement on Oct. 3 of plans to carry out the underground nuclear test was timed, in part, to coincide with Ban's selection in an effort to get world attention.
With Security Council members meeting anyway, Japan, the current council president, as well as the United States, made clear last week the 15-member council would hold immediate consultations if North Korea conducted its first test.
The council on Friday urged North Korea not to carry out a test.
In Washington, the United States said it expected the Security Council to take immediate action to respond to what the White House called a provocative act. Members usually consult first, sometimes for hours, to ascertain facts before taking a common public position.
Ban, 62, would be the eighth secretary general in the world body's 60-year history. He will inherit a bureaucracy of 9,000 staff, a $5 billion budget and more than 90,000 peacekeepers in 18 operations around the globe that cost another $5 billion.
It remains to be seen how he might deal with the North Korean nuclear issue — to say nothing of the many other conflicts he will be involved in mediating and which few others want to solve.
The low-keyed Ban will be a contrast to Annan, a Ghanaian who in his first five years won a Nobel Peace Prize and was sometimes dubbed a diplomatic rock star, before financial scandals took over the headlines over the past few years.
But some diplomats, particularly U.S. Ambassador John Bolton, would like to see a secretary general be an administrator and have a lower profile around the world.
Among his colleagues in Seoul, everyone seems to agree that Ban is very pleasant and hard-working.
Jang Sung-min, a former presidential aide and member of parliament said, "He probably won't do a bad job. It is really hard to think of a problem with Ban. Maybe that's his strong point — that there's nothing peculiar about him."
Ban won't be "the sort of activist diplomat, ready to seize the initiative, which we saw in Kofi Annan," said Dick Leurdijk, UN expert at the Netherlands Clingendael Institute of International Relations.
"I think he will be more like his Asian predecessor U Thant, who just took care of the shop," he said, referring to the Burmese diplomat who held the post from 1961-71.
At the United Nations, a senior diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said of Ban, "I think he will bring genuinely a huge amount of diplomatic experience.

TITLE: Genocide Trial Witness: Saddam 'Buried People Alive'
AUTHOR: By Bushra Juhi and Jamal Halaby
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGHDAD, Iraq — Prison guards under Saddam Hussein used to bury detainees alive and watch women as they bathed, occasionally shooting over their heads, a former female prisoner testified Monday in the genocide trial of the ex-president.Speaking in Kurdish through an Arabic interpreter, the 31-year-old witness recalled what she saw as a 13-year-old Kurdish girl who was detained during Saddam's offensive against the Kurds in the late 1980s.
The woman, who testified behind a curtain and whose name was withheld apparently for fear of reprisal, said Iraqi government forces destroyed her Kurdish village in northern Iraq in 1988. She and some family members were imprisoned in southern Iraq.
A prison warden she identified as Hajaj — whose name has been given by earlier witnesses in the trial — "used to drag women, their hands and feet shackled, and leave them in a scorching sun for several hours."
"Soldiers used to watch us bathe," said the woman. The guards also fired over the women's heads as they washed.
The woman said several relatives disappeared during the offensive against the Kurds, branded Operation Anfal.
"I know the fate of my family. They were buried alive," she testified.
The prosecution presented the court with documents showing that remains of the women's relatives turned up in a mass grave.
"I'd like to ask Saddam: 'what crime did women and children commit'?" the woman said in court.
She added she was seeking unspecified "compensation" because "Saddam's men looted our properties three times during my lifetime."
Saddam and his six co-defendants sat quietly in court on Monday when their trial resumed after a 12-day break. They were not represented by lawyers.
Chief Judge Mohammed Oreibi al-Khalifa had declared a recess after a stormy session on Sept. 26 in which Saddam and his co-defendants were thrown out of court. The judge said then he wanted to give the defendants time to convince their lawyers to end their boycott of the trial, or to confer with new ones.
On Sunday, Saddam's chief lawyer said he and his team would continue to boycott the trial to protest the removal of the first chief judge, and the court's refusal to give the attorneys time to examine thousands of documents.
Lawyer Khalil al-Dulaimi said the decision to continue the boycott was made after he met with Saddam on Oct. 2 and because of "repeated violations by the court."
Saddam and his co-defendants are charged with genocide against Iraq's Kurdish population in the Anfal campaign, in which an estimated 180,000 people were killed. If convicted, the accused could be condemned to death by hanging.
A second witness, 41-year-old farmer Abdul-Hadi Abdullah Mohammed, told the court that his mother had died in detention and that several other family members went missing in 1988 and are presumed dead.
"The fate of my family is still unknown up to now," he said.

TITLE: Alonso On the Final Straight After Schumacher's Car Fails
AUTHOR: By Alan Baldwin
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: SUZUKA, Japan — World champion Fernando Alonso hailed his surprise Japanese Grand Prix victory as a gift from God on Sunday after an engine failure left Michael Schumacher's Formula One title hopes in tatters.The penultimate race of a hard-fought season left the Renault driver 10 points clear of his Ferrari foe and needing just one more point to seal the championship for the second year in a row.
After two retirements in the previous four races, in Hungary and in Italy, the Spaniard felt the wheel of fortune had finally turned his way again.
"It was not only Monza where we lost points, I think we had very unlucky moments in Hungary as well and in some other places — China — so we lost a lot of points in bad luck moments," he told a news conference.
"For sure these 10 points are a little present that God gave to us," he added after his seventh win of the season but first since Canada in June.
Alonso had led last weekend in China only to lose out to Schumacher after he and the team made a wrong tire choice at his first pitstop.
In Monza he was penalized five places to 10th on the starting grid for allegedly impeding Ferrari's Felipe Massa in qualifying and was then sidelined when his engine blew. The 25-year-old led in Hungary before a wheel nut came loose and pitched him out.
Renault have also suffered from the governing body's decision to outlaw a 'mass damper' system that had given the team a performance advantage.
"Today has been very hard for us, and we hadn't had things going our way for some time," team boss Flavio Briatore told Italy's RAI television. "This shows there is some justice — we broke an engine in Monza and they broke one here.
"It's fair for the sport because we've equalized the dramas. Therefore it's a great result for Fernando and it's great for the team."
Alonso said Schumacher's engine failure, the seven times champion's first since the 2000 French Grand Prix, was the surprise of the race.
"I just didn't believe what I was seeing," he said.
"Victory means a lot, not only for me but the team as well, getting back their confidence. We deserved this victory a long time ago, I think.
"When you win it is a really happy moment and this victory is even better because it was a complete surprise," said the Spaniard, who danced a jig on his car after parking up.
"We never thought at any moment yesterday or this morning that we could fight for victory."

TITLE: Jon Stewart For President?
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK — Those people wearing "Stewart/Colbert '08" T-shirts can stop hoping — Comedy Central's fake news stars have no intention of making a run for the White House.Jon Stewart said the T-shirts promoting him and Stephen Colbert "are a real sign of how sad people are" with the state of affairs in the country.
"Nothing says 'I am ashamed of you my government' more than 'Stewart/Colbert '08,' Stewart told an audience Sunday at the New Yorker Festival. He was interviewed by the magazine's editor, David Remnick.
Stewart, who recently hosted Pakistan's president, General Pervez Musharraf, on "The Daily Show," said he's been trying to get top Bush administration officials to appear. "We have requests in there to everyone including Barney," Stewart said. "Only Barney replies."
Barney is the president's Scottish terrier. Stewart scoffed at suggestions that some people actually get their news from "The Daily Show."
"There's no way you could get the news from us," he said. "I've seen the show. It couldn't happen."

TITLE: Foley's E-Mail Surfaced in 2000
AUTHOR: By Hope Yen
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON — A Republican member of Congress confronted then-Representative Mark Foley about his internet communications with teenagers as early as 2000, according to a newspaper report.The report in the Washington Post pushes back by at least five years the date when a member of Congress acknowledges learning of the Florida Republican's questionable behavior toward pages.
It came as the Republican leadership attempted to present a united front on the congressional page scandal that has rocked the party a month before midterm elections and put House Speaker Dennis Hastert on shaky ground.
Though Representative Adam Putnam, insisted Sunday that "the dirty laundry in our conference is gone," that claim appeared to be premature.
The Washington Post reported Sunday night that Representative Jim Kolbe confronted Foley about his internet communications with teenagers as early as 2000.
The Post said that a former page showed Kolbe some internet messages from Foley that had made the page uncomfortable. Kolbe's press secretary, Korenna Cline, told the Post that a Kolbe staff member advised the page last week to discuss the matter with the clerk of the House.
Hastert and his aides have been criticized for failing to act promptly after receiving warnings about Foley's questionable electronic communications with pages.
Hastert since has insisted he was not aware of the communications until recently. But on the day after Foley resigned, New York Representative Tom Reynolds said he had told Hastert months ago about concerns that Foley had sent inappropriate messages. Reynolds now says he cannot remember exactly when he learned of Foley's e-mails or when he told Hastert about them.
Putnam sat in Sunday for Reynolds, who canceled an appearance on ABC's "This Week" because, said an aide, he was suffering from a "flu-like" ailment.
Reynolds is facing a tough re-election fight against Democrat Jack Davis.
Reynolds has been criticized by Democrats who say he did too little to protect a male teenage page from Foley who resigned Sept. 29 after disclosure of his inappropriate electronic messages to former congressional pages.
Foley is now under investigation by federal and Florida authorities.
Putnam, who heads the Republican Policy Committee, sought to make the case that Hastert's office "acted proactively, they acted aggressively, and within hours of the explicit e-mails coming to light, they demanded Foley's resignation."
One Republican lawmaker said Sunday that those who participated in a cover-up would have to resign.
"Anybody that hindered this in any kind of way, tried to step in the way of hiding this, covering it up, is going to have to step down. Whoever that is," said Representative Tom Davis.
The House ethics committee is investigating the matter. If it finds evidence of a cover-up, the punishment could range from a mild rebuke in a committee report to a House vote of censure or expulsion.
Representative Patrick McHenry said Democrats should be investigated to see whether they leaked the explicit e-mails to gain a political advantage before the elections, although the lawmaker acknowledged he had no evidence indicating that was the case.
Almost half of Americans surveyed in a recent Associated Press-Ipsos poll said recent disclosures of corruption and scandal will be extremely or very important to their vote.
Also, more than half of those surveyed in a Newsweek poll released this weekend believe Hastert tried to cover up news of Foley's messages to the pages. That poll gives Democrats the advantage on handling moral values, normally a Republican strong point.

TITLE: Fidel Castro is Not Dying of Cancer, Says Brother
AUTHOR: By Vanessa Arrington
PUBLISHER: THE ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
TEXT: HAVANA — The ailing Fidel Castro is not dying but is recovering from an illness, his younger brother and Cuba's acting president said Sunday in response to rumors that the leader was on his deathbed.Raul Castro, who has been standing in for his brother since July 31, was responding to recent reports including one in Time magazine that said Castro apparently has terminal cancer. Castro is recovering from intestinal surgery but the lack of details from the Cuban government regarding the nature of his illness has sparked a number of rumors about his health.
"He is not dying like some of the press in Miami is saying," Raul Castro told a youth congress in Havana. "He is constantly getting better."
The younger Castro said Fidel has a telephone next to him "and he's using it more and more every day." He said he had a long working session with his brother just two days ago.
Fidel, 80, has not appeared publicly since July 26, and no new photographs of the leader have been released in three weeks. He was last shown receiving private visits by world leaders during the Nonaligned Movement summit in mid-September, which was hosted by Cuba.
In late September, the elder Castro did not meet with visiting Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov, whose two-day trip to Cuba marked the highest-level visit from Russia since President Vladimir Putin came to the island in 2000.
Last week, local media reported Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque told Cubans that Castro will return to his post as maximum leader, but he did not say when.
"This takes time, but he's right there," Raul Castro said Sunday. "Little by little, he's working."
The acting president presided over the closing session of a state-sponsored youth congress, which brought together 900 schoolchildren aged 6 to 12 — an age group known as "pioneers" on the communist-run island.
The children gave their support to the ailing Castro in a message published Sunday on a government-run newspaper's web site, saying his presence was felt at the event.
They also said they would defend the island's revolution against any assault by the U.S. government, calling President Bush and his supporters "cockroaches."
"To Bush and his followers, we say stop being foolish, and that they are truly a bunch of cockroaches," they said in their message. "Don't mess with us, because the pioneers are also ready to defend the Revolution."

TITLE: Lesbians Win Right To Marry
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ATTLEBORO, Massachusetts — A lesbian couple from Rhode Island who won the right to marry in Massachusetts held their ceremony Sunday.After being denied a marriage license in Massachusetts, Wendy Becker and Mary Norton challenged a 1913 state law that prohibits out-of-state residents from marrying if the union would not be permitted in their home state.
They argued that same-sex marriage was not specifically banned in Rhode Island. Superior Court Judge Thomas Connolly agreed last month, saying he saw no evidence of a "constitutional amendment, statute, or controlling appellate decision" making same-sex marriage illegal in Rhode Island.
Rhode Island Governor Don Carcieri, a Republican and a gay marriage opponent, said through a spokesman that he has no plans to try to revise the state's laws.
Becker and Norton have been together for 18 years and have two children, 3-year-old Mickey and 6-year-old Hannah. Becker works at Rhode Island College, Norton at Brown Medical School.
Becker and Norton said they started planning their wedding almost as soon as the ruling was issued Sept. 29. About 50 people attended the ceremony.
"People take a year to pull off a wedding, so it's been a busy few days, but we've been emotionally planning since much longer than that," Becker said.

TITLE: Thai King Accepts Cabinet Picks From Coup Leaders
AUTHOR: By Rungrawee C. Pinyorat
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BANGKOK, Thailand — Thailand's king approved a post-coup Cabinet lineup Monday, ushering in an interim government expected to rule the country for one year until the next elections are held.The Cabinet was announced early Monday on a military-run television channel and other networks.
A government spokesman could not immediately be reached to confirm the list of 26 ministers to serve under Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont, who was appointed by the military after the bloodless Sept. 19 coup that ousted former premier Thaksin Shinawatra.
Surayud had submitted his cabinet selections to King Bhumibol Adulyadej shortly after his Oct. 1 appointment and needed a royal endorsement before making the lineup public.
Key posts went to a well-respected economist, a high-profile civil servant and a retired military officer close to Surayud, all with reputations for being corruption-free. The military council that ousted Thaksin accused his government of corruption and is investigating the allegations.
Thailand's central bank chief, Pridiyathorn Devakula, was named finance minister and will also serve as a deputy prime minister for economic matters.
A highly regarded economist with an MBA from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, Pridiyathorn helped steer Thailand's economy out of the devastating Asian financial crisis and has been praised for policies that promoted financial stability.
The new foreign minister is Nitya Pibulsongkram, a career diplomat who served as an ambassador to the United States and the United Nations. He was also Thailand's chief negotiator for a U.S.-Thai free trade agreement that stalled during the country's political turmoil.
Retired army general Bunrod Somtad, a longtime friend of Surayud, was named defense minister. The two went to military school together and Bunrod rose to the post of the army's joint chief of staff while Surayud was the army chief.
According to the road map set out by the coup leaders, Surayud's government will rule for about a year, until the new constitution is written and elections can be held next October.
The military ousted Thaksin while he was attending the United Nations.