SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1214 (80), Friday, October 20, 2006
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TITLE: Olmert Appeals to Russia for Aid Over Iran
AUTHOR: By Amy Teibel
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert appealed to Russia on Wednesday to help block Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, but Russian President Vladimir Putin offered the visiting Israeli leader no public reassurances.
Relations between Russia and Israel have warmed dramatically in recent years, but the countries are in deep disagreement over the Iranian nuclear issue. Israel, like the West, doesn't believe Tehran's claims that its nuclear program is for energy, and wants its capabilities nipped.But Russia says it has no proof Iran is seeking a nuclear weapon and continues to build Iran's first, $800 million nuclear reactor. Russia, which wields veto power as a permanent Security Council member, has been a major impediment to imposing UN sanctions on Iran for refusing to scale back its nuclear ambitions.
But Olmert said those ambitions need to be thwarted.
"We don't have the privilege to ignore the true intentions of Iran, whose leadership publicly calls for the destruction of the state of Israel," Olmert said at a joint news conference with Putin after their meeting.
"The entire international community must join ranks to block Iran's intention of arming itself with nuclear weapons."
"I leave this meeting with the sense that President Putin understands the danger that is lurking from Iran's direction, should it succeed in realizing its objectives of arming itself with nuclear weapons," he added.
Putin remained stonily silent, appearing to brush off Olmert's request by saying nothing about Iran at the news conference.
Fears about Russia's role in the Iranian standoff grew last month when Moscow, caving in to Iranian pressure, agreed to ship fuel to the atomic power plant it is building in Iran. The fear is that the fuel will be diverted and used to produce bombs.
Despite the tensions, relations between Russia and Israel have improved dramatically since the days of the Cold War, when Moscow helped to arm Arab nations fighting Israel and barred Jews from leaving the Soviet Union.
As the Soviet Union was collapsing in the early 1990s, both nations restored ties, and Moscow loosened the emigration restrictions, prompting more than 1 million Russian-speakers to immigrate to Israel.
Now, Russia is a member of the Quartet of international Middle East peace negotiations, along with the United States, the United Nations and the European Union, which proposed the "road map" peace plan that foundered shortly after it was introduced in June 2003.
Putin, who took office in 2000, called for a resumption of talks.
"The only way to get out of the vicious circle of violence is to stop making mutual accusations, free hostages and resume peaceful dialogue. Russia, as a member of the Middle East Quartet, intends to assist in a rapid stabilization of the situation and a resumption of the negotiating process," he said.
Olmert said that Israel was committed to the resumption of peace talks and that he wants to meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a moderate who was elected last year separately from government members of Hamas, which refuses to recognize Israel. Israel is boycotting the Islamic militant group.
However, Olmert reiterated that the conditions laid down by the Quartet must be respected, in particular the recognition of Israel and of all existing peace agreements between Israel and the Palestinians.
Abbas doesn't want to meet with Olmert without assurances he would have something to show for it — such as an Israeli promise to release some of the thousands of Palestinian prisoners Israel holds. But Israel says it won't free prisoners until Hamas-linked militants free an Israeli soldier they captured nearly four months ago.
Olmert alluded to Russia's supply of military technology to other Israeli enemies. Israel claims Lebanon-based Hezbollah guerrillas used Russian missiles in a summer war with Israel. Israel does not accuse Russia of directly supplying Hezbollah, but maintains the arms were sold to Syria and Iran, which sent them on to their Hezbollah proxies.
Russia denies its missiles reached Hezbollah, but Israeli media reported that Russia has issued directives to tighten arms export controls. The Russians have reported no tightening of controls and Olmert said weapons transfers were an issue in his meeting with Putin.
"We discussed the importance of implementing the arms embargo on countries that transfer weapons to Hezbollah," Olmert said.

TITLE: Activists Ask To Adopt Georgian Surnames
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A group of young liberal political activists has contacted city registration offices with requests to change their Russian surnames into Georgian-language variants in protest against what they feel is "anti-Georgian hysteria sweeping over Russia."Yabloko youth wing politician Alexander Shurshev asked to be renamed Shurshadze.
"In today's Russia, people are discriminated against on the basis of their nationality; this is an embarrassing practice," Shurshev said on Monday. "I have decided to change my last name to give it a Georgian ending to express my solidarity with the Georgian people who are being oppressed."
The name-changing campaign is a joint initiative by the local branch of liberal political party Yabloko and the St. Petersburg bureau of opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta.
Nikolai Donskov, St. Petersburg bureau chief of Novaya Gazeta, said the provocative campaign is aimed at what he called "the absurdity of rampant anti-Georgian frenzy."
A diplomatic conflict between Russia and Georgia erupted earlier this month when four Russian army officers were arrested on suspicion of spying in Georgia. Although the officers were returned to Russia, the Kremlin has acted swiftly to isolate Georgia with the imposition of a communications ban and other measures. Russian authorities have moved against Georgians they say live in Russia illegally and planeloads have been forcibly repatriated to Georgia amid a general crackdown on Georgians in Russia that has led Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili to use the term "ethnic cleansing."
"There is an element of mass psychosis in the rage which the law enforcement and officials let loose on every Georgian in their sight," Donskov said.
"Even though the local campaign is not as rife as in Moscow, Georgian hunting is going on at full steam. Complete with unnecessary document checks, fast-track deportations and even insulting speeches in the city parliament, the atmosphere is very tense."
Donskov welcomed the unusual form of protest and invoked European history to make his point.
"When Denmark was occupied by fascists and all Jews were ordered to wear a yellow Star of David at all times when they were outside, the Royal family attached the star to their clothes and went out too," the editor said. "They chose that move as a form of solidarity with the people of Denmark, regardless of their ethnic origin."
Shurshev's request may take up to one week to be processed by the Admiralteisky district registration office. According to Russian legislation, all Russian citizens have the right to change their names and surnames. To get one's surname changed costs a Russian citizen 500 rubles for registration, plus 100 rubles for a new internal passport.
Governor Valentina Matviyenko on Monday delivered a lengthy speech to mark three years in office in which she touched on the Russia-Georgia conflict.
"Only those Georgians who violated the law and stay here illegally must be subject to police punishment" Matviyenko said. "Police actions should not spread out to affect innocent ordinary people."
There is evidence however that local politicians are eager to join in Moscow's anti-Georgian witchhunt.
Speaking to colleagues on Wednesday, Alexei Timofeyev, a lawmaker at the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, called for shutdown of what he branded "Georgian casinos" and other companies ran or managed by people with Georgian last names, which are "patronized by the Georgian mafia."
Although Timofeyev's initiative was not supported by fellow parliamentarians, he was given the opportunity to make a speech rife with anti-Georgian rhetoric on the topic without censure or protest.
Roman Omari Vephvadze, senior priest at the Georgian church on Starorusskaya Ulitsa, said his parishioners are afraid of going to public places and feel threatened.
"I see much fewer people attending services, and those who come say they are scared," the priest told reporters this week.
A group of St. Petersburg writers, including Boris Strugatsky, Konstantin Azadovsky and Ilya Fonyakov sent an open letter to Matviyenko highlighting the fear of ordinary Georgians living in the city.
"We are ashamed to admit that the embarrasing anti-Georgian campaign has reached St. Petersburg," reads the letter, whose authors are not ethnic Georgians.
While Moscow authorities this week announced plans to deport over 200 Georgians for violating immigration rules, a Georgian citizen awaiting deportation died in Domodedovo airport shortly before boarding a plane back to his home country. Tengiz Togonidze, 48, was detained in St. Petersburg and a local court sentenced him to be deported.
Shurshev, soon to be known as Shurshadze, is convinced he is doing the right thing by changing his name.
"All of us bear responsibility for the authorities, for the people we chose to govern us," he said. "Our leaders neglect human rights and stir up whole nations against each other. We need to show that we disgaree — those who believe so, that is."

TITLE: Verdict Given in Hate Murder Case
AUTHOR: By Ali Nassor
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: In the third acquittal of suspected hate criminals in a jury trial this year, the St. Petersburg City Court on Tuesday cleared all 14 defendants of the murder of Vu An-Tuan, 20, a Vietnamese student of the St. Petersburg Politechnical University who was fatally stabbed two years ago.Meanwhile, an official representative of the Vietnamese Foreign Office, Le Zung, has taken Russian government and St. Petersburg law enforcement establishment to task, demanding "an immediate solution to An-Tuan's murder, and that investigations be resumed and sped up."
"The murder is not compatible with traditional good relations between the peoples of our countries," RIA Novosti news agency quoted Zung as saying.
He also called for urgent and effective measures to be taken to protect Vietnamese nationals in Russia.
In July, a jury in the same court acquitted suspects of the murder of Roland Epasak, a Congolese student who was killed in September last year. Another group of defendants were cleared in March of the February 2004 murder of Khursheda Sultanova, a nine-year-old Tajiki girl.
An-Tuan died instantly of 37 stab wounds on the evening of Oct. 13, 2004, following an attack by a group of drunk young men on Ulitsa Lva Tolstogo near a medical academy's students dormitory on the Petrograd Side.
According to the prosecution, the defendants were on their way from a drinking spree at the nearby Rovesnik club on Ordinarnaya Ulitsa to attack an Azeri watermelon vendor at the corner of Ulitsa Lva Tolstogo and Ulitsa Rentgena, when they attacked An-Tuan, who died from the loss of blood.
A day after the murder, Alexei Terpigoryev, then Petrogradsky District's Prosecutor, said, "there were so many eye-witnesses who are now giving testimonies."
Dmitry Dubrovsky, deputy head of the department of modern ethnology and inter-ethnic relations at St. Petersburg's Russian Museum of Ethnography, said "the ruling is a reflection of the prosecution's incompetence and jury's xenophobic attitudes," adding, "there'll be no end to controversial acquittals unless investigators learn to be professional, and jury members are cured of their xenophobic disease."
Yury Vdovin, co-chairman of the St. Petersburg Citizens' Watch human rights watchdog partially backed Dubrovsky saying "the prosecution's fiasco is mainly due to their incompetence exacerbated by both the prosecution's and the jury's xenophobic attitudes."
He did not rule out the possibility that "pressure from the upper corridors of power might have been exerted on an equally unprofessional jury."
The jury dismissed the prosecution, saying it had failed to draw any connections between the suspects and An Tuan's murder, and that five suspects had been kept behind bars for committing no offense at all.
However, the rest were found guilty on other counts including separate incidents of violent hate attacks on a Palestinian and a Chinese student. They were also found guilty of committing acts of hooliganism in separate incidents involving street fights with an Azeri national and a Ghanaian student.
The court was due to pass sentence late Thursday.
Meanwhile, a nine-year-old African-Russian girl who survived stab wounds following an attack by a group of teenagers in March is due to flee to Mali, her father's native country, by the end of the month.
"I had to forfeit the child and let her go to Mali with her father, as she has found life here unbearable ever since she was attacked," said Lilian Sisoko's mother, Yekaterina.
"She could not even cope with school," said Yekaterina, who has to stay in St. Petersburg because of other family commitments.

TITLE: Candidate in Mayoral Elections Gunned Down in Dalnegorsk
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — A mayoral candidate in a Far Eastern city was gunned down as he left his campaign headquarters, a regional official said Thursday.Dmitry Fotyanov was shot around noon Wednesday in Dalnegorsk, about 5,750 miles east of Moscow. Police said attackers used an assault rifle equipped with a silencer, Russian media reported.
Russian news reports said the gunmen were riding in a car that later exploded, but it was unclear precisely when the explosion occurred or whether there were any injuries from the blast.
Investigators were focusing on whether the killing was to keep Fotyanov out of a runoff election scheduled for next week, said Irina Nomokonova, an official with the Primorky Krai regional prosecutor's office.
Russia has seen a rash of high-profile murders in recent weeks, including the killings in Moscow of a top Central Bank inspector and investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya.

TITLE: City Prepares To Promote Image Abroad
AUTHOR: By Evgenia Ivanova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: St. Petersburg authorities are to spend more than half a million dollars on promoting the city worldwide, City Hall said Thursday.As well as announcing the 500,000 euro ($628,000) publicity campaign, City Hall shortlisted three logo designs to brand the city, Galina Gromova, spokesperson for the city's committee on investment and strategic projects, said. The final decision on which logo to adopt will be announced next week.
"At the moment we have three winning designs, and we haven't decided yet whether we will be using one for everything or perhaps we will handle it like the government of Berlin did," Vitaly Ritstsi, director of the state-run Agency of City Marketing, said. Berlin authorities use different logos for different aspects of its promotional campaigns Ritstsi said.
"Perhaps St. Petersburg will use one brand for street advertising; another for t-shirts, pens and other souvenirs; the third one for something else. This will be decided either by the government or by citizens of the city," Ritstsi told The St. Petersburg Times on Thursday.
Paris, Frankfurt and Amsterdam will be the first targets of the campaign, according to the agency.
"They have become our priority due to their airports being transit hubs with transit tourists numbering around five million people each," Ritstsi said.
"At the moment we are in talks with the major international advertising agencies of Wall and JCDecaux and, given the negotiations are successful, we will start the three months' advertising program as soon as this Christmas," he said.
Although Ritstsi said that this move is unique for Russia, Sergey Korneyev, head of the Northwestern branch of Russia's Union of Tourism Industry said other cities have had similar ideas.
Kaliningrad, Novgorod and Murmansk also have their own tourism brands, with the design competitions taking place there beforehand, he told The St. Petersburg Times over the telephone on Thursday.
Korneyev said that 500,000 euros did not sound sufficient to promote St. Petersburg in the world's tourism markets.
"At present it's not very clear what they mean by the word 'brand.' There are pictures, there are some graphic elements, but as far as I know, a notion of 'brand' is much wider concept than just graphic representation of logotype," he said.
Mikhail Podushko, strategic development director for Comcon-Workline, a St. Petersburg based market research company, also considers this sum to be insufficient.
"Undoubtedly, the promotion of St. Petersburg is a very important step, but the planned amount is rather too small," Podushko said.
For example, Turkey spends $5-6 million to promote itself only in Russia, Podushko said, while Cyprus spends around $1-2 million.
"Therefore it is very hard to say how this budget should be allocated for it not to be a drop in the ocean," Podushko said.
St. Petersburg has to tackle its crime and infrastructure problems before it can become a serious player in world tourism, Podushko said.
"Attacks on foreigners and the existing tourism infrastructure do not help the efforts to promote the city, without changing this even with big budgets St. Petersburg will not be taken seriously," he said.

TITLE: Georgian Man Dies While Being Deported
AUTHOR: By Henry Meyer
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — A Georgian man about to be deported from Russia died Tuesday at a Moscow airport from an asthma attack, the Georgian Embassy said, accusing Moscow of "inhuman" behavior for depriving him of medical attention during five days of detention.Authorities also raided an outdoor market in Moscow, rounding up dozens of bakers, vendors and others from impoverished former Soviet republics, as Russia stepped up its campaign against illegal foreign workers.
The raid came several weeks after the Kremlin cracked down on Georgian migrants in retaliation for that country's arrest of four Russian military officers on charges of espionage. Russia has deported hundreds of people and closed dozens of Georgian-run firms and restaurants.
The Georgian who died at the airport, Tengiz Togonidze, 58, was arrested by immigration officials in St. Petersburg and detained for five days before being taken to Moscow for deportation, said Georgian Embassy spokesman Vakhtang Tatunashvili.
He began to feel sick, but his requests to be allowed outside for fresh air and access to a doctor were denied, the diplomat said.
Russia's Federal Migration Service confirmed the death of the Georgian, who was being deported along with some 150 others, but gave no other details.
"Georgia has repeatedly drawn attention to the fact that the deportation of Georgian citizens from Russia is being carried out in gross violation of international standards," Tatunashvili said, complaining that the deportees were being kept "in inhuman conditions."
Rights groups also condemned Tuesday's raid of the market, saying merely deporting foreigners would not solve the country's illegal immigration problem.
They said the authorities should also target police and other officials whom they accused of extorting bribes from migrants and allowing them to continue working illegally.
On Tuesday, several employees of the Federal Migration Service accompanied by more than a dozen police burst into bakeries, small cafes and kiosks at the Kiyevsky market in southwestern Moscow, detaining 50 illegal workers, mostly from the Central Asian states of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
Most of the detainees lacked work or residence permits. They were taken to a nearby police station, where they were to be fined and later deported, said Viktor Makarov, a senior inspector with the service's Moscow branch.
Among those detained was Aslan Alimov, a 32-year-old meat pie baker from Tajikistan, who said he had to support his wife and three children back home by working in Russia for $200 a month, half of which he sends to his family.
"You cannot earn such money back home. There is nothing to do there," Alimov said bitterly.
His colleague, Mavzhlyuda, 43, said she feared her three sons and a daughter back in the Tajik capital of Dushanbe would not survive if she were deported.
"If only we had work there, do you think we would come here?" said Mavzhlyuda, who declined to give her full name out of fear of further angering the authorities.
Foreigners constitute a significant part of the Moscow labor force, with hundreds of thousands working in construction, trade, food and other sectors for low wages and no benefits — bringing significant savings to the owners.
Svetlana Gannushkina, a leading human rights activist who advocates for refugees, estimated there were more than a half-million illegal migrants working in Moscow. Other estimates put the figure at more than 1 million.
Makarov, the migration official, said such raids help root out illegal migration. He denied any link between Tuesday's detentions and the crackdown on Georgians in Russia.

TITLE: Abkhazia Seeks Russian Recognition
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SUKHUMI, Georgia — Lawmakers in the breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia formally called on Russia to recognize the region's independence Wednesday, a move that will further complicate already strained ties between Georgia and Russia.The government of the Black Sea region has been unrecognized internationally since splitting from Georgian control during a war in the early 1990s. Most Abkhazians hold Russian passports and Georgia, which has vowed to bring Abkhazia and South Ossetia under central control, accuses Russian peacekeepers of siding with separatists.
In the resolution, Abkhazia's legislature said the region had all the qualities of an independent state.
"The 13-year post-war period has confirmed the viability of the de facto independent state of Abkhazia, and the only thing that has to be done now is to confirm and legitimize this sovereignty," the resolution said.

TITLE: Phone Firm Looks To Line Regional Pockets
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Golden Telecom has announced a shift away from the corporate sector with a $2 million rebranding and advertisement campaign in 25 of Russia's largest cities. Experts said the company has left it late to tap the huge regional market for individual customers."Rebranding is a vital part of our strategy for expanding into new market segments," Jean-Pierre Vandromme, CEO of Golden Telecom, said Tuesday at a press conference.
From now on the company will focus closely on small and medium-sized companies and individual subscribers.
Vandromme forecast that the Russian telecom market would reach $69 billion to $78 billion by 2010 — three or four times its current volume.
Golden Telecom has a strong position in Moscow as a fixed line operator for corporate clients, but this segment is only growing at 15 percent a year. In the regions the number of individual broadband subscribers is growing by 45 percent to 55 percent a year, Vandromme said, but so far the company has less than one percent of the market.
The new strategy is based on developing four areas — wireless connection, DSL connection, fiber-optic network and the acquisition of regional providers. The company will heavily promote broadband, long-distance calls through a federal transit network and convergence.
Golden Telecom has acquired providers in Kazan, Yekaterinburg, Krasnodar, Ivano-Frankovsk, Nizhny Novgorod and Kiev and serves about 75,000 households in test mode.
Broadband resembles the cellular market four years ago, Vandromme said — very few users and huge unsatisfied demand for services. "In the next four years we'll see penetration of broadband into 50-60 percent of households," he said.
"The large regional market has always attracted us," said Andrei Patoka, vice president of Golden Telecom.
The regions provide 38 percent of the company's revenue, and the figure grows by 50 percent a year. Broadband penetration is three percent to six percent, while 50 to 60 percent of residents possess computers.
"The household market is practically (unoccupied) and cost of constructing networks in the regions is lower than in Moscow," Patoka said.
In St. Petersburg individual subscribers account for 10 percent, operators — 30 percent, corporate clients — 60 percent of Golden Telecom revenue. Individuals provide an average revenue per user of $14.2 as opposed to $18 ARPU earned from corporate clients.
Golden Telecom hopes to attract subscribers through its high speed 2Mb per second service, rather than through discounts.
As for other business areas, Golden Telecom has completed the construction of a federal transit network.
By January the company will construct over 6,000 Wi-Fi spots in Moscow, spending about $10 million on the project. By 2010-2012 Vandromme expects to serve 300,000 to 400,000 Wi-Fi users taking 15-20 percent of the Moscow market.
In Ukraine Golden Telecom has started offering convergence — where it will be an internet provider, fixed line and cellular operator all at the same time. Later the service will be introduced in Russia as well, Vandromme said.
According to a survey by IBM, last year 90 percent of telecom CEOs spoke in favor of convergence.
A telecoms expert said the strategy was logical, but that the company had left it late.
"The corporate market is growing slowly — at about 10 percent a year. The number of large corporate clients is limited, and they are already divided between the major providers," said Boris Ovchinnikov, head of analytical department at J'son & Partners.
The number of small companies is increasing more rapidly, and they are able and ready to order more services, he said.
"The fastest growth is in individual broadband subscribers. The fact that Golden Telecom is not already well established in this segment is a serious disadvantage," he said.
In the regions the company will face practically no competition other than from local telephone networks, while in Moscow dozens of providers compete for customers, he said.
Though the difference between 2Mb per second and 10Mb per second is not as obvious as between 2Mb and 256kb, the volume and speed of traffic are the main factors subscribers will consider, Ovchinnikov said, which is especially important for new clients.
However subscribers would not switch providers just for more speed, he said. "People are rather conservative in this regard."

TITLE: Police Seize Sakhalin-2 Findings
AUTHOR: By Miriam Elder
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The campaign against Sakhalin-2 appeared to hit a stumbling block Wednesday, with organized crime police seizing documents related to the investigation from the Natural Resources Ministry's environmental agency.Police officers spent three hours examining documents relating to the issue of a license for the Yuzhno-Tambeyskoye field in July, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry's organized crime unit said.
Police also seized documents relating to recent trips by environmental agency officials to the Shell-run Sakhalin-2 project and fields run by LUKoil in the Komi republic, said Yevgeny Snegiryov, spokesman for the environmental agency, the Federal Service for the Inspection of Natural Resources Use.
"It seems strange to us that police took documents not only relating to [Yuzhno-Tambeyskoye] but also to business trips to Sakhalin and Komi," Snegiryov said.
"It's difficult for us to say exactly what the police have against the Federal Service for the Inspection of Natural Resources Use in this case," he said.
Oleg Mitvol, deputy head of the agency, has been leading the charge against Sakhalin-2, accusing project operator Sakhalin Energy of committing gross ecological violations during the construction of an 800-kilometer pipeline that runs the length of Sakhalin Island to a large oil and gas plant in the south.
"The police took two sets of airplane tickets, two hotel bills and two general business trip audits," Mitvol said.
He confirmed that the documents related to a recent trip to investigate LUKoil at Komi, but skirted the question when asked if they also involved Sakhalin-2.
Mitvol said the officers' unannounced visit was "not normal" and acknowledged he was worried that his campaign might be under threat.
"I am scared," he said.
The searches cast further confusion over the state's campaign against Shell. Senior government officials have been sending mixed messages over the sanctity of Shell's production sharing agreement, or PSA, in Sakhalin-2, with Mitvol taking a tough position. Industry and Energy Minister Viktor Khristenko said Tuesday that the PSA could only be revoked or changed if both sides agreed.
A decision on the project, and whether to revoke its environmental license, could be made by the end of the month, after Natural Resources Minister Yury Trutnev returns from a trip to Sakhalin on Oct. 26.
Mitvol has taken up the mantle as the country's top environmental crusader, leading a very public campaign against Sakhalin-2 and issuing repeated threats to bring criminal charges against the project if it failed to improve its environmental record. His crusading has at times appeared to verge on being a one-man show. It is not clear how much support he has from Trutnev, his boss.
His campaign suffered a setback this week, when a Moscow court refused to hear a lawsuit filed by his agency against the Natural Resources Ministry to obtain the right to revoke Sakhalin Energy's environmental license. Mitvol's threats to shut down the project, Russia's largest foreign investment, were coupled with government threats to review similar projects by ExxonMobil and Total, prompting fears of a wider crackdown on ventures with foreign involvement.
The environmental agency recently said it would also look into purported violations by LUKoil and Rosneft, adding Russian companies to the list of those due to be investigated.
On Wednesday, it said it would also open an investigation into ecological and technical failures at Gazprom's oil unit, GazpromNeft, on Nov. 21.
Police spokesman Yevegny Artyonov said Mitvol was not the target of Wednesday's search. "There are no complaints against Mitvol himself," Artyonov said. "The people who committed the offense will be examined and brought before the courts."
He maintained the documents seized were related to the license for Yuzhno-Tambeyskoye, but when pressed acknowledged that the issuing of the license was "not really" in question. He failed to provide further details.
Mitvol led a team of environmentalists and journalists to Sakhalin in late September and carried out a similar trip to Komi last week.
Government pressure on Sakhalin-2 has been seen as a means of ensuring that negotiations on Gazprom's entry into the project work out in favor of the state-run gas giant.
Gazprom has been seeking a 25 percent stake in the project, but negotiations hit a snag when Shell announced last year that the project would cost $20 billion — double the initial estimate.
Gazprom has also faced difficulty at Yuzhno-Tambeyskoye, going to the courts to ensure the size of its stake in that major gas field, which has estimated reserves of 1.2 trillion cubic meters.
A Moscow court in August ruled that the license to develop the field in the Yamal Peninsula must be returned to Tambeyneftegaz, in which Gazprom holds a 25.1 percent blocking stake. The license had been transferred to Yamal LNG, a body set up by Tambeyneftegaz majority shareholder Nikolai Bogachev, and Tambeyneftegaz's interest in the new group was subsequently reduced to 51 percent, which in turn would have diluted Gazprom's stake in Yamal to 12 percent.
Gazprom is the world's largest gas company and is positioning itself to become an even larger player in the country's enormous hydrocarbon sector.
The police move against the environmental agency came amid other signs that the state was seeking to change its approach to Sakhalin Energy.
Also Wednesday, Sakhalin's environmental prosecutor questioned Dmitry Belanovich, the official appointed by Mitvol to lead the environmental audit of Sakhalin-2. Belanovich was asked to provide details on the investigation, including proof of compliance with the law, following a complaint by Sakhalin Energy.
The natural resources minister appears to be taking control of the investigation, and he plans to meet Sakhalin Energy officials during his visit to the island next week. "We received an official invitation to take part in a meeting with Minister Trutnev while he is in Sakhalin," Sakhalin Energy spokesman Ivan Chernyakhovsky said.
"We expect to get at least preliminary results of the [environmental agency's] audit that is going on currently, to be able to develop a set of comprehensive measures and actions" to address the recommendations, he said.
The Federation Council is to examine the case against Sakhalin-2 on Friday.

TITLE: Six Free Lessons in Business
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: More than 600 of St. Petersburg's entrepreneurs will receive free training and advice thanks to a new program financed by the city budget. The series of six seminars, designed for the heads of small-businesses, began Wednesday at the Law Faculty of the State University."The seminars are focused on businessmen who have already worked in the market for some time but have experienced some difficulties," said Tatiana Boiko, director of the Center of Business Development.
The seminars are run by the Center of Business Development, a non-commercial organization where businessmen get free management and legal advice. Among the topics to be covered at the seminars are taxation, HR training, legal matters and administrative control, commerce, catering and construction.
Top managers, university teachers and business analysts will share their professional experience and discuss common problems faced in business.
Paulina Guseva, director of Capital Events, who is attending the course, said that many entrepreneurs start their business with limited work experience in a certain business field .
"Such seminars give a unique opportunity to enrich your knowledge in law and finance, domains that are extremely important in business," she said.
The seminars run weekly till Nov 23.			www.bdcspb.ru

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Profits FlownMOSCOW (SPT) — Money transfer system UNIStream increased its transactions to $573 million in July-September, up 45 percent compared with April-May when the system made a turnover of $396 million turnover.
In September of this year, UNIStream became the first Russian money transfer system to demonstrate a $1.3 billion turnover in the period from JanuarySeptember.
With the focus on signing new partnership agreements, UNIStream's portfolio increased by 48 banks and money transfer systems — the number of service points growing from 22 000 (end of Q2) to 25 000.TNK-BP LicensesnMOSCOW (Bloomberg) — BP's Russian venture won a license to develop three oil and gas fields in west Siberia for 879 million rubles ($32.7 million), Interfax reported.
TNK-BP, Russia's third-largest oil company, won the license through subsidiary Tagulskoye. The company beat state-controlled Rosneft for the right to develop the Taikinsky, Gorchinsky and Vostochno-Pendomayakhsky fields in Russia's Taimyr region, the news agency said. Russia's fourth-largest oil company, Surgutneftegas, won a license for the Studeny field in the same region for 280 million rubles, four times the starting price, Interfax said.
Taikinsky has 28.8 billion cubic meters of gas and 29 million tons of oil; Gorchinsky has 12.6 billion cubic meters of gas and 8 million tons of oil; Vostochno-Pendomayakhsky has 11 billion cubic meters of gas and 26 million tons of oil, Interfax said. Studeny has 11 billion tons of gas and 17.5 million tons of oil, the news agency said.
The licenses are for 25 years, including five years for exploration, Interfax said.

TITLE: British Architect Unveils Plan
AUTHOR: By Kevin O'Flynn
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: British architect Sir Norman Foster presented a design Wednesday to fill the space where the Rossiya hotel once stood with a cultural center in the shape of an ellipsis, a 2,000-room hotel and a museum.Moscow's architectural council, led by Mayor Yury Luzhkov, backed the overall proposal but sent Foster back to the drawing board after a three-hour debate.
"Everyone liked it because it was not only hotels but museum space, which was unexpected, and concert halls," said Alexei Klimenko, a member of the council and an adviser to the city.
"In principle it was accepted, but with some serious changes that need to be made."
Foster's design envisions 10 to 11 buildings, with the cultural center at its heart. The other buildings would include the hotel and museum as well as offices, apartments and parking for 2,000 cars.
The buildings would cover 456,630 square meters, of which 35,600 square meters would be underground.
Nearly one-quarter of the complex would be devoted to space for cultural activities.
The main criticism Wednesday was directed at the height of the buildings, some of which would stand 10 stories high and block views of the river, the city's chief architect, Alexander Kuzmin, told reporters after the meeting.
Luzhkov took a particular dislike to the cultural center in the shape of an ellipsis.
"Maybe I am getting old," said the mayor, who turned 70 last month, "but that is not Moscow."
Luzhkov spent a good part of the meeting expounding on what he viewed as the design's shortcomings, Klimenko said.
"It was horrible because Luzhkov was telling Foster how to be an architect," he said.
Foster is one of the most famous architects in the world, having designed a pyramid for the Kazakh capital, a "gherkin" for London and a 600-meter-tall building to tower over the Moskva City business district.
After 2 1/2 hours of debate, patience was beginning to wear thin with some people in the audience. Singer Alla Pugachyova walked out early, snarling the word "bored" as she got up.
As she walked out, she showed her exasperation by muttering "rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb" to herself.
Foster will have a month or two to adjust his design, Kuzmin said.
The Rossiya hotel, which is in the process of being knocked down, was once the largest hotel in Europe. The company ST Development won a tender for the site in 2004, bidding $800 million with a plan to build a copy of old Moscow streets.
No completion date was given Wednesday, and no mention was made of the estimated final cost of Foster's project.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Energy ChangesnMOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia won't ratify the energy charter proposed by the European Union without changes, said Sergei Yastrzhembsky, President Vladimir Putin's adviser on the EU, Interfax reported Thursday.
Putin will meet with the head of the EU states tomorrow in Finland to discuss energy cooperation and Russia-EU ties, the news service cited Yastrzhembsky as saying.
Putin has objected to the charter as being biased toward consumer countries at the expense of producers and because it would loosen Russia's control of its pipelines. Putin has urged Europe to open its markets to Russian investment.
Russia's energy strategy and European companies' interest in Russian resources are also on the agenda, Interfax reported.
The leaders will discuss planned pipelines, including Gazprom's Nord Stream and southern European gas link projects and the Burgas-Alexandroupolis oil link, which would bypass the overcrowded Turkish straits, Interfax said.Belarus GoodsnMOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia cut state orders for Belarussian goods amid a dispute over natural gas prices, Kommersant said Thursday, citing Deputy Economy Minister Andrei Sharonov.
Sharonov told parliament yesterday that Russia would stop buying furniture, sanitary equipment, tiles, canned food, meat and produce from neighboring Belarus, which may cost the country $250 million a year, the Moscow-based newspaper said. Russia isn't imposing an embargo and private companies are free to trade, Kommersant cited Sharonov as saying.KamAZ SharesnLONDON (Bloomberg) — KamAZ, Russia's largest truckmaker, may sell shares in London next year.
"This will let us raise the company's market value before the government sells its shares,'' said Boris Pavlov, the economy minister for Tatarstan, the Russian republic where KamAZ is based, at a conference in London on Thursday.
The Russian government may sell its shares in KamAZ in 2007 or 2008, Tatarstan President Mintimer Shaimiyev said Thursday at the conference.
The Russian government owns about 34 percent of KamAZ and the republic of Tatarstan about 11 percent.

TITLE: Understanding Murder in Its Own Context
AUTHOR: By Richard Lourie
TEXT: Russia is simply becoming more Darwinian. It is not only democracy that is dying, but civilization itself. Democracy is just a sign of advanced civilization. It is based on the assumption that individuals are of significance and their voices should be heard. Exactly the opposite message is projected when a leader and a party stifle any opposition to its power in the polls and the courts.A free press is another attribute of civilization, but not only because people need information about the truth. A free press is in itself an assumption, a value, a message that reality is complex, each individual has a unique perspective and so a truer picture of reality is achieved when as many points of view as possible are taken into account.
The 12 journalists who have been killed in Russia since President Vladimir Putin came to power were probably killed to avenge something already written or to prevent the publication of something else. But an atmosphere in which individuals and free institutions are held in open contempt also facilitated these murders.
This contempt was evident in the remarks Putin made after two days of silence about the slaying of Anna Politkovskaya. "I think that journalists should be aware that her influence on political life was extremely insignificant in scale." The woman is two days dead and the president of her country pronounces her life's work "extremely insignificant." But Putin takes her death almost as an affront, at the very least, a smudge on his regime: "This murder inflicts more harm and damage to the governments of Russia and Chechnya than did her publications."
A few months after Putin came to power in 2000, he convened a meeting of the oligarchs in the Kremlin and told them they could keep their ill-gotten gains if they kept out of politics. But there was another power bloc that had to be attended to — the real mafias as opposed to the educated business types who had spotted their big chance. Putin apparently reached some sort of modus vivendi with the criminal world. They stopped killing each other in the streets and concentrated their efforts on traditional areas like drugs, prostitution and gambling or went semi-legit. But money has to be laundered. It's certainly possible that the murder of Central Bank First Deputy Chairman Andrei Kozlov, the Politkovskaya of banking, was a result of his threatening the flow of such funds. Sensing the lawlessness in the land, the mafias could now be resurgent.
In any case, some sort of gigantic struggle is afoot in Russia, a new "divvying up." Most of it takes place behind the scenes, but its violent reverberations are felt everywhere: When Georgia arrests four Russians on charges of espionage, the response is overkill — all transportation and postal links severed. Shell Oil's project on Sakhalin Island is charged with serious environmental violations. All the foreign companies bidding for a part in the development of the Shtokman gas field in the Barents Sea are summarily rejected. A senior official at TNK-BP, Enver Ziganshin, is shot dead.
The murders of Kozlov the banker, Ziganshin the oilman and Politkovskaya the journalist all no doubt had their specific causes about which we will probably never know any more than we will know who pulled the trigger or paid the killer. But what they all have in common is that they emerge from the context created in Russia over the last few years. Putin's chickens have come home to roost. And they're not chickens, they're vultures.

Richard Lourie is the author of "The Autobiography of Joseph Stalin" and "Sakharov: A Biography."

TITLE: An Offer That Germany Had To Refuse
TEXT: Accusations that Russia is using its vast energy supplies as a political weapon draw indignant replies from Moscow. But Gazprom's decision last week to abandon plans to work with a Western partner on the Shtokman field, and President Vladimir Putin's meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel the next day, made it hard to take these protests seriously.Gazprom's decision to develop the field on its own puts any plans to ship gas to the United States in a liquefied form on the back burner, prompting speculation that the move was an intentional snub aimed at Washington.
If that wasn't convincing enough, Putin's offer of a generous portion of the gas from the field to Germany clearly smacked of politics in a European Union still searching for a common energy policy.
Merkel, to her credit, didn't take the bait. Instead, Germany signed a deal with France calling for a balanced energy partnership between Russia and the EU as a whole.
Balance of power considerations have been at the root of Russian foreign policy going back at least to the beginning of the 18th century, based on the ability to tip this balance to one side or the other in times of conflict or uneasy peace. The shifting of positions was only really put on hold with the end of World War II, when the Cold War Soviet threat became a unifying factor in the West.
But the last couple years have seen cracks developing in the common market's unity. More recent efforts on the part of member governments to keep major national energy companies in domestic hands have led to more division and haggling.
The opportunity presented by this potential political division over energy may have led Russia to revert to old approaches to dealing with Europe. Given its wealth in energy resources and aspirations to a greater role in international affairs, Putin's attempt to get Germany on side was simply acting in what the Kremlin believes are Russia's interests. This is understandable.
But Merkel's reaction is even more understandable. Following centuries of division and warfare, culminating in the deaths of more than 60 million people in World War II, the path toward and establishment of the current European Union has taken place during a period of relative peace on the continent. And the potential for greater cooperation is there. The Shtokman gas offer was clearly tempting, but a Europe able to cooperate and coordinate policy is likely even more in Berlin's interests.This comment first appeared in The Moscow Times.

TITLE: No More Mr. Nice Guy
AUTHOR: By Svante E. Cornell
TEXT: Recent weeks have seen two events that should alarm U.S. and European leaders about their relationship to Russia. This time, however, alarm and worry aren't enough — what's needed is action.On Oct. 7, renowned journalist Anna Politkovskaya was murdered in her apartment building, silencing one of the last independent and critical voices in the country.
In the preceding week, the authorities chased down ethnic Georgians living in Russia, closing businesses and asking schools to register Georgian children, all to punish the Georgian government's refusal to toe Moscow's line.
These two events seem unrelated, but have much in common. First, they are both related to the troubled but strategic Caucasus region to Russia's south. Politkovskaya made her fame — and her enemies — reporting on atrocities in Chechnya. Georgia is, unlike Chechnya, an independent state. Yet the Georgian government's decision to choose a foreign policy course truly independent from Russia is behind the acrimony in its relations with Moscow.
On a deeper level, both events represent the dangers to individuals and states alike of not giving the resurgent and oil-rich Russian government the respect it demands.
Politkovskaya's frank and fearless reporting was a constant irritant to President Vladimir Putin's government. High officials alternately decried her as insane or a traitor. The security services — which Putin used to lead — once kept Politkovskaya in a pit for three days without food or water, and on another occasion allegedly poisoned her on an airplane to the Caucasus, hospitalizing her for weeks. In spite of all this, while the Kremlin took control of almost all media in Russia, she refused to fold.
Constantly followed by a security services car, she kept filing stories at home and in the West. On Oct. 7, someone apparently had had enough. The murder — like the dozens that led the Committee to Protect Journalists to label Russia one of the three most dangerous countries in the world for journalists — probably will not be solved. But remaining voices of dissent will certainly take note.
As for Georgia, a Russian deputy foreign minister recently said: "Russia does not want to be provoked; Russia wants to be respected," adding that policies in Georgia would not change until Russia felt it got the respect it deserved. Until then, Moscow will continue trying to strangle Georgia — endorsing separatist regions in its territory, banning imports and threatening military strikes.
Moscow can't kill a country, but one of Putin's closest advisers, Gleb Pavlovsky, once suggested the best way to solve the "Georgia problem" was "the cost of a bullet," a reference (never denied) to assassinating Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.
Russia's behavior is based not on earning respect but on instilling fear.
Politkovskaya revolted against the overwhelming violations of human rights she witnessed in Chechnya. These were, she concluded, condoned if not encouraged by the top leadership. She also decried the increasingly authoritarian system Putin installed in a country where press freedom is increasingly a thing of the past.
Saakashvili's sin is leading Georgia away from Russia's embrace and toward Europe, including membership in NATO. He has also laid the foundations of a lasting democracy, an example Putin does not want to see next door, and has the audacity to seek the removal of Russian troops and the restoration of his government's control over its territory.
The West has been remarkably silent as the Kremlin's stifling of dissent at home and bullying of its neighbors get uglier. U.S. and European leaders have grown worried, written some and discussed much. But they have done little in terms of support for freedom in Russia or for its beleaguered neighbors. Even Western public statements have been weak and wobbly.
Western leverage over Russia, it is true, is receding as oil revenues grow. Yet this is not an excuse for inaction. What Russia's leaders do at home and abroad must receive a much more forceful and united response.
Specifically, the West must first realize that the 15-year-old policy of appeasing Russia and seeking to integrate it has failed. Appeasement has made Russia not more but less European. The West must coordinate policy priorities on Russia, both across the Atlantic and within the European Union. This will have to include bolder efforts to break Europe's energy dependence on Russia by seeking alternative sources, including from the Caspian Sea region.
Finally, it is time for the West to take up a role in resolving the "frozen" conflicts in Georgia, Moldova and Azerbaijan. This would deny Russia the privilege of manipulating its neighbors and contribute to stability and freedom in increasingly strategic areas of the world.
U.S. and European leaders must clearly mark the boundaries of what is acceptable. Otherwise, the problem of a reckless and wayward Russia may soon become unmanageable. Let no one say the West did not try.

Svante Cornell is research director for the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute of Johns Hopkins University's School for Advanced International Studies and an associate professor at Uppsala University in Sweden. This comment was published in The Baltimore Sun.

TITLE: New horizon
AUTHOR: By Michael Steen
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: A pyramid has arisen in the Kazakh capital, masterminded by Sir Norman Foster.ASTANA, Kazakhstan — Oh, and we want an opera house in the basement.That was the message given to British architect Lord Norman Foster by the president of Kazakhstan four months into designing a pyramid in the capital city, Astana.
The resulting 62-meter-high Pyramid of Peace and Accord, constructed in less than two years, juts out into the barren plain behind Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev's palace.
Sounds odd? Astana, a Brasilia of the steppe, is like that.
Nazarbayev moved the capital here in 1997 and has poured billions of dollars of revenues from oil, gas and metals exports into the construction of a new city in the middle of the vast, empty heartland of the world's ninth-largest country.
The pyramid is the first building in Astana designed by a big-name architect like Foster, famous among other things for the glass cupola on Berlin's Reichstag and the Swiss Re tower in London that is nicknamed the "gherkin."
Foster is also behind St. Petersburg's New Holland Island redevelopment.
Nazarbayev commissioned his pyramid to host a congress of world religious leaders, an event he dreamt up to put Kazakhstan on the map as a serious player in global affairs and to show it is not just another former Soviet republic.
Foster, 71, squeezed in the 1,500 seat opera house — a bit bigger than one at Glyndebourne in Britain — as well as offices, "hanging gardens" and a huge atrium.
The pyramid is topped by a transparent peak where a doughnut-shaped meeting table hovers in mid-air.
"It was quite challenging," Foster said by telephone from Foster and Partners in London. "Typically, you would be thinking six to eight years for such a cultural project.
"If somebody says, 'Hey there's this congress meeting point/public space/university/exhibition space and we need it in two years,' you know, that makes your pulse quicken and slightly takes your breath away," he said.
"If you then, four months into that process, say, 'Well, we'd like to put a Glyndebourne in, sorry it's a bit bigger than Glyndebourne, but we'd like to put it underneath ..." Foster trailed off.
For an architect known for his use of neutral colors and glass and steel, it is also something of a departure, as most of the building is windowless, with only the apex clad in glass.
Sunlight filtered by yellow and blue stained-glass windows designed by Brian Clarke, a British artist and long-term Foster collaborator, streams down into the pyramid's cavernous atrium.
The opera house below is predominantly red. Perhaps heaven and hell are not the right comparisons, but Foster describes his building in symbolic terms.
"As you ascend up the pyramid you ascend up into the light," he said.
Another Foster theme, breathtaking vertical drops that are enough to give most people wobbly legs, is certainly present.
From the doughnut-shaped dais suspended at the top of the pyramid there is a sheer drop down to the ground floor of the atrium, which is also the roof of the opera house.
Foster said he was intrigued at the prospect of building a pyramid that would be "so light that it will appear to float away," in contrast to the massive and solid historical pyramids.
He declined to comment on the rest of Astana's architecture, but his pyramid certainly stands out, both as a gesture by Nazarbayev and as a piece of architecture.
"It's an unbelievable folly, in the sense that it's a grand monument by one man to himself," said Hugh Pearman, editor of the Royal Institute of British Architects' monthly RIBA Journal. "[But] it has merit."
The city rapidly developing around the pyramid, built according to a master plan laid out by Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa, is not — yet — loved by the locals, the richer of whom try to escape to the former capital Almaty in the south on weekends.
The left bank of the Ishim river that bisects the city consists of Nazarbayev's palace, ministries, monuments and building sites while the more lively right bank comprises mainly Soviet-era residential buildings and the old town center.
A bracing wind blows all year round, bringing temperatures that can hit 40 degrees Celsius in the summer and sink to minus 40 C in the winter — another factor that complicates construction.
Most new buildings in Astana glitter with reflective surfaces or bewilder the eye with intricate colonnades and other baubles. The style is politely termed postmodernism by architects.
There is also a trend to hark back to Soviet architecture. One new tower block is a garish modern replica of one of the Stalin-era skyscrapers in Moscow known as the Seven Sisters — right here at the heart of the gulag archipelago, where the Soviet dictator sent millions to die.
For an architect like Foster, the pyramid was not only an entry into a market awash in petrodollars — he is now involved in a proposal for an enormous indoor leisure center dubbed the Khan's tent — it was also a chance to experiment.
"For a British architect, the fact that you will see your vision completed in, like, 18 months is a powerful inducement," said Pearman, the architecture critic. "He can use Astana as a testing ground. ... it can be regarded as rapid prototyping."
In the weeks running up to the opening at the beginning of September and to the religious congress, workers hired by the Turkish constructors toiled around the clock to get things finished. Several hundred soldiers were called in to help out.
The result is certainly rough around the edges. The odd leak in the roof, missing screws, splintered glass panes and a lot of building dust and debris, but that is common in Kazakhstan.
"Not surprisingly, there's a long snagging list of things to be properly finished and tidied up and sorted out," Foster said.
Pearman, who visited the site during construction, described it as the scariest he had seen in terms of safety, but added that Western architects faced the choice of working with local conditions or not working at all in countries like Kazakhstan.
And does he feel that the pyramid improves Astana?
"The city doesn't at the moment feel like a friendly place, it feels very much like an administrative center," he said.
"One craves a little corner cafe or something like that. But it's early days."

TITLE: Black and white vision
AUTHOR: By Andrei Vorobei
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A Swedish cultural festival focuses on black-and-white photography from three modern masters.The Swedish cultural festival known as SWEDKULT got underway this week highlighting some names and trends in contemporary Swedish fashion, films, literature, video art, and quite comprehensively, photography.Three exhibitions stand for three generations of modern Swedish black-and-white art photography and documentary.
One show at the Faculty of Journalism at St. Petersburg State University features Hans HammarskiΪld, the most celebrated, internationally acclaimed figure on the list of photographers being shown during the festival. He was one of the members of the influential group of photographers that went by the name of "TIO Fotografer," and worked for Vogue. His images were selected for Edward Steichen's legendary "Family of Man" show first presented at New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1955. The current show, "Impressions," features many of the classical images that made HammarskiΪld an indispensable part of photographic history.
Two shows by emerging names in Swedish photography are being held in more accessible venues, indicating the organisers want to promote modern trends in Sweden. Thomas WΜgstrΪm, three portfolios by whom are on display at the National Center of Photography, displays in his powerful "Boxers" series an intimate approach to the bloody sport. The series includes plenty of portraits that skillfully use chiaroscuro effects to illustrate faces that are both passionless and melancholy and that radiate external calmness with internal energy. There is an absorbing choreography in the way the boxers or their shadows are caught during highly economical movements of their well-built, confident bodies. Boxing is advocated as a graceful sport and not vulgar entertainment.
Thematically close to the boxers, "The Inner Side of Earnest" deals again with the reverse side of the legal and trained use of force. It verifies the photographer's interest in semi-closed social practices and groups. The most bewitching images from the set equally resemble scenes from military units, jail or even an S&M party. In fact, the series is a captivating document of the training of the Swedish Special Forces over two years. There is indeed, an amazing "almost ritual form of seriousness in which they tackled their difficult trials." The third project, "Moment Zero" features quite foggy, surrealistic images of dead hares, abandoned cars and strange staircases, and so on. It lacks the documentary vitality of the first two series, and is too mainstream to be artistically individual.
There are some similarities to WΜgstrΪm's graphic tricks in Lisa Selin's photography. Although Selin is the youngest participant in the program, her work certainly has its own character. The photographer's critically-acclaimed series "The Search For Ali Boulala" is on display at the Ars Magna gallery. According to the artist, Ali Boulala is one of Sweden's best-known skateboarders, although he is elusive.
Everybody has heard about him but nobody has ever seen him. Her camera follows the Ali myth for five years and on both sides of the Atlantic. She doesn't find Ali, but was produced a handsome account of street teenagers' perpetual and inventive enthusiasm. Amusingly, sweaty skateboard culture, in black-and-white becomes elegant and respectable. The show includes a number of short interviews with some of these young board fans. A bonus slide-show called "Petersburg skateboarding" has been contributed by a local board-shop, and demonstrates that skateboarding has a truly international following.Hans Hamersheldis's "Impressions" runs through Nov. 1.
Thomas Wagstrom's trilogy runs through Nov. 10.
Lisa Selin's "The Search For Ali Boulala" runs through Nov. 12.
www.ncprf.org; www.sweden.spb.ru/SWEDKULT, www.fotomuseet.sundsvall.se, www.swedenabroad.com/, www.lisaselin.nu/, www.thomaswagstrom.com/

TITLE: Chernov's choice
TEXT: Griboyedov, the legendary local bunker club, marked its 10th anniversary this week with a chaotic yet enjoyable concert and party, with the venue packed with more than 500 fans.Although the club has recently expanded, adding an overground, avant-gardish building that holds a stage and a restaurant, it was still overcrowded. However, the main crowd-pleaser failed to show up; the hugely popular band Leningrad, which had been announced to take part, canceled early this week.
According to Griboyedov's art director Mikhail Sindalovsky, the band failed to appear because its frontman Sergei Shnurov was abroad, but there was a hope that the band would perform without him. The hope was not fulfilled, though.
Another famous absentee was Tequilajazzz whose frontman Yevgeny Fyodorov turned out to be in Helsinki on that particular night, according to Sindalovsky.
Opened by Dva Samaliota, the band that founded Griboyedov, the concert was emceed by the band's bassist and vocalist Anton Belyankin and featured good performances from Kacheli and La Minor.
Belyankin, who stepped aside from co-directing Griboyedov to run his own Fidel bar, managed to snub the anodyne pop-rock band Segodnya Nochyu in his introductory speech, twice — first describing the band's audience at a gig that he happened to attend as "only girls," secondly expressing a hope that its set would "not take long."
Refreshingly, OMON special forces police, infamous for their series of brutal raids on the club in the past, also failed show up.
Three funk bands fronted by female singers will get together for a joint concert called "Funk with a Female Face" at Platforma on Saturday. J.D. and the Blenders, Esperanto and Mlad i Star will perform. (J.D. and the Blenders will also perform, on its own, at Tsokol on Friday.)
A glimpse of New York's Russian scene can be caught at Griboyedov on Friday, when a band called Spielenfrau performs.
Spielenfrau was formed in New York by Soviet emigre Michael Idov. Born in Riga, Idov, who once was a television-news anchor, is the only Russian speaker in the band whose members all hail from outside the U.S.: Ireland, New Zealand and Denmark.
The band, whose sound was described by Idov in an email as "somewhat Nick Cave-ish," "mixes sophisticated, reverb-drenched rock with intelligent lyrics full of Eastern European black humor and irony," according to The New Yorker.
"Michael Idov's compositions and erudite lyrics remain the unmistakable trait of this dark-sounding, elegant and sophisticated pop that will find adepts among fans of Tindersticks, early Magnetic Fields, Paolo Conte and French chanteurs whose names I tend to forget," wrote a reviewer in The Deli, a New York-based indie-rock magazine.— By Sergey Chernov

TITLE: Many happy returns
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Britain's Fitzwilliam Quartet, which became a favorite of Dmitry Shostakovich in the years before his death in 1975, returns to St. Petersburg this week to celebrate the composer's centenary year with five concerts at venues including the Sheremetev Palace and the White Hall at Peterhof.Founded in 1968 by four Cambridge University undergraduates, the Fitzwilliam was one of the first of a long line of distinguished quartets to emerge from Britain's Royal Academy of Music. They became well known through their close personal association with Shostakovich, who befriended them following a visit to York, England, in 1972 to hear them play.
Viola player Alan George recalled the circumstances of the Fitzwilliam Quartet's meeting with the great Russian composer in an interview shortly after Shostakovich died.
"Early in 1972 I wrote to Shostakovich requesting his permission to perform the 13th quartet — the work had in fact been composed two years previously, and it seemed shameful to me that it had not yet been heard in [the U.K.] He replied at once, not only consenting but welcoming the chance and expressing the hope that he might be able to come and hear the performance himself.
"Not long after, he sent a score and a set of parts, repeating his wish to come and hear us play. At the time, I was somewhat perplexed as to why he should be so enthusiastic about hearing a very young and unknown group play his music, but as I got to know him better, through his letters and his music, and meeting him personally, I have come to realise that, distressingly conscious of his age, he must have felt glad to know that this 'old man's music' could live and thrive in the hands of young people.
When the moment came, the young musicians decided it was George who should first meet Shostakovich.
"I had been delegated by my colleagues to meet the composer at the station, and as I stood waiting, excitement and apprehension in turn prevented me from realising the composure with which I had hoped to greet him. Of course I recognised him immediately, but he was a much bigger man than I had expected; in fact he appeared a squarely built powerful-looking figure, yet physically very frail on account of his poor health. His face was white and drawn, yet behind a pair of thick spectacles one was acutely conscious of his dark, searching eyes.
"His reputation of being excessively nervous was soon amply justified, especially when confronted with anything more than the smallest group of people, but as soon as he got to know us better he became more relaxed and very talkative. He must have known that actually playing to him for the first time would be a real ordeal for us, so he suggested that we should play the piece through to him during the afternoon, so that we would feel more at ease in the concert itself.
"We were all deeply touched by his efforts to make us comfortable and his insistence that plans for the day should be arranged to suit our convenience rather than his.
"I don't think that anyone who was fortunate enough to be in the Lyons Concert Hall at York University that night can have forgotten the occasion quickly. The man's presence was electrifying, and one had the overwhelming sensation that one was in the company of something indescribably great."
Shostakovich himself was moved by the occasion and later wrote to George: "I would like to thank the Fitzwilliam Quartet, whom I admire very much, for a superlative performance of the 13th quartet."
Shostakovich went on to entrust the Fitzwilliam Quartet with the western premieres of his last three quartets. They became the first ever group to perform and record all 15 quartets; complete cycles have been performed by them in a number of major cities, including London, New York, and Montreal.
The Fitzwilliam Quartet will perform works by Shostakovich, Glazunov, Haydn, Strauss and Mozart during its visit to St. Petersburg this week, as well as work by living British composer Jonathan Rathbone.
Also included is a performance at the Agora cultural center in the flat once lived in by Modest Tchaikovsky, the brother of the composer Pyotr, on the Fontanka.

TITLE: Protection order
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A solution to the question that has long been bothering the more Russophile part of the St. Petersburg cultural beau monde — how to balance the repertoires of local cinemas toward a greater share of art versus entertainment and give center stage to Russian, rather than U.S.-made films — may come from France.The St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly expressed a keen interest in a series of recent laws adopted in France.
A recent discussion with Jean-Jacques Aillagon, director of Palazzo Grassi in Venice, and a former culture minister of France, inspired Rodina deputy Sergei Andreyev, chairman of the parliament's Science, Education and Culture Committee, to request the texts of several laws, including the Law on Patronage written by Aillagon, and legislation providing quotas for francophone films in cinemas in France.
Aillagon's meeting with members of St. Petersburg's cultural community was part of a new initiative by Helene Perroud, the new director of the French Institute in St. Petersburg, who has launched a series of discussions with France's top-flight politicians, prominent businessmen and cultural luminaries.
During the discussion, one of the younger members of the audience pointed out that the Louvre, France's premier art gallery, is known to many youngsters almost exclusively from "The Da Vinci Code," a U.S.-made blockbuster. Is this a worthwhile vehicle to promote French culture, the young man wondered.
"This film, although clearly lightweight entertainment, does show the Louvre, which is a good thing," Aillagon said. "The danger is that the chance for Louvre to reach out to mass audiences would come only and entirely with such films, rather than with deep, sublime and nuanced productions."
In Aillagon's opinion, banning films or music is a damaging practice that would only serve to stir arguments, provoke conflicts and incite intolerance.
To strengthen his point, he added that French legislation protects national filmmaking traditions and producers by setting fixed quotas for a minimum amount of French or francophone films to be shown in the country's cinemas and French music be broadcast by the state-run radio stations.
"The quota is not strangling filmmakers from other countries: we give French films a guaranteed share of 20 percent," he explains, adding that all cinemas in France are private. "In reality, French films account for about one third of all films shown in the country's cinemas."
"I would suggest that you give a fixed quota of 40 percent to the Russian films, reserve 10 percent for French films and let the market form the rest," Aillagon advised, tongue-in-cheek.
The French solution very much appealed to Andreyev, and is highly likely to generate a good response from his counterparts in the city parliament, who have long been campaigning against the noticeable predominance of U.S. films on Russian screens.
"Local cinemas are flooded with low-quality American movies abundant with scenes of violence," Andreyev said. "I want ordinary Russians to have the opportunity to give themselves and their children a much better choice than that."
To further support French filmmakers, the French government introduced a state sponsorship scheme, with the state adding 1 euro for every 2 euros invested in film production in France.
During his tenure as France's Culture Minister from 2002-2004, Aillagon pushed through the Law on Patronage and Foundations.
"The law aims to facilitate the creation and running of private foundations, and, thanks to significant financial benefits, to make patronage attractive to individuals and companies," Aillagon explained. "The law permits the enrichment of the public heritage by giving benefits to companies that purchase national treasures for public collections — they may receive tax breaks of up to 90 percent."
France needed the law because the arts patronage in the country was weak and poorly developed, and funding for culture was too dependent on public and state financing — a situation very familiar to Russia's arts institutions that have been drifting on the waves of the market economy since state funding for the arts dried up in the early 1990s.
In France, the law had a very dynamic effect. Aillagon sees huge potential for a similar law in Russia.
"Russian museums have huge needs while some Russians are making huge fortunes," he said. "In my opinion, they would be much better off to let these fortunes work for the general interest."

TITLE: Trial by Water
AUTHOR: By Robert Rosenberg
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: "North of Mongolia and Manchuria, draining an area as large as Spain, France, and all the countries of Eastern Europe combined, and fed by five hundred tributaries, the Lena is the tenth longest river in the world, and the third longest in Russia. It flows down from the Baikal Mountains through the taiga of the Siberian Plateau into the boggy lowlands and tundra of the Republic of Sakha ... to empty, through a broad delta, into the stormy Laptev Sea, a bay of the Arctic Ocean, some 450 miles above the Arctic Circle."In the summer of 2004, the writer Jeffrey Tayler decided he would traverse that distance by raft, braving sudden storms and crushing rapids, horseflies large enough to bite through clothes, bears, wild dogs and the Soviet gulag's semi-deserted outposts, now populated by drunken villagers, thieves and corrupt officials. One wonders, Didn't he have any better way to spend his summer vacation? Why not St.-Tropez?
As Tayler, Moscow correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly and author of four other travel books, explains in "River of No Reprieve," "Those wilds, I sensed, had something to teach me." Having lived in Russia for the past 13 years, he wanted to know, "Had any of the strength I so admired in Russians rubbed off on me? In short, could I hack it on the Lena, camping amid clouds of mosquitoes, enduring the cold and Arctic storms, as the Cossacks did? I felt I had to know — or how could I ever understand, let alone be worthy of, the country to which I had devoted my life?"
Surely there are other ways to understand Russia than journey for two months in an impossibly small raft down a Siberian river. But Tayler's intrepid curiosity and passion for his adopted homeland are winning on the page. By the end of the book we almost agree with him: There could be few better strategies for contemplating the colossal contradictions of Russia's populace and history than tracing the Lena, the unexplored heart of the largest nation on earth.
The voyage is undertaken in a custom-built raft, and by Tayler's own admission is made possible only through the skills of his "beefy-shouldered" Russian guide, Vadim, a former dentist who now spends six months a year exploring Russia's Far North. It is Vadim who designs the raft to personal specifications and who navigates the river's myriad dangers. At times he aggressively forces them to race impending winds and storms; at other times he is frustratingly cautious, beaching the raft for days until conditions improve. Vadim is moody, isolated, even antisocial, and the two men do not get along. "You're just a writer living on paper," the Russian scolds Tayler. He also baits him: "America doesn't have its own cuisine. Your national dish is hamburgers."
I admit to feeling this last one in the gut. But Tayler keeps his poise, aware that his life depends on Vadim. Wistfully, he confesses near journey's end that the two men have not grown close. But it says something about the book's honesty that, despite Tayler's feelings, the reader grows to admire Vadim's skills, loyalty and devotion to the success of the trip. By the time we say goodbye to Vadim in a camp on the Arctic Ocean, where he has saved the near-failed expedition in a brilliantly rendered confrontation with a shady, if powerful, Arctic official, we want to give the prickly man an enormous bear hug.
Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" and Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" are the obvious touchstones to Tayler's perilous river journey. Like Conrad, Tayler takes us to the darkest regions of a nation's soul along a river whose impenetrability and mysteriousness haunt the book from the opening pages. Like Twain's hero, Tayler's protagonist is an innocent sharing the journey with a guide who is stronger and more knowledgeable, though struggling with personal demons. Down Twain's Mississippi River lay the harsher excesses of slavery. Down the Lena lie the increasingly isolated outposts of the gulag. As Twain did with slavery and Conrad did with colonization, Tayler peels away the injustices of contemporary Russian life to expose a nation from the inside out — and to better reveal it to its own citizens.
The book achieves its broad insightfulness largely through alternating accounts of river travel with social reportage. "You always want to stop in villages and meet people — the one thing I do not want to do out here," Vadim rants. Indeed, Tayler disembarks in every barren town, village and hamlet along the way, leaving his guide guarding the raft and mumbling, "I hate returning to civilization." Tayler has considerable skill in searching out friendships. He is amazed by the warmth of the people who take him in and supply food and shelter. "Once again, I thought, the feared 'village barbarians' were turning out to be among the friendliest souls I had met in Russia."
These souls are eager to discuss the difficulties of their lives in the doomed towns along the river, and do so in conversations that, lubricated by samogonka, are at once candid, humorous and chilling. In Olekminsk, a regional capital, a member of a Siberian hip-hop dance troupe complains, "Look at this dump we live in. It's not a city but a village! Cows graze at our bus stops. Not one traffic light. No indoor plumbing anywhere. Imagine using an outhouse when it's forty degrees below!" As for the possibility of help from further west: "Moscow doesn't care what goes on out here."
Similar sentiments are heard throughout Tayler's travels. "People now are hungering for a new Stalin," a young Russian Baptist in Yakutsk warns. "They want someone to lead them out of this chaos. They're really suffering from a spiritual hunger, but they don't know it." A former weightlifter and amateur historian in the tiny hamlet of Petropavlovskoye breaks into song and says, "I need to sing sometimes or I'd lose my mind. ... There's too much grief in our history out here."
Many of these complaints — the nostalgia, the false romanticizing of the past, the passive suffering, the "pride Russians often take in showing foreigners that no one, but no one, could live worse than they" — are familiar and could equally apply to Central Asia or to any village in the Russian Far East. Like the endless bends of the Lena itself, Tayler's conversations sometimes grow repetitive. Still, for Muscovites and those living in the mainland's bubble, it is crucial that the voices of the dispossessed be heard if a complete picture of their nation is ever to be understood.
After Tayler has snapped a village photo, a madwoman accosts him and implores, "Send that picture to President Putin! I want him to see how bad we live out here. Our town is a dump — just look at those drunks! We should be rich but our mayor is robbing us blind, stealing the money Putin sends to help us." In surviving the Lena and writing this harrowing book, Tayler delivers that picture to Putin and the world.

Robert Rosenberg is the author of the novel "This Is Not Civilization." He teaches writing at Bucknell University.

TITLE: Dull blade
AUTHOR: By Leo Mouzenko
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: So, let's see: there's a guy with tormented past and a blade coming out of his hand. Whenever he's enraged by some unjust or just annoying cause he's virtually unstoppable, crashing everything and everyone around with his unbreakable blade. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?As far as sources on the web say, a Wolverine spin-off from the "X-Men" series of Hollywood blockbusters, based on the comic books featuring Wolverine and his genetically-mutated pals, is scheduled to hit the screens in 2008. But what we have here is a different film: the latest Russian action flick, "Mechenosez" ("The Swordsman.")
The film enriches our lives with the story of Sasha (Artyom Tkachenko), a guy who has a blade inside his hand. Apart from the sword, he also seems to have developed an emotional attachment to lead pipes but as well as most of characters bio it's a field to fantasize.
Out of nowhere Sasha arrives to another somewhere (which just happens to look like St. Petersburg) for an unspecified reason. First thing he does is beats his old friend's new boyfriend, thus making a few enemies.
Then he meets a really cute Katya (Chulpan Khamatova) and pulls her into bed with a couple of one liners. Sly dog. This swordsman/playboy isn't too much of talker anyway, he usually stares. When he bravely looks in the eye of his future victims he's intense and scary; when he stares at his curly-haired object of affection this hound of the Baskervilles suddenly becomes a droopy eyed pup. In case you didn't catch it, this is called character versatility.
During the rest of the movie, our versatile character reaps to shreds whoever is around him: policemen, inmates in Kresty jail or offensive looking businessmen. One of the latter, the supposed counterpart of the title character, inspired by the heaps of limbs that Sasha leaves left and right decides to practice on-sight surgery and amputates a policeman's finger with a help of a pair of pliers in a dirty bathroom. In case you didn't know, offensive looking businessmen always carry pliers to the bathroom. In the end of this cinematic celebration, a vengeful mechenosets or swordsman discovers the ability of his weapon to cut in half an airborne helicopter while chopping wood on the Gulf of Finland coast. Brilliance anywhere you look.
The script has more holes than a shower head and less substance than candy cotton. The fantasy world in which the characters live doesn't require such boring things as logic or motivation; they do just fine with meaningful looks and gladly dissipate in the gloomy ambiance.
On the other hand, lack of substance can be easily compensated with imaginatively choreographed fighting scenes, thrilling car chases and stunning visual effects. After all, isn't it why people go see action films?
The director, the charming Filipp Yankovksy, seems to think otherwise. He claims to never have seen any of the "X-men" movies, thus having no way of knowing about Wolverine but he guessed it was an action film. Score!
It's a pity that the charming Yankovsky didn't do his homework. If he chose to watch at least one mindless cut-throat Hollywood action feature, he'd find out that such movies involve a totally unexpected element… action!
In "Mechenosets" all those gory scenes with splitting bodies in half happen off screen: it's either an imagination examination or a test "How well do you remember Tarantino movies?" Visual effects are produced in the similar fashion and can be easily put to shame by inter-level cartoons in the mediocre video games. We're only left to guess what the production team did with the reported $12 million budget; probably had a lot of pizza on the set.
Obviously, there's some kind of misunderstanding going on. Yankovsky, scion of a filmmaking family, isn't new to the industry. His previous effort, "The State Consellor" (2005), based on Boris Akunin's novel featuring 19th century detective Erast Fandorin, was quite decent. The truth does come out when you listen to the director. In his own words, he was making "a love story" and "a parable". Right, that explains it all. The director was trying to go for something higher while the greedy producers marketed "Mechenosets "as an action film to sell more seats.
The film is too shallow and too dim to even render an idea clearly. As a love story it fails as well: Sasha's and Katya's love seems to occur mainly horizontally. They don't share a bit of dialogue and their on-screen chemistry is similar to that of Angelina Jolie and Ethan Hawke in "Taking Lives" (2004): put two beautiful undressed people in one bed and hope it will save the movie. Doesn't work. Sasha's effort to get back to his woman in the end looks like an attempt to fill the vacuum in his life because he doesn't seem to have a thing of his own. Because he doesn't.
Characters in "Mechenosets" aren't even clichΞs: they're phantoms, shadows of an idea, the statement that can be applied to the whole movie. Yankovsky and co might have wanted to create a good action film but found out they don't have the means; then decided to go with an art-house idea but discovered they don't have the potential. So they went with the flow. The result is highly dissatisfying.
In the end of the cast presentation, Sergei Selyanov, the producer said that a UFO showed up during the shooting and it can even be found in the film. Perhaps aliens were interested at first but then took a better look and went somewhere else. For instance, ABC premiered the third season of "Lost" last week. There's a thought.

TITLE: Borat Actor Invited To Kazakhstan
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ALMATY, Kazakhstan — A top Kazakh official has an invitation for the British comedian whose depiction of a homophobic, misogynistic, English-mangling Kazakh journalist has outraged the Central Asian nation. Come visit.Deputy Foreign Minister Rakhat Aliyev said in an interview that he understands why Kazakhs are unhappy about Sacha Baron Cohen's character, Borat Sagdiyev.
"But we must have a sense of humor and respect other people's freedom of creativity," Aliyev was quoted as saying by Kazakhstan Today.
"I'd like to invite Cohen here," he said. "He can discover a lot of things. Women drive cars, wine is made of grapes, and Jews are free to go to synagogues."
Cohen's Borat character has presented inhabitants of the ex-Soviet republic as misogynist anti-Semites fond of shooting dogs and drinking horse urine.
The Kazakh Foreign Ministry recently ran ads on CNN, in The New York Times, and in the International Herald Tribune denouncing Borat's stunts while offering facts and figures on the nation's economic growth, civil liberties and cultural achievements.
Cohen's full-length feature movie, "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan," opens in the U.S. next month.

TITLE: Fast Taylor Hat Trick As Windies Win
AUTHOR: By Sanjay Rajan
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MUMBAI, India — West Indies' fast bowler Jerome Taylor recorded a hat-trick on Wednesday to take defending champions West Indies to a thrilling 10-run win over Australia in their Champions Trophy Group A match.Taylor bowled Michael Hussey for 13 and Brett Lee for a duck off consecutive balls as the world champions, needing 21 off 13 balls to overhaul West Indies' 234 for six, crumbled under pressure.
With the first ball of the following over, 22-year-old Taylor, playing in his 19th one-dayer, bowled Brad Hogg for 10 to become the first West Indian to take a hat trick in one-day internationals. At the end of their 50 overs Australia were 224 for nine with Taylor taking four for 49.
Adam Gilchrist led Australia's challenge with a measured 92 before he was run out.
West Indies owed their challenging total to Runako Morton (90 not out) and captain Brian Lara (71).
Gilchrist and Michael Clarke shared in a 101-run stand for the fifth wicket after Australia had slumped to 81-4 in 20 overs. But vice-captain Gilchrist's dismissal, run out while aiming for a quick single with the side needing 53 off 50 deliveries, was a severe blow. It also saw West Indies slowly regain control in the tension-filled final overs.
"There was a game here to be won, and we were not good enough. So I won't be blaming anybody but ourselves," Australia captain Ricky Ponting told a news conference.
Paceman Dwayne Bravo, reintroduced into the attack, dismissed Michael Clarke caught and bowled for 47, deceiving him with a slower one.
West Indies were led by vice-captain Ramnaresh Sarwan in the absence of Lara who did not take the field after suffering cramps while batting.
They were also without strike bowler Corey Collymore, who returned home during the weekend to be with his wife for the birth of their first child, and Fidel Edwards, who sat out of the match due to a leg injury. Local Mumbai player Vinayak Samant fielded as 12th man.
"More than the hat trick, I take pride in representing my country. To come out and give that sort of a performance, I am very happy about," Taylor said.West Indies had slumped to 63 for four before 28-year-old Morton, playing instead of Shivnarine Chanderpaul, and Lara hauled the side back into the match with a 137-run stand for the fifth wicket after opting to bat in the day-night match.The wickets were shared by the Australian attack as Wavell Hinds, Chris Gayle, Dwayne Smith and Ramnaresh Sarwan fell in quick succession.
Lara, 37, batting at number six, took 31 balls to score his first boundary before opening up with a series of breathtaking strokes. He stroked seven fours and two sixes en route to his 61st one-day fifty.
Morton had a reprieve on 41, dropped by Ponting at mid-off when he gave Nathan Bracken the charge.
The tall right-hander collected seven fours and a six as he compiled his fifth one-day half-century.

TITLE: Chinese Women Upset U.S.
AUTHOR: By Eddie Pells,
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: — The loud "thunk" was followed almost immediately by a gasp two sounds that almost always signal bad news in a gymnastics hall. The first noise came from possibly the best gymnast in the world, America's Chellsie Memmel. The second came from a crowd that was stunned to see her fall from the uneven bars.Memmel gets a do-over of sorts Thursday, when she'll be a favorite in the women's all-around. But on Wednesday, her mistake and a bunch of others by her teammates made for a huge gymnastics surprise: The heavily favored Americans lost to China in the team finals at the world championships.
"I was just a little bit off tonight," Memmel said.
"Totally, totally unexpected," was what national team coordinator Martha Karolyi called the off night that led to America's stunning silver.
This was, after all, a team that goes through dozens of training sessions without making a single mistake. It was a team that dominated so thoroughly in qualifying two nights earlier that finals were shaping up more like a gala than an actual competition.
But there was a competition. And China won it.
"I guess that's why they call it sport," Kathy Kelly said. "Totally unexpected. But you can't take anything away from China."
The Chinese scored 182.2 points, 0.85 more than the Americans and nearly five ahead of Russia, which finished in third a good result for a team rebuilding after the retirement of Svetlana Khorkina.
It continued a great week for the Chinese, who won their first world title and capped a sweep at the worlds after winning the men's championship Tuesday. That victory could have been expected. This one wasn't.
China finished seventh at the Athens Olympics and hadn't won a team medal at worlds since 1999. In 2003, the Chinese infamously gave away the bronze when an athlete was penalized for warming up for her beam routine on the podium near the beam, which wasn't allowed.
In all, this was thought to be a program that was slowly improving maybe timing it to make a big splash at the Beijing Olympics?
"This victory has already passed," said Zhang Nan, who gets a gold to go with her all-around bronze from Athens. "Next time, we start again at zero. At the Olympic Games, we will have the same competition."
Well, mostly the same. Besides Memmel, the defending all-around champion, and Nastia Liukin, the national titlist who was hurt and limited to one event this week, there are no sure things for Beijing.
When it came to mistakes in this meet, Memmel wasn't alone.
Jana Bieger had to put both hands down behind her to keep from totally biffing on her vault landing. There were wobbles on the beam and extra little hops and slips on the floor that cost precious tenths of points.
"China was consistent tonight, and I thought they deserved to win," Karolyi said. "But they didn't beat us. We beat ourselves."
The Chinese women took the lead into their last event, the floor, and Pang Panpan opened the festivities there with the routine of the night. It was sassy, technically strong and full of pizazz. The fans clapped along, and when the music stopped, she brought her hand to her cheek and pushed her head to an angle to smile to the crowd.
Maybe the Americans won't be the only team with star power in Beijing.
A few minutes later, the Chinese were celebrating, hugging and high-fiving, even though the Americans still had to go.
Who would've ever guessed the favorites would be an afterthought?
Alicia Sacramone, the defending world champ on floor, did her usual best another head-turning number that will be her last on the floor this week due to a judging decision in qualifying that knocked her out of event finals.
Memmel was superb, too. Maybe when she competes in the all-around, that high-flying floor exercise will mean something. In this meet, it was already too late.
"I don't know what we could have done differently," Karolyi said. "They were really surprising mistakes. But you turn the page, you go to the next competition, you look ahead. It's the only thing you can do."

TITLE: Rice Holds N. Korea Talks During Asian Trip
AUTHOR: By Anne Gearan
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SEOUL, South Korea — U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday she will not presume to tell South Korea or China exactly how they should enforce UN sanctions on North Korea, but called on all nations to cooperate."I did not come to South Korea nor do I go anyplace else to try to dictate to governments what they ought to do," she said at a news conference.
She said the United States wants to lower tensions, not escalate them.
Rice's South Korean counterpart, Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon, warned North Korea anew that it should do nothing to worsen tensions.
"A second nuclear test by North Korea should never take place," he said following meetings with Rice.
Rice is on an Asian tour in support of United Nations sanctions on North Korea for a nuclear test that rattled the world amid continued signs that North Korea may be preparing for a second nuclear test.
At the same time, she is reassuring Seoul that the United States stands behind its pledge to defend the country if the North attacked. She carried a similar message in Japan, her first stop on a four-day trip devoted almost entirely to crisis talks on the nuclear threat.
Acknowledging that different countries will take different approaches to enforcing the UN restrictions on North Korea, Rice said the United States wants to ensure that all nations cooperate.
She said initial reports that the UN sanctions would require a blockade or embargo on North Korean goods were exaggerated and that there is a model for action, citing an existing agreement among about 80 nations that is meant to counter the spread of nuclear materials or long-range missiles.
South Korea has not signed on to that 2003 agreement, the Proliferation Security Initiative, out of concern that it would provoke the North. Frustration over that position was one cause of tension between Washington and Seoul even before the nuclear test.
Rice described that existing program as "effective, but not confrontational."
"There are many ways to implement [UN sanctions] that have the same character," she said.
North Korea has a standing army of about 1.2 million, with millions more in reserve, and a supply of missiles capable of reaching Asian cities. North and South Korea technically are still at war more than 50 years after the Korean conflict ended.
The U.S. has 29,500 troops in South Korea, plus other air and naval forces in range. While the U.S. has no land-based nuclear weapons in Asia, it does have submarines equipped with nuclear weapons.
Rice's meeting with Ban was their first since his selection this month as the next UN secretary general. The two diplomats later were holding a rare three-way session with Japan's foreign minister, a sign that the Korean nuclear crisis has helped warm Japan's often frosty relationship with South Korea.
South Korea and China together account for two-thirds of overseas trade for the impoverished communist North, and South Korea hopes to one day reunite the two Koreas.

TITLE: Chelsea, Liverpool Grab Wins
AUTHOR: By Ravi Ubha
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: LONDON — Chelsea snapped Barcelona's 15-game unbeaten streak in soccer's Champions League with a 1-0 win, while Liverpool beat Bordeaux 1-0 for its first tournament victory on the road in four matches.Didier Drogba scored his ninth goal this season as Chelsea downed the defending champion in London. It was the teams' third meeting in successive seasons, with Chelsea handing Barcelona its last defeat in the competition in March 2005.
Drogba and manager Jose Mourinho said the team dedicated the win to a former employee of the club who died in a car accident yesterday.
"It was a great victory,'' Mourinho told Sky Sports.
"Not just the three points, but the way we got it. We played an amazing game against a great opponent. We were great tactically.''
Inter Milan got its first points with a 3-1 win over Spartak Moscow, Bayern Munich made it three straight wins with a 1-0 victory at Sporting Lisbon and Valencia also improved to nine points with a 2-0 win over Shakhtar Donetsk. Werder Bremen beat Levski Sofia 2-0, Galatasaray lost 2-1 to PSV and Roma downed Olympiakos 1-0.
The top two teams from each of the eight groups advance to the final 16, while the third-place finishers qualify for the second-tier UEFA Cup. Real Madrid, Manchester United and A.C. Milan were among the winners Tuesday.
Chelsea leads Group A with nine points, five more than Barcelona and Werder Bremen. Bremen, the leader in Germany, got goals from Naldo and Ribas Diego.
Peter Crouch scored with a header in the 58th minute for Liverpool, which won for the second time in eight games in France. Crouch earlier missed two chances.
Liverpool has seven points atop Group C along with PSV Eindhoven, which rallied to defeat Galatasaray on the road. Jan Kromkamp and Arouna Kone scored for the Dutch champion.

TITLE: Schumacher Seeks One Last Victory
AUTHOR: By Alan Baldwin
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: SAO PAULO — The chequered flag comes down on the greatest Formula One career of all on Sunday with Michael Schumacher chasing one last win and, just possibly, an unprecedented eighth title.The Ferrari ace, signing off with a string of records that may never be bettered, will fire up his engines for a final showdown with Renault's Fernando Alonso in the Brazilian season-ender.
If Schumacher wins at Interlagos and Alonso fails to score, as happened at Monza in Italy last month, the 37-year-old German will take the title with him into retirement.
Otherwise, his Spanish rival will retain the crown he won in Brazil last year to become the sport's youngest champion at the age of 24.
The odds favor Alonso, with the Spaniard needing just a point while Italian team mate Giancarlo Fisichella takes on Schumacher for the race victory, but the last few races have been full of surprises.
"I don't think it is over at all," Alonso said this week, looking forward to what will be his final race for Renault before switching to McLaren in 2007.
"Until the final lap, when you know you are champion, anything can still happen and we are taking nothing for granted," he added.
"I think our aim has to be to do a normal weekend, to get the maximum from the car without any big risks and to finish the job. If we have our usual performance, fighting at the front, then we will achieve our targets."
Ferrari lag Renault by nine points in the constructors' standings and Schumacher, who declared an end to his own title hopes after being sidelined by an engine failure while leading the last race in Japan, wants to make that championship his farewell gift to the team.
To do that, he needs to go for broke.
"We are aiming for a one-two, nothing less," the winner of a record 91 grands prix said on the Ferrari website. "This is the only hope we have of taking the constructors' title and it is all we can do."
"Naturally I am aware of the fact that, after almost 16 years, this is my last race," he added.
"I hope that it will be an exciting race, that way I will take with me the marvellous feeling that only a win can bring."

TITLE: Olympic Chief Awaits Appeal
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PARIS — The president of the French Olympic Committee was convicted on corruption charges Thursday and received a three-month suspended sentence.Henri Serandour, also an International Olympic Committee member, was accused of giving two lucrative jobs to a communications company that had hired his wife, former swimmer Catherine Poirot.
The 69-year-old Serandour could be suspended by the IOC following the guilty verdict in the criminal court trial that began in June. He said he would appeal.
Serandour has been an IOC member since 2000 and could join former sports minister and Olympic champion Guy Drut as the second French member of the Olympic governing body to be suspended on corruption charges.
Serandour told The Associated Press he could not be suspended by the IOC until his appeal has been heard. The IOC regularly awaits the outcomes of appeals before sanctioning members.
Serandour's lawyer, Patrick Maisonneuve, said his client "will not seek any sort of pardon but will use the normal route" to clear his name.
Maisonneuve noted that Serandour's IOC membership expires at the end of 2007 and an appeals court would likely not rule on the case before next summer.
If the conviction is upheld, Serandour could appeal to a higher court, meaning the case could still be open when Serandour retires.

TITLE: High-Profile Casualites in Madrid
AUTHOR: By Simon Baskett
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MADRID — Sixth seed Andy Roddick and world number eight Tommy Robredo suffered straight sets defeats in the third round of the Madrid Masters on Thursday.Czech Tomas Berdych toppled Roddick 7-6 6-3 with the American ending the match complaining of pain in his left ankle, while the unseeded Robby Ginepri beat Spain's Robredo 6-3 7-6.
There was nothing to separate Berdych and Roddick in the first set as they held firm on their serves and it was no surprise when the set went to a tiebreak. But Roddick was the first to crack and the 21-year-old Czech edged the tiebreak 9-7.
Berdych will now play the winner of the match between defending champion Rafael Nadal and 13th-seeded German Tommy Haas in the quarter-finals.
American Ginepri, who lost to Nadal in the semis last year, put Robredo under early pressure, breaking in the second game and then holding his serve with ease to take the first set 6-3.
The second set went to a tiebreak and it was Ginepri who won through 7-3 to earn himself a quarter-final showdown against the winner of the third round match between world number one Roger Federer and Sweden's Robin Soderling.
British number one Andy Murray will be looking to build on his impressive victory over third seed Ivan Ljubicic when he meets Novak Djokovic of Serbia, while fellow countryman Tim Henman meets fourth seeded Argentine David Nalbandian.