SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1220 (86), Friday, November 10, 2006
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TITLE: Kyrgyzstan Steps Back From Crisis
AUTHOR: By Maria Golovnina
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BISHKEK — Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev on Thursday signed a new constitution that will reduce his powers, a climbdown that defused a political crisis which had brought thousands of opposition protesters onto the streets.Bakiyev signed the constitution in front of reporters ending a tense week of pressure by the opposition that had staged mass protests threatening the Central Asian state's fragile stability.
The opposition had said Bakiyev, who came to power in July last year, should quit if he did not agree to the new constitution. The document will transfer to parliament the power to appoint the government.
Despite the curtailing of his powers, Bakiyev said the deal was a victory for stability.
"There are no losers here," he said after signing the document, hammered out by the opposition and his supporters and voted by parliament on Wednesday.
Hailing it as a step toward entrenching democracy in his country, he said: "The new constitution is the result of the level-headedness and wisdom of the Kyrgyz people."
Even before the signing, the opposition were making plans for celebrations and the red plastic tents in which protesters had kept overnight vigil for nights on end were being cleared away from Bishkek's central square.
Scenting victory on Wednesday, about 500 opposition supporters who stayed for the late-night parliamentary vote shouted and waved Kyrgyz national flags. Organizers let off fireworks and protesters waved sparklers.
The protests broke out after the opposition accused Bakiyev of reneging on promises to introduce democratic reforms when he was elected in the wake of violent protests that forced his long-serving predecessor to flee the country.
The United States and Russia both have military airbases in Kyrgyzstan. In a region where autocratic rulers are the order of the day, the constitution will make Kyrgyzstan Central Asia's only ex-Soviet republic to have strong checks and balances on the powers of the president.

TITLE: Democrat Congress Is 'Bad News' For Russia
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: Victory by the Democrats in U.S. congressional elections will mean a tougher line toward Russia on human rights and possible accession to the World Trade Organization, Russian politicians and media said on Thursday."The success of the opposition in the congressional polls will harden U.S. policy toward Russia," the respected daily newspaper Kommersant said.
"In practical terms the new Democratic leadership in Congress will probably mean additional complications for Russia's access to the WTO." Russia is in the final stages of protracted talks on joining the WTO.
The influential speaker of the Russian Duma, Boris Gryzlov, said he hoped Washington would pursue what he termed a "better balanced" policy on the use of its military outside the United States, a coded criticism of the Iraq war.
Like other Russian politicians, he worried the new Congress might step up scrutiny of Moscow's record on human rights.
"The Democrats are fighters for human rights, staunch fighters," Gryzlov told Interfax news agency. "I think the Democrats are more prone to apply double standards in human rights."
U.S.-Russian relations reached a high in 2001 when President George W. Bush said after his first meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin that he had looked him in the eye and seen a "very straightforward and trustworthy" man.
Since then, Moscow's increasingly assertive and independent foreign policy, its crackdown on political opposition and independent media and its drive to restore state control over key natural resources have severely frayed ties.
"Russian-American relations are at an all-time low for the whole post-Communist period," said Maria Lipmann, who edits a policy journal for the Carnegie Moscow Center.
"There now seems to be a universal consensus — which I do not share — that [the Democratic victory in Congress] is bad for Russia.
"Most people believe that Democrats are traditionally more concerned about human rights and democracy and will interfere more in Russian domestic affairs."
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he had heard the argument that Democrats were bad for Moscow but played down the significance of the political earthquake in Washington.
Russia respected the choice of the American electorate and was "open for dialogue" with the new leadership in Congress, he said.
"We are not speculating on the WTO until the negotiations are over," he said. "They are developing quite positively."
The pro-government daily Izvestia published an opinion poll showing 55 percent of respondents believed the new U.S. Congress would not change anything for Russia.
Some 17 percent thought relations would worsen, 15 percent that Washington would pull troops out of Iraq and seven percent that relations would improve.
In a rout once considered almost inconceivable, Democrats won a 51st seat in the Senate and regained total control of Congress after 12 years of near-domination by the Republican Party.
The shift dramatically alters the government's balance of power, leaving President Bush without Republican congressional control to drive his legislative agenda. Democrats hailed the results and issued calls for bipartisanship even as they vowed to investigate administration policies and decisions.
Democrats completed their sweep Wednesday evening by ousting Republican Senator George Allen of Virginia, the last of six Republican incumbents to lose re-election bids in a midterm election marked by deep dissatisfaction with the president and the war in Iraq.
Emboldened by their congressional election triumph and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's resignation, Democrats say they will use their new clout to force a change in Iraq policy and demand that President Bush start bringing troops home.
Rumsfeld's resignation — and Bush's pledge to work with Democrats on issues facing the nation — came after months of the president backing Rumsfeld and insisting the war in Iraq was on track. His arguments lost steam after voters catapulted Democrats to power in Tuesday's voting, giving Democrats control of both the House and Senate next year.
Democrats say they hope election gains would provide momentum for more than the fall of Rumsfeld.
First stop next year will be legislation calling for an undetermined number of troops to come home immediately. Though Democrats are divided over exactly what to propose, they say their effort will send a loud political signal to disgruntled U.S. voters, and to Iraqis to assume more responsibility.
"I believe a number of Republicans will want to join forces here because there's a lot of unease in the country," said Senator Carl Levin, in line to head the Senate Armed Services Committee in the new Congress.
That dynamic may be on display even sooner than next year.
Senator John Warner, the current chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, already has planned an Iraq hearing for next week with top military and intelligence officials testifying.
And after Bush surprised virtually the entire capital by announcing Rumsfeld's departure on Wednesday and picking former CIA Director Robert Gates to replace him, Warner said he wants to hold Gates' confirmation hearings this year — sessions that could become inquiries into almost every aspect of the Iraq war.

(Reuters, AP)

TITLE: Gazprom Skyscraper Designs Revealed
AUTHOR: By Evgenia Ivanova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: World-leading architects revealed on Wednesday sky-high designs for Gazprom's new headquarters to be built in St. Petersburg. The construction of the skyscraper for the state energy giant, to be built on the other side of the Neva River to Smolny Cathedral by 2012, represents a turning point for the city's development and will change the city's skyline forever, experts say.Architects taking part in the competition to find a winning design for the building include some of the biggest names in international architecture including Rem Koolhaas, Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron — previous winners of 'architectural Nobel,' the Pritzker Prize.
Also taking part is Jean Nouvel, one of the most influential architects in France, Massimiliano Fuksas , the creator of Vienna's twin-towers, the U.K.'s largest architectural firm, RMJM, and Daniel Libeskind, the architect behind the winning design for New York's Freedom Tower, the replacement for the World Trade Center which was destroyed in terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
Their designs include a glass needle, a cluster of cubes and include an abstract design reminiscent of a flying eagle, as well as others inspired by St. Petersburg's spires.
The proposals differ greatly, but all the architects in the project agree: innovative high-rise architecture is the only way forward for St. Petersburg.
Despite widely-expressed criticism and concerns that 300-meter high complexes will irreparably damage the skyline of the city, the architects said that 21st century hi-tech buildings will only enhance it.
To preserve traditions, one should look not at safeguarding the low skyline, which has already been breached by the 316-meter high TV tower and other structures, but follow the progressive philosophy of Peter the Great, the city's founder, said Philip Nikandrov, a representative of RMJM, one of the participating firms.
"Peter the Great was an extremely ambitious person and St. Petersburg was built using the most advanced techniques and materials available at the time, there's no doubt he would go ahead with the idea [of building a skyscraper in the city]," Nikandrov told the St. Petersburg Times on Wednesday.
Koolhaas also said that the concerns about the height of Gazprom's new HQ have been exagggerated.
"We found the 300-meter limit stated in the project specification to be very strange," he said in an interview.
"The most important question here is how to make the building stand in harmony with its surroundings so it doesn't simply look like a sample of contemporary commercial architecture," he said.
"Just to look at height is a very vulgar way to access architecture," Koolhaas, who is the internationally recognized industry guru and author of the architecture student's bible, SMLXL, said Wednesday.
He also noted that if buildings are not allowed to be developed vertically, then the only way to go is to build horizontally — and this approach "doesn't sound very attractive."
Herzog and de Meuron said the Gazprom project attracted criticism mainly because it is very difficult to accept change, especially on such a grandiose level.
"There will be a very big transformation for the city, but I think if St. Petersburg accepts it, it will be a very positive transformation," Herzog said.
To accept such a transformation has proved difficult for St. Petersburg artist and namesake of Gazprom chairman Alexei Miller, Kirill Miller.
He has teamed up with other members of St. Petersburg's arts community to mock Gazprom and render its proposed tower absurd in an exhibition that went on show this week to coincide with the unveiling of official proposals.
"By chance I was watching a neighbor's TV recently. After I watched the city news, I came to the realization that a Miller is allowed to do anything in St. Petersburg," Kirill Miller wrote in the event's press release.
"I also understood that our government are the bravest avant-gardists, eager to support the most daring projects," he noted at the exhibition's opening on Wednesday at Tsinik, an alternative downtown bar.
"So it was a signal that anyone can do anything in the city, and we decided to offer our ideas too."
According to Kirill Miller's ideas, the artillery museum should be converted into a Monetarist Temple, a reference to the arms trade, and Russia's National Library should be demolished to erect in its stead an office for Gosspirtfrom (a state department for controling the production of alcohol).
Designed in the shape of a monstrous bottle, the office would "symbolize the trampling of forced and alien values and the return of tradition," the artist jokes.
"Soon the city administration will receive a whole lot of projects, and Gazprom's idea will pale into complete insignificance," Miller warns.

TITLE: Service to Honor War Dead
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Anglican church community in St. Petersburg will observe Remembrance Day on Sunday with a traditional service at St. Catherines Swedish Lutheran Church on Malakonnyushenaya Ulitsa.Remembrance services on the second Sunday of November are held throughout the English-speaking world to mark Nov. 11, the anniversary of the cease-fire that ended World War I in 1918.
"The big guns which had spewed out death and destruction for four years along the Western Front, stretching from Switzerland to the North Sea, fell silent at 11 a.m. on the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918," Reverend Canon Dr. Trevor Park, who will officiate at the church service, told The St. Petersburg Times this week. "Every year since 1919, the millions who died or who were maimed in that war have been remembered."
Reverend Parks said Remembrance Day honors the dead of wars fought since 1914-1918.
"Tens of millions have lost their lives — Russia has suffered more than most countries," he said.
The Remembrance Day church service, which will be conducted in English and is open to all worshippers, begins at 11 a.m. on Sunday.

TITLE: 'Offensive' Borat Movie Banned
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW — The distributor of a hit Hollywood film featuring boorish Kazakh TV reporter Borat decided not to show it in Russian cinemas after officials advised it may cause offence, Russian officials said on Thursday.The film, the surprise No. 1 at the U.S. box office on its opening weekend, pokes fun at Kazakhstan and includes naked wrestling, toilet jokes and anti-Semitic satire as fictional hero Borat Sagdiyev makes a road trip across the United States.
Less than three weeks before a feature film about Borat, a character created by English comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, was to open in Russian movie theaters, the Federal Culture and Cinematography Agency refused to license it out of concern that the film could offend audiences in this country.
The movie, "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan," has thus become one of the first non-pornographic films to be banned since the breakup of the Soviet Union.
It was scheduled to open in 300 theaters nationwide Nov. 30.
The movie opened in the United States on Nov. 3, and took in $26.49 million in its first weekend, setting a box-office record for movies that opened in fewer than 1,000 theaters.
Even before it opened, the movie drew the ire of the Kazakh government, which initially found little to laugh about in Cohen's depiction of Kazakhstan as a country whose people are addicted to horse urine and are fond of rape, incest and shooting dogs.
"The film contains material that some viewers may consider offensive to certain nationalities and religions," said Yury Vasyuchkov, head of the Federal Culture and Cinematography Agency's department that licenses movies for distribution to theaters.
The distributor, Twentieth Century Fox in Russia, can appeal the agency's decision in court, Vasyuchkov said, adding that he had never heard of a non-pornographic movie being banned. Hundreds of hard-core pornographic movies are currently licensed by the agency for distribution.
"We got the news today," said Nikolai Vorunkov, deputy general director of Gemini Marketing, the movie's distributor in Russia and a subsidiary of Twentieth Century Fox. Vorunkov said he remained hopeful that a solution could be found.
"There was some kind of explanation that the movie might create tension between races and nationalities because of its far-from-simple humor," said Vorunkov, adding that the movie was now unlikely to open before the New Year — if ever.
The film can be downloaded illegally on the internet, however.
Cohen's movie has been criticized for being offensive to Jews, Kazakhs, Uzbeks, homosexuals and Americans.
The decision to ban Cohen's movie on the grounds that it could incite ethnic tension comes as the government faces charges of xenophobia for its campaign directed against Georgian businesses and illegal immigrants in this country.
Sergei Lukashevsky, director of the Demos Center, an independent civil liberties watchdog, said Wednesday that the agency was well within its rights to ban the movie.
"There is a provision on degrading ethnic and religious dignity in Russian law, but it is always subject to the personal interpretation of the officials who make the decisions," Lukashevsky said. "But these decisions should also be based on an expert assessment."
A spokeswoman for Russia's Federal Culture Agency, which issues licences for films to go on release, told Reuters on Thursday that Gemini approached the agency informally for advice on whether the film was suitable.
"They showed it to our staff, who, in private exchanges with the company, said from the agency's point of view there is material in the film that could cause offence to some confessions and nationalities," the spokeswoman said.
"It is laughable to say that we banned the film ... There has been no official request (from the distributor) for a licence so how could we turn it down?" she said.
In recent weeks, the Kazakh government has softened its position on the movie, even inviting Cohen to visit Kazakhstan.
Kazakhstan itself has not banned the film, said Kazakh Embassy spokesman Denis Tsaryov, although he did add: "It would be hard to find a distribution company willing to handle this movie."
(Reuters, SPT)

TITLE: Former East German Spy Chief Dead at 83
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BERLIN — Markus Wolf, the legendary East German spymaster whose Cold War activities earned him the moniker "The Man Without a Face," has died aged 83.Wolf's publisher said he had died peacefully in his sleep in the German capital early on Thursday morning, 17 years to the day after the Berlin Wall fell. No cause of death was given.
During his 34 years as a spy, Wolf rose through the ranks of the communist state's Stasi secret police to head its elite foreign intelligence division, running a network of 4,000 spies.
He masterminded some of the Cold War's most audacious operations, planting an agent close to West German Chancellor Willy Brandt in a move which brought about Brandt's downfall when the spy was exposed in 1974.
"I can't say I'm proud of what I did, I'm not," Wolf told Reuters in 1997. "But I don't think I've lived for nothing."
After the Wall fell in 1989, Wolf escaped to Russia where he remained until Russian communism collapsed. He was then handed over to his old western foes and charged with treason in 1993, receiving a six-year sentence which was later suspended.
During his career Wolf crossed paths with Venezuelan guerrilla Illich Ramirez Sanchez, better known as Carlos the Jackal, whom he wrote about in his autobiography "Man Without a Face" and called the Stasi's "most problematic customer".
Wolf said in his memoirs that if he went down in espionage history, it should be for perfecting the use of sex in spying, a nod to his use of seductive "Romeo" agents to obtain secrets.
Although it has been widely rumoured that novelist John le Carre based his character "Karla" on Wolf, the author has denied this. Still, his image as a dashing, thinking-man's spy has led Wolf to be romanticised in the West in recent decades.
"I have followed with some dismay the idealisation of Markus Wolf since the end of the Cold War as a glamorous intellectual and communist reformer," University of Oxford professor Timothy Garton Ash told Reuters. "The truth is that he was fully part of one of the worst apparatuses of oppression in postwar Europe," said Ash, whose book "The File: A Personal History" describes his discovery of his own Stasi file after the fall of the Wall.
Born on January 19, 1923, Wolf fled the Nazis with his family in 1934 and settled in Russia. His father, Friedrich Wolf, was a Jewish doctor, playwright and communist.
After the war he went back to East Germany and worked as a journalist before helping to set up the intelligence services.
Following his conviction for his Cold War activities, Wolf launched a four-year appeal, arguing it would be "victors' justice" to punish him for the same cloak-and-dagger activities carried out by western agents.
In 1995, a German court agreed and ruled it was unfair to jail men like Wolf whose acts were legal under communist East Germany. It suspended his earlier sentence.

TITLE: Retrial in Klebnikov Murder
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia's Supreme Court overturned on Thursday the acquittal of two defendants in the high-profile murder of U.S. journalist Paul Klebnikov and ordered a retrial. Klebnikov's family hailed the ruling as a "hopeful signal for justice and the rule of law" in Russia.Two Chechens, Kazbek Dukuzov and Musa Vakhayev, were acquitted by a lower court in May of murdering Klebnikov, editor of the Russian edition of Forbes magazine, who was shot dead in July 2004. Prosecutors and Klebnikov's family lodged an appeal with the Supreme Court against their acquittal, citing alleged violations of court procedure and pressure on the jury.
Neither of the Chechens was in court on Thursday.
The murder of Klebnikov, who was shot as he left his office in central Moscow, was one of the most high-profile killings in the six years of President Vladimir Putin's rule.
The U.S. Senate asked Russia to accept help in the investigation of Klebnikov's murder and the affair has figured in conversations between Putin and President Bush.
Klebnikov, who was 41, had delved into a world where Russian business, politics and organized crime overlap and local media said he was the victim of a contract killing linked to his work.
Klebnikov's family said in a statement they remained concerned that Klebnikov's killers and those who ordered the crime were still at large.
"We call on the Russian government to redouble efforts for searching for, detaining and transferring into the arms of justice those who ordered this crime," the statement said.

TITLE: Iran's Nuclear Chief to Visit Moscow
AUTHOR: By Valery Stepchenkov
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani will visit Moscow on Friday amid concern in the West about Russia's readiness to back UN sanctions against Tehran over its nuclear program."The Secretary of the (Iranian) National Security Council, Mr Larijani, arrives in Moscow tomorrow and he will have negotiations in the Russian Security Council and the Foreign Ministry," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters.
Russia says it is determined to prevent Tehran obtaining a nuclear weapon but has tried to water down a draft UN resolution on sanctions being thrashed out by European Union envoys.
Speaking at a meeting with his Bahraini counterpart, Lavrov said Russia believed the best way out of the standoff with Iran was multilateral talks between Tehran and major powers.
"We are still convinced that there is a place for the continuation of peaceful negotiations," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. "Sanctions are very sensitive...and we have to behave extremely responsibly."
Tehran says its nuclear ambitions are limited to energy production while the United States fears it wants nuclear weapons.
Western diplomats said Moscow has grown increasingly impatient with Iran's refusal to open all its facilities to inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
"The Russians have told the Iranians that they will have to back some sanctions in the end," a diplomat told Reuters.
"They told the Iranians that they find their refusal to let the IAEA into some facilities incomprehensible and that Iran would benefit the most from such transparency because it would dispel all doubts."INSPECTORS BARRED
An EU diplomat said Iran has been barring inspectors from bunkers and tunnels which UN inspectors have good grounds for wanting to visit.Lavrov said Moscow's proposal to enrich uranium for Iran's nuclear power program on Russian soil should be on the agenda when any multilateral talks started. Moscow made the enrichment offer earlier this year but received no response from Iran.
"There have been no changes in our position whatsoever," RIA news agency quoted Lavrov as saying. "We are pursuing the resumption of talks as soon as possible.
"When talks start all options that would help the non-proliferation regime will be examined. In this context, I think our proposal (to enrich uranium for Iran) will be very much in demand."
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki had been due to visit Moscow earlier this week but this was postponed. Tehran requested the postponement, Lavrov said, without giving the reason.
Russia is carrying out a multi-million dollar contract to build a nuclear power station for Iran at Bushehr, on the Persian Gulf. Some western diplomats say Moscow is concerned any sanctions may affect that contract.(Additional reporting by Louis Charbonneau in Berlin)

TITLE: Russia Emerges as Henkel Favorite
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: German giant Henkel, the maker of Persil detergent and Fa shampoo, has signaled out Russia as the company's most important emerging market. The claim came on Wednesday at a press conference reporting the group's financial results for the third quarter of 2006."The positive trends, seen in the first and the second quarters of 2006, have continued through the third quarter," said Ulrich Lehner, chairman of the management board of Henkel KGaA.
Total sales increased 3.8 percent up to 3.26 billion euros ($4.14 billion), organic growth was reported at 5.6 percent. Operating profit (EBIT) increased seven percent up to 321 million euros, net earnings by nine percent up to 217 million euros.
Lothar Stainebach, Henkel CFO, emphasized the effect reinvestment and innovation had had on the group's performance. 17 million euros were reinvested into the improvement of distribution and infrastructure.
Stainebach revealed the group's accelerated sales in Western Europe and Germany and double-digit growth in the emerging markets.
In the Asia/Pacific region sales grew by 12.6 percent, in Latin America by 14.1 percent, in Europe/Africa/Middle East by 8.7 percent. In North America sales dropped by 4.7 percent.
"Development was especially strong in Eastern Europe," Stainebach said.
Gross margin improved by 1.1 percent to 46.2 percent and is expected to keep growing till the end of 2006, he said.
In Russia, Henkel has seen growth of 311 percent from 2000 to 2005, while over the same period in Eastern Europe growth was 206 percent, Lehner said.
Last year Henkel Russia generated sales totaling around 400 million euros — a 26 percent increase on the previous year.
Henkel operates five production sites in Russia, including a plant in Tosno, Leningrad Oblast, and employs 2,000 people.
"We are very pleased with our business in Russia," Lehner said. He indicated that Russia is the most important of the BRIC group of countries and one of the top ten markets in the world for Henkel.
He reiterated his financial forecast for the year. In 2006 Henkel expects organic sales growth to be around five percent, operating profit to increase by 10 percent and earnings per preferred share to likewise rise by around 10 percent.
Ongoing restructuring is expected to save the group 25 million euros in 2007.
In many product categories Henkel aims at expanding its business in Eastern Europe, Mexico, Brazil and North Africa.
Lehner said that "extremely high" sales in Russia demand investment into production and employees.
At the moment Henkel is constructing a headquarters in Moscow. Lehner did not indicate any other specific projects or the precise volume of investment into the new headquarters, but he did say that usually Henkel reinvests around 25 percent to 27 percent of its turnover.
Retail market researchers are also positive about the Russian market.
According to the IMC group, multinational corporations are expected to grow organically at 15-20 percent on average over the next three years by way of acquisitions and partnerships with successful local companies in emerging markets and the launch of new products.
A PwC report, "The World in 2050" forecasts that Russia will have the highest income per head among the world's seven fastest-growing economies.
PwC estimates the Russian retail market has the potential to grow to twice its current size.
Last year the retail market was estimated at $245 million, including a $151.3 million non-food segment. Market growth was 12 percent.
"The Russian cosmetics and personal care market is one of the most rapidly growing in the world," PwC experts said in a report on Russia.
In 2005, the market was estimated at 5.6 billion euros with annual growth of 13 percent. Market potential is estimated at 14 billion to 16 billion euros
The market is dominated by foreign cosmetic companies: Beiersdorf, Colgate-Palmolive, Johnson&Johnson, L'Oreal, Procter&Gamble, Schwartzkopf&Henkel and Unilever.

TITLE: Car Dealers Look For That Special Something
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Local holding Strategiya Rost will invest $25 million into the construction of a new multi-brand car dealership on the corner of the ring-road and Murmanskoye Shosse, Prime-TASS reported Tuesday.The successive opening of several car dealerships means each is trying to differentiate itself from the competition, offering something special to increase sales.
The complex will be located on a 3.5 hectare plot and is due to open by the end of 2007. Moskommertsbank granted a five-year, $15 million loan to Strategiya Rost, with company shareholders funding the remaining costs.
"Such projects are very important for both St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast. First of all, it will create about 400 jobs for highly qualified workers. Secondly, it means tax payments to municipal and regional budgets," Prime-TASS cited Sergei Vainer, director for automotive division at Strategiya Rost.
The new car center will be comprised of three buildings. It will be a classical "car village" selling eight brands of car.
The company has prior agreements with Chevrolet, Opel, Hummer, Saab, Cadillac and Honda and is in negotiations with other leading car manufacturers.
Two subsidiaries of the holding — Capital Auto and Pobeda Motors — are dealers of General Motors and Honda Motor.
Vainer expects to sell 5,000 cars a year and get the investment returned within four to five years after opening. According to his forecast, the new center will occupy four percent to five percent of the local car market.
The center will also offer training courses on safe driving, with a track specially designed for the purpose.
Predicted sales correspond to the growing St. Petersburg market.
For example, the Ford dealer Alarm-Motors sold 2,137 cars last year. In the first eight months of 2006 the company sold 2,749 cars. "By the end of the year we expect to sell another 1,863," said Natalia Gracheva, PR and advertisement manager of Alarm-Motors.
Alarm-Motors operates three car centers. "In 2007 we are planning to open a new car center at Marchala Zhukova Prospekt. It will be the largest dealership in St. Petersburg, occupying 5,176 square meters," Gracheva said.
"The center will house a spacious show-room and the largest Ford service center in the Northwest. Center capacity allows sales of 5,000 cars a year and the servicing of 100 cars a day," she said.
"The special feature of the new center will be a car warehouse located on its roof," Gracheva said.
Gracheva indicated that Ford, Toyota, Hyundai, Chevrolet, DAT and LADA brands have been showing the most rapid growth in sales in the city.

TITLE: S&P's: Transparency In Business Still Low
AUTHOR: By Simon Shuster
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Businesses remain nearly as opaque in the eyes of investors as they were a year ago, Standard and Poor's said Wednesday.After surveying the 70 biggest listed companies in the country, the rating agency concluded that the overall trend in Russia's corporate transparency is one of "stagnation."
Oil firm Bashneft scored lowest in the study, while AvtoVAZ took the tally's biggest dive, dropping 25 places to the 67th spot. Two state-run companies — Rosoboronexport and Vneshtorgbank — took a majority on the AvtoVAZ board last year.
For the second year running, Mobile TeleSystems, Russia's No. 1 mobile phone firm, was found to be the most transparent company in the country.
Gazprom came in 14th place after improving its rating by 6 percentage points since 2005.
"But life is hard for a company going public," said Dmitry Zhdanovich, head of investor relations at Gazprom at a conference Wednesday.
He blamed the relative opaqueness of his company on two factors beyond its control — the rules imposed by the Federal Service for Financial Markets and the influence of brokers who slant information before passing it on to investors.
"Brokers organize their work not around objectivity but subjectivity, in order to sell," Zhdanovich said.
As for the Federal Service for Financial Markets, the study did not control for its directives, and some experts said that it is indeed detrimental to transparency.
"There is one main hindrance to the market in Russia, to its attractiveness to foreign investors, and it is called the FSFM," said Irina Vakharaneva, director of the Russian branch of the Bank of New York.
Whereas three years ago, rapid development made Russian stocks "very fashionable" among foreign investors, Vakharaneva said that investors were now considering these stocks more cautiously. Moreover, with Chinese and Indian companies going public at an increasing clip, investors have more options to lure them away from Russian firms, Vakharaneva added.
On the upside, the survey found companies more willing to name their private owners — usually a touchy secret in Russia, where businessmen often hide behind offshore holding companies. This year, disclosure rose by 6 percent, but at least 21 percent of private ownership "remains obscured," the study concluded.
The strongest improvements were seen among companies at the bottom of last year's survey, such as Pyatyorochka, the country's No. 1 supermarket chain, which improved by more than 50 percentage points, and steel giant Evraz Group, which rose by 30 percent.
The study found that although Russian firms have adopted 44 percent of the transparency measures common in Western companies, on average they are reluctant to go further.
The average company score improved by less than 1 percentage point on the agency's scale, which is based on 103 indicators, including the openness of yearly progress reports, information available to investors, and the companies' web sites.

TITLE: Severstal Values Itself At 'High' $12.7 Billion
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON —Severstal unveiled Wednesday what analysts said was a high price for its public offering, valuing the company at $12.7 billion and earning it about $1.1 billion.With official trading due to begin Nov. 14 on the London Stock Exchange, the company's share price was down more than 9 percent, at $11.80 on the RTS — reflecting what analysts said were concerns the company had set too high a price given its shaky corporate governance record.
In a statement filed with the London Stock Exchange, Severstal said it had priced its shares at $12.50 each — the higher end of its announced price range of $11 to $13.50. It also said it would be selling 9.1 percent of its shares, compared to the 15 percent that had been anticipated. Ten percent of Severstal's shares are already traded in Moscow.
Severstal CEO Alexei Mordashov — who now controls around 81 percent of the company — breezed over the concerns Wednesday, saying investors had been bought in after Severstal announced changes to strengthen the independence of its board. "The success of the offering supported by our new corporate governance arrangements demonstrates significant endorsement of Severstal among international investors and the Russian steel sector," Mordashov said.
Mordashov, still smarting after a failed bid to create the world's No. 1 company with Arcelor this year, repeated a pledge to use the money raised to expand his company's global presence. "The offering has given us access to capital that we will use to enhance our opportunities for growth and value creation aiming to be a leader in the consolidating global steel industry," he said.
Ahead of the listing, Mordashov said he would take steps to shore up the company's image by appointing an independent board chairman and moving into the position of chief executive.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Lenenergo SharenST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko asked the city government to reserve 3 billion rubles ($112.4 million) in the 2007 budget to buy 25 percent of local energy utility Lenenergo, Vedomosti said Wednesday.
The utility, which is majority owned by state-controlled Unified Energy System, plans to sell new shares next year, after its assets are appraised, the newspaper said. Aton analyst Dmitry Skryabin put the value of Lenenergo at $900 million, Vedomosti said.Rosneft in ChinanBEIJING (Bloomberg) — Rosneft, Russia's state oil company, plans to open at least 300 gas stations in China and may build a refinery there to supply them, Interfax said Thursday, citing Chief Executive Officer Sergei Bogdanchikov.
Rosneft and China National Petroleum Corp. are forming two joint ventures, one for exploration and production and another for refining and marketing, Bogdanchikov told reporters in Bejing, where he is visiting as part of a business delegation led by Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov, Interfax said. The refinery would have a capacity to process 10 million tons of crude oil a year, the news service cited Bogdanchikov as saying.BP, Gazprom AccordnMOSCOW (Bloomberg) — BP's Russian venture will sign an accord with Gazprom's refining subsidiary on the processing of so-called associated gas, which is extracted along with crude oil.
The accord with Gazprom's Sibur Holding will be signed Nov. 15, said Alexander Shadrin, a spokesman for TNK-BP Holding, in a phone interview Thursday.

TITLE: Georgia Rejects Gas Offer
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: TBILISI —Georgia rejected a compromise deal with Gazprom on Wednesday, leaving it with the prospect of either paying twice the price for gas or having supplies cut off.Gazprom on Tuesday reiterated an offer to soften the increase if Tbilisi handed over control of its domestic gas distribution network.
Georgian Prime Minister Zurab Nogaideli rejected that offer. "I want to repeat once again: We are not going to bow to blackmail," he said at a Cabinet meeting.
The Georgian minister for energy, Nika Gilauri, when asked by reporters if Georgia might cede energy infrastructure to Gazprom, replied: "Never."
Moscow is locked in a bitter dispute with Tbilisi and has severed transport links.
A cutoff of gas supplies — which Georgia depends on — would dramatically ratchet up the standoff.
Gazprom says it wants Georgia to pay $230 per 1,000 cubic meters of gas in 2007 instead of the $110 it pays now. It says if no new contract is signed, supplies will be cut.
Tbilisi says Moscow is using gas as a political tool to punish it for its pro-Western policies.
Gazprom says the increase is purely commercial.
A senior U.S. official said purely commercial deals rarely included haggling over national assets.
"I've observed negotiation of other gas sales and purchase agreements ... but I don't recall one country demanding another country's energy assets to avoid either a gas cutoff or paying a dictated price," U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Bryza said by telephone from Washington late Tuesday. "Such demands do not seem to reflect a commercial partnership."
Bryza said Georgia had no reason to give up assets.
"Georgia is a sovereign state with a sovereign government. In the past, Georgia has in fact resisted selling assets that could put it in a weaker negotiating position for future years," he said.
Still, Bryza expressed optimism that an agreement would be reached and said Georgia would be able to afford whatever price was reached.
U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney accused Russia this year of energy blackmail after Gazprom cut off supplies to Ukraine, also in a dispute over higher prices.
Alarmed at the prospect of a gas cutoff, a leading Georgian opposition figure urged Nogaideli, the prime minister, to seek some kind of a compromise.
"The prime minister should explain if his statement means Georgia will be left without gas this winter because for now, there is no real alternative to Russian gas," lawmaker David Berdzenishvili said, Interfax reported.
A senior Kremlin human rights official on Wednesday lambasted an anti-Georgian campaign unleashed by Russian authorities over the past month.
Ella Pamfilova, head of the president's Council on the Institutions of Civil Society and Human Rights, said in a statement that most legal actions that had been taken against ethnic Georgians and their companies violated the law.
(Reuters, SPT)

TITLE: Not a Europe in Retreat
AUTHOR: By Janusz Bugajski
TEXT: An uncritical acceptance of alarming recent accounts from Central Europe would lead one to conclude that the region is discarding democracy and descending toward destructive nationalism. Such perceptions are not only distorted, but they may damage the European project on three counts: by promoting international divisions, countering European Union enlargement and bolstering an expansionist Russia.Four new EU members are facing political turmoil, even though their economies continue to grow. The Polish and Slovak governments have included a handful of ultraconservatives and populists in their cabinets, the two major Hungarian parties remain at loggerheads and have polarized society and the Czech Republic lacks effective government as no party has a parliamentary majority.
Despite these setbacks, none of these countries is threatened by radical or isolationist governments any more than Western Europe is. The rising popularity of anti-immigration parties in France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany, homegrown terrorists in the Netherlands and Britain and escalating Muslim-Christian disputes across the EU may be harbingers of much more serious challenges to the fabric of democracy than the diversity of public opinion in Central Europe.
Indeed, why should Europe's new democracies be held to higher standards than their Western European counterparts? After 16 years of diligent transformation, all of the Central European states have constructed durable democratic institutions, respect civil and minority rights and follow the rule of law. Civic organizations are thriving, as are new entrepreneurs in growing market economies.
The relative success of populist and protectionist parties during the last election cycle should not obscure the fact that the major winners continue to be committed democrats who operate according to established rules and will not abandon post-communist gains. Populism is partly a backlash against years of consensus on key national targets, particularly NATO and EU membership, although it is not a wholesale rejection of internationalism. Some sectors of society fear a complete loss of national control, while others have yet to benefit fully from the market economy. But this does not signal that the majority will turn away from democratic capitalism. On the contrary, it demonstrates that these societies continue to generate high expectations as the debate on national priorities evolves.
Of course, there are always risks that some political leaders will play on simplistic, xenophobic sentiments as they do in Western Europe. Democracy is a messy system that allows extremists to compete in the political marketplace. The rules of competition, a free press and a pluralistic polity will ensure, however, that democratic standards prevail just as they have in the older democracies.
Simplified judgments about alleged political regression in Central Europe will contribute to dividing the continent. This will prevent the emergence of common positions on everything from homeland defense to foreign and security policies. Disputes among governments have always been a feature of the loose EU confederation, but each capital has accepted that others operate according to common democratic norms. If this principle is undermined because of mutual misperceptions, Europe as a whole will suffer.
Allegations of democratic backsliding in Central Europe also fortify the position of those EU officials who warn about "enlargement fatigue" and "absorption capacity." After the entry of Bulgaria and Romania early next year, we have been told, there will be little appetite for bringing in other European states because of their purported radicalism and disruptiveness. Paradoxically, a closed-door policy is much more likely to encourage extremism and protectionism in the Western Balkans and the former Soviet republics than the prospect of EU accession, in which common democratic standards must be met by all candidates.
A fractured and limited Europe will also embolden the authoritarian regime in Russia to pressure and blackmail its neighbors and former satellites. Moscow is intent on promoting a weak and divided Europe that will further loosen the trans-Atlantic link, undercut U.S. influence and enable Russia to re-establish its sphere of dominance. The perception of the EU newcomers as wayward radicals will help the Kremlin's cause, as Russia will pose as a stabilizing factor in an unpredictable region.
Instead of misreading developments in the new democracies and undermining the European project, the older members must engage more closely with their neighbors in Central Europe. They all confront serious challenges stemming from economic disparities, intercommunal tensions, extremist ideologies and external pressures from unstable nearby regions. This is no time to ostracize and isolate the EU newcomers, but rather an opportunity to help determine how to respond to common domestic and international threats.

Janusz Bugajski is the director of the New European Democracies Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington and co-author, with Ilona Teleki, of "Atlantic Bridges: America's New European Allies," due out this month. This comment was published in The Wall Street Journal.

TITLE: These Signals Are Less Than Transparent
TEXT: Confidence in the business climate took another hit this week when prosecutors called for TNK-BP's Rospan unit to be stripped of its license for a gas field in west Siberia. The damage has been done whether or not the request ends up proving justified.This is the case because of three basic factors constantly at play in Russia's energy sector: significant state ownership, a general lack of transparency and serious concerns over the fair and consistent application of the law.
The state-ownership issue arises in the form of Gazprom, with which Rospan has been involved in a tug-of-war over pipeline access for gas produced at the field. Gazprom has been pressing TNK-BP's owners for a share in another, bigger field — east Siberia's Kovykta — and for a stake in TNK-BP itself. Interestingly, prosecutors are currently acting on a request filed by a State Duma deputy from the pro-Kremlin United Russia faction.
Perhaps a better idea of the inner workings of Gazprom would ease concerns about what is going on, but the gas giant ranks near the bottom of company transparency indexes in a country where business dealings are famously opaque.
Top all of this off with the possibility of a conflict of interest on the part of prosecutors who, just like management at Gazprom, work for the state, and you have fertile ground for conspiracy theories.
Revoking the license could strip $3 billion from the value of TNK-BP. With increasing talk that the Russian shareholders in TNK-BP are looking to sell, Gazprom is in perfect position to get a bargain.
This suggestion would strain credibility if not for the history of Yuganskneftegaz, which was purchased by state-owned oil major Rosneft for $9.3 billion. The price was based on valuations of the company that took into account its share of back taxes owed by its parent company, Yukos. Subsequent rulings by the Federal Tax Service have cut the bill for Yuganskneftegaz to a quarter of what it was when Rosneft bought it. That money goes straight to the company's bottom line.
All of this suspicion over the prosecutors' motives is, of course, based on conjecture. The prosecutors might be doing their jobs in ensuring that TNK-BP has filed the documents necessary to retain the license. (A TNK-BP representative said that all of the paperwork was filed months ago, but the company has heard nothing back.)
With the conflicts of interest for the main figures in the story and the lack of transparency in the system as a whole, however, it's hard to fault investors for having some serious doubts.

TITLE: Big Shootout Generates Little Fallout
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: The prosecutor's office for the Southern Federal District has released a statement about an ongoing investigation into a shootout between Chechen and Ingush OMON special forces officers at the Volga-20 police checkpoint on Sept. 13."At present, the identities of those who committed these crimes are being established, and their actions will receive the appropriate legal response," the statement reads. "The actions of senior Ingush Interior Ministry officials at the scene who were unable to avert this conflict will also be evaluated."
While they are busy sorting out who is who and evaluating, I will briefly recap what happened.
A foreign-made car belonging to someone close to Chechen Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov — there are rumors it was his sister's — was stolen in Grozny. Stealing foreign-made cars is a popular pastime in Ingushetia. The most active residents in this line of business are the Batalkhadzhintsy, or Batalki, who are Ingush followers of 19th-century religious leader Sheikh Batal-Hadji. Think of it as a religious denomination specializing in stealing foreign cars. Previously, cars were stolen mainly in Moscow, but this one was stolen in Chechnya after liberalization of the regime led to the removal of many police posts there. Kadyrov's boys figured out who stole the car, and the Chechen OMON piled into three buses and traveled to the village of Yandare, looking for renowned car thief Gerikhan Temurziyev. Despite the Chechen OMON's poor reputation, no one stopped them on the way — apparently it was assumed they were going after terrorists or something similar. On the way back Ingush OMON at a police post opened fire on the buses. One officer was killed, while the rest dove under the buses and radioed back to their superiors.
Although those shooting at the OMON officers — as police officers stood by like spectators — were in plain clothes and masks, Chechen OMON commander Artur Akhmadov swore to me that Temurziyev identified the first man to open fire: It was his uncle, the acting head of the plainclothes branch in the town of Narzan.
First to arrive at the scene in his armored Volga was Buvadi Dakhiyev, the legendary deputy commander of the Chechen OMON. A film shot by one of the Ingush clearly shows Dakhiyev getting out of his Volga unarmed and running to separate the fighting sides. The next second, Dakhiyev is machine-gunned down at point-blank range. After this, the real shootout started. Dakhiyev died in the hospital at Vladikavkaz — when given an anesthetic, the joke goes. His last words by telephone to Artur Akhmadov were: "I didn't even get any weapons out."
There were six more corpses in addition to Dakhiyev's — one Ingush, and five Chechens.
Finding those involved in the shooting shouldn't be difficult, given that it was caught on film, that Temurziyev is still alive — the Chechens still took the car thief with them — and that the Ingush police would hardly have let armed and masked OMON officers into their police checkpoint if they had not known them well. A few days after the incident, I spoke with a Southern Federal District official. "Will at least someone be punished?" I asked. "Of course," he replied. "The scapegoats."
The statement from the Prosecutor General's Office in the Southern Federal District reads: "A large number of operational and investigative measures has been carried out in the criminal case. More than 100 people have been questioned and 22 medical and 14 ballistic assessments have been commissioned from court experts. The conclusions of autopsies on those killed and examinations of the nine injured men have been filed."
They might as well take their time. A dozen Batalki have already disappeared in Ingushetia since the incident. The inquest by Kadyrov's men is over, and the sentence handed down and is now being executed. The prosecutor's office can relax.

Yulia Latynina is the host of a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.

TITLE: Digital radical
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Retaining a radical stance forged during the golden age of Russian Rock, Vasily Shumov uses new technology to expose old hypocracies about religion and politics.Russian rock might have lost momentum after its heyday in the 1980s, but one of the most interesting and radical voices of that generation can still be heard via the internet from 10,000 kilometers away — that of Los Angeles-based electronic musician and multimedia artist Vasily Shumov, whose band, Center, was one of the best-known and most original bands in Moscow during the '80s rock explosion.While some of his former peers in Russian rock now flirt with the Kremlin or the Russian Orthodox Church, Shumov, who mostly distributes his music through the web site www.centromania.com, takes an uncompromising approach to present-day issues, for instance, in a recent single called "Religion — It's a Time Bomb."
"Religion — it's a time bomb," goes the minimalist track, sung in Russian, German and English. "It's ticking. Tick tock / Peaceful, harmless. / For now. / Just wait. / It's ticking. Tick tock..."
Shumov, who returns to St. Petersburg after a 17-year hiatus to perform a one-off concert at the local nightclub Decadance on Nov. 19, described the track, which will be featured in his show, as an invitation to discussion.
"It reflects the state of society today, when certain achievements of civilization such as civil freedoms [or] religious liberty are in retreat," Shumov said in a recent interview with The St. Petersburg Times, speaking by telephone from his home in Los Angeles.
"What's religion and where's its place? If things go on like this, it's not difficult to foresee that people will soon be saying, without hesitation, that the Earth is flat."
Center's most recent album, "Region 5," was inspired by DVD region codes, which identify the United States as Region 1, while Region 5 refers to the former Soviet Union as well as most African countries, the Indian subcontinent, Mongolia and North Korea. Shumov said he found the DVD region map — which is based on the wealth and technological development of different parts of the world — thought-provoking.
Heavy on electronic noises and vocoders, "Region 5" tackles themes like globalization ("Where Electronics Come From"), immigration ("You Are Welcome") and war ("Wars In Every Direction").
"There have always been social themes in my work, starting from the early albums," Shumov said. "We had an album called 'One-Room Apartment' [in 1983], so there's nothing new about us reflecting certain social situations. And if it's a bit dark, I don't know of any social phenomena that are not dark."
Besides music, Saturday's concert will consist of a show featuring experimental video and film footage. Called "Electronic Video Show," it is radically different from Center's early, "new wave" songs. It is based on five electronic albums that Shumov recorded between 2000 and 2005, with contributions from his so-called "Centroborators," Shumov's collaborators from around the world who upload their work to his FTP server.
"Essentially, it is electronic music plus a live guitar, accompanied by video projections, which is all a unified whole," Shumov said.
"There will be two men on stage, but the main thing in the show is video projections."
Shumov will be backed by Los Angeles-based guitarist Fast Freddy (born Alfred Rapillo), his long-time sideman, known for his work with Rick James and Spiro Gyro.
"This set includes everything I've done during the past five years — video art, electronic music and all kinds of experiments in different fields," Shumov said.
Based in Los Angeles since 1990, Shumov took a course in multimedia art at the California Institute of the Arts in the late 1990s. He said that his interest in technology was one of the reasons behind his move to the United States.
"In the late 1980s, during perestroika, I wasn't interested in the prospect of working in private business, which all the people I knew were overtaken with," Shumov said.
"On the other hand, I was very interested in all these computer technologies and their uses in music. There was very little of this in Moscow at that time, and I found out that almost everything is done in California. When I got here, I realized that all these technologies go beyond the limits of just music, which was interesting for me, and I had some ideas of my own. And it turned out that there was the California Institute of the Arts in L.A., which had a new course about exactly what I was interested in. So I applied, submitted some of my past works and was accepted."
Shumov marked his return to live performances with a concert at Sixteen Tons in Moscow in June. His current "Electronic Video Show" exists in three versions, tentatively called "dot ru," "dot com" and "dot org"; they are oriented, respectively, toward the Russian, international and art-events public.
"Center's set in St. Petersburg will be about the same [as in Moscow, but] with small changes, because we are trying to make every next concert different from the previous one," wrote Shumov in an email this week. He added that hopes to release "Electronic Video Show" on a CD by the date.
Though he lives far from Russia, Shumov said he is free of nostalgia for his native land.
"I am rather interested in the present and the future, while nostalgia has to do with the past. I absolutely don't feel linked to the past."Vasily Shumov and Center perform at Decadance, located at 17 Shcherbakov Per., M.: Vladimirskaya, Tel.: 332-21-09, on Nov. 19.
www.centromania.com,
www.c-e-n-t-e-r.com

TITLE: Heirs of Rubinstein
AUTHOR: By Yelena Andreyeva
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A classical music festival named in honor of the 19th century Russian pianist and educator puts some of the best young performers center stage.The Second International Anton Rubinstein Festival begins Sunday with the aim of presenting young musicians and their well-known teachers at venues in St. Petersburg, Peterhof and Pushkin.The festival, which runs through Nov. 19, is dedicated to the anniversary of Rubinstein's birth in November 1829. The distinguished Russian pianist, composer and conductor (not to be confused with Polish 20th Century pianist Arthur Rubinstein) presents compositions for piano soloists and duetists as well as the performances by violinists, flautists, harpists, and vocalists.
"All human achievements are reached through education and it was Rubinstein who founded the first conservatoire in Russia, ran the first international contest among pianists and composers and greatly helped the development of musical education throughout the world," Vadim Palmov, art director of the festival, said.
The opening concert will be performed by Oleg Malov, a professor at the St. Petersburg Conservatory and an "honored artist of Russia," and his students.
On Monday, a concert for piano duo will be presented by the musicians from Germany, Tatiana and Leonid Shik, composer Vadim Bibergan, who has written numerous compositions of chamber and symphonic music and over 70 film soundtracks, and Palmov, who is also a pianist.
However, the main participants of the festival are the young winners of music contests, performing Nov. 17 and 18.
"The festival focuses on the young talented musicians. We want to show them at the beginning of their career when they are absorbing knowledge from their teachers," said Palmov.
Besides commemorating Rubinstein's memory, on Nov. 16, the festival pays tribute to Natan Perelman (1906-2002), a professor at the St. Petersburg Conservatory and a teacher of many well-known musicians.
The festival's opening and closing concerts will be held in the White Hall of the Peterhof Grand Palace, while other performances will take place at the Sheremetev Palace, the Theater Museum, and the Twelve Colleges Building of the St. Petersburg State University.

TITLE: Chernov's choice
TEXT: To ban a satire is the silliest move possible. It proves that there is some truth to the satire, and that is exactly what Russia has shown with "Borat!: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan," Sacha Baron Cohen's side-splitting satire about outrageous Kazakstani reporter Borat Sagdiyev roaming the U.S. courtesy of Kazakhstan's Ministry of Information.The move says a lot about the intellectual prowess of those in power, but maybe they are on to something. Might they have realized what nobody else has — that Borat Sagdiyev is... Russian?
Promoters were tight-lipped about the reasons why Babyshambles canceled what was scheduled to be the band's one-off Russian concert at B2 in Moscow on Nov. 26.
"I prefer not to comment on this. I could say that [concerts in] Warsaw and Riga were canceled as well," wrote the publicist for the Moscow-based agency Caviar Lounge in an email last week.
However, B2, the venue that hoped that Babyshambles would crown its anniversary celebrations, said that the concert was canceled "due to the fault of the band's frontman Pete Doherty" in its email posting to the media.
"Why was it canceled? Because of alcoholism and drug addiction," said the club's representative by phone this week.
"As far as I understand, [Doherty's] management wanted him to go but it didn't work."
Doherty who is infamous for last-minute cancelations pulled out of some of Babyshambles' British concerts last month, but this week rescheduled the canceled shows for December. As this paper went to press, the band's official website did not contain any more news other than an item about the cancelation of its Oct. 30 concert in Cologne, Germany.
However, this week saw Doherty not missing a court hearing in London where he was fined $1,400 for assaulting a BBC reporter in March.
Though Babyshambles has canceled, another British band, Razorlight, will perform a one-off Russian concert in Moscow. Due to take place on Nov. 24, it will be part of Nokia Trends, the Finnish company's music event featuring several bands and DJs that is advertised as being held at new and unusual locations. In Moscow, the location will be a railroad depot, according to the promoter.
Rumors about a fire in Tsinik on Thursday proved untrue, the popular student hangout's owner Vladimir Postnichenko said later that day.
What a passer-by who reported this incident took for smoke was in reality steam from a broken hot-water pipe. The bar, which is hosting an exhibition organized by local painter Kirill Miller this week, was flooded. Postnichenko said that Tsinik's rooms were affected and it was temporarilly closed. Although the place may reopen on Friday, call 312 8779 before going there.— By Sergey Chernov

TITLE: Future recollections
AUTHOR: By Angelina Davydova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Vladimir Nabokov's "A Guide to Berlin" written in 1925 tells the story of a character wandering around the European city, watching new pipes being installed, mailmen delivering letters, and bakers taking out trays of fresh bread and pastries.His version of Berlin differs from other works of that time on this theme and depicts turmoil and decadence at the center of Europe. Nabokov did not write about the busiest square in the world at that time (Alexanderplatz), unlike Alfred Doblin (the author of the 1929 "Berlin Alexandeplatz"), nor did he write about downtown bohemian life as Christopher Isherwood did in "Goodbye to Berlin" in 1939 (a memoir on which the musical "Cabaret" is based).Nabokov, on the other hand, is fascinated by trivial, everyday features of normal German life. He takes a tram from the Zoologischer Garten (which he describes as "Eden") to the quarter where bakers, butchers and manual workers live and locates his protagonist in a small bar with a pool table where the character speculates on the future of Berlin.
Some of his predictions are wrong ("the streetcar will vanish in twenty years or so, just as the horse-drawn tram has vanished"), but the vision of a new European capital shaking off the past amid construction dust and scaffolding is eternally true for Berlin.
The trams are still there, so are the bakers and the smell of fresh pastries, and so is the Zoologischer Garten with its tame hares.
That's what a visitor will find in today's Berlin — a relaxing and pleasant city with great gardens and parks (the center of the city is actually a park, the Tiergarten, which once a year plays host to the Love Parade). A young dynamic hub, the center of Europe's alternative scene, Berlin throngs with numerous clubs, bars and cafes — every night there's something happening.
Berlin retains an updated version of its notorious squats — the so-called WG, "Wohngemeinschaft," especially popular in the Kreuzberg and Friedrichshein areas, where several young people live in what is known in Russia as kommunalki (communal apartments) sharing a kitchen and bathroom facilities.
Berlin is not rich (the city went bankrupt a few years ago) and unemployment rates are high. While sufficient social payments allow many people live well enough, big West German companies have not yet made it to the capital of united Germany. Many newly-built business centers are half-empty.
Among them are a few former harbor warehouses and industrial buildings on the corner of Kreuzberg, including a former egg-storage facility and a former paint factory, that are still looking for new tenants.
These buildings, dating from the 1970s and showing either their Soviet or West Berlin architechtural heritage, have been enriched with an infinite freedom of contemporary design. During the post-war restoration of Berlin (92 percent of which was almost completely demolished during the war) East Berlin tried to restore as much as it could, while in the West new quarters were built.
The East/West division is no longer always easy to trace. Unter den Linden, Alexanderplatz and areas northeast of it offer clear examples of the triumph of Soviet architecture. Alexanderplatz with its clock and a 386-meter-high TV Tower is certainly a must-see place. The view from the TV Tower is one of the best of the city and also there the chance to dine out in a '70s-style rotating restaurant.
To the east from Alexanderplatz one can find Prenzlauberg, probably the most exciting and trendy neighborhood of today's Berlin. Starting with numerous old inter-connected yards with murals and ivies climbing the walls of the Hackerscher Market, further north Prenzlauberg opens out into a vast district, full of houses, terraces and balconies, endless cafes, galleries, squats (one of which says "you're leaving the capitalist sector" — the idea of class struggle is still alive, especially if you happen to come across or even wake up to the sound of youths demonstrating against social reform), and cultural centers located even in amusing places, such as a former brewery.
In the northern part of Prenzlauberg, where it borders Wedding, a former working class area of West Berlin, the two districts were once divided by the Berlin Wall. The route of the wall can be traced all over the city. A few memorable places to visit are Checkpoint Charlie (including the famous "You're leaving the American sector" sign), along with the indoor private museum dedicated to all those who attempted to flee from East Berlin, successfully or not, and an open-air exhibition about the Berlin Wall. Another Wall-related center is located at 111 Bernauer Strasse (north of Prenzlauberg) comprising a Documentation Center, a Berlin Wall memorial and a Chapel of Reconciliation.
The Documentation Center provides an extensive collection of photographic, audio, video and documentary material dedicated to the construction of the Wall and its first days, including an interesting comparative study of West and East German media coverage of the event.
Another important Wallrelated site is the East-side Gallery (not far from the Oberbaumbrucke bridge, one of the meeting points for the East and West sectors of Berlin), where remaining pieces of the wall have been painted by artists and left as a silent remembrance of the 28 years it divided the city. Parts of the Wall can be seen almost everywhere in contemporary Berlin, from the German Historical Museum (which has recently presented a very ambitious and entertaining exhibition of the history of Germany, with many interactive features) to a department store on Friedrichstrasse which boasts having an authentic piece of the Wall at its entrance.
There are probably only a few cities in the world where so many monuments and memorial sites are actually former prisons or other sights dedicated to the darkest years of German history.
From the SS and Gestapo Headquarters to Sachsenhausen concentration camp (located just outside the city limits) to the Holocaust memorial, just off the Brandenburg Gate, those interested in an open and honest coverage of the time will find their interest completely fulfilled. A Stasi prison and an information center about the work of the secret service during the years of the misnamed German Democratic Republic (East Germany) will also prove a very rewarding experience for those interested in recent German history.
But Berlin has more to offer.
Along with various historical monuments, the city boasts world-class art museums, including the Egyptian Museum, the Pergamon Museum, and others to be found in and around Museum Island. Contemporary art can be found either at Kunst-Werke Berlin, comprising five stories of art in a former margarine-making factory, at the Hamburger Bahnhof, a renovated railway station, presenting a collection of works by Warhol, Beuys and Lichtenstein, and at the Deutsch Guggenheim museum on Unter den Linden.
A recent memorable addition to the Berlin cultural scene is the Jewish Museum, designed by U.S. architect Daniel Liebeskind in the form of a shattered Star of David. Another recent architectural masterpiece is certainly a newly-built Potsdamerplatz — one of the busiest squares of pre-war Berlin which was completely destroyed during the war and left unreconstructed until the reunification of Germany in 1990 (the Wall actually bisected the square until its destruction in 1989). Most Berliners have a love-hate relationship with the now-fully revived Potsdamerplatz — you can hardly find anyone who approves of its new look completely.
New skyscrapers, among them the Sony Center which comprises several cinemas and the German Film Museum, and new cafes and restaurants stand out from the rest of Berlin's landscape. As well as the Sony Center, the design of which resembles a flower's petals, another remarkable building on the square is a '20s-style red-brick tower on the other side of the Potsdamerplatz that recalls New York in its skyscraping heyday.
Next to the square one can see a few remaining plots of wasteland — with wild grass, even in the downtown area. Some were the location of houses demolished during the war and never built again. The plots seem out of place amid the architectural landmarks. But, after a while, they assume the status of special corridors, full of air, that let the city breathe.
The heart of European decadence in the '20s and '30s, the centrifugal hub of World War II, the border between the East and the West during the Cold War, the home of the "Iron Curtain" itself, a living monument to the greatest events of the 20th century, a Mecca for alternative people from all over Europe — Berlin is all of these.
"Berlin is a city that never is, but it is always in the process of becoming," historian Karl Scheffler said in 1910. It is still true today.

TITLE: The hunger artist
AUTHOR: By Jon Fasman
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Nikolai Maslov was born in 1954, too late for the Great Patriotic War, as the Soviet Union termed its role in World War II, but early enough to put him squarely into middle age by perestroika and its aftermath. He was born to a telephone lineman and a homemaker in a village in western Siberia: an impeccable class background, for what little that was worth. He served in the army, worked in construction, attended an art college in Novosibirsk, moved to Moscow, had a series of menial jobs, drank himself into an insane asylum and emerged a night watchman in post-Soviet Moscow. Millions of Soviet citizens shared the basic tropes of his life: poverty, brutality, violence, physical labor, booze, confusion, cynicism. Rather than succumbing to them, however, Maslov rose above them. First published in French and now translated into English by Blake Ferris, "Siberia" tells his memorable and haunting tale, similar in its particulars to so many tragic late-20th-century Russian lives, yet, in the way that Maslov rises above his obstacles with a quiet dignity, entirely unique.Like the best memoirists, Maslov edits his own life effectively. In narrative and picture, this graphic novel contains almost nothing extraneous, no filler or padded material. Maslov presents his life with the spare, flickering intensity of a dream, and fittingly, he begins in his imagination: For the first two pages we see a teenage Nikolai in his log cabin in western Siberia, listening to a radio broadcast about France. The broadcast's questions — "And what are they wearing on the Champs-Elysees today? What colors do Parisians like this season?" — are so distant from Nikolai's life that they might as well concern another planet. Images of the Pont Neuf and booksellers on the Seine give way to the shabby expanse of rural Siberia.
Immediately thereafter — before any biographical information other than his birthplace and family members — Maslov announces his beginning as an artist. "Holding a pencil," he says, "I could see things I hadn't seen before. ... It was like Siberia had opened up a bit of its heart to me." The five drawings that accompany these words are stunning: monochromatic but rich, alive with light and contour. His admiration for Impressionist painters comes as no surprise: His drawings also blend line-swept vibrancy and an almost Japanese sense of motion. Throughout he succeeds more with landscapes than cityscapes, and more with either than with his people, who tend to be either angelic or grotesque, but never entirely human. Still, just as these forest-and-stream idylls show Western readers that Siberia is something more than an unvaried landscape of ice and snow, Maslov's grotesques speak of lives ravaged by alcohol (which first shows up on page 6; the last glasses are downed five pages from the end), frustration and suppressed rage. The instructor who lectures on the socialist artist's duty and says that "everything about man should be beautiful" is a gap-toothed ogre. The drinkers all have leers; the superior officers have perversely distended mouths; the older men Maslov respects — his father, a no-nonsense construction foreman — have square heads and straight mouths, deifications of unbowed stoicism.
Similarly telling are the few appearances of Socialist Realist art: Nikolai drinks himself silly after a day's construction work in front of a mural proclaiming "The Party is Our Strength." He paints a propaganda poster extolling Soviet progress and goodness and then reveals how he staved off starvation with pilfered bread. This is in keeping with the rest of his education, which is riddled with bombast and hypocrisy. His elementary-school teacher rhapsodizes, "Thanks to the guidance of the Communist Party, we live in the world's richest country"; the political instructor on a Mongolian army base lionizes his "nation of ardent patriots, savants and proletarians, talented inventors" — a litany the officers repeat that night while toasting with homemade spirits; entry to the painters' union belongs to well-connected students rather than talented artists. Maslov presents these blowhards mercilessly, but without cynicism or rancor: He seems more an observer than a true believer, and in his Dante-esque journey he remains an even-tempered, welcoming guide.
Similar hypocrisy pervades his military service in Mongolia. Here, too, the haunting parts are the lesser told: a beautiful picture of a train heading east through Siberia, a wonderfully translated drinking song ("I could have ended up snuffing it / At the station they were all roughing it up / But then I got my seat / On the Big Tractor Express") and a single image, rendered in shadow, of a Mongolian horseman on a mountaintop. Service itself alternates brutality with tedium: Officers pummel enlisted men, who spend their days digging trenches for a nonexistent conflict, guarding stockpiles (mostly from their half-starved comrades) and marching in pointless drills. Maslov is assigned to draw a propaganda display showing Soviet bounty and progress; as he draws a fat sausage he notes dryly, "The only place you ever saw sausages was on posters." He goes AWOL to explore his surroundings, and finds that Soviet troops have scrawled curses all over an ornate Mongolian bridge. Maslov uses his eye for landscape to tremendous effect during these pages: His vistas of valley and stream seem to shimmer and shift as you stare at them.
If the army disillusioned him a bit, we see stirrings of deeper questioning just after his dismissal. During a break from construction work in Siberia, he remembers an incident from his youth, when he and some friends went swimming in a river and came upon some human bones on the riverside. An older peasant recalls mass shootings in the area during the 1920s, and says that "the earth has been spitting [bones] up for years. She doesn't want them, poor thing." Maslov then wonders, "How many Russians rotted here, vanishing without a trace? And for what?" This recollection, like a select few others in the book, has more than a whiff of convenient fiction, for what little that matters. It also shows Maslov's stoic bewilderment to great effect: The simple questions "How many" and "For what" cut to the bone more effectively than any amount of pontification or wallowing. The amount of prosaic tragedy in Maslov's life will probably stun most Western readers, yet as the author himself has said, "This graphic novel is nasty, very nasty, but it is the reflection of my life. ... My story is neither the most violent, nor the most tragic."
What makes this book worthwhile is less the violence and tragedy than the way Maslov passes through them, with understated defiance and hard-earned wisdom. The book ends with a series of dreams he had during his breakdown, and all of them — traditional Russian bread ovens rolling across Red Square in place of tanks, the onion domes of St. Basil's Cathedral floating off as the building morphs into pine trees — speak of a longing for home and quiet. "In a country where people agree to be flies," he says, having emerged from his hospital and found work as a building superintendent, "isn't it true that life is a spider web, always trembling with the slightest wind? I couldn't, and I wouldn't, accept that." "Siberia" is a refusal to accept life first as a cog in the Soviet machine and then as a forgotten citizen of the cash-obsessed kleptocracy that Russia has become. In its narrative's honesty and the deceptively simple vibrancy of its draftsmanship, it testifies to the worth of any single examined life.Jon Fasman is the author of the novel "The Geographer's Library," a former online editor for The Economist, and writes about books, food and travel.

TITLE: Parker and Duncan Lead Spurs' Surge
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: SAN ANTONIO, United States — Tony Parker scored 29 points and Tim Duncan added 26 as the San Antonio Spurs used a late surge to seal an 111-106 overtime win over the slumping Phoneix Suns.The Suns suffered their third straight National Basketball Association defeat, as forward Amara Stoudemire's first start of the season was spoiled.
Stoudemire had 16 points in 15 minutes, showing signs of explosiveness with a monstrous one-handed dunk on Duncan in the second quarter.
It was an encouraging sign for the 23-year-old who had microfracture surgery on his knee over a year ago and is still recovering.
But it wasn't enough to change the Suns' fortunes against determined San Antonio.
Fabricio Oberto made all 11 of his shots en route to career highs of 22 points and 10 rebounds for the Spurs, who had six scorers in double figures. Oberto set a franchise record for shooting percentage in a game.
The Spurs opened overtime with a 10-2 surge for a 111-103 advantage capped by Parker's floater in the lane with 1:14 remaining.
San Antonio erased a nine-point deficit in the fourth quarter. Duncan scored on a hook off the glass and Parker converted a three-point play for a 98-97 edge with 39 seconds remaining.
Raja Bell's 3-pointer from the left corner cut the deficit to 101-100 with 7.5 seconds left. After Duncan missed a pair of free throws, Bell was fouled on the ensuing possession and split a pair from the line to send the game to overtime.
Boston also triumphed in overtime as a buzzer-beater from Delonte West kept the Celtics from falling to depths the club hasn't seen in more than three decades.
West hit a wide-open jumper from the left wing as time expired in overtime to give the Celtics a 110-108 victory over Charlotte.
Paul Pierce and Wally Szczerbiak scored 35 points apiece for Boston, which had lost its first three games but avoided its first 0-4 start since the 1969-70 season, the end of their decade of NBA dominance.
Orlando and Toronto also pulled off close-run victories on Wednesday.
In Orlando, Hedo Turkoglu hit a fadeaway shot in the left corner with four-tenths of a second left as the Magic downed the struggling SuperSonics 88-87.
In Toronto, the Raptors' Chris Bosh tracked down a loose ball and buried a 3-pointer over Chris Webber with 6.1 seconds left to seal a 106-104 victory over the Philadelphia 76ers.

TITLE: Palestinians Bury 18 Killed in Gaza
AUTHOR: By Ibrahim Barzak
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BEIT HANOUN, Gaza Strip —Tens of thousands of grief-stricken, furious Gazans flocked to an artillery-scarred cluster of apartment buildings in the town of Beit Hanoun on Thursday to mourn 18 civilians killed when a barrage of Israeli shells tore through their homes.Cries of "God is greater than Israel and America!" rang out, punctuated by gunshots as the bodies were carried on stretchers from the 18 ambulances that brought them from hospital morgues to their homes ahead of funeral prayers.
One of the victims' relatives, firing into the air, screamed, "I will revenge, I will revenge!"
A cemetery under construction in Beit Hanoun was hastily opened to accommodate the victims, because no other cemetery in town had enough land to allow them to be buried together.
A Palestinian flag fluttered over each of the graves, freshly dug in a single row and marked by concrete blocks. Two unmanned Israeli aerial drones buzzed overhead.
The number of Palestinian civilian deaths in Wednesday's barrage was the highest of any incident in six years of fighting, and undermined Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's attempts to form a more moderate government and renew peace talks with Israel.
All of the victims were members of a single extended family, asleep in their beds when the artillery bombardment began.
The ambulances set out from two hospital morgues and met at the entrance to Beit Hanoun because no single one of the area hospitals — already taxed by casualties from a weeklong Israeli offensive in the town — was able to keep all the dead.
The town's streets are usually teeming with people on a Thursday morning but in the hours before the funeral, they were all but deserted.
A three-day mourning period declared by Palestinian leaders kept shops shuttered.
"All of us are feeling sad, and worried, too," said Khadra Abu Shabat, 55, tears streaming down her face. "We are going to bury this family and ask ourselves, 'Who's next? Me? My grandchildren? My neighbor?'"
Israeli troops were firing artillery in northern Gaza in response to Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel when several rounds hit a compound of apartment buildings owned by four brothers from the Al-Athamna family. The artillery rounds left gaping holes in the four structures, and sent panicked residents scurrying outside — some to their deaths, as additional salvos landed.
The Al-Athamna family is prominent in Beit Hanoun and includes several doctors and other professionals. Family members said they had fled during the recent Israeli offensive, returning home after a Tuesday pullout.
Khaled Mashaal, the supreme leader of the Palestinians' ruling Hamas group, canceled a cease-fire with Israel that has largely held since February 2005, raising the specter of renewed suicide bombings.
Israeli police stepped up their alert level, mobilizing forces across the country.
Hamas' military wing called for attacks against American targets — an appeal that Hamas political leaders in Gaza did not endorse. President Bush called for restraint on all sides.
An Israeli army commander blamed malfunctioning artillery aiming devices. Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz called for an inquiry and ordered results by Thursday evening.
Abbas condemned the "terrible, despicable crime." Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert expressed regret for harming civilians.

TITLE: World Welcomes U.S. Political Shift
AUTHOR: By Paul Haven
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MADRID, Spain — Politicians, analysts and ordinary citizens across much of the world welcomed the electoral rebuke given to President Bush's Republican Party and the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Wednesday.Against the broad mood of satisfaction, however, there were voices of concern that a power split between Democrats and Republicans in Washington might mean uncertainty in crucial areas like global trade talks.
On Iraq, some worried that Democrats could force a too-rapid retreat, leaving the country and the region in chaos. Others said they doubted the congressional turnover would have a dramatic impact on Iraq policy any time soon, largely because the Democrats have yet to define the course they want to take.
But from Paris to Pakistan, a repeated theme was hope that the Democratic takeover of the House and Senate would force Bush to adopt a more conciliatory approach to global crises, and teach a president many see as a "cowboy" a lesson in humility.
"Americans are realizing that you can't found the politics of a country on patriotic passion and reflexes," said French schoolteacher Jean-Pierre Charpemtrat.
"You can't fool everybody all the time — and I think that's what Bush and his administration are learning today."
Italian Premier Romano Prodi said Rumsfeld's surprise resignation underscored the depth of what has happened in America. "Even though U.S. politics had already started changing, Rumsfeld's resignation means an accentuation of this change," Prodi said. "We'll see over the next few days what the new direction will be. But certainly we have a political structure ... deeply different from that of a few days ago."
In an extraordinary joint statement, more than 200 Socialist members of the European Parliament hailed the American election results as "the beginning of the end of a six-year nightmare for the world."
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has consistently railed against the Bush administration, called the election "a reprisal vote."
In Nicaragua, president-elect Daniel Ortega told thousands of cheering supporters during his victory speech that the GOP lost because "Republicans always want to be at war, and that has been rejected."
Bush is deeply unpopular in many countries, with particularly intense opposition to the war in Iraq, the U.S. terror holding facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and allegations of Washington-sanctioned interrogation methods that some equate with torture.
Many said they thought the big gains by Democrats signaled the beginning of the end of Bush's tenure.
In Copenhagen, Denmark, Jens Langfeldt, 35, said he didn't know much about the midterm elections but was opposed to Bush, referring to the president as "that cowboy."
"The Americans have made it clear that current American policy should change in dealing with the world, from a confrontational approach, to a more consensus-based and bridge-building approach," said Jehan Perera, a political analyst. The Democratic win means "there will be more control and restraint" over U.S. foreign policy.
Passions were even higher in Pakistan, where Bush is deeply unpopular despite billions in aid and support for President Gen. Pervez Musharraf. One opposition lawmaker, Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, said he welcomed the election result, but was hoping for more. Bush "deserves to be removed, put on trial and given a Saddam-like death sentence," he said.

TITLE: China's Olympic PRBan
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BEIJING — China, eager to ensure national glory at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, has banned its athletes from taking part in advertising and public relations work, local media reported on Thursday."In order to prepare for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, our country's athletes, including celebrity athletes, are banned from participating in all kinds of social activities," the Beijing News quoted Sports Minister Liu Peng as saying.
"Athletes who participate in social activities are relatively easily distracted. If this is not regulated, it may interfere with their training and be detrimental to Beijing Olympic preparations," Liu said.
The report did not specify what he meant by "social activities" or which kinds would be deemed necessary but observers said they included commercial endorsements.
China holds its athletes to strict standards of conduct that have become especially severe in the run-up to the Olympic Games. Olympic diving gold medallist Tian Liang was kicked off the national team in 2005 for taking part in a rash of television ads and endorsements. "Since the Athens games, Chinese athletes have taken part in too many commercial activities," Wei Jizhong, former general secretary of the Chinese Olympic Committee, told the paper.
"Some athletes simply do not manage the relationship between their identity and their role as product endorsers."
In May, Olympic champion hurdler Liu Xiang came under fire for signing a deal with the Baisha corporation, a Chinese tobacco giant.

TITLE: Friend Federer Follows Tiger Trail
AUTHOR: By Nick Mulvenney
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: SHANGHAI — Tiger Woods found at least one spectator in the throng around him at the Champions tournament on Thursday who could relate to being a multi-millionaire dominating his sport — Roger Federer.Tennis world number one Federer, who is in Shanghai for next week's season-ending Masters Cup tournament, watched the last few holes of the Woods's round before the pair chatted for more than five minutes in the clubhouse.
"Roger's a great guy and has become a really good friend. It's really special that he took some time out from his preparations to come down and watch me," Woods told reporters.
Woods, who at 30 has already won 12 majors, said only the likes of Federer and basketball great Michael Jordan were able to share his experience of being the best player of their generation in a sport.
"It's not often that you can relate to someone about things that are going on but we can," the American said.
"It's nice to pick his brains. I've been lucky to get to know Michael Jordan pretty well and it's good to find people you can talk to about preparations and distractions, about getting to the top and then moving forward."
Woods contrasted his "frustrating" level-par 72 on Thursday with watching the 25-year-old Federer win his ninth grand slam at the U.S. Open tennis this year, an experience the Swiss said at the time had proved motivational.
"He played well, I slashed around a bit," said Woods of his first round of golf after a five-week break.
Asked if Federer had helped him with any tips, Woods said: "Yes, I need to improve my backhand.
"I'd love to play golf with him, but I'd like to play tennis with him more," he added.PHONE RINGS
Woods skipped last week's PGA Tour championship to "recharge his batteries" after a run of seven tournaments in nine weeks and a two-day trip to Ireland for Ryder Cup preparations."I needed it," he said. "It was a lot. I don't normally play that much golf."
Federer was not the only one following Woods around the course on Thursday and although there were still a number of mobile phone rings and camera clicks from the gallery, Woods thought it was an improvement on his first trip to the Sheshan International Golf Club.
"We had a few distractions," he said. "But it's good to see so many people out here watching golf. A lot of them aren't even golf fans and it's a new experience for them.
"It was a lot better than last year," he added.

TITLE: UN Urges U.S. to End 45-Year Cuba Embargo
AUTHOR: By Edith M. Lederer
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK — The U.N. General Assembly voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to urge the United States to end its 45-year-old trade embargo against Cuba after defeating an amendment calling on Fidel Castro's government to free political prisoners and respect human rights.It was the 15th straight year that the 192-member world body approved a resolution calling for the U.S. economic and commercial embargo against Cuba to be repealed "as soon as possible."
Cuba's Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque told the assembly "the economic war unleashed by the U.S. against Cuba, the longest and most ruthless ever known, qualifies as an act of genocide and constitutes a flagrant violation of international law and the charter of the United Nations."
Delegates in the General Assembly chamber burst into applause when the vote flashed on the screen — 183 in favor to 4 opposed, with 1 abstention. Joining the United States in voting "no" were Israel and the South Pacific nations of the Marshall Islands and Palau. Micronesia, also in the South Pacific, abstained.
In Cuba, state-run television showed Foreign Ministry officials in Havana cheering when the result was announced.
"This confirms once again by the U.N. itself that the embargo is totally illegal and wrong and needs to be suspended," said Hipolito Rodriguez, a customs worker.
The General Assembly voted on the resolution soon after defeating an amendment by Australia stating that the U.S. laws and measures "were motivated by valid concerns about the continued lack of democracy and political freedom in Cuba."
It also would have called on Cuba to release all political prisoners, cooperate with international human rights bodies, respect the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and comply with all human rights treaties to which it is a signatory.
The sanctions, aimed at toppling Castro's socialist system, were imposed after Castro repelled the CIA-backed assault at the Bay of Pigs in 1961. The embargo has been steadily tightened under President Bush.

TITLE: Cambodia Seeks to End Drought
AUTHOR: By Ek Madra
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: PHNOM PENH — Cambodia is pinning its hopes on either a wrestler, a snooker player or a taekwondo fighter to win the country's first Asian Games medal in 36 years.Vath Chamroeun, the team's chef de mission, insisted that despite fierce competition and a serious lack of cash, the war-scarred nation was confident of ending its drought in Doha next month.
"We won silver and bronze medals at the last Southeast Asian Games in Vietnam and the Philippines, so we hope to get some in Doha too," he told Reuters.
"But it was hard for us to get those medals, so it will be even harder to get many next month."
Cambodia has not won a medal since the 1970 Games in Bangkok, where it took two silvers in boxing, and bronzes in women's volleyball and swimming.
Five years later, its hopes of winning more were dashed when it was banned from the Olympic movement for 20 years because of its brutal civil war, which claimed an estimated 1.7 million lives in four years.
Chamroeun said Cambodia's athletes had improved since the last Games, especially its taekwondo fighters, snooker players and wrestlers.
"We have foreign coaches to train us in these sports," he said. "In other sports, our chances of medals are slim."

TITLE: Sri Lankan Military Kills 45 Tamils
AUTHOR: By Dilip Ganguly
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Government forces bombarding rebels with artillery hit a school where scores of civilians had taken refuge Wednesday from the fighting, killing at least 45 Tamils and wounding 125 in Sri Lanka, a senior rebel official said.Military spokesman Brig. Prasad Samarasinghe said he was not aware of the casualties in the rebel-held area and accused the rebels of using civilians as human shields.
"It was a big attack and we have 45 dead bodies," Seevaratnam Puleedevan, a top rebel official, told The Associated Press by satellite phone. Puleedevan said 125 people also were wounded. Among the dead were six infants, the rebels said.
Human rights group Amnesty International condemned the incident and called for an independent inquiry, saying there was an urgent need to "respond to the dramatic deterioration of the human rights and humanitarian situation."
"It is appalling that the military should attack a camp for displaced people — these are civilians who have already been forced from their homes because of the conflict," Amnesty's Asia Pacific Director Purna Sen said.
A doctor attending the wounded said most had broken bones and deep wounds caused by shrapnel. The doctor spoke on condition of anonymity fearing reprisals. All the dead and wounded were civilians from Sri Lanka's Tamil minority, in whose name the Tigers say they are fighting the government, dominated by the island nation's Sinhalese majority, rebels said.
Fighting continued on Thursday when Tamil Tigers attacked a Sri Lankan military post in northern Jaffna, killing one soldier and wounding two others, the Defense Ministry said.
Samarasinghe, the military spokesman, said Wednesday there had been a days-long artillery exchange in the area. "This morning, they (rebels) intensified their artillery attack, five of our soldiers were also wounded. We also retaliated to their attacks," he said.
Wednesday's reported attack would be the second-deadliest for Tamil civilians since a truce was signed in 2002.
On Aug. 14, an air raid allegedly killed 61 Tamil girls in the rebel stronghold Mullaitivu. At the time, the government said it had proof that the site was a rebel base, although rebels said the victims were school girls undergoing first aid training.
The worst single attack suffered by the Sri Lankan military was on Oct. 16, when a rebel suicide bomber rammed an explosives-packed truck into a military bus convoy in central Sri Lanka, killing at least 95 sailors and wounding more than 150.
Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission, a group of foreigners overseeing the 2002 cease-fire, has said 1,076 civilians have been killed in violence in Sri Lanka since early this year. Helen Olafsdottir, acting spokeswoman for the mission, said monitors were on their way to investigate Wednesday's incident. But she refused to comment further.
The Tamil Tigers have been fighting since 1983 for a separate homeland for ethnic Tamils in the north and east of Sri Lanka, citing discrimination by the majority Sinhalese. More than 65,000 people were killed before the truce. An upsurge in violence this year has killed more than 2,000 people.

TITLE: Advocaat Brings Craft to Petersburg
AUTHOR: By Gennady Fyodorov
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: ST. PETERSBURG — It was Peter the Great who in the early 18th century first invited Dutch craftsmen to help him build the city that still bears his name.Three centuries later another Dutch master, by the name of Dick Advocaat, has been brought to the city on the shores of the Baltic Sea to revive the sagging hopes of local soccer side Zenit.
"Yes, I knew a little bit of history about this city from my school days," the Dutchman, 59 said in an interview at Zenit's training centre in northern St. Petersburg.
"Of course, I've learnt a lot more since coming here."
Advocaat was appointed Zenit coach in June after stepping down as South Korea manager when his team was eliminated from the World Cup in Germany.
Former St. Petersburg politician turned soccer administrator Vitaly Mutko, who hired Dutchman Guus Hiddink as national team coach, had a hand in bringing Advocaat to Russia.
A former colleague of Russian President Vladimir Putin and close friend of Chelsea's billionaire owner Roman Abramovich, Mutko was Zenit's president from 1997 to 2003 before being elected Russian soccer chief in 2005. He still has close ties with the club.
"I was first approached to coach Russia but in the end they decided on Hiddink," Advocaat said.
"I think Mr. Mutko had something to do with me being here."
Asked if he was jealous of Hiddink after being overlooked for the Russia job, Advocaat, who took the Netherlands to the quarterfinals of the 1994 World Cup and the semifinals of Euro 2004, said: "Not at all. If anything, we're just good friends.
"As for coaching Russia, I'm not bitter. First of all, I didn't agree to take the job, so I can't say they rejected me.
"Also, I understand it was Abramovich and his people who wanted Hiddink to coach Russia. You can't argue with that. People who have lots of money also have a lot of power."
Advocaat quickly settled into his new job, leading Zenit to a 13-game unbeaten run that transformed the mid-table club into a title contender again and made fans all but forget their previous coach, the popular Czech Vlastimil Petrzela.
The streak revived the city's hopes of seeing its beloved team win its first Russian league title since 1984.
Although its dreams of bringing the silverware to Russia's northern capital were dashed following a controversial 1-0 defeat at CSKA Moscow last week, the St. Petersburg side looks like it could be a genuine title contender next season.
Zenit has long been in the shadow of powerful Moscow clubs, prompting the outspoken Petrzela to declare "they [Moscow] would never let us win the title" a couple of years ago.
Reminded of that now famous phrase, Advocaat just smiled.
"Yes, I've heard it and will try to disprove it," said the Dutchman, who has signed an 18-month contract through to 2007.
"It was a bit difficult this year, as we were too far back when I came here. But we'll definitely try to build a championship-winning team next season."
Backed by the almost limitless resources of Zenit's owners, Russian energy giant Gazprom, Advocaat undoubtedly will want to strengthen the squad in the off season.
Known as a strict disciplinarian, Advocaat's first steps were to build team morale.
"First of all, I'd like to change the players' mentality," he said. "They have to be more professional because football is not just a fun game, it's hard work."
During the Petrzela regime, it was not uncommon for players to skip practice or spend free time at casinos and nightclubs.
Asked to describe the main difference between Advocaat and Petrzela, Zenit top striker Andrei Arshavin used only one word: "Discipline."
While Advocaat had only nice things to say about the city, the club and its owners, he was less diplomatic about the work of his predecessor.
"I just don't want to talk about him," he said of Petrzela.
"He was talking to the press all the time, saying how great he was. As for myself, I don't like to talk much, I always let my work do the talking for me."

TITLE: Red Wings Blank Oilers to Keep Winning
PUBLISHER: BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
TEXT: DETROIT — Dominik Hasek didn't have to work too hard for a shutout.He only had to stop 16 shots to earn his 70th career shutout and lift the Detroit Red Wings to a 3-0 win over the Edmonton Oilers on Wednesday night.
"I never even had to make one save," said the 41-year-old goaltender. "I stopped the puck, I poke-checked the puck, I passed the puck, but I didn't have to make a save."
It was the seventh consecutive win for Detroit (10-4-1), which got goals from Dan Cleary, Henrik Zetterberg and Jiri Hudler, and two assists from Chris Chelios. The Red Wings came into the game leading the NHL in fewest shots allowed per game and improved on that average. "We're trying to play in the middle and keep them to the outside," said Detroit captain Nicklas Lidstrom. "Let them get shots from the outside. But not from the inside."
Dwayne Roloson stopped 42 shots for Edmonton (7-7-1) in the second meeting of the season between the teams that met in the first round of the playoffs last season. The Oilers, who upset the top-seeded Red Wings last season in six games, beat Detroit 3-1 in Edmonton on Oct. 21.
Cleary opened the scoring 1:55 into the second period, when he tipped in Kirk Maltby's shot from the right point. It was Cleary's third goal of the season.
Zetterberg added a short-handed goal 2:57 into the third period on a wrist shot from the bottom of the left circle that beat Roloson on the short side. Hudler had a power-play goal with 4:28 left.
Detroit's Jason Williams was taken off the ice on a stretcher and left Joe Louis Arena in an ambulance in the second period. He received a hard check to the face.
In other games:
Thrashers 5, Senators 4. Slava Kozlov's hat trick helped Atlanta hand Ottawa its first five-game losing streak in 10 years; Rangers 4, at Panthers 3 (SO) Michael Nylander scored the only goal in the shootout to lead New York over Florida; Lightning 4 Penguins 3 (OT) Vincent LeCavalier's goal 2:41 into overtime gave Tampa Bay a win over Pittsburgh.

TITLE: Spartak Still In With A Title Shout
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: MOSCOW — Reigning champions CSKA Moscow failed to clinch their second consecutive Russian Premier League title after suffering a 2-0 defeat at Samara.CSKA nevertheless stay top with 55 points from 28 matches, three points ahead of city rivals Spartak with another Moscow side Lokomotiv third on 47.
Samara seized the initiative early, testing the CSKA defence with goalkeeper Igor Akinfeyev unable to keep out a Karen Dokhoyan header after 29 minutes. The Red Army side replied positively but to no avail as Samara defended well replying on the counter-attacks.
In the 61st minute Samara skipper Matthew Booth made it 2-0 with a precise spotkick after CSKA defenders fouled Bosnian striker Marko Topic in their box to secure a well deserved win for the hosts.
Nine-time champions Spartak remain in the race as they narrowed the gap with a 1-1 draw at Ramenskoye.
Zenit Saint Petersburg won 2-1 away to Torpedo Moscow to stay just one point behind third-placed Lokomotiv Moscow, who fell 3-1 at Tomsk.

TITLE: Sharapova Does Rounds Towards World No.1 Spot
AUTHOR: By Paul Logothetis
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MADRID, Spain — Maria Sharapova beat two-time champion Kim Clijsters 6-4, 6-4 at the WTA Championships on Wednesday, moving a step closer to a spot in the semifinals.In other matches, Svetlana Kuznetsova defeated fellow Russian Elena Dementieva 7-5, 6-3, and two-time winner Martina Hingis pulled out a 6-4, 3-6, 6-3 victory over Nadia Petrova.
Hingis' victory means top-ranked Amelie Mauresmo will not finish the year as the No. 1 player in the world. That distinction will go to Sharapova or Justine Henin-Hardenne, depending on how they fare in this tournament.
Sharapova is 2-0 in the round-robin portion, Kuznetsova is 1-0 and Clijsters is 0-1. Also in the Red Group, the seventh-ranked Dementieva is 0-2, including Tuesday's loss to Sharapova, and has little chance of reaching the semifinals for the first time since 2000.
Kuznetsova can guarantee herself and Sharapova a place in the semifinals by beating Clijsters on Thursday.
In the Yellow Group, Hingis and Petrova are 1-1. Henin-Hardenne is 1-0, while Mauresmo is 0-1.
Sharapova, the U.S. Open champion, kept Clijsters deep behind the baseline and on the run throughout, hitting crosscourt winners from both sides.
"I think the quality of my tennis today was quite high," Sharapova said after her 10th straight win. "I know that I've played a lot of matches and I feel good about my game."
After the 19-year-old Russian saved three break points in the fourth game of the second set, she took away the momentum from Clijsters and broke the frustrated Belgian in the next game.
Sharapova broke Clijsters again in the seventh game, but failed to hold for the first time in the match as Clijsters closed to 5-4. Sharapova saved a double-break point in the 10th before her fifth ace clinched the win.
"I felt like I was moving really well and no matter how big and deep her shots were I still felt like I was in position for them. And that just comes from playing a lot of matches," Sharapova said.
The fourth-ranked Kuznetsova capitalized on Dementieva's erratic serve. Dementieva broke when trailing 5-3 before holding serve for the first time in four games. But Kuznetsova held and broke Dementieva for the third time to take the first set.
"I had a lot of chances that I didn't close out in the first set," Kuznetsova said. "I was losing my concentration, but that's normal after a long season."
Kuznetsova took control of the second set, breaking Dementieva with a forehand winner for a 2-0 lead. She held serve — saving four break points — and the match went to serve until a netted backhand by Dementieva sealed it.
"I'm looking forward to raising my game tomorrow, but today it was enough," Kuznetsova said.
Hingis stormed to a 4-1 lead in the first set against the fifth-ranked Petrova, who beat Mauresmo on Tuesday. Petrova broke Hingis twice en route to winning the second set.
But 41 unforced errors cost the Russian. In the deciding set, Hingis broke in the sixth game and sealed the win with a forehand pass on her second match point.

TITLE: Vaughan Targets 3rd Test Return
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Former England cricket captain Michael Vaughan hopes he may be able to play in the final three Ashes tests, the Independent newspaper reported on Thursday.Vaughan has not played for England since last December because of a knee injury but had been targeting the fourth test against Australia, starting in Melbourne on December 26.
However, he told a lunch at the National Sporting Club in London on Wednesday that he hoped to be playing cricket again in three weeks.
That would make him available for a two-day match with Western Australia on December 9-10 ahead of the third test beginning in Perth on December 14.
Vaughan was quoted in Thursday's Independent as saying: "I hope to be playing cricket again in three weeks.
"The knee is coming on well and by that time I hope to be able to put a call in and say 'I'm available to play.'"
But he added: "Whether it takes two games, five games or a month to be match-fit is up to the selectors."
In 2005, Vaughan captained England to their first Ashes series win for 18 years. The first test starts on November 23 in Brisbane.