SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1225 (91), Tuesday, November 28, 2006
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TITLE: Timing Couldn’t Be Worse for Putin
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev and Maria Levitov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — The poisoning death of former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko threatens to damage further the Kremlin’s reputation in the West regardless of who masterminded it and why it was carried out.
The timing couldn’t have been worse for President Vladimir Putin. 
Litvinenko, who on his London deathbed accused the president of poisoning him, died just hours before Putin met Friday with European leaders in Helsinki for an annual European Union-Russia summit. Putin also faced uncomfortable questions during his last meeting with European leaders at an informal EU summit on Oct. 9, just two days after journalist Anna Politkovskaya, a fierce critic of Putin, was shot dead in her Moscow apartment building.
“The excessive number of coincidences between the deaths of people opposed to the Russian authorities and major international events involving Vladimir Putin is a source of concern,” Sergei Yastrzhembsky, Putin’s aide for EU relations, said in Helsinki.
“I am hardly someone who believes in conspiracy theories, but in this case I think that we are witnessing a well-rehearsed plan to discredit Russia and its leader,” he said.
The Kremlin, which is seeking to establish a strategic partnership with the EU, needs to be accepted by its European partners more than ever as relations have cooled with the United States, analysts said. 
“Coupled together, these deaths will intensify criticism of the Kremlin abroad,” said Alexei Makarkin, an analyst with the Center for Political Technologies. 
Litvinenko’s death will strain British ties, already frosty over refusals by British courts to extradite one-time Kremlin powerbroker Boris Berezovsky and Chechen rebel envoy Akhmed Zakayev to face terrorism and other charges at home. Berezovsky and Zakayev were friends of Litvinenko. Before Litvinenko sought asylum in Britain in 2000, he had publicly accused his superiors of ordering him to kill Berezovsky.
The Kremlin has denied any involvement in the deaths of Litvinenko and Politkovskaya, and in both instances it has pointed an accusatory finger at Berezovsky.
Without a smoking gun in either case, the amount of damage that will be inflicted on the Kremlin will be determined largely by how the poisoning plays out in the Western media, which is now offering the most critical coverage that Putin has faced during his six-year presidency. Britain’s Sunday Times had eight articles alone, including a 4,300-word investigative piece that raised claims by Litvinenko that a video exists of Putin “caught in a compromising sexual assignation.”
Western media have made very few references to the ties between Litvinenko and Berezovsky, said Sergei Markov, a Kremlin-connected political analyst. He said Berezovsky was playing his “PR cards perfectly,” noting that the businessman’s suggestion that the Kremlin might be behind the poisoning was receiving prominent coverage in the Western media.
While Western media reports have been filled with speculation about a Kremlin connection, Russian state media have highlighted speculation that Berezovsky was behind the poisoning.
“Theories about the former FSB colonel’s death are in one way or another linked with Berezovsky,” Rossiiskaya Gazeta reported. The government newspaper speculated that Berezovsky “masked the crime to bring suspicion on the FSB” or that Berezovsky’s associates killed Litvinenko as a warning to the businessman in a commercial dispute. It described Litvinenko as violent and unintelligent, and said he “made his choice and drank his poison ... when he betrayed those he worked for.”
Television channels had few reports about Litvinenko’s death.
State Duma Deputy Valery Dyatlenko insisted on Channel One television on Friday that the state had no reason to kill him. “The death of Litvinenko — for Russia, for the security services — means nothing,” said Dyatlenko, a former FSB officer. “I think this is another game of some kind by Berezovsky.”
“Possibly, there was a conflict,” Nikolai Kovalyov, a fellow deputy and former FSB director, said on the same channel. “In untying this knot called the relationship between Berezovsky and Litvinenko, it was necessary to derive the maximum benefit — and the benefit here for Boris Abramovich [Berezovsky] is ... the accusation of Russia’s involvement in the killing.”
In an interview, Gennady Gudkov, a member of the Duma’s Security Committee and an FSB colonel, said he believed Berezovsky or his entourage was involved in the poisoning.
Other former intelligence officers, including Oleg Kalugin, “are alive and well,” even though they knew more classified information than Litvinenko, Gudkov said.
“There was probably some internal strife” in Berezovsky’s inner circle, Gudkov said, stressing that this was his personal opinion.
Analysts agreed that the Kremlin had little motive to kill Litvinenko, since the fallout from his death promises to prove more damaging than any of Litvinenko’s criticism or even his private investigations into Politkovskaya’s death and Russia’s 1999 apartment bombings.

TITLE: Radioactive Trail Follows Litvinenko
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: Traces of radiation have been found at several sites in London during investigations into the dramatic radioactive poisoning death of a former FSB agent last week, British interior minister John Reid said on Monday.
Reid told the British Parliament that indications of radiation had been found at “several other premises” in addition to Alexander Litvinenko’s home and at a hotel and restaurant he visited on Nov. 1, the day he fell ill. Reid said there was no need for public alarm.
However, three people have been sent to a special clinic for radiological tests, a spokeswoman for Britain’s Health Protection Agency (HPA) said on Monday.
She said more than 450 people had called a government hotline for health advice after the death of Litvinenko, whose body was found to contain a poisonous radioactive isotope, and 18 had been passed on to the HPA.
“Of those 18, three have been referred as a precaution to a special clinic for radiological assessment,” she said, declining to comment on their symptoms.
Highly radioactive polonium-210 was found in the body of Litvinenko, who died last week accusing Russian President Vladimir Putin of murdering him. When traces of radiation were found at Litvinenko’s home, a restaurant and a hotel he had visited the day he fell ill, health officials offered tests to members of the public who had visited those places. 
Local authorities said an inquest was expected to open on Thursday into the death of Litvinenko, who died after a three-week illness during which all his hair fell out, his body wasted away and his organs failed.
Scotland Yard police are investigating the case as a suspicious death, and the affair has raised tension between London and Moscow.
Senior cabinet minister Peter Hain on Sunday condemned “murky murders” that had taken place in Putin’s Russia and criticised “huge attacks” on individual freedoms and democracy in Russia.
Prime Minister Tony Blair’s official spokesman said on Monday it was premature to jump to conclusions.
“The prime minister and other ministers have repeatedly underlined our concern about some aspects of human rights in Russia,” he said. “In terms of this particular case, however, we do have to proceed carefully. There is a police investigation ongoing and we have to await the outcome.”

TERROR 
Anti-terrorist police combed London over the weekend for traces of the radioactive substance that killed Litvinenko as conspiracy theories swirled over the poisoning that threatens to shatter Russia’s standing in the West.
Putin is facing an unprecedented barrage of Western media criticism after the 43-year-old former spy accused him of his “barbaric and ruthless murder” in his deathbed statement.
Putin immediately dismissed the accusation Friday, calling Litvinenko’s death a tragedy and accusing his opponents of engineering a political provocation.
Litvinenko, an employee of fierce Kremlin critic and oligarch-in-exile Boris Berezovsky, suffered heart failure late Thursday after days in intensive care in a case that baffled doctors up to the last minute. 
It was announced late Friday traces had been discovered in his urine of polonium-210, a rare and hard-to-produce radioactive isotope that is lethal if ingested, inhaled or injected.
The discovery prompted British Cabinet ministers to convene a top-level security committee — known as Cobra — on Saturday amid fears of contamination. Russia’s ambassador to Britain was called in to the Foreign Office.
British detectives are to fly to Moscow early this week to pick up the trail. Officers want to question two Russians whom Litvinenko met for tea in a Mayfair hotel bar on Nov. 1, the day he fell ill, and an Italian expert on Russian security services he met in a sushi restaurant later that day.
The Sunday Times cited one guest of the hotel, the Millennium, as saying room 441 had been blocked off and was being guarded by police. The hotel’s health and safety manager, Brian Kelly, did not respond to several calls for comment Sunday. All other staff members referred calls to him. 
Litvinenko’s death, just weeks after the killing of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya in Moscow, has provoked fears that Russia’s secret services are running amok.
Some claim the killing is a sign that a Byzantine battle for ascendancy between Kremlin clans is spinning out of control ahead of the presidential election in 2008. Others directly accuse Putin of being behind a plot to kill a one-time FSB agent whose move to Britain in 2000 was considered a betrayal of the state.
But many speculate that the death might have been engineered and then expertly stage-managed by Berezovsky, a one-time Kremlin gray cardinal, known for elaborate intrigues and propaganda games, in an attempt to discredit Putin’s government.

DEATHBED
Litvinenko’s deathbed accusation that Putin was behind the poisoning grabbed headlines around the world.
“You may succeed in silencing one man, but the howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr. Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life,” Litvinenko said in a statement that his friend Alex Goldfarb said he signed shortly before he died. Goldfarb read the statement to a barrage of television cameras. “You have shown yourself to be unworthy of your office, to be unworthy of the trust of civilized men and women.”
Putin questioned whether Litvinenko had ever signed off on the note.
“If such a note appeared before the death of Mr. Litvinenko, then there’s always the question: Why wasn’t it published while he was still alive? And if it appeared after his death, then of course how can one comment on this?” Putin told reporters during a European Union-Russia summit in Helsinki on Friday. “It is very sad that such tragic events as the death of a person are being used for political provocations.”
Putin’s stance was backed up by a welter of Russian lawmakers, who all squarely pointed the finger at Berezovsky as the only person who could benefit from Litvinenko’s death.
“Litvinenko did not present any threat to the Russian secret services,” said Alexander Khinshtein, a deputy in the pro-Kremlin United Russia faction and a Litvinenko foe who is considered close to the Federal Security Service, or FSB. 
“There was no sense in liquidating him. It was very clear that the liquidation of Litvinenko would only lead to accusations that this was done by Moscow.
“His death is only advantageous to Berezovsky,” he said, adding that he knew of a pattern of similar “provocations” that law enforcement agencies had tied to the businessman, who is wanted in Russia on charges of fraud and terrorism. One example, he said, was the 2004 purported kidnapping of Berezovsky ally and presidential candidate Ivan Rybkin.
Berezovsky declined to comment for this report, saying only: “They can say whatever they like. I am not making any comment until after the police make their conclusions.” He declined to say whether he had been questioned over the poisoning.
Goldfarb, who holds a doctorate in biology, said he had been briefly questioned by police. “But of course I can’t share any information. I only arrived in England 13 days after the poisoning,” he said.

KGB AGENT
Oleg Gordievsky, the most senior KGB agent to defect to the West, said the use of such a rare substance as polonium-210 indicated that Russian intelligence agencies had to be involved. “The KGB could make polonium and any radioactive material. They have a huge factory for making poison,” he said.
He said the media exposure that Litvinenko’s anti-Putin friends got as the former spy died a slow and painful death instead of being killed quickly was testimony to the bungling abilities of the FSB, and not a sign that the poisoning was engineered by Putin’s opponents. 
“It’s a disaster,” he said. “Now the world has a picture of Russia. They know Russia is a country of troglodytes. Now no one wants anything to do with Russia.”
He accused the two Russians whom Litvinenko met at the London hotel of slipping the poison into his tea.
One of the Russians, Andrei Lugovoi, denied any involvement in the poisoning. Lugovoi, who worked for Berezovsky in the 1990s as head of security for ORT, now Channel One, television, told Russian and British media that the trio had met to discuss a business proposal. The other Russian present at the meeting was an associate, Dmitry Kovtun, he said.
Stanislav Belkovsky, a political analyst and one-time Kremlin insider, said the poisoning was part of an elaborate power struggle as the race to anoint Putin’s successor heats up. He claimed the attack was an attempt by supporters of Dmitry Medvedev, the first deputy prime minister, to force Putin to push aside the siloviki by making it look like they were involved in an attack that had damaged Putin’s image in the West.

TITLE: Weight-lifter or Ballet Dancer? Take a Genetic Test
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Some human talents, like an ear for music, reveal themselves early while others, such as athletic prowess, can remain hidden forever. It has always been hard to know if a bouncing baby is destined to become a weight-lifter or a figure skater — until now.
Researchers in St. Petersburg say they can take three to five human hairs, scrutinize twelve chosen genes, and in just two days hand over an envelope with the results of what physical talents potential athletes possess.
Genetic testing of sportsmen to determine their athletic traits, such as explosive power, suppleness or powers of endurance, can help in choosing the right career in sports and warn against a potentially dangerous field or excessive stress, said Professor Viktor Rogozkin, head of the Sports Genetics Laboratory of St. Petersburg’s Research Institute For Physical Culture.
“Back in the Soviet era, the role of strong will and ‘character’ in building a career in sports was believed to be instrumental,” Rogozkin said. “But after we recently tested several [past] Olympic champions — who are now burdened with serious illnesses — we could see from their genetic tests that they were bound to get sick. They did not have the potential to cope with the kind of tasks they were setting for themselves.”
Genetic testing, if done early, can help to redirect a beginner’s career into the right field to suit their traits.
Ildus Akhmetov, a research fellow with the Sports Genetics Laboratory, said a number of qualities essential for success in a particular sport can be found in one’s genes and are inherited.
“About 25 percent of people would do well in a marathon but in 80 to 90 percent of cases, explosive power, a crucial quality for weight-lifting, is genetic,” he said. “A test would indicate the people with especially high potential for the sport.”
While dexterity and skill can be learned, suppleness — a key trait in gymnastics and ballet — is in most cases a genetic quality, Akhmetov explains.
Anton Sikharulidze, Olympic gold medalist in figure skating pairs at the Salt Lake Winter Games in 2002, and a multiple European and world champion figure skater, is convinced genetic testing can only help sportsmen.
“Naturally, for the people who only need sports to stay healthy and keep fit, it would make no sense to take such tests, because in moderate doses almost any sport is healthy, “  the St. Petersburg-based former figure skater said. “For these people, it does not matter if they are two meters tall [6 feet 5 inches] or 1.30 meters tall [4 feet 2 inches] — they can safely swim, ski or box.”
By comparison, in the world of world-class sports, genetic testing is essential.
“On the one hand it can help sportsmen themselves to stay healthy and maintain a proper balance between rest and work, while on the other hand their agents and managers would have a better, clearer idea of what they are investing the big money in,” the Olympian explains. “World-class sports involves a huge amount of money, and it is only natural for everyone involved to want to know of all the slightest risks.”
In Sikharulidze’s opinion, the more criteria is involved in the testing, the more beneficial it would be. 
“Some qualities are very visible, and can be judged just by viewing but one’s potential in other respects is more difficult to assess: each sport requires a specific type of mentality, reaction, muscle structure and so on,” he said.
Genetic testing of sportsmen, at least as far as determining liability to certain genetically identifiable diseases, is already undertaken — usually for insurance purposes — the U.S. Results of these tests, however, have already cost several basketball players a place in the professional league because they showed an increased risk of cardiovascular complications later in life.
In 2005, professional basketball player Eddy Curry of the Chicago Bulls, then 22, had a heart arrhythmia. His managers requested that he take a DNA test to determine if he was predisposed to heart arrhythmia. Curry thought the request was unethical, and the conflict resulted in the player leaving the Bulls for another club, the New York Knicks. The Knicks made no DNA test requests. 
“The ethical side of the issue is very important: coaches treat testing results according to their intelligence and tact, which in some cases are questionable,” Professor Rogozkin said.
Renowned ballerina Altynai Asylmuratova, artistic director of St. Petersburg’s Vaganova Ballet Academy welcomed ongoing genetic research but said test results needed to be viewed with skepticism.
“Of course, tests might help to see the [overall health] picture [of a dancer] but I would not recommend relying entirely on them,” the ballerina said. “In the world of ballet and to some degree in sport as well, character, inspiration and motivation do wonders, and we ought to give people a chance to succeed, despite their genetic limitations.”
Many of Russia’s — and the world’s — finest dancers were imperfect from the point of their physique, and in some cases schools were even reluctant to accept them, Asylmuratova added. 
“They would probably have failed the gene test. It was something unmeasurable that led them to fame,” she said. “It would be so heartless to deny someone a chance based on such testing. I am not against them but the rules of the game have to give everyone a free chance to try things.”
With the importance of genes in certain sports now widely known, the risk of abuse of the knowledge is increasing.
Nikolai Durmanov, head of the anti-doping department of the Russian Federal Agency for Sports and Physical Culture, calls so-called “genetic doping” a major threat to contemporary sports and a likely problem at the next Olympic Games in Beijing 2008.
“International anti-doping watchdogs are very closely looking into the issue: there is a growing feeling in the industry that ‘genetic doping’ has already sneaked into sports,” Durmanov said, adding that Russia’s Anti-Doping Laboratory has created a gene bank containing samples of the genes of Russian sportsmen. The first Russian gene bank for sportsmen was created in 2002 by the St. Petersburg Scientific Research Institute for Physical Culture, and currently contains over 1,300 samples.
At least one international scandal involving manipulation of human genes is already in progress. German coach Thomas Springstein was recently accused of feeding his minor trainees an unhealthy diet of repoxygen — a gene-based medicine for the the treatment of anaemia — to enhance their performance.
“Some risk-takers already know what to do — inject yourself with antibodies of myostatin, a  protein that acts by inhibiting the growth of muscles — and you will see your muscles growing at high speed,” Akhmetov said. 
“Playing with genes may cause cancer, and this fear is limiting the size of this criminal market. But top-flight sports involves high royalties, so the huge money at stake keeps the battle going.”

TITLE: Deadly Polonium May Have Been Russian
PUBLISHER: For The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The polonium-210 that doctors believe killed former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko could have come from Russia, but it will be difficult for investigators to pinpoint blame for the death even if the origin of the radioactive substance is determined, nuclear experts said. 
Coming after the mysterious poisoning of another prominent opponent of the Kremlin, Ukrainian politician Viktor Yushchenko, the death provoked accusations that Russia continues to use Cold War-style tactics to eliminate critics abroad. London was the scene of the 1978 assassination of a Bulgarian dissident who was killed by a jab from an umbrella tip bearing the toxin ricin.
Polonium-210 is one of the world’s rarest elements, first discovered in the 19th century by scientists Marie and Pierre Curie. The alpha rays emitted by polonium are extremely hard to detect, and a fatal dose of the element could have rapidly penetrated his bone marrow without raising immediate suspicion.
Polonium occurs naturally in very low concentrations in the Earth’s crust, and small amounts — but not enough to kill someone — are used legitimately in Britain and elsewhere for industrial purposes. Professor Dudley Goodhead, a radiation expert at the Medical Research Council, said that “to poison someone, much larger amounts are required, and this would have to be man-made, perhaps from a particle accelerator or a nuclear reactor.”
That means the polonium used to poison Litvinenko probably came from a country with a significant nuclear program, experts said. With several nuclear research facilities, Russia fits the bill — and it also has a major space program, another sector in which the element has been used. “There are many laboratories in Russia where it could be produced,” said Vladimir Slivyak, a nuclear expert and co-chairman of the Russian environmental group Ecodefense. 
Alexander Pikayev, a senior analyst with the Moscow-based Institute for Global Economy and International Relations, said the polonium isotope would be “much easier” to acquire than weapons-grade plutonium or highly enriched uranium because it is not considered weapons-grade. 
Pikayev said that if a Russian intelligence agency had wanted to kill Litvinenko, it would have been foolish to use polonium because its source could probably be traced. 
Slivyak also said British authorities might have a good chance of determining where the polonium was produced. But he argued that the information would be far short of proof of a plot in the country of origin because the substance could have been acquired on the black market. If the Federal Security Service, or FSB, wanted to use polonium to kill someone, “from the point of the view of the FSB it would be better not to bring it from Russia but to buy it on the black market in Europe” to avoid leaving a trail, Slivyak said. 
Conversely, he said, a country of origin other than Russia would not rule out Russian involvement.
John Henry, a toxicologist who examined Litvinenko before his death, said the type of polonium involved was “only found in government-controlled institutions.” Henry said polonium-210 was lethal in doses so small, “you can lose it on the point of a pin.” Henry, who took part in the investigation of the 2004 poisoning of Yushchenko, then opposition leader and now Ukraine’s president, said that polonium-210 “kills cell by cell” and that once it is administered, there’s “absolutely nothing” that can be done to save the exposed person.
Britain’s Health Protection Agency said the high level of polonium-210 found in Litvinenko indicated that he “would either have to have eaten it, inhaled it or taken it in through a wound.”

TITLE: Western Press Attack Putin After Litvinenko Dies
PUBLISHER: For The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The following is a sample of the opinions expressed on the editorial pages of leading Western newspapers in response to the death of Alexander Litvinenko in London on Thursday.

The Guardian (London)
As the [Alexander Litvinenko] scandal grows, it is important to cling to one thought. There are few independently verifiable facts about this case. Almost all the accusations against the Kremlin and the Foreign Intelligence Service, or SVR, have been made either by former KGB officers turned by MI6, or by friends, associates, or employees of Boris Berezovsky, the oligarch of the Yeltsin era whom Moscow has tried and failed to extradite on fraud charges. Even if Moscow’s claim to have given up foreign assassinations “a long time ago” is not strictly true — they killed Chechen rebel leader Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev in Qatar in 2004 — Russia’s argument that a scandal abroad is the last thing that President [Vladimir] Putin needs at this moment holds weight. Why would the Kremlin risk a torrent of Western opprobrium by killing an insignificant critic in London? Friends of Litvinenko claim he was investigating the death of the journalist Anna Politkovskaya, and therefore a threat to the Russian state that also sanctioned her murder.
But the leads in the investigation of her murder point away from the Kremlin and towards either the Moscow-backed regime in Chechnya or elements in the Russian Army, exposed by her courageous journalism as war criminals. We know that Litvinenko had already shot his bolt by publishing a book that accused the Kremlin of involvement in the blowing up of apartment blocks in Moscow and Volgodonsk in 1999, which Moscow used to launch a new campaign in Chechnya. 
That was seven years ago and the truth still has not come out. Those waiting for the truth about the death of a Russian in London might have longer to wait.

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
Putin cannot bear the humiliation [that has resulted from Litvinenko’s death] for long.
So the risk is great that this murder will have repercussions for the intelligence services. With such a loss of face, Putin cannot sit still for long. He will seek to show that his country is a democracy after all. In Russia, politicians loyal to the Kremlin interpret the murder — just as in the case of Politkovskaya — as an attempt to slander the image of Putin — a neat little conspiracy theory.
But perhaps everything is more complicated. The poisoning could have been the revenge of a person or a group from the murky world of the Russian intelligence services and organized crime that was disturbed by Litvinenko or his allies.
A number of power structures operate in Russia. In pursuing their interests, they often turn to violence, somewhat more often than to the media. And Putin certainly had something to do with that.

Los Angeles Times
The British Health Protection Agency said Litvinenko took in a “major dose” of the radioactive element polonium-210, which ravaged his immune system. In Cold War days, the Soviets tended to contract out the serious stuff to the Bulgarians and East Germans, and poison was one of their favorite methods.
These days, Russians presumably have to do their own dirty work. And in recent years, a veritable rash of poisonings has erupted all over the post-Soviet body politic. Many seem to stem from business disputes, but others are more political, notably the unsolved 2004 dioxin poisoning of Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko.
It is, of course, possible that Putin had no hand in these crimes. There are plenty of dangerous characters in the shadows of Russian public life. He has denied any role, issued condolences, but also strangely maintained that it was “not a violent death.”
Litvinenko, though, had no doubts. “You may succeed in silencing one man,” he wrote Putin from this deathbed, “but the howl of protest from around the world will reverberate.” Until the Russian president cleans up its house, the world is right to wonder if the bad old KGB days are still with us.
La Stampa (Turin)
This is what you have to do to reveal the truth.” These were Alexander Litvinenko’s last words before the agony seized his final breath. If this axiom is reliable, then the wound left by one of the darkest tragedies of post-Soviet Russia, the 1999 apartment bombings, about which Litvinenko made claims that could rock the Kremlin to its foundation, will reopen…
When they occurred, the 1999 bombings failed to grip a world still untouched by Islamic terrorism. More recently, Litvinenko was investigating the murder of Anna Politkovskaya. It seems as though all of Putin’s skeletons are bursting to get out of the closet.

The Times (London)
The suspicion must fall on the FSB, the successor agency to the KGB. It had motive, means and opportunity. In exile in London, Litvinenko, himself a former FSB agent, taunted and mocked the present head of Russia’s spy agency as well as Putin. Goaded into a vendetta against a traitor, they may well have reacted as Henry II’s knights did on imagining their king’s desire to be rid of Thomas Becket.
Two other factors increase the suspicion. First, the State Duma recently voted to allow the FSB to undertake assassination missions abroad fighting terrorism… Second, the FSB, though politically accountable, has been given an almost free hand by the president, who grew up in that same culture. It had no need to seek permission from the top…
Putin has been deeply embarrassed by the murder. His open quest to make Russia respected again around the world is not helped by accusations of running a gangster state. He must therefore offer British investigators full cooperation and total access to all those they might want to question. A refusal or even prevarication must be taken as evidence of complicity. Nor should Russia be given the impression that this is a small episode that will be forgotten in a few weeks. Any policy of trying to tough it out should be met with an even tougher response from Britain. Litvinenko was a citizen of this country. His murder is an affront to our laws, our democracy and our way of life.

The Daily Telegraph (London)
Putin’s regime] is showing increasingly autocratic tendencies. Opposition figures are jailed on pretexts. Independent television stations have been virtually eliminated. Just weeks ago, a respected journalist, Anna Politkovskaya, was gunned down in broad daylight after criticizing the president.
Abroad, too, Putin is throwing his weight about, meddling in Ukraine and in the dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan. He is conducting a bestial war against Chechen separatism, but is happy to sponsor South Ossetian separatism in Georgia.
Why this newfound swagger? Because Russia is suddenly, as Putin likes to remind us, “an energy superpower.”... 
Until now, the West has tended to overlook Putin’s authoritarianism, largely for the sake of a quiet life. But there must come a point when our patience runs out. It is one thing to tyrannize your people; quite another to presume to do so on British territory.

TITLE: British Council Chief Imparts Value of Internationalism
AUTHOR: By Yelena Andreyeva
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: With his strong interest in foreign languages and cultures, Stephen Kinnock has always wanted to be involved in international activities. He has already worked in many different countries and, besides English, speaks fluent French, Spanish, Danish and Russian — in May 2005 he was appointed the director of the British Council in Northwest Russia, based in St. Petersburg. 
Born in 1970 in a small town named Tredegar in South Wales, Kinnock moved to London when he was three years old. As a child he wanted to become a professional football player and later a journalist but soon Kinnock was focused on learning foreign languages instead. 
“When I was in school I always wanted to learn the Romance languages and that is why I chose to study French and Spanish at Cambridge University,” he said. 
As a third year student, Kinnock went for twelve months to Madrid where he not only learned Spanish but also taught his native English. 
In 1993, a year after graduating from Cambridge University, Kinnock set off to pursue a Masters in European Studies at the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium. “International relations were always what I wanted to do and for some time I thought very hard about becoming a full-time diplomat with our Foreign Ministry,” he said. On leaving university, Kinnock was hired as a policy researcher for a member of the European Parliament in Brussels. 
“His focus was on the enlargement of the European Union and we worked together on the report on the accession of Finland to the EU. I was involved in the negotiations and it was really very interesting,” Kinnock said.
From 1993 to 1996, Kinnock worked for Lancashire Enterprises, a private consulting company and regional development agency that specializes in bidding for projects financed by European Commission Programs. Among Kinnock’s responsibilities was to put together the consortia of organizations and technical proposals in order to win contracts for projects. 
“I was involved in implementing the projects and worked in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Russia, Palestine and Egypt,” he said. One of the organizations that Kinnock frequently competed against and also cooperated with was the British Council. “I was quite focused on projects for consultancy, management change, and technical systems and I got more and more involved in general work for the British Council and education.  Eventually, in 1996, I became a part of global management personnel at the British Council.” 
In all Kinnock worked in Brussels for eight years.  During that time he developed a very strong interest in Europe and the European Union. “Working in Brussels was good for that. It is such a mixture of all the European countries. However, after a while I felt that I needed to make a change by expanding into other international activities,” he said. 
In 2003, Kinnock moved to the British Council office in London. One of the reasons why he enjoys working with the British Council is that it involves a mixture of different activities including arts, languages, educational and cultural projects which all have a concrete practical outcome. “I realized that running the projects of the British Council is more attractive to me than being involved in diplomatic work, which is, of course, very useful but mostly based on analysis and reporting and does not have such evident practical results,” he said.
Eighteen months ago, Kinnock got a posting to St. Petersburg. “The system we have is that when vacancies become available and get advertised, you can express interest in up to four different positions. My number-one choice was St. Petersburg and I was very, very happy to get here,” he said. 
Among the first of the challenges Kinnock faced on his arrival to Russia was the Russian language. “By that time, I had studied several foreign languages and practiced them in the European countries where I used to live but did not really have much Russian. So I immediately took an intensive course that lasted for two-and-a-half months here in St. Petersburg and it helped me a lot,” he said.
An experienced learner of foreign languages and a former English teacher, Kinnock thinks that one of the key challenges for Russia now that it is entering the competitive global economy is to increase the number of people who speak English. Although he admits that the English language competence of many educated citizens of St. Petersburg is rather high and most of his team “speak better English than I do,” in terms of the general spread of English, Russia has quite a long way to go. 
“Of course, it takes a lot of investment and training for teachers but it also requires a really clear understanding of what makes kids interested in languages. You should apply the open-minded, modern, and more learner-oriented approaches rather than teacher-focused ones,” he said. Kinnock also suggests that people who want to improve their English skills should watch more subtitled films rather than those in which everything has been dubbed into Russian.  He also recommends reading more English-language newspapers and magazines. 
As a top foreign manager in Russia, Kinnock is struck by the local bureaucratic culture. “It is incredible how many pieces of paper I have to sign daily. It is a huge amount of paperwork. I am not really used to it. In Western Europe, we are focused on taking responsibility rather than waiting for someone else to make decisions,” he said.
In Kinnock’s opinion, other problems most foreign businesspeople confront in Russia have to do with the difficulties posed by regulations and bureaucratic obstacles.  “If you can get over it and find a way of getting a route to the Russian market, you’ll succeed because the competition for quality products here is not as intense as the competition for them in the U.K. market,” he said. 
Kinnock believes that modern Russia is a country with lots of opportunities for those who have the right connections and contacts. “Although sometimes it is not that easy for international organizations, I suppose it will continue to open up and get better in the next five to fifteen years,” Kinnock said. 
As for advice on how to effectively run an organization like the British Council, Kinnock said that it is essential not to try to do everything yourself but rather delegate well and see the big picture in order to set the right objectives for your team. “It is important not to manage all of the input but rather focus on the output and make it clear to people what you want them to achieve,” he said. 
Kinnock said that the overall objective of the British Council is to work at building bridges between British and Russian organizations and stand for the value of internationalism to ensure that the ties between countries become so strong that they will never have to go to war with each other.  “Although it does sound idealistic, that is what we are working for,” he said.

TITLE: Regional Journalists Fight for Press Freedom
TEXT: By Maria Eismont and Rebecca Hewitt

In recent weeks, the editorial staff of two Siberian newspapers — Berdsky Kuryer from Berdsk in the Novosibirsk region and Gorod KhM in Khanty-Mansiisk — walked out after their owners tried to remove articles about corruption and abuse of power.
The journalists’ decisions to stand by their articles is further evidence that, while the authorities and their opponents squabble over who bears more responsibility for the disappearance of the free press in this country, independent regional newspapers are proving that it is too early to give up hope.
Across the country, even in small, remote towns, local journalists are addressing issues that national television channels stopped covering long ago, and which appear rarely in the national press. Moreover, readers seem to admire this stance, suggesting that those who produce information and those who consume it can still choose to support a free press.
In Berdsk, the main owner of the newspaper initially pulled an article about Galina Zyryanova, an elderly woman who was severely beaten by the deputy police chief, because the deputy was his friend. The paper published the story two months later — without the owner’s consent — alongside an editorial that explained the delay and apologized for the editors’ “faint-heartedness.” “The most important thing to us, dear readers, is that it is impossible not to print the truth in this newspaper,” the editorial said. “That we continue to talk about people like Galina Zyryanova who are easy to humiliate and insult.”
Two weeks later, the editorial team quit and started its own publication, which has received good feedback from readers and has seen its circulation steadily increase.
In Khanty-Mansiisk, the publisher pulled a story about the embezzlement of public funds allocated for the reconstruction of a local factory. High-ranking local officials were suspected of involvement. The subsequent resignation of the editor and his staff was covered by many Internet news sites and newspapers in other regions. The Khanty-Mansiisk journalists plan to run the story on the front page of a new independent publication, which they are putting together on their home computers and with the help of colleagues in other regions. The first issue is due out this week.
It remains to be seen whether these new publications can succeed financially if their editors stick to the high ethical standards they have laid out. They face difficult times ahead, but they have every chance to survive and even prosper. Despite the widespread opinion that newspapers can’t get along without wealthy backers, many regional newspapers are proving the opposite. The rapid development of the advertising market, accompanying the general upswing in economic growth, gives newspapers in regional towns the power to make ends meet and even to accumulate the capital necessary for development.
Furthermore, conflicts with owners and the mass exodus of editorial staff are not the only way for hard-hitting stories to make it onto the front page. Articles similar to those that caused so much trouble for the journalists at Berdsky Kuryer and Gorod KhM appear regularly in other regional publications, whose owners actually encourage their reporters and editors to pursue thoughtful, unbiased reporting on important and often controversial issues.
The story of Private Andrei Sychyov, whose legs and genitals had to be amputated after a brutal hazing incident at the Chelyabinsk Armor Academy last New Year’s Eve, first appeared in Vecherny Krasnoturinsk, Sychyov’s hometown paper. It wasn’t covered by national and international media until two weeks later.
In March, some national papers ran articles based on the Defense Ministry’s version of events, according to which Sychyov’s injuries were the result of a genetic defect that predisposed him to severe blood clotting. The editor of Vecherny Krasnoturinsk uncovered medical records that showed Sychyov had never suffered from a serious illness. She also interviewed Sychyov’s mother, who said her actions were being closely controlled by the hospital administration and that only selected journalists had access to her son.
At least five newspapers republished the story and all of them received a flood of similar hazing stories from their readers in response.
Newspapers that display remarkable courage and integrity are far more numerous than generally believed, but they are nevertheless far too few for a country of this size. Today, local media outlets face many challenges. They have to compete with state-sponsored publications, which receive funding from various levels of the government and distort the market — not to mention money from local tycoons and corporate media outlets. In the run-up to the parliamentary election in 2007 and the presidential vote in 2008, big money is expected to be injected into the media market.
As the election cycle approaches, nervousness and uncertainty have taken root among regional journalists. Not known for their openness, government officials are becoming even more obstructive, denying independent media access to information with increasing frequency.
Given the low quality of regional journalism on the whole, many ambitious, small independent media outlets also suffer from a sense of isolation and inferiority. Often regional newspapers lose their most talented journalists to Moscow or other cities, or to better-paid professions, such as public relations.
But it is the absence of a real professional community capable of exerting peer pressure on its members and of honoring the best journalism and shaming the worst that can smother burgeoning responsible journalism faster than oligarchs’ money and authoritarian pressure.
Moscow-based colleagues and the international journalism community have already sounded the death knell of responsible journalism in Russia. At times, they seem more interested in reporting the efforts of the Kremlin to take control of the media than the media’s efforts to report the truth. The rare articles on regional media that do appear often make no distinction between independent and opposition publications, or between government repression and legitimate court cases arising from the irresponsible behavior of particular media outlets. This sort of coverage helps to cultivate a sense of cynicism and lethargy among honest journalists, resulting in an overall lack of morale, which is particularly damaging to efforts to attract young people into the profession.
If it is true that freedom may not be granted but has to be won, regional independent publications are leading the fight. Because of their small circulation, these newspapers will not change the face of the country as a whole, but papers such as Berdsky Kuryer and Gorod KhM can make a significant contribution to the state of journalism in this country.
There is no need for any sort of intervention, particularly of the financial variety. The national and international journalism communities can, however, shine a spotlight on these journalists who are fighting the good fight and offer their support.

Maria Eismont is head of the Russian Independent Print Media Program of the New Eurasia Foundation in Moscow. Rebecca Hewitt is an adviser to the program. Berdsky Kuryer, Gorod KhM and Vecherny Krasnoturinsk are all participants in the program.

TITLE: Humpback Whales Have ‘Human’ Brains
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: WASHINGTON — Humpback whales have a type of brain cell seen only in humans, the great apes, and other cetaceans such as dolphins, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.
This might mean such whales are more intelligent than they have been given credit for, and suggests the basis for complex brains either evolved more than once, or has gone unused by most species of animals, the researchers said.
The finding may help explain some of the behaviors seen in whales, such as intricate communication skills, the formation of alliances, cooperation, cultural transmission and tool usage, the researchers report in The Anatomical Record.
Patrick Hof and Estel Van der Gucht of the Department of Neuroscience at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York studied the brains of humpback whales and discovered a type of cell called a spindle neuron in the cortex, in areas comparable to where they are seen in humans and great apes.
Although the function of spindle neurons is not well understood, they may be involved in cognition — learning, remembering and recognizing the world around oneself. Spindle cells may be affected by Alzheimer’s disease and other debilitating brain disorders such as autism and schizophrenia. 
The researchers found spindle neurons in the same location in toothed whales with the largest brains, which the researchers said suggests that they may be related to brain size. Toothed whales such as orcas are generally considered more intelligent than baleen whales such as humpbacks and blue whales, which filter water for their food.
The humpbacks also had structures that resembled “islands” in the cerebral cortex, also seen in some other mammals.
These islands may have evolved in order to promote fast and efficient communication between neurons, the researchers said.
Spindle neurons probably first appeared in the common ancestor of hominids, humans and great apes about 15 million years ago, the researchers said — they are not seen in lesser apes or monkeys.
In cetaceans they would have evolved earlier, possibly as early as 30 million years ago, the researchers said.
Either the spindle neurons were only kept in the animals with the largest brains or they evolved several times independently, the researchers said.
“In spite of the relative scarcity of information on many cetacean species, it is important to note in this context that sperm whales, killer whales, and certainly humpback whales, exhibit complex social patterns that included intricate communication skills, coalition-formation, cooperation, cultural transmission and tool usage,” the researchers wrote.
“It is thus likely that some of these abilities are related to comparable histologic complexity in brain organization in cetaceans and in hominids.”

TITLE: Turkish PM Decides to Meet Pope
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: VATICAN CITY — Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has changed his plans and will meet Pope Benedict XVI in Turkey on Tuesday, the Vatican said.
Erdogan had originally planned not to meet the pope, saying he couldn’t because he would be attending a NATO summit in Latvia. He will now meet Benedict at the airport when the pontiff arrives, before the prime minister leaves for Latvia, Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said Monday.
The schedule change was a clear sign of openness to the visit, which has been contested by some Turks angered by a speech Benedict gave in September in which he quoted a medieval text that linked Islam to violence. Tens of thousands of Turks marched in Istanbul on Sunday to protest the visit, calling Benedict an enemy of Islam.
When the government originally announced that Erdogan would be out of the country, Italian media described it as a snub during Benedict’s first visit as a pope to a predominantly Muslim country. The Vatican rejected that, saying it was aware of the scheduling conflict.
Erdogan’s spokesman, Akif Beki, confirmed the meeting. News reports in Turkey said the meeting would last 20 minutes, but Beki said he didn’t know the duration.
The Church’s policy on relations with other religions was stated in a message to a conference in Bali, Indonesia, that the Vatican released Monday.
The message from Cardinal Paul Poupard, head of the office for inter-religious dialogue, said missionary work must be accompanied by a “commitment to sincere and authentic dialogue between cultures and between religions, marked by respect, reciprocity, openness and charity.”

TITLE: Chunder Down Under For Sick Elton
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: SYDNEY — Elton John’s latest Australian tour got off to an inauspicious start when the pop superstar had to leave the stage briefly to be sick, local media reported on Monday.
John was about to perform “Crocodile Rock”, one of the most popular songs of his four-decade career, on Sunday when he felt unwell and left the stage in Brisbane for about five minutes.
“I thought I’d better chunder (vomit) in the toilet than all over the front row,” Australian Associated Press quoted John as telling his audience of 15,000 fans.
John, 59, is making his 12th tour of Australia and had been on stage for about two hours when he became ill. He returned to the stage for another 45 minutes without further inconvenience.
A tour spokeswoman said the veteran entertainer had been suffering from an upset stomach.
“He got it out and got on with it,” the spokeswoman said.

TITLE: Zombie Networks Behind Global Surge in Email Spam
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Criminal gangs using hijacked computers are behind a surge in unwanted emails peddling sex, drugs and stock tips in Britain. 
The number of spam messages has tripled since June and now accounts for as many as nine out of 10 emails sent worldwide, according to U.S. email security company Postini. As Christmas approaches, the daily trawl through in-boxes clogged with offers of fake Viagra, loans and sex aids is tipped to take even longer. 
“Email systems are overloaded or melting down trying to keep up with all the spam,” said Dan Druker, a vice-president at Postini. 
Postini has detected 7 billion spam e-mails worldwide in November compared to 2.5 billion in June. Spam in Britain has risen by 50 per cent in the last two months alone, according to Internet security company SurfControl. 
The United States, China and Poland are the top sources of spam, data from security firm Marshal suggests. 
About 200 illegal gangs are behind 80 per cent of unwanted emails, according to Spamhaus, a body that tracks the problem. Experts blame the rise in spam on computer programs that hijack millions of home computers to send emails. 
These “zombie networks”, also called “botnets”, can link 100,000 home computers without their owners’ knowledge. They are leased to gangs who use their huge “free” computing power to send millions of emails with relative anonymity. 
While “Trojan horse” programs that invade computers have been around for years, they are now more sophisticated, written by professionals rather than bored teenagers. 
“Before it was about showing off, now it’s about ripping people off,” said SurfControl’s Harnish Patel. 
Spam costs firms up to $1,000 a year per employee in lost productivity and higher computing bills, according to research published last year. 
Home computer users are at risk from emails that ask them to reveal their bank details, a practice known as “phishing”. 
The latest programs mutate to avoid detection and send fewer emails from each machine. 
Fast broadband Internet connections, which are always connected, help the spammers. 
The gangs send millions of emails, so they only need a fraction of people to reply to make a profit. 
“This is a constant game of cat and mouse,” said Mark Sunner, Chief Technology Officer at MessageLabs, an email security company. “The bad guys will not stand still.” 
They disguise words to try to outfox filters searching for telltale words. So, Viagra would become V1@gra. 
When anti-spam experts clamped down on this, the spammers began to send messages embedded in a graphic instead of plain text. It is harder for filters to scan pictures. 
Random extracts from classic books are often included to confuse filters looking for keywords.

TITLE: Leftist Wins Landslide in Ecuador
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: By Monte Hayes

QUITO, Ecuador — A leftist economist who called for Ecuador to cut ties with international lenders appeared to have easily won the presidency of this poor, politically unstable Andean nation, strengthening South America’s tilt to the left. 
Partial returns from Sunday’s voting showed that Rafael Correa — who has worried Washington with calls to limit foreign debt payments — would join left-leaning leaders in Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Venezuela, where he is friends with anti-U.S. President Hugo Chavez.
The returns showed Correa with as many as twice the votes recorded as for his banana tycoon rival, who claimed the polls were rigged.
Correa was a fresh face in a field of established politicians, and won a place in Sunday’s runoff by pledging a “citizens’ revolution” against Ecuador’s discredited political system.
During the campaign, he called for Ecuador to cut ties with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Correa, who has called President Bush “dimwitted,” also wants to hold a referendum to rewrite the constitution to reduce the power of traditional parties and limit U.S. military activities in Ecuador.
“We receive this triumph with deep serenity and humility,” the 43-year-old, who has an economics doctorate from the University of Illinois, told a news conference. “When we take office it will finally be the Ecuadorean people who are assuming power.”
With 31 percent of the ballots counted, Correa had nearly 67 percent compared to 33 percent for Alvaro Noboa, Ecuador’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal said before dawn Monday. Election officials said more returns were expected later Monday but that final results may not be known until Tuesday.
But Noboa, a Bible-toting billionaire who counts the Kennedys and Rockefellers among his friends, declined to concede defeat, saying he would wait for the final vote results.
“There has been a scenario in which they are preparing to commit fraud,” Noboa told dozens of his supporters in the coastal city of Guayaquil. He said he instructed his campaign chiefs “to go to the Supreme Electoral Tribunal and demand that they open the ballot boxes to count vote for vote so there can be no doubt.”
Ecuador has had eight presidents since 1996, including three who were driven from office by street protests.
Correa pledged to construct 100,000 low-cost homes and copied Noboa’s promise to double a $36 “poverty bonus” that 1.2 million poor Ecuadoreans receive each month.
Correa began his campaign identifying with Chavez, but backpedaled when he feared the comparison was hurting him in the polls. That appeared to change somewhat Sunday night.
“Hopefully, we will get much, much closer to Chavez,” he told Channel 8 television in an interview. “Chavez is my personal friend, but in my house, my friends aren’t in charge, I am. And in Ecuador, it will be Ecuadoreans in charge.”
He said he would not rule out also seeking stronger ties to other more moderate leftist presidents like Michelle Bachelet in Chile, Nestor Kirchner in Argentina and Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva in Brazil, and with Washington, if President Bush makes it worthwhile for Ecuador.
Correa stood firm, however, on not signing a free-trade deal with the United States, “because, among other things, it would destroy our agriculture, cattle and poultry” industries.
At his first news conference following the election, Correa said Ecuador could rejoin the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, or        OPEC.
“If it is possible we will rejoin OPEC,” he said. Ecuador, which produces some 535,000 barrels of oil a day, left OPEC in 1993.
He also announced that leftist economists Ricardo Patino and Alberto Acosta, whom he had mentioned earlier as possible Cabinet ministers, would be appointed to head the ministries of economy and energy. 
Correa was favored to win the first round but came in second to Noboa in the field of 13 after his comments on Bush and threat to reduce payments on Ecuador’s $16.1 billion foreign debt rattled investors. 
Prior to the second round of voting, he softened his radical rhetoric and began to make populist promises of his own. 
Correa served just 106 days last year as finance minister under interim President Alfredo Palacio, who replaced Lucio Gutierrez in the midst of street protests in April 2005. 
Noboa, who was seeking the presidency for the third time, had run an old-fashioned populist campaign, crisscrossing Ecuador handing out computers, medicine and money.

TITLE: U.S. F16 Crashes In Iraq, Curfew Lifted
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: By Sameer N. Yacoub

BAGHDAD, Iraq — A U.S. Air Force jet with one pilot on board crashed Monday in Anbar province, a hotbed of        Iraq’s Sunni-Arab insurgency, and a witness said other U.S. warplanes rushed to the crash site and circled above it. 
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani arrived for an official visit in Iran, where he is expected to seek its help in preventing Iraq’s sectarian violence from sliding into an all-out civil war. His departure was delayed by a three-day curfew, which the government lifted on Monday.
Meanwhile, as Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki prepared for his summit meeting with President Bush this week in Jordan, Britain said it expects to withdraw thousands of its 7,000 military personnel from Iraq by the end of next year, and Poland and Italy announced the impending withdrawal of their remaining troops.
The F-16CG jet was supporting coalition ground forces when it went down Monday afternoon in Anbar province, about 20 miles northwest of Baghdad, the military said in a brief statement. The statement had no information about the suspected cause of the crash or the fate of the pilot.
Mohammed Al-Obeidi, who lives in the nearby town of Karmah, said by telephone that he saw the jet flying up and down erratically before it nose-dived and exploded in a field. He said other U.S. warplanes rushed to the area and circled above the wreckage.
Separately, police and witnesses said U.S. soldiers shot and killed 11 civilians and wounded five on Sunday night in the Baghdad suburb of Husseiniya. The U.S. military said it had no record of any American military operation in the area.
“We were sitting inside our house when the Americans showed up and started firing at homes. They killed many people and burned some houses,” said one of the witnesses, a man with bandages on his head who was being treated at Imam Ali Hospital in the Shiite slum of Sadr City. The police and witnesses spoke with Associated Press Television News on condition of anonymity to protect their own security.
On Monday, about 250 attended a memorial service outside the hospital’s morgue for the 11 victims, saying it was being conducted in the slum because the dead had been followers of the radical anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The cleric and his Madhi Army militia are both based in Sadr City.
The U.S. command also said three of its soldiers were killed and two wounded in Baghdad on Sunday, the day that Iraq’s government began to lift the curfew by allowing Iraqis to leave their homes on foot to shop at their local fruit and vegetable markets. The curfew was imposed Thursday after suspected Sunni-Arab insurgents used bombs and mortars to kill more than 200 people in Sadr City in the worst attack by militants in the war.
Talabani had been scheduled to visit neighboring Iran on Saturday, but he had to postpone his trip because Baghdad’s airport was closed to commercial flights as part of the curfew.
The U.S. wants Iran’s mostly Shiite government to do more to help Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government stem a surge in sectarian violence.
Talabani is a member of Iraq’s Kurdish minority, but he had close ties with Iranian officials before Saddam Hussein was driven out by the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
The Bush administration has accused Tehran of arming and providing logistical assistance to Shiite militias, and British Defense Secretary Des Browne said Monday that Iran’s behavior in Iraq remains a deep concern.
“Support from within Iran goes to groups who are attacking our forces, but also to groups who are simply fueling the sectarian violence,” Browne said in an address to the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London.
Hard-line Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said Iran is “ready to help” calm Iraq’s fighting.
In other violence, gunmen opened fire on a crowded central Baghdad street on Monday morning, killing six Iraqis and wounding three.

TITLE: Berlusconi’s Trial Suspended After He Collapses At Rally
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: The Associated Press

MILAN, Italy — Former Premier Silvio Berlusconi, who was hospitalized for tests after he fainted during a rally, will stay in the hospital for a couple more days, doctors and friends said Monday. 
Emilio Fede, a news executive at one of Berlusconi’s private TV networks and a close friend, said after visiting him at San Raffaele hospital that the conservative opposition leader would remain at least through Tuesday.
Berlusconi, 70, had said before checking into the hospital Sunday evening that he would be staying for 24 hours.
Dr. Alberto Zangrillo, a heart specialist at San Raffaele, said Berlusconi would stay “a couple of days, no longer” while heart tests are done.
“For a person who had a fainting episode yesterday, which unfortunately all could see, keeping him in the hospital is correct from the medical point of view,” Zangrillo said.
“He’s a man who doesn’t have time, so we are taking advantage of the occasion (of the hospitalization) for a proper cardiac examination,” Zangrillo said.
Berlusconi’s spokesman, Paolo Bonaiuti, said he would keep his commitment to lead a rally Saturday in Rome to protest the policies of Premier Romano Prodi’s center-left government.
The hospitalization forced Berlusconi’s ongoing trial in Milan to be adjourned to Friday, his lawyer Niccolo Ghedini said.
Berlusconi and British lawyer David Mills are on trial for false accounting, embezzlement and tax fraud in the purchase by Berlusconi’s Mediaset empire of TV rights for U.S. movies. Both men deny wrongdoing.
The collapse also fueled speculation about Berlusconi’s political future at a time when his leadership in the conservative opposition is being challenged.
“He doesn’t want to, he must not and he couldn’t quit,” Bonaiuti told state radio.
Berlusconi nearly collapsed during a speech to supporters in the Tuscan spa resort of Montecatini Terme. 
His voice trailed off, and he gripped the podium for support as he leaned back. His aides rushed to keep him from falling over.

TITLE: Israel Offers Concessions Over Gaza
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: By Ravi Nessman 

JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, seeking to build on a shaky cease-fire with the Palestinians, offered Monday to reduce checkpoints, release frozen funds, and free prisoners in exchange for a serious push for peace by the Palestinians. 
In what was billed as a major policy speech, Olmert also said Israel would also pull out of the West Bank and uproot settlements under a final peace deal.
“I hold out my hand in peace to our Palestinian neighbors in the hope that it won’t be returned empty,” Olmert said.
“We cannot change the past and we will not be able to bring back the victims on both sides of the borders,” he said. “All that we can do today is stop additional tragedies.”
His offer to restart long-stalled peace talks came a day after the two sides began observing a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, ending five months of widespread violence in the coastal area and raising hopes that the truce would lead to new peace efforts.
Despite the cease-fire, Palestinian militants fired two rockets at Israel on Monday, causing no injuries, Israeli authorities said.
Olmert’s speech also raised the diplomatic stakes ahead of a visit to the region by President Bush.
Olmert said that if the Palestinians establish a new, moderate Cabinet committed to carrying out the U.S.-backed “road map” peace plan and securing the release of a captured Israeli soldier, then he would call for an immediate meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas “to have a real, open, honest, serious dialogue.”
Israeli officials denied the possibility of a summit between Abbas and Olmert on the sidelines of Bush’s visit to neighboring Jordan later this week. Olmert spokeswoman Miri Eisin said the sides were discussing when the leaders would meet, but no date had been set.
Palestinian legislator Saeb Erekat, a top aide to Abbas, head of the moderate Fatah Party, said the Palestinians were ready to negotiate a final peace deal.
“I believe Mr. Olmert knows he has a partner, and that is President Abbas. He knows that to achieve peace and security for all, we need to shoot for the end game,” Erekat said.

TITLE: CSKA Crowned Champions as Soccer Season Ends
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: Zenit St. Petersburg ended the 2005/06 Russian soccer season with a scoreless draw against Tom Tomsk at Petrovsky Stadium on Sunday.
Zenit place fourth in the premiership after all 30 games had been played, but CSKA Moscow had wrapped up the season as champions on Nov. 19 with a game in hand. 
CSKA ended the season with a 2-1 home defeat to neighbors Dinamo and finished level on 58 points with Spartak Moscow, who were 1-0 winners at Krylya Sovietov Samara. 
CSKA retained the title because they won more matches than their city rivals, which is the decisive factor if two teams finish level on points. 
Igor Semshov and Denis Kolodin scored either side of Ivica Olic’s equaliser to give Dinamo the win at the end of a poor season in which they narrowly avoided relegation. 
The league’s top scorer Roman Pavlyuchenko netted his 18th goal of the season to hand Spartak a bittersweet victory at 10th-placed Samara. 
Lokomotiv Moscow finished third five points behind the champions after a Draman Traore goal helped them to a 1-0 home win over Rostov.

TITLE: Pressure Grows on Flop Rugby Coach
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: By Mitch Phillips 

LONDON —If the British media is to be believed, Andy Robinson has coached England for the last time and if he does not resign, he will be paid off and asked to leave. 
Saturday’s 25-14 defeat by South Africa was England’s eighth loss in nine games and the 13th of Robinson’s 22-game, two-year reign in charge of the world champions. 
Later on Monday he was due to meet Rob Andrew, who as director of elite rugby has overall control of the England set-up, where he will begin the de-brief from the dreadful November series. 
Robinson has repeatedly said he will not resign and was still saying England were “moving forward” after Saturday’s defeat, their third from the four November tests. 
However, the man who helped England to win the World Cup three years ago as assistant to Clive Woodward, seems certain to be shown the door to give the new regime some working time before the defence of that title begins in 10 months’ time. Universally liked and respected throughout the rugby world, Robinson nevertheless has come under fire from just about every angle. 
Former England lock Paul Ackford, now a journalist, wrote in the Sunday Telegraph: “Robinson may have the confidence of his squad but he has lost the confidence of almost everyone else. 
“England lack shape, they lack direction and, critically, they are losing the respect of the rugby world.” 
Former England hooker Brian Moore wrote on Monday: “I strongly suspect that the decision that Robinson must go was really made after the Argentina game and, if so, it should have been executed at that time because all else was disingenuous.” 
Andrew’s directorial post was created in April, when Robinson’s three assistants were sacked after another fourth-placed finish in the Six Nations. 
The former England flyhalf surely knows that something needs to be done, or even seen to be done, after twice witnessing the national team booed off the pitch at Twickenham. 
Robinson’s schedule this week includes a series of meetings in Paris to discuss the World Cup but the chances of him still being in charge next year are rated highly unlikely by British bookmakers, who make him 4-1 on to be out of the post before the Six Nations. If he does go, there is also likely to be a large scale clear-out of under-performing players, with captain Martin Corry widely tipped to be among them. 
Robinson has repeatedly gone out of his way to praise the leadership of Corry, both men being cut from the same fearless cloth as players, but the Leicester number eight is well aware that his time as captain will forever be associated with the lowest point in England’s rugby history. 
“Saturday was my 49th cap and in all that time I cannot remember such a sense of uncertainty,” Corry wrote in Monday’s Guardian. 
“Who will be head coach and captain for England’s first Six Nations game against Scotland at Twickenham in February? Nobody has a clue at this precise moment, least of all me.” 
Corry said the constant speculation about his and Robinson’s future had been unsettling and made it “impossible to focus purely on our rugby.” 
He added that the squad, frustrated and angry at their own performances, had gone out and “drowned their sorrows” in a pub on Saturday night. 
“It had been a long and demanding month and for better of worse this was the end of a chapter.” 
For Robinson, it is surely the end of the book.

TITLE: U.S. Ice Dancers Win Gold As Russians Are Frozen Out
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: By Jim Heintz

MOSCOW — Tanith Belbin and Benjamin Agosto of the United States won the ice dancing gold Sunday at the Cup of Russia after the free dance performances. 
Belbin and Agosto finished with an overall 186.33 points — 0.99 ahead of Russians Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin. Isabelle Delobel and Olivier Schoenfelder of France took the bronze with 183.53. 
The Americans’ ballroom-style romp to classic movie tunes scored behind the more adventurous Russians, who wore peasant-themed costumes and were accompanied by music from Borodin’s “Prince Igor.” 
But the Russians had started the free dance in third place overall — after Shabalin’s fall in Saturday’s original dance — and they fell short of enough points to take gold. 
“It was hard to get together and stay focused after yesterday’s mistake,” Shabalin said. 
Delobel and Schoenfelder wore all-black outfits for their “Bonnie and Clyde” free dance but had synchronization problems on spins. The final standings reversed the Cup of China results two weeks ago, when Domnina and Shabalin beat the Americans. 
“We feel we’ve made a very big step forward from our performance in China,” Agosto said. 
The results left Russia without a gold medal for the first time in the event’s decade-long history. 
Brian Joubert of France won the men’s, Switzerland’s Sarah Meier took the women’s gold and Germany’s Aliona Savchenko and Robin Szolkowy won the pairs. 
Silver medalists included American champion Johnny Weir, Hungary’s Julia Sebestyen and Russian pair Maria Petrova and Alexei Tikhonov. 
Bronze medals went to Yoshie Onda of Japan, Ilya Klimkin of Russia and pair Yuko Kawaguchi and Alexander Smirnov of Russia.
The Cup of Russia is the fifth of six events in the Grand Prix series.