SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1230 (96), Friday, December 15, 2006
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TITLE: Sportsmen To Run In City Vote
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The forthcoming election campaign to the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly is likely to resemble a sports contest as major parties recruit popular sportsmen as candidates to run in the March poll.
Yevgeny Plyushchenko, an Olympic figure skating champion and one of Russia’s most flamboyant sportsmen, announced at a news conference this week that he will run in the election for the Just Russia party as one of the top three candidates on its list.
But Plyushchenko indicated it was practical rather than ideological motives that led him to plunge into politics.
“Careers in sports do not last forever, and no one can skate forever,”  Plyushchenko said.
The blond-haired skater said he had been approached by other political parties with similar offers but said he did not consider any of them seriously.
Fittingly, Oleg Nilov, chairman of the local branch of Just Russia, is the president of St. Petersburg Figure Skating Federation, and this may explain Plyushchenko’s decision to join the party.
If elected, Plyushchenko said he will lobby for the interests of sportsmen as well as back health care reform and children’s programs.
Maria Matskevich, a leading researcher and project leader at the Institite of Sociology at the Russian Academy of Sciences said taking prominent sportsmen on board is a good decision for any political party.
“Russia’s champions made careers as government executives — take for instance, hockey player Vyacheslav Fetisov  [now head of the Federal Agency for Physical Culture and Sport] and hockey goaltender Vladislav Tretyak [president of the Russian Ice Hockey Federation] — but they never played an important role in parliaments,” the analyst said. “The most vivid example is perhaps [Greco-Roman wrestling champion] Alexander Karelin. As one of the top three candidates from the United Russia [called the Unity Party at the time], he proved a good vote-getter, but his presence in the State Duma was close to nominal.”
But Plyushchenko’s political ambition may match his drive in sport. The skater said he has long term plans that include running for the State Duma.
Meanwhile, according to a source close to the negotiations, United Russia is persuing Andrei Arshavin, a top soccer player at Zenit St. Petersburg, with the aim of putting him forward as a candidate to the Legislative Assembly .
“If this is true and if they succeed, it is going to be a very winning move: Arshavin’s participation is likely to draw more younger people and middle-aged men — who usually stay away from politics  — to go to the polling stations, if only for the fun of voting for, or against Arshavin,” Matskevich said. 
Russia’s elite sportsmen have recently been showing a growing appetite for political battles. Earlier this year, Svetlana Zhurova, 2006 Olympic champion in speed skating, Anton Sikharulidze, 2002 Olympic champion in figure skating, and prominent boxer Konstantin Tszyu joined United Russia, which also boasts hockey players Maxim Sushinsky, Maxim Sokolov and Alexander Kharitonov among its members. 
St. Petersburg-based Zhurova has announced she is intending to participate in the next elections to the Leningrad Oblast Legislative Assembly.
Popular sportsmen in the west have often turned to politics when their sports careers come to an end. The leader of the Liberal Democrats in the U.K., Sir Menzies Campbell, was a successful sprinter in the 1960s, while former U.S. presidential candidate Bill Bradley was a professional basketball player.
Local political parties have not yet presented their lists of candidates for registration to the St. Petersburg Election Commission, with the only exception being Yabloko. Yabloko’s top three candidates include Mikhail Amosov, head of the City Planning Commission in the current assembly, Natalya Yevdokimova, head of the Social Issues Commission, and Maxim Reznik, one of the leaders of the local branch of Yabloko.
In the meantime, the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly has sent an appeal to Sergei Mironov, head of the Federation Council and Just Russia party leader — and a native of St. Petersburg — asking the politician not to front the party’s local list at the next elections. The appeal was supported by the majority of lawmakers, who felt Mironov’s high position in Moscow would turn him into “a steam-train” for the party, and called his participation in the local campaign unethical.

TITLE: Drunk Tanks Face Money Woes, Bad PR
AUTHOR: By Carl Schreck
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Two police officers escorted Boris into the station at about 6 p.m. His speech was slurred. He had trouble recalling his last name. When the cops forcibly removed his coat and sweater, the stench of booze and sweat was overpowering.
“Why did you bring me here?” Boris screamed after the nurse managed to coax his age, 53, out of him.
When the officers told him he’d have to take off all his clothes, Boris less-than-politely declined.
One double-arm lock later, three officers had Boris hoisted in the air, immobilized. They removed his boots, stripped him down to his tattered boxer shorts, and hustled him off to a ward where two men who had urinated on themselves hours before were passed out on their cots.
Boris is among the hundreds of thousands of Russians scooped up off the street by police each year and forced to dry out at the infamous, century-old institution known as the vytrezvitel, or sobering-up station.
With winter approaching, sobering-up stations can be lifesavers for people who drink themselves unconscious in freezing temperatures.
But now the sobering-up station, or drunk tank, is facing an uncertain future, plagued with financial woes, legal questions and a public image tainted by times past.
Since the Soviet collapse, the number of sobering-up stations has plummeted. There are now 586 stations in the country, down from 1,249 in 1990, said Yulia Ivanova, spokeswoman for the Interior Ministry’s Public Order Department, which oversees the stations.
In Moscow alone, several sobering-up stations have been closed in recent years. There are 12 facilities in the city — 11 for men and one for women.
Police Lieutenant Oleg Sergeyev of Moscow’s No. 3 Sobering-Up Station, in the Northern Administrative District, voiced serious concerns about the months ahead.
“Winter is especially dangerous,” Sergeyev said. “I think our patrol guys have saved the lives of a lot of the people they’ve found. We get thank-you notes from people thanking us for saving their lives.”
The No. 1 problem facing stations is money. The fees charged to drunks for sobering up vary widely — 100 rubles in Moscow, 50 rubles in Vladimir, 1,900 rubles in Yakutsk — and are rarely enough to cover overheads.
Another hurdle the drunk tanks must contend with is the courts. With the forced disrobing and prison-like atmosphere, many have questioned whether Russia, like the Soviet Union before it, has the right to force people to get sober.
In May 2005, a Chelyabinsk man took his case to the Supreme Court, arguing that his civil liberties had been violated when local police detained him overnight in a sobering-up station. The court rejected that argument, but other challenges seem likely.
Indeed, officials are well aware of the police-state provenance of the vytrezvitel, the first station having opened in Leningrad in 1931 under the jurisdiction of the People’s Health Commissariat.		
Following a 1940 decree by secret police chief Lavrenty Beria, one of the era’s most searing symbols of the Stalin dictatorship, the drunk tanks were transferred to the control of the NKVD, the predecessor to the KGB.
After the Soviet collapse, the government sought to distance sobering-up stations from the police, ordering the facilities transferred to the Health and Social Development Ministry. Despite that, the Interior Ministry continues to run them.
Compounding the stations’ PR problems have been reports of police abuse at the facilities.
In June, Moscow region prosecutors charged a lieutenant with stealing a detainee’s ATM card and withdrawing $5,000 from his account.
And in 2003, prosecutors charged seven officers from Moscow’s Sobering-Up Station No. 4 with theft and abuse of power for stopping people who were rushing to catch trains at the nearby Kursky Station. 
The officers then forced these people to pay bribes — or miss their trains, prosecutors said. Attendants at the station were also accused of robbing detainees.
Still, those who man the sobering-up stations insist they play a critical role.
For one thing, alcohol remains a critical problem. The health ministry estimates that there are 2 million alcoholics nationwide. 
Alcoholism has been cited as a leading killer, with an estimated 40,000 people believed to die annually from alcohol poisoning.
“Sobering-up stations are a way to prevent crime,” said Sergeyev of Sobering-Up Station No. 3. “If he’s getting rowdy in here, it means he’s not getting rowdy on the street or beating up his wife at home.”
For others, the stations, while having a lock-down feel, do provide safety and some modicum of cleanliness.
Consider Sobering-Up Station No. 3. Sergeyev has spent the past six years at the station, which has 15 beds in two wards sealed off by thick, gray, metal doors with a small window for attendants to keep an eye on detainees.
After being deposited at the station, detainees check in their clothes and valuables, are questioned by medics and are then given a cot with fresh linen to sleep off their drunkenness.
Granted, sobering-up stations are not hotels. In Boris’ ward, for instance, the sheets on his neighbor’s cot were decorated with a urine stain the size of a human torso. Nor did Boris seem to care much about letting the other men in his ward sleep: Minutes after being locked up, he began banging on the steel door and begging for a cigarette.
Most of the men at the sobering-up station were more resigned: less hostile, less pugnacious. While they seemed surprised they’d have to get undressed, they did so voluntarily.
But they didn’t necessarily think they belonged behind bars.
“We’d been sitting at the cafe just across the street and having some drinks after work,” explained a man in his fifties sitting on his cot. “We left the cafe, and the police picked us up right away. That’s a very convenient location for them.”
A duty officer offered a different version of what had happened. The two men, the officer said, had been loitering just outside the train station, cursing loudly and struggling to keep their balance.
Whatever the case, Interior Ministry officials are convinced the sobering-up stations cannot be left to rot.
“Whatever it’s called, whether it’s part of the police or part of the health authorities, it’s clear something has to exist to help these people and prevent them from committing crimes or becoming victims of crimes themselves,” said Ivanova, the ministry spokeswoman.
Especially with winter coming on, officials said, the drunks on Moscow’s soon-to-be frozen streets will need somewhere warm to get sober.
Vladimir Kiselyov, who has worked for 10 years at Sobering-Up Station No. 3, has seen all too many vodka-swilling men come through the turnstile at the drunk tank.
“A lot of people turn up here several times each month,” Kiselyov said. “Some people might come here six or eight times a month. Our patrolmen know their faces.”

TITLE: Registration Reform for Foreigners Planned
AUTHOR: By Ali Nassor
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Russian and international visitors to the city will be able to register themselves at post offices when a reform unveiled by the St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast Federal Immigration Service this week takes force next month.
“The new practice will save both foreign and Russian visitors the time and trouble of filling in and chasing people in office corridors,” the head of the Immigration Services’ Department of Legal and International Cooperation, Sergei Golovin said about the new policy which takes effect on Jan. 15.
The service will also launch a new tolerance-building program that will include the creation of a co-ordination council involving members of ethnic minorities living in the jurisdiction of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast. 
“We shall have regular meetings with the council to share ideas,” said Golovin, who is also supervising the scheme,  in a round-table talk with members of the city’s minority leaders on Tuesday. 
“It looks too good to be true,” said Boris Pustintsev, a co-leader of the Citizens’ Watch human rights watchdog, referring to both schemes. “It is a show-off gesture typical of the KGB who would at times pretend to be working with and for the people by forging pseudo-dialogue with the public,” he said, adding “they cannot do otherwise at this time when they face accusations of human rights abuse and xenophobia from the international community and the public in general.”
Condemning the plans, Pustintsev said, “The restriction of movement and the registration regulations in question were abolished more than ten years ago with the formation of the new federal constitution... it’s a move to legalize the offense’s being committed].”
But to Muhammad Nazar, head of the city’s Tajik Diaspora, under whose patronage are about 10,000 people, the new registration procedures were welcome, saying “they will relieve me of a workload that involves chasing registration papers for my compatriots.”
Nevertheless, he said, the new system leaves a lot to be desired since the registration regulations in question are treated separately from work permits. 
“Most of my countrymen come here to work; but with this kind of confusion they will be easy targets of hostile law enforcers for being illegal migrants.”
According to Nazar, the new regulations will mark the start of a series of new problems. 
“Imagine the situation when someone fills in the form as a tourist when there’s no migration officer to counter-check, and disappears in the city’s criminal underworld or even resorting to a non-sanctioned job,” he said, adding, “it’s not a bad law, only that it lacks the follow-up mechanism.” 
Nazar, who is also a preliminary member of the Coordination Council, applauds the scheme on tolerance, saying, “It’s a step forward, but only if our voices really matter.”

TITLE: Post Finally Arrives After 7-Year Delay
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian Post has started delivering 4.5 tonnes of letters and parcels that were sent from the United States in 1999.
The state-owned postal service said the delay was not its fault — a shipping container with the mail inside had languished at a port in Finland for years.
The container finally reached Russia on December 8.
“The loss of mail usually happens because of force majeure circumstances, such as natural disasters, traffic and other accidents,” Russian Post said via e-mail.
“All of the mail has been very well preserved because the container was hermetically sealed.”

TITLE: City Charity Project
TEXT: ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Every Petersburger will have a chance to become a Good Samaritan when Radio Baltika’s charity fundraiser gets under way Sunday.
The radio station said that each year 6,000 children spend the holidays in city hospitals and has appealed to listeners to donate a gift for them.
The gifts can be dropped off at the office of Radio Baltika until Dec. 24 or brought to Lenta supermarkets on Dec. 23 or 24 where special collecting points will be organized.

TITLE: Park-and-Ride Pitched
TEXT: ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The city’s first “park-and-ride” scheme has been announced by the planning committee of the Legislative Assembly, Rosbalt agency reported.
Fifty car parks will be built on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, accommodating 250,000 vehicles, with express-buses laid on to bring visitors to the city, according to the brains behind the project Nikita Ananov, the news agency reported.
Meanwhile, to deal with ever-increasing traffic jams on the city’s roads City Hall has created a new department whose chief, the traffic director, will be held personally responsible for improving the situation, Rosbalt reported.

TITLE: Russian Schoolgirl Sues Over Evolution Teaching
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: A city court on Wednesday heard an unprecedented lawsuit brought by a 15-year-old student who maintains that being taught the theory of evolution in school violates her rights and offends her religious beliefs.
Maria Shreiber has sued the St. Petersburg city education committee, saying the 10th-grade biology textbook used at the Cervantes Gymnasium was offensive to believers and that the school should teach an alternative to Darwin’s famous theory.
“The biology textbook generally refers to religion and the existence of God in a negative way. It infringes on believers’ rights,” she said in televised remarks.
Shreiber could not be immediately located for further comment.
Her father, Kirill Shreiber, who represented her in court Wednesday, said he wanted the biology textbook revised.
School officials, meanwhile, were dismissive of the suit. Principal Andrei Polozov said he doubted Shreiber had “serious religious beliefs.”
“It seems to everyone that this is stupid and serves no purpose,” he said of the lawsuit in televised comments. “Pupils and teachers are more amused than concerned by it.”
Deputy principal Olga Makarova said the biology teacher had mentioned alternative theories to evolution.
“When starting the course on the matter, the biology teacher said that there are other versions of humanity’s origin,” she said.
The suit is the first of its kind in Russia.
In the United States, several lawsuits challenging the theory that says humans descended from apes have been filed in courts, with many anti-evolution groups pushing an idea known as “intelligent design,” which holds that living organisms are so complex they must have been created by some kind of higher force. A Pennsylvania judge overturned such a lawsuit in April.

TITLE: Jews Question Russia-Iran Links
AUTHOR: By Kevin O’Flynn
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia’s largest Jewish organization on Wednesday called on the government to reassess its relations with Iran in response to a conference held in Tehran that questioned the reality of the Holocaust.
Boruch Gorin, director of public affairs for the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia, called the Tehran conference “unprincipled and arrogant PR on the bones of the victims of the worst catastrophe of the 20th century.”
During the two-day conference, which ended Tuesday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said: “The Zionist regime will disappear soon, just as the Soviet Union disappeared,” The New York Times reported, citing Iranian news agency ISNA.
Ahmadinejad said a committee should be formed to determine whether the Holocaust actually occurred.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin said Wednesday that Ahmadinejad’s statements were unacceptable.
President Vladimir Putin has made no comment on the conference.

TITLE: U.S., Russia Stall Debate on Iran
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: UNITED NATIONS — Negotiations on an Iran sanctions resolution were unexpectedly postponed late Tuesday because of Russia’s anger at the United States for raising the plight of a Belarussian opposition leader in the UN Security Council.
Belarus, an authoritarian former communist state with close ties to Russia, is not on the agenda of the UN’s most powerful body. Russia’s Ambassador Vitaly Churkin strongly objected when senior U.S. diplomat William Brencick brought up the 54-day hunger strike of jailed former Belarusian opposition presidential candidate, Alexander Kozulin, council diplomats said.
The five veto-wielding council members — the U.S., Russia, China, Britain and France — along with Germany had been scheduled to meet soon after to discuss Russian amendments to a revised European draft resolution on Iran.
But because of the diplomatic tiff over Belarus, the meeting was put off.
“It wasn’t the best timing by the U.S.,” said Britain’s UN ambassador, Emyr Jones Parry.
Churkin, when asked why the meeting was postponed, said: “Because I said so.”
A UN source said the events in Belarus were “not a Security Council issue,” adding that the Security Council was “not the place for political propaganda.”

TITLE: Interest Remains High In Regional Expansion
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Mortgage volume at City Mortgage Bank increased up to $300 million this year, managers said Wednesday at a press conference to announce their regional expansion. Various obstacles notwithstanding, the bank’s representatives were confident of continued expansion.
Summarizing the bank’s performance in 2006, Igor Zhigunov, director for the Northwest region, said that its total number of borrowers was in excess of 4,000.
This year the bank opened offices in Yekaterinburg, Ufa and Rostov-na-Donu. It also operates offices in Samara and Nizhny Novgorod.
Next year the volume of mortgages could increase by between 80 to 90 percent, Zhigunov said.
Although Moscow currently accounts for 66 percent of its mortgages, in the future the regions will be where they do most deals, he said.
“It is impossible to compete by decreasing the interest rate. We stake our growth on developing credit and cash offices in the regions and offering a finely tuned product. Next year we plan to enter new regions every month,” Zhigunov said.
The bank will also expand its network of mortgage brokers and agents. At the moment it works with 300 brokers and over 100 agents.
“We needed to speed up the deals. We were one of the first banks to offer deal registration within 16 hours,” said Andrei Pimenov, head of the bank credit and cash office in St. Petersburg.
In St. Petersburg this year City Mortgage Bank issued loans for $40 million. Mortgages account for six percent of loans issued in the city.
However, according to Zhigunov, mortgages still do not exceed one percent of GDP. “On average it takes 11 years to save enough money to buy an apartment. A normal period would be between six and eight years. Taking this into account we can hardly expect mortgages to grow at a staggering rate,” Zhigunov admitted.
The average monthly payment is $1,000, which is twice the average cost of renting an apartment. In the last half of 2006 the average size of a mortgage increased by 80 percent to 90 percent up to $70,000.
However real estate attracts wealthy Russians from Siberia and foreign investors. “In Europe, real estate is overpriced and of no interest to investors. Over the last few years direct foreign investment into Russia has increased fourfold and could reach $20 billion by the end of the year,” Zhigunov said.
He forecasted that the price for elite real estate would keep growing, while comfort class and business class real estate would grow within the rate of inflation. “If the volume of construction does not increase, the price will grow much faster,” Zhigunov said.
“The City Mortgage Bank managers’ optimism is, of course, a positive sign, however doubling the mortgage volume is a very ambitious goal,” said Konstantin Krasovsky, general director of Competens Consulting company.
Such a goal demands decreasing the initial installment to zero, he said, “because the growth of real estate price in St. Petersburg this year made a 30 percent installment not affordable for many potential borrowers.”
This year several banks — Vneshtorgbank 24, Raiffeisen and Bank of Moscow — offered mortgages without an initial installment. However City Mortgage Bank rejected the idea as too risky, Zhigunov said.
Krasovsky agreed that price competition is unlikely. “We could hardly expect interest rates to decrease. They will oscillate to within 0.5 percent from the current level,” he said.
This year City Mortgage Bank issued mortgage backed securities of $72.65 million total value, which were distributed in Europe and the U.S. It was the first Russian bank to make such a move. Next year the bank plans to issue securities of over $100 million total value.
Krasovsky noted that while securitization improves the financial position of the lender, it does not directly affect the market.
“The market depends on the ability to take a loan rather than on the willingness to grant one,” Krasovsky said.

TITLE: State Eager to Serve Residents
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The state is forcing private firms out of the market for housing services, companies said at a press conference at Rosbalt news agency Thursday. In some districts state companies are likely to win 100 percent of tenders for the servicing of residential buildings.
As part of City Hall’s program of reform, the Housing Agency will distribute around 55 million square meters of residential buildings between service and managing companies by the end of 2006.
District authorities are supervising the tenders, with the results to be announced in January 2007. However, market players said they already know the winner — Zhilkomservice, a state owned company created on the basis of over 40 former servicing agencies located in various city districts.
“Zhilkomservice controls about 87 percent of the market,” said Sergei Tikhonov, general director of RESTSV company.
In Krasnogvardeisky and Tsentralny districts state companies won 100 percent of lots.
Last year RESTSV, as well as the Sozvezdie Vodoleya holding company, took part in tenders and have been servicing buildings in accordance with one-year investment agreements.
RESTSV didn’t win any.
Among the formal arguments used, officials said that companies did not service the buildings in a profitable way and made mistakes when filing documents.
Sozvezdiye has been servicing four objects — in Primorsky, Vasileostrovsky, Krasnogvardeisky and Kurortny districts. Vladimir Khilchenko, president of Sozvezdie Vodoleya, blamed the authorities for giving him dilapidated buildings and hiding information on the real condition of the premises.
“Some of these buildings were constructed in 1917. The basements were flooded, the infrastructure looked like a mass of scrap metal. It doesn’t make sense to repair the roof when the building is about to collapse,” Khilchenko said.
A net loss was the natural result of unpaid resident bills (55 percent of the total debt) and debt from the federal budget (36 percent), Khilchenko explained. By June 2006 total debt amounted to 10 billion rubles ($386 million).
“Although we signed an agreement with the city housing agency, we did not have agreements with the residents, and formally we could not demand payments from debtors nor file suits against them,” Khilchenko said.
Another problem is that existing tariffs for services are far below their actual cost. “At the moment conditions make it unprofitable to provide housing services,” Khilchenko said.
“I regret that we did not appeal to the courts last year. We should have created a precedent,” Tikhonov said.
Khilchenko objected. “It does not make sense to start legal proceedings with district officials. Even if we prove their culpability, they are responsible for assessing our performance. And they will pick up on some mistakes and break our agreement,” he said.
He recalled the words of the city governor in her annual appeal to the city legislative assembly — earlier this year Valentina Matviyenko called for liquidating the state monopoly in housing services.
“There is no doubt that development of the city is impossible without radical reform of housing services. The old soviet system is obsolete and totally discredited. Housing is in ruins,” she said in March.
“The reform has two main aims — to make city residents responsible owners of their property and at the same time to provide real market competition between service companies,” Matviyenko said.
She admitted, however, that “inertness, resistance and even sabotage” could impede the process since for a number of decades servicing agencies have formed a “vicious circle of irresponsibility.”
“The mediators — district authorities — slow down the reform process. Investigating us captiously, they will always find faults. It’s like arguing with the road traffic police,” Khilchenko said.

TITLE: VTB to Sell 16% Stake In IMB to UniCredit
AUTHOR: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW — The country’s second-largest bank, Vneshtorgbank, has agreed to sell its 16 percent stake in International Moscow Bank, or IMB, to Italy’s UniCredit, banking sources said Wednesday.
“An agreement in principle has been reached. There are only technical details left. It is possible that the deal will be closed before the end of the year,” one of the sources said.
UniCredit earlier this year bought a 23.4 percent stake in IMB from Nordic banking group Nordea and currently controls 79.3 percent of IMB, which is ranked among Russia’s top 10 banks.
A VTB spokesman declined to comment, but the state-owned bank stated its intention to sell its interest in IMB, which it valued at $146 million, in its 2005 accounts published in May.
VTB is restructuring to prepare for a planned international initial public offering next year, in which it aims to raise up to $4 billion by floating a stake of up to one-quarter. 
In addition to selling non-core assets, market sources say VTB is looking to acquire an investment banking franchise. An approach to independent finance house Renaissance Capital has been rebuffed, they say.
After its takeover of Germany’s HVB, UniCredit moved its East European banking holdings to Austrian unit Bank Austria Creditanstalt, now the direct owner of the controlling interest in IMB. IMB’s assets totaled $5.5 billion at the end of 2005; its shareholders’ equity totaled $477 million. Net profit for the year was $106 million. 				
		       (Reuters, MT)

TITLE: Shell Says Pressure May Delay Project
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Pressure from the authorities is beginning to threaten the timetable of the Shell-led Sakhalin-2 oil and gas project, the venture’s operator said Wednesday.
“The activity of the regulatory bodies who are slowing down the process of getting an agreement is beginning to have an effect on the project,” said Igor Ignatyev, vice president of the operator, Sakhalin Energy.
“In January we are due to start drilling at the Lunksoye field, but for more than two months, we haven’t been able to get the environmental inspectorate to send its agreement for the start of drilling.
“The [Lunskoye] timetable is no longer realistic. It will be a serious factor in keeping to project deadlines.”
The Natural Resources Ministry has mounted a campaign of inspections by its environmental inspectorate and threats of administrative sanctions against Sakhalin-2, the only big energy project entirely in foreign hands. 
Partly as a result, a deal is taking shape for Gazprom to buy into the scheme that includes the world’s biggest liquefied natural gas project, which is due to start supplying Japan, South Korea and the United States in mid-2008. 
The water resources agency has suspended 12 water-use licenses held by Sakhalin-2’s main contractor — Russian-Italian joint venture Starstroi — and given it two months to rectify violations. 
 On Wednesday, Interfax quoted the agency’s head, Rustam Khamitov, as saying he doubted that the contractor could rectify the violations and that the licenses would be suspended. 
This would prevent the group from finishing pipelines linking gas fields in the north of Sakhalin with the liquefaction plant in the south.
Analysts say pressure from the state, notably from environmental inspectorate official Oleg Mitvol, is part of a wider drive to increase Kremlin control over the strategic energy sector.
“Everybody is speaking about the company’s activities, but nobody raises questions about the personal responsibility of officials in this project, which is very serious and strategic for Russia,” Ignatyev said.
Gazprom is in talks with Shell to buy into Sakhalin-2, the biggest single foreign investment in the country.
Shell’s Japanese partners Mitsui and Mitsubishi may also sell Gazprom a 10 percent stake each. Shell’s troubles began last year when it doubled its cost estimate for Sakhalin-2 to $22 billion days after reaching a preliminary swap deal that would have brought Gazprom in as a 25 percent shareholder.
The cost increase infuriated government officials and forced Shell back to the negotiating table with both Gazprom and the Kremlin, which needs to agree to changes in the project budget.
Shell plans to tie up all the threads of the scheme at once. 
“No single element can be agreed in isolation from the whole. People might think you can chop it up into different pieces, but that’s not going to happen,” Shell spokesman Alf D’Souza said Monday.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: Comstar Purchase
n MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Billionaire Vladimir Yevtushenkov’s Comstar United Telesystems will get a one-year loan of up to $675 million from ABN Amro Bank NV to refinance the purchase of a quarter of national fixed-line monopoly Svyazinvest.
Comstar will pay ABN Amro an interest of 1.6 percent above the London Interbank Offered Rate or Libor, the Moscow-based company said in a filing on its web site Thursday. Comstar approved the deal at its board meeting Dec. 11.

Sual Plant 
n ALMATA (Bloomberg) — Sual, a Russian aluminum producer being taken over by larger rival Russian Aluminium, will build a factory in Kazakhstan to supply countries including China with the metal.
The $1.5 billion smelter will be capable of producing 500,000 tons of the metal a year, Artem Volynets, Sual vice president for development, said in a presentation in Kazakhstan Thursday, according to an e-mailed copy of his remark.
Halyk Millions
n LONDON (Bloomberg) — Halyk Savings Bank, Kazakhstan’s third-biggest lender by assets, raised $680 million in a stock offering in London.
Halyk sold 42.5 million global depositary receipts at $16 apiece, the top of the range it was seeking, the bank said Thursday in a Regulatory News Service statement. Halyk on Dec. 12 raised the original range of $11.80 to $14.30 to as much as $16.

Escrow Cover 
n WARSAW (Bloomberg) — PKN Orlen SA, Poland’s largest oil company, will seek compensation for fire damage at a Lithuanian refiner from a fund that the seller, Yukos International UK BV, agreed to hold for two years in case of claims.
Orlen is buying AB Mazeikiu Nafta from Yukos and the Lithuanian government for a total of $2.34 billion. Mazeikiu says damage from the October fire may total 131 million litai ($50 million). “The damage from the fire will be compensated partly by insurance, and partly from a $250 million escrow account that Yukos will set up under the terms of our agreement announced in May,’’ Orlen Chief Executive Igor Chalupec said in an interview in Warsaw on Wednesday.

Kolon Order 
n GWACHEON, South Korea (Bloomberg) — Kolon Engineering & Construction Co. of South Korea received a 223 billion won ($240 million) order to build a bioethanol plant in southwestern Russia.
Kolon signed a preliminary agreement to build the factory in Volgograd for Volgo Bioethanol, Gwacheon-based Kolon said in a regulatory filing Thursday. Construction of the alternative fuel plant will probably be completed two years after a final agreement is signed by June, said Jung Sung Hwan, a manager at Kolon’s overseas business.

Alstom Sales 
n MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Alstom SA, the world’s second-biggest train maker, said sales will be buoyed by increased investment in faster locomotives and more comfortable carriages in emerging economies such as Russia and Turkey.

TITLE: Pinochet Junta In High Regard
AUTHOR: By Alexei Pankin
TEXT: Augusto Pinochet has died. He was the old idol of Russia’s democrats and liberals. I recall the praises of the former Chilean dictator’s iron hand sung by Mark Zakharov, the progressive director of the Lenin Komsomol Theater, back in Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s time. Pinochet’s was an example for young reformers in President Boris Yeltsin’s time as well. I remember one of them telling me with delight that, after the siege of the White House in 1993, some of the surviving defenders where taken to a nearby stadium. In this the reformer saw a certain symbolic gesture reminiscent of Pinochet, who, as is well known, held and tortured his enemies in the Santiago’s football stadium. Around the time of President Vladimir Putin’s ascension to the presidential throne in 2000, the press was full of praise for the successes of the Chilean experiment. Back then, sociologist and Latin America specialist Alexander Tarasov wrote the following in Sreda magazine:
“Either 186 or 222 journalists, depending on the source, including foreigners, died during the first three days of the putsch in Chile. ... From 2,705 to 2,820 journalists are estimated to have been killed over the course of the coup or died in the junta’s prisons and concentration thereafter. ... Up to 40 percent of all journalists working in Chile when Pinochet came to power on Sept. 11, 1973, later emigrated. ... Over 1 million people left the country, representing about 10 percent of the population or one-third of all economically active citizens. In Russia, that would be the same as 15 million people heading for the doors.”
Fortunately, the liberal reforms in Russia were not carried through to the end, thus saving us the lives of thousands of journalists and sparing Europe a deluge of starving Russian refugees.
But Pinochet’s reign continues to live in the minds and hearts of decision and opinion makers. “Khrushchev was for us what Pinochet was for Chile,” was State Duma Deputy Gennady Gudkov’s first comments to the press. “One thing is clear,” a comment published in Rossiiskaya Gazeta said. “He had not been convicted when he passed away; therefore, he was at least formally innocent.” 
And consider this quote:
“In the first place, the level of journalism has declined precipitously. A new generation of young and incompetent journalists has arrived on the scene. Their deficiencies are especially evident in articles about economics, humanities and cultural issues. They have no mastery of specialized journalistic terminology, as can be seen by their confusion of the words cadastre and sequester. And they quite sincerely write that ‘it is well known that, on orders from the Marxist International, a certain Charles Darwin postulated that God did not create man at all; instead, man appeared as the fruit of unnatural connections between different breeds of monkeys.’
“Second, the use of language has degraded extremely. Not only are journalistic writings littered with Americanisms, but they have become exceedingly uniform and lack any personal voice.
“Third, the intellectual level of journalism has fallen precipitously. Journalism is no longer an arena for the intellect; what is expected now is mediocrity. Banalities are heaped upon banalities, and the mentality of the average official or business owner has become the new standard. Reports or translations from English-language gossip about Hollywood stars require no mental effort. It is a professional and intellectual catastrophe.”
Do you think this passage refers to Pinochet’s Chile or the Russia of today?

Alexei Pankin is a freelance journalist in Moscow.

TITLE: Some Strong Medicine
AUTHOR: By Nikolai Petrov
TEXT: The case of the Federal Mandatory Medical Insurance Fund provides the likelihood that wolves will be exposed as wearing sheep’s clothing — or at least dinner jackets or medical gowns. This looks set to take place on a grand scale, might involve whole networks of illegal activity and affects a significant number of the country’s regions.
And it’s safe to say that the whole thing started in the regions. This summer, budget and finance specialist Pavel Voronin, one of the “Duma-saurs” from United Russia, called on the Prosecutor General’s Office to check on the activities of the insurance fund in his native region of Stavropol. The ensuing investigation dovetailed with the new chief prosecutor’s plan for a systematic review of all federal ministries, services and agencies. The second contributing factor behind the scale of the scandal is the enormous debt for drug deliveries that the federal government has incurred; the federal government’s subsequent appeal to a number of regional governments for additional funds to cover those debts; and investigations made by the federal authorities that revealed large-scale “violations of fiscal discipline” in insurance fund documentation for 2005. These are primarily related to the “additional medical services” program set up in 2004 in conjunction with the replacement of some social benefits by cash payments.
In short, the program lets people receive free medicine — instead of the money to buy it — as part of their social welfare benefits. At first, 12 million people were recipients of the free drugs under the program. In 2005, many of these recipients opted out of these packages altogether. Thirty billion rubles, or $1.14 billion, were allocated from the federal budget for the remaining 7.5 million recipients. Not only was this money spent long ago, but a debt of 21 billion rubles has also been accumulated. And the cost for this year is expected to grow, as 2.5 million more people have joined the program.
The scam under investigation was simple: Contracts to deliver drugs within the framework of the program were purportedly awarded without tenders, or with only the appearance of one, to companies close to Health and Social Development Minister Mikhail Zurabov. These firms then purportedly furnished the drugs and equipment at inflated prices, splitting the profits with officials. Hence the budget overruns and the shortage of cheaper drugs. A severe shortage of these drugs was reported last month in the Vologda, Ryazan and Sverdlovsk regions, for example.
Criminal proceedings were initiated in early September as a result of the investigation. At the end of October, law enforcement bodies in a number of regions conducted simultaneous inspections of the final link in the pharmaceutical market chain — pharmacies. The operation included document seizures and large-scale confiscations of counterfeit products. Inspections of domestic drug manufacturers were also conducted.
Then, in November, came the turn for the insurance fund, along with the main companies involved in the suspected scam. The prosecutor’s office carried out hundreds of searches and seized documents in almost 20 regions, including Voronezh, Smolensk, Tomsk and Primorye. It is worth noting that, in addition to the insurance fund’s main headquarters, the organization works out of about 90 regional centers and more than 800 branch offices. A second wave of inspections followed initial arrests in the Moscow headquarters, and investigations are continuing in every regional fund division.
Regional authorities had long been dissatisfied with affairs in the additional medical services program, particularly the huge debts for drugs that had been delivered, and with the fact that major Moscow players had taken control of the pharmaceutical market. One of the few exceptions has been Imperia-Farma, a company widely reported to be linked to the son of St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko. Imperia-Farma controls about 3 percent of the national market.
There is both a strong business and political component to all of these events. Financially, the program generated $2 billion in annual profit, which was paid out by the federal budget. As a result, the restructuring of this market is inevitable, and analysts are suggesting that the whole system might be nationalized.
The political component is even more obvious. The program plays a role in President Vladimir Putin’s national health project and affects millions of pensioners, who represent the Kremlin’s primary voter base and the main focus of their attention since the move to replace benefits with cash payments in 2005. The current campaign against corruption has the markings of struggle between power clans and also constitutes a serious strike by the federal authorities against regional governors and mayors.
At a recent meeting dedicated to the battle against corruption, Putin’s harsh words indicated the likelihood of continuing anti-corruption operations, including further investigations into the activities of staff in the capital and regions. Similar meetings were held earlier at regional and federal district centers. Significantly, the increased political attacks against corruption come just ahead of the 2007 and 2008 election cycle. The result may not be a change in the system, but instead the exchange of corrupt officials for more honest ones.

Nikolai Petrov is a scholar in residence at the Carnegie Moscow Center.

TITLE: Energy Put In The Spotlight
TEXT: The news that Shell has offered Gazprom a stake in the Sakhalin-2 project doesn’t come as a surprise to many. The state-controlled gas giant has been looking to get involved in the project for at least six months and, if information from industry insiders is accurate, the involvement will be significant.
When it comes to the energy sector, it seems pretty clear that the government gets what it wants. And what it wants now is control.
Supporters of the government’s stance vis-a-vis energy point out that Russia is not alone in pushing for control in extraction industries. Strong state presence and control in the oil and gas sector is the case in developing countries such as Venezuela, Mexico and Saudi Arabia. The sector in Norway is also largely government controlled.
Even if we ignore the debate over the merits of state ownership, the question about how to realize such a policy remains. The answer to this conundrum, in turn, speaks volumes as to the accepted rules of the game.
Evidence is continuing to mount that the rules not only involve giving the state what it wants, but also letting it set the price. Yukos provided the first example, as the value of the company was whittled down by back tax claims to the point that Rosneft, the state oil company, was able to get a bargain on the purchase of its main production unit, Yuganskneftegaz.
In the case of Sakhalin-2, the instrument has been the Natural Resources Ministry, which began filing environmental complaints not long after a deal to bring Gazprom into the project foundered in July. Gazprom says the ecological and other problems faced by the project will figure into the price it is willing to pay for a stake, so do not look for these problems to disappear before an agreement has been reached on the terms.
What happens afterwards will surely attract the attention of potential foreign investors. If the violations of environmental regulations cited by the Natural Resources Ministry simply disappear — as have many of the tax claims against Yuganskneftegaz — this would help substantiate critics’ claims that the government is using regulatory pressure to gain valuable assets at reduced prices.
The damage probably has been done. Even if the pressure remains, it will be hard to shake the impression that it only arose to help Gazprom get its hand on a large stake. Nobody can say for sure why the Natural Resources Ministry got involved. Given investors’ famous aversion to uncertainty, that’s a problem.

This comment first appeared in The Moscow Times.

TITLE: Baby boom
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A blond boy sits on a swing and talks about his parents finding him in a cabbage patch, while a girl puts on eye shadow with an expert touch. These are two of the 6-year-old children depicted in “Generation,” a documentary cycle whose second installment is nearly ready to air on Russian television.
Filmmaker Vitaly Mansky shot the first installment in 1999, when the 24 participants were still in their mothers’ wombs. The idea of the show is to follow the lives of children born in 2000, going back to meet them every six years. It’s a concept similar to the “Seven Up” series that began in Britain in 1964 and has revisited its heroes every seven years since then. That show has a Russian offshoot, filmed by another documentary maker, though Mansky insists they are not competitors.
The new installment of Mansky’s project is expected to air on CTC later this season. When the first installment aired in 2000, it was on Rossia television under the title “Russia — The Start.” This time around, Rossia wasn’t interested, Mansky said in an interview. “I sincerely do not understand it.” 
Mansky used to work for Rossia as head of the documentary-production section, and he said he remained on good terms with the channel’s management. “I can simply repeat — knowing that they won’t be offended — what I said to their faces: ‘You are just idiots,’” he said, bursting out laughing.
Television bosses firmly believe that documentaries have to be about hijackings, murders or famous people, he said. “Television has total distrust of real life.”
A bearded man in his 40s, Mansky was sitting in an office decorated with photographs of some of his former subjects: President Vladimir Putin and former presidents Boris Yeltsin and Mikhail Gorbachev, whom he filmed in a trilogy on Russia’s leaders. Numerous award statuettes stood on a shelf.
The filmmaker is one of Russia’s best known documentary directors, although some of his films have provoked negative reactions. A film about Vladimir Vysotsky focused on the singer’s drug use, prompting his relatives to ban the use of his poems in the film.
In 2003, Mansky released a documentary about the faux-lesbian pop duo t.A.T.u. and even debated the film’s merits on the populist talk show “To the Barrier.” He is now making a film about bear hunting in northern Russia.
The new installment of “Generation” is set to air on CTC, an entertainment channel that has so far specialized in sitcoms such as “My Beautiful Nanny” and “If You’re Not Born Beautiful.” For them, it is an “image-enhancing project,” Mansky believes. 
Initially, CTC announced that it would start showing “Generation” in October, but then the broadcast date was pushed back. At present, it is not clear when the series will air.
With the move to CTC, the series has changed its presentation. “It was more pompous on Rossia,” Mansky said. “It started with the Russian flag with newborn babies lying on it, and we practically played the national anthem.” 
Mansky described the new graphics as being either fashionable or kitsch, depending on one’s point of view. “I could never have imagined that my film would have graphics like that,” he said.
The second installment stars all the children who were due to be born in the first one. However, some of the parents asked Mansky not to mention certain elements of their lives in the second series, the filmmaker said. He gave the example of a woman who was in prison in 1999, but is now a businesswoman, and did not want her prison experiences to be brought up again. In another case, a woman did not want the series to reveal that her child was not in touch with its father.
He bowed to their demands, but did not agree with them, he said. “We can hide something now ... but you should realize that sooner or later, life itself will uncover it.”
In the first few minutes of the new series, which Mansky screened in his studio, children are shown making solemn pronouncements on their lives. One girl talks about how many people are in love with her, while making rings around her eyes with her fingers. A boy tells the camera that his name, Matvei, is Greek, before tossing his head back in a fit of wild laughter. 
There were also scenes from the maternity ward where one girl was born. A tiny baby in swaddling clothes nuzzles the head of a neighboring baby as they lie packed in a trolley.
During the casting of the children’s parents, the aim was to show extreme stories, Mansky said. So the father of one child had died serving in Chechnya, while another one’s mother was a Chechen refugee; one mother was homeless, while some parents were wealthy.
For the new series, Mansky went to Rostov-on-Don to film a woman who had been living in a squat in 1999. Her conditions had improved little: She was living in a tiny room, sleeping in one bed with her child, and had no passport. The director talked to the police and a politician, and by the time he left, she had a Russian passport — essential for receiving social services.
“The most interesting thing about this project is its absolute unpredictability,” Mansky said. He would not have chosen many of the children if there had been a casting session for them, he admitted, since he would have chosen ones who “talk a lot, and talk very paradoxically, very vividly.” 
While working for Rossia, Mansky arranged for Sergei Miroshnichenko’s “Born in the U.S.S.R.” — the local version of Britain’s “Seven Up” project — to be shown to record ratings, he said. The first installment of that series was filmed in the Soviet Union in 1990. In the latest episode, which has not yet been shown on Russian television, the children are 21 years old.
The filmmaker hopes to take his series to age 30. He can continue filming the children till they are 16 with their parents’ consent; from then on, the children will have to agree. His daughter is studying documentary filmmaking at the VGIK film institute, and could possibly follow on with the project, he said.

TITLE: In the Spotlight
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The author Dmitry Bykov wrote an article in Ogonyok last week arguing that there aren’t any Russian sex symbols, only Hollywood ones. This was a touch harsh, I think, especially since the writer and his shorts recently starred in a Moskovsky Komsomolets gossip column.
Bykov just won the Big Book literary prize for his biography of Boris Pasternak, but he’s also a populist figure who appears on television and radio shows, and probably isn’t above flicking through Seven Days magazine. So I can only blame the months spent on Pasternak for his shocking ignorance about Scarlett Johansson’s love life: Jared Leto was so 2005.
By “sex symbols,” Bykov means actors, and he goes through the possible candidates, discarding them one by one. He says Konstantin Khabensky wastes his talent in the “Night Watch” films — not even mentioning the ears — while Oleg Menshikov just looks tired all the time, and tough-guy Vladimir Mashkov was far hotter back in the early 1990s.
Arguing about sex symbols in Russia is pretty pointless, though, as I realized this week when I read that 74 percent of Muscovites questioned by My Plyus magazine preferred Pierce Brosnan to Daniel Craig. Of course, it doesn’t help that the title of the latest Bond film means “Casino Grand Piano” in Russian, but still, I fear for the nation’s sanity.
Judging from my less scientific surveys, Russia’s main sex symbols seem to be people like Andrei Malakhov and Dima Bilan, and even, God help us, Nikolai Baskov. In other words, you can never wear too much fake tan or be too blow-dried. Which I suppose explains why Brosnan goes down well.
Unfortunately, Bykov doesn’t dip his toe into the Bond debate. But then again, if he doesn’t know that Johansson has been going out with Josh Hartnett and they’ve put extra sound insulation in their bedroom, then he has got a lot of Seven Days to catch up on.
I certainly hope that Bykov saw Johansson’s swimsuit scene in “Scoop,” since he writes lovingly of her vital statistics. He’s not so keen on Russian actresses. The only one he sees as a potential sex symbol is Chulpan Khamatova, but he says that she’s unconvincing in love scenes. It’s an unfair comparison, though, since her period dramas don’t give the same opportunities to wear Lycra.
It seems pretty unbelievable that Bykov can’t think of any other female sex symbols. I mean, have the girl groups Blestyashchiye and VIA Gra been living in vain? I used to get the two groups mixed up, but not any more, since Komsomolskaya Pravda pointed out that — perhaps counterintuitively — Blestyashchiye has breasts, while VIA Gra has legs.

Sergey Chernov is on vacation.

TITLE: One step at a time
AUTHOR: By Michael Schwirtz
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: While the organizers of May’s disastrous gay march lick their wounds, one activist is waging a more subtle battle for the rights of sexual minorities in the face of antagonistic public attitudes and apathy among the people he is trying to help.
Ed Mishin, director of the Russian National GLBT Center, Together for short, does not like waving rainbow flags or holding rallies, and he is certainly averse to being assaulted by neo-fascists or arrested, as were his more pugnacious colleagues in May.
Instead of political agitation, Mishin said, steps need to be taken to build a community out of Russia’s atomized gay men and lesbians. Without it, he said, homosexuals will never enjoy the rights and freedoms guaranteed to other Russians.
For now, no such community exists. Homosexuals themselves tend to be apathetic about their position in society. “Most people would rather work, make their money, then go home and drink tea,” said Mishin, 33, a Moscow native.
Mishin founded the Together organization about three years ago along with a cadre of Russian activists who had been involved in homosexual issues for nearly a decade. Their’s is a mostly evolutionary strategy for securing gay and lesbian rights, meant to slowly chip away at the Soviet-hardened public hostility that open protest seems only to inflame.
Rather than politicking, the organization offers a number of services to gays and lesbians in Moscow and, to a lesser extent, throughout the country. It runs support groups for gay men and lesbians every Monday, though for security reasons the location is kept secret. Interested parties send an e-mail to group@gay.ru inquiring about the sessions, and a Together volunteer replies with a number to call for more information.
Volunteers also man a hotline from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. weekdays. Callers ask about safe-sex practices and how to talk to their parents about their homosexuality, Mishin said. The support groups and the hotline are in Russian. 
Together also publishes two monthly Russian-language magazines — Kvir for gay men and Pink for lesbians — and runs a web site, www.gay.ru, in Russian and English. The site, which Mishin said gets 65,000 hits a day, features news, a personals section and a history of homosexuality in Russia. 
A year ago, Mishin opened Indigo, a store where Together has its offices. Indigo reflects the organization’s philosophy of community. Its DVD selection is loosely gay-themed, with movies like “Tootsie,” “Capote” and, of course, several copies of “Brokeback Mountain.” The compact disc collection is similarly oriented: Billy Idol, Queen, Elton John and Russia’s Cher, Alla Pugachyova.
Indigo also has a small and eclectic collection of English-language literature, including guides on HIV/AIDS, back issues of Harrington Gay Men’s Fiction Quarterly and a donor insemination guide for lesbians.
For Vladimir Shapovalov, a salesman at the store, the interesting people and sense of community at Indigo are most important. “I am here for my soul and not for money,” he said, as two young men checked out thongs behind him.
Mishin is optimistic, perhaps overly so, about gay life in Moscow. “Homophobia is not that big a problem here,” he said. He brushed aside a question about whether gay and lesbian visitors should take extra precautions in the city. He advised newcomers to conduct themselves as they would in any other major Western city.
Even Nikolai Alexeyev, one of the main organizers of May’s gay march, said there was “no danger from neo-fascists to the gay movement.”
Yevgenia Debryanskaya, one of Russia’s most prominent gay rights activists, who, incidentally, participated in and was arrested during the failed gay demonstration this year, disagrees. Though she could give no firm statistics, she said she was sure that incidents of homosexual-targeted crime, such as murder and thefts, were higher in Russia than in Western Europe.
Mishin said, however, that he had never heard of any cases of crime directed specifically at homosexuals.
Still, for lesbians and gays looking for a night out, some increased vigilance is advised. On top of spoiling the gay march, nationalists and religious conservatives broke up two parties at local gay clubs in early May. Debryanskaya, who owns a club, refused to discuss it for fear of generating “negative publicity.”
She has good reason to worry. A group of thugs recently attacked and severely beat a gay man outside a popular Moscow gay club, Dusha i Telo.
Mishin acknowledged that there is work to be done but said Moscow was growing more open. He noted that his gay and lesbian magazines are sold in many kiosks and that his store is directly across from the Moscow City Duma. He registered Together with Moscow city authorities in 2002.
Indeed, the problem seems not to center on laws. Debryanskaya said the Russian Constitution was one of the most democratic in the world. Though, as Alexeyev said, so was Stalin’s.

TITLE: Paradigm shift
AUTHOR: By Katya Madrid
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Imagine a forum of artists, thinkers, critics, and art-historians all engaged in a conversation about a single, somewhat abstract concept. 
Now, print that conversation — in two verbal, and three visual languages in a compact and beautifully made volume. What you get is a festival of ideas on paper, a book of essays and photographs called “Paradigm” — a new collaborative project, in this case, taking the “north” as its theme.
As the authors explain: 
“The essence of the Paradigm project lies in examining, and where possible interpreting, the incarnations grouped around a polysemantic word, to determine the compilation of its cultural ‘declensions’ and to discover — although hardly exhaust — its paradigm. The word for the first ‘Paradigm’ is north.”
An international project with several northern European thinkers taking part, the essays in the first edition of “Paradigm” offer ways of thinking about what north means in different contexts. These texts, which are printed in Russian and English, coexist on its pages with images that tell their own, parallel story. The manner in which these media are juxtaposed, tells a third story. There is no wrong way of looking at this material, just as there is no particular order that would present the ideas more effectively. It is up to you to waltz with the frigid, whirling winds of the north, and once the dance takes hold of you, it does not let go. 
For example, you may find yourself drifting into the memory of a fairytale that made an impression on you when you were a child. Then you might think about the first time that you ever thought of yourself as being intimately connected with the north. Is that time right now? If you are not from the north, perhaps you will remember the first time that you ever felt a snowflake melt on your tongue, or seen a car buried under a dirty brown mountain of crusted-over snow and sand piled high by street sweepers.
There is one recurring theme that is particularly intriguing throughout the book: fur. Fur can be associated with fashion, with comfort, with protection, with animals, and finally with texture. Art historian Vadim Bass writes about “the rough, textured cheeks” of the facades of the enchanted “forest” that is St. Petersburg’s architecture in his essay “The Union of City and Forest.” In “Hanging on Air,” he develops the concept further:
“…richly dressed buildings in St. Petersburg in a way look like Japanese millionaires in Venice on days of acqua alta: a fur coat above and Wellingtons below, all around there is incredible beauty, severity and harmony, a true postcard.”
In “Venus in Furs,” Vanessa Baird’s darkly comedic paintings about human nature, where its animalistic side is best seen in the deep woods of myth and psyche, are presented in concert with photographs of the “furry” texture of city walls in extreme close up, lest we forget that the forest is all around us. Unfortunately, this is where the written word has the advantage because the play with images happens at the expense of their size, making it difficult to fully appreciate Baird’s work. Art director Andrei Shabanov must have been aware of this, as he has included a close-up of the key detail for many of her paintings. An interesting design choice, but it does not quite fix the problem since the details themselves are also quite small.
Another conceptual twist is to invite readers to cut pages out of the “festival on paper”(using a scissors-and-dotted line graphic) and use the pages, perhaps, as large postcards This furthers the idea of sharing and reaching out to a wider audience, facilitating a more inclusive dialogue. On the other hand, it contradicts the notion that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, which in the case of “Paradigm” is certainly true.
There is more. The makers of “Paradigm” are reaching beyond paper and inviting readers to join them. A presentation of “Paradigm” and a creative art event, created in the spirit of the project — unusual, thought provoking, and fun — will be held on Saturday at 4 p.m., at the European University, 3 Gagarinskaya Ulitsa. 

www.paragdigm-fest.spb.ru

TITLE: The devil in the detail
AUTHOR: By Andrei Vorobei
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Russian painter, draughtsman and designer Mikhail Vrubel (1856-1910) replaced Pavel Filonov at the Benois Wing of the Russian Museum when a new exhibition of his work opened last week. 
The consquence is meaningful. Near contemporaries, both artists were extremely inventive and had fabulous biographies with tragic ends; both Vrubel and Filonov remain lonely and enigmatic figures in Russian art and its history. Filonov, as well as many other artists, also owes a debt to Vrubel.
The artist, who is traditionally considered a key figure in the Russian strain of Symbolism, was always ahead of his time and outside the mainstream. 
“For the first time in Russia a painter found himself ahead of his literary counterparts, confident of his own gifts and independent of all theories,” as one commentator once precisely put it. Although his mature period spanned the middle of 1880s until he went blind in 1906, Vrubel was the antithesis of the realist aesthetics of the Wanderers and the tendency of the period for plein air painting — painting outdoors — with Impressionism its culmination. But Vrubel presents a faceted, mosaic-like surface, color combinations reminiscent of stained glass, and an “unfinished” manner next to academic monumentality. He is at the intricate crossroads of archaic forms, late Byzantine art, early Renaissance painting and Romanticism; some commentators even find in certain mature works by Vrubel the rudiments of Cubism. 
Vrubel’s evolution, as well as his legacy, is linked to three cities: St Petersburg, where he was trained at the Academy of Arts; Kiev, where he fully developed his own style while participating in the restoration of the medieval Russian murals and mosaics as well as taking a crucial trip to Venice; and Moscow, where he gained artistic independence and was encouraged by the outstanding Moscow art patron of the time, Savva Mamontov. However, the new retrospective on show is exclusively drawn from the Russian Museum’s collection and this makes his story fragmentary.  
The exhibition is a measure of the collection and comprises predominantly graphic works by the artist, spanning his academic studies and such extracts from his mature legacy as a series of illustrations for Mikhail Lermontov’s poems, numerous brilliant flower studies and so on. Among the paintings “Flying Demon” (1899) refers to the other two most influential and notorious pieces from the artist’s demonic cycle — “The Seated Demon” and “The Demon Downcast”. 
As was typical for the time in general and for the Art Nouveau movement in particular, artists were omnivorous. Along with paintings and graphic works the exposition features Vrubel’s sketches for frescoes, designs for the interiors of some of Moscow’s art nouveau houses, and numerous applied art objects such as stained glass and majolica works. One such rarity is the Volga and Mikula fireplace (1899-1900), which is reassembled from 130 fragments. “There is proper mixture of the exaggerated, the fantastic, the passionate, and the naÕve” as Susan Sontag once said. There is often a strong feeling in such works as “Sea King,” “Spring,” “Sadko,” “Fantasy” and similar overladen and fussy art nouveau oddities, with all their overbearing seriousness, are simply too much; such works are perhaps a good illustration of Sontag’s thesis that Art Nouveau is the most fully developed Camp style. 
Vrubel’s wife from 1896, the opera singer Nadezhda-Zabela Vrubel (1868-1913), was herself one of his works of art. He produced costumes and stage designs for her performances of Rimsky-Korsakov characters . There are dozens of good portraits in oil, pastel and gouache of her, reflecting all the magic of the opera world and the couple’s social success.
The exhibition’s greatest hit is masterful graphic series from the 1900s — “Insomnia,” “Campanulas” and “Shell” — which is defined by artist’s progressive insanity. The “Shell” series, which ends the show, resembles the globe of the eye, hosting a melancholic view on the abyss. 

The Vrubel exhibition runs through end of January 2007. www.rusmuseum.ru

TITLE: Mirror images
AUTHOR: By Nicole Rudick
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: One of history’s more interesting coincidences occurred on nearly the same day in June, 129 years apart: In 1812 and 1941, respectively, Napoleon and Hitler invaded Russia. The correlation between the two campaigns, however, extends beyond the vagaries of time. Despite being outnumbered and sustaining significant casualties, the Russians were able eventually to repel French and German forces in what would become legendary encounters — the Battle of Borodino in 1812, the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942-43 and the slow, punishing drive of both armies out of Eastern Europe. Moreover, the failure of these operations in the vast Russian nation marked the beginning of the end for both Napoleonic France and Nazi Germany.
The storied bravery and spirit of the Russian people, civilians and soldiers alike, often figure in accounts of these two confrontations, with regard both to the trials of occupation and to the force of will required to oust a foreign enemy. Nowhere, however, do the accounts of 1812 and 1941 relate more directly to one another than in the visual culture of the wartime lubok (a simple Russian print that first appeared in the 17th century). As Stephen M. Norris argues in “A War of Images,” the visual expression of Russian nationhood that developed as a result of Napoleon’s incursion initiated cultural traditions that would be not only literally referenced by the Soviet government in mobilizing the country against the Germans but utilized and expanded in each successive war after 1812. 
In his study of the wartime lubok, Norris, an assistant professor of Russian history at Miami University in Ohio, challenges the dominant assertion that Russian national identity remained unsubstantiated until 1917 and, further, that a strong sense of nationhood only emerged during Josef Stalin’s Soviet Union. Instead, he tracks historical instances in which Russians visually negotiated the terrain of national consciousness, a process that comes most clearly into focus during wartime, for in picturing its enemy, a country also imagines itself.
Prior to 1812, Norris contends, any nascent sense of national character remained fragmented. Napoleon’s invasion, however, produced the force necessary to crystallize a renewed interest in national history and mythology together with “the belief that authentic Russianness lay in the peasant village and the Russian soul” into an identity that could be broadly articulated. The war in 1812 also marks the moment at which the lubok — already transformed into a popular mode of visual propaganda during the reign of Peter I — was first widely proliferated. The overriding significance of the 1812 lubki for subsequent conflicts (the Crimean War, the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, the Russo-Japanese War, World War I, the Bolshevik Revolution and World War II) is in their establishment of a primary myth: that “the war against Napoleon was a ‘people’s victory’ that ‘proved’ Russian cultural superiority over a devious foe.” 
This projection of dominance underwent fairly radical changes over the course of a century. During the Crimean War, in the 1850s, lubki honored individual soldiers for their heroism, bravery and strong Orthodox religion. In “The Victory of the Sailor Petr Koshka,” for instance, the eponymous hero, after asking for God’s blessing, dodges enemy bullets as he valiantly carries a fellow soldier from the field of battle. At the same time, lubok publishers applied to the Turks many of the same inadequacies used to describe the French in 1812, also adding to the new enemy claims of savagery and a morally bankrupt Muslim faith. Yet by 1914, cliches and stereotypes were often whittled down to a representative, satirical figure, such as John Bull and Uncle Sam in depictions of Britain and the United States. In the case of World War I, Kaiser Wilhelm II stood in for the German foe. Russians, on the other hand, though still portrayed in individual instances, were similarly amalgamated into symbolic agents. One of the most exceptional lubki in “A War of Images” (and that which graces the book’s cover) pits an imperious Russian bogatyr, or heroic warrior, against a serpent-beast with the devilish heads of Wilhelm II, Franz Joseph of Austria and Mehmed V of the Ottoman Empire.
Though Norris contends that lubki helped form an edifying national identity for Russians, it is perhaps more accurate to describe the process as the contouring of national consciousness or even the stimulation of a broad sense of patriotism. Certainly, key elements of 19th-century Russian identity were consistently in play: the Cossack, the peasant and the “Russian spirit.” 
However, the goal of these images was to inform and inflame the people while also making a profit for publishers, and it seems unlikely that such commercialism would produce candid reports of wartime events that didn’t, at some level, also promote a nationalist movement. The marketplace for lubki ultimately determined their success, yet this market almost exclusively consisted of semi-literate and illiterate peasants and countryfolk, who were not only accustomed to treating the lubok as a primary source of information but also relied on these images as the way by which wartime events were made familiar. Norris tempers his definition of “propaganda,” reserving its modern, fully negative connotations for Bolshevik and Soviet usage, but in doing so, he mitigates the vitriol inherent in the palpably nationalistic and openly racist imagery of these pre-Revolutionary images. Though intended to evoke the “strong salt of folk humor,” the prints produced during Russia’s engagement with Japan invariably depicted the Asian foe “as knock-kneed weaklings, slant-eyed, yellow-skinned ... a puny kind of monkey,” in the words of Alexander Pasternak (brother of the famous writer). Throughout his study, Norris distinguishes between popular embrace of such imagery (peasants displaying lubki alongside religious iconography in their homes) and elite distaste and outrage at such a vulgar mode of manipulation. 
Critics of the wartime lubki existed during each phase of development, from Leo Tolstoy’s denunciation of Crimean War lubki as, in Norris’ words, a “pernicious means by which the government exhorted Russians to fight,” to early 20th-century historian Gerasim Magula’s condemnation of publishers who “aspire less to spend than to receive money” from images that arouse the people’s basest emotions. 
The lubok remained, however, the most accessible form of communication for the masses, and as such, it provided the ideal art form for the Soviet regime — a nascent government with a massive, largely illiterate and far-flung populace that needed both to be informed of the regime’s policies and, more simply, to be encouraged to participate in the ideals of the new nation. Here, too, the early lessons of lubok production come full circle. In 1851, new technologies (specifically, the lithographic technique) permitted the centralization and full commercialization of the industry, which, in turn, made it easier for the government to regulate and censor lubok artists. Likewise, the new stars of lubok production in the years surrounding the Bolshevik Revolution — including Natalya Goncharova, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Kasimir Malevich and Dmitry Moor — praised the genre for, among other qualities, “the mechanical precision of construction.” In drawing on the lubok’s styles and themes for the mass creation of posters, the Soviet period would become the era of the poster, and the lubok would thus attain its full propagandistic promise. For Mayakovsky, this meant “Red Army men looking at posters before battle and going to fight not with a prayer but with a slogan on their lips.”

Nicole Rudick is managing editor of Bookforum.

TITLE: High on the hog
AUTHOR: By William Whitehead
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: However it’s cooked, the fatty Bavarian sausage seems to pull in the crowds and St. Petersburg’s meat-loving public is proving just as rapt by a lengthy mix of shoulder, cheek and skin. 
First there was the phenomenal (and vaguely explicable) success of Karl and Friedrich on Krestovsky Island, and now Grad Petrov downtown,, in the shadow of a towering statue of Mikhail Lomonosov next to the Neva, is forever thronged with tourists and locals alike. 
And although the brewpub was packed, the waitress did not waste any time in appearing to confirm the fact, quickly offering us a couple of high stools in a corner, which was dark but cozy and that little bit closer to a smartly vaulted brick wall, so welcoming after the river cold walk.
Fronting the bar opposite was a huge plasma TV showing a classic Russian comedy film but butchering noises from the adjacent kitchen tended to spill in around the subtitles. Even close at hand, service appeared deferent but indifferent, reduced to the minimum, although most of the people in the room didn’t seem to care. 
The waitress quickly moved in and seemed all too set for our order of brewed-on-the-premises wheat beer, immediately countering with half a liter of the more available Christmas special (140 rubles, $5.40), whose seasonal infusion of cinnamon and cloves admittedly lined one’s stomach with cheer. Solid and slightly cheaper was the traditional dark beer “with a light scent of bread”(125 rubles, $4.80).  
There was another hint of bread in the Classical Bavarian Green Pea Soup with Smoked Pork (170 rubles ($6.50), which could explain why a complementary breadbasket did not accompany our starters. A fresh white crunchy roll or two with three types of butter might well have salvaged a rather soggy carpaccio (290 rubles, $11.20), which the menu boastfully claims takes an unusual, beery view of the classic carpaccio. But the soup was unadulterated and thick with succulent chunks of pork.
We resisted a number of ways to eat sausage — including a one-meter-long option for 650 rubles ($25) which is presumably served curled up — but meat remains the order of the day. Dishes come ready garnished with variations of cabbage and potato, from Sauerkraut to red cabbage, from fries to mash. Those familiar with another standard of German cuisine will know that Eisbein (490 rubles, $18.80) is essentially a huge hunk of pig, relying heavily on Sauerkraut and potatoes and large dollops of horseradish and mustard to sustain the diner’s interest. Attentive to these combinations, it did what it was probably meant to do and the meat was vaguely moist and tore away easily from the bone.
Another success in the name of density was a soft veal stew with creamy mushrooms and roasted spezle. It did not have the visual bulk of the Eisbein, but one got one’s 490 rubles’ ($18.80) fill of calories amid some straightforward tastiness.
The menu is packed with other Bavarian favorites, as well as less German “snacks,” such as Bouillabaisse and Filet mignon. And it would have to be a special list of desserts to tempt one further, and it is thankfully, distinctly limited to cheese cake, fruit and ice cream. 
When you set foot in the place, the general idea of Grad Petrov shines out of the brass fixtures of its brewing machinery. Yes, one senses a dreaded “theme,” but underneath bubbles sophistication. Lomonosov, the great Russian scientist, must look on with pride as the latest technologies serve to perfect the art of, what is after all, a drunken banquet. The perfect place for a Christmas party.

TITLE: Apocalypto, now?
AUTHOR: By Kenneth Turan
PUBLISHER: The Los Angeles Times
TEXT: Who knows what violence lurks in the hearts of men? Mel Gibson knows, and he just can’t resist putting every last ounce of it on screen. He also can’t resist pulling those bloody, still-beating hearts out of human bodies and putting them up on screen as well. And that’s just the beginning.
Numerous good things can be said about “Apocalypto,” the director’s foray into the decaying Mayan civilization of the early 1500s, but every last one of them is overshadowed by Gibson’s well-established penchant for depictions of stupendous amounts of violence.
Despite a genuine talent for taking us to another time and place, a gift that under other circumstances would be worth experiencing, Gibson has made a movie that can be confidently recommended only to viewers who have a concentration camp commandant’s tolerance for repugnant savagery.
Mountains of hacked up corpses, exit wounds spewing fountains of blood, spears shattering teeth, warriors literally beating each other’s brains out, it’s all here in living and dying color.
This is the kind of movie in which a person known as a finisher does not work on your floors, a jaguar graphically munches on a man’s face, and when someone says, “I will peel his skin and have him watch me wear it,” we can only pray that it doesn’t come to pass.
Perhaps even Gibson himself doesn’t know what deep need is satisfied by putting this kind of brutality on screen. But no one who’s seen the disemboweling scene in “Braveheart” or the torture and crucifixion in “The Passion of the Christ” (not to mention the Gibson parody on “South Park”) can doubt that need is there.
Given that penchant, it was only a matter of time until the director would find his way to a civilization that enthusiastically practiced human sacrifice. If ever there was a filmmaker congenitally unable to resist shots of severed heads bouncing, bouncing, bouncing down the side of a steep pyramid, this is the man.
In a Gibson-directed movie, it’s usually not very long until someone sticks the knife in and does his worst, and “Apocalypto” is no different. It opens with a ferocious tapir hunt in a verdant jungle that ends with the animal impaled and eviscerated with its throat cut for good measure. Welcome to Mel’s World of Fang and Claw. 
The men in the hunting party, including tribal elder Flint Sky (Morris Birdyellowhead) and his son Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood), soon to be the film’s protagonist, are weighed down with so many body and facial piercings, including what look to be nuts and bolts under the lower lip, that it would not be surprising to see True Value Hardware with a product placement credit.
These men are part of a small village living in peaceful serenity in all that jungle. (The Mexican rain forest of Catemaco location has been beautifully shot in high definition digital video by Dean Semler, an Oscar winner for “Dances With Wolves.”) The first hint that the future will be less bucolic is an encounter with the fleeing people of another village. The look on their faces is enough to cause Flint Sky to give a pep talk to his son, telling him that fear is a disease that must be kept at bay at all costs.
That talk turns out to be especially timely, as early the next morning the ultrafierce Zero Wolf (Raoul Trujillo) leads a group of sneering, sadistic warriors from a more advanced civilization in a savage attack on the village. Women are raped, men die in grotesque ways, but, for reasons we can easily guess, the attackers are as interested in taking prisoners as in meeting Gibson’s bloodshed quota.
After hiding his pregnant wife, Seven (Dalia Hernandez), and their small son in a deep hole, Jaguar Paw gets captured and taken on the long journey to Zero Wolf’s city. Along the way he sees crop failure, drought and plague, all symptoms of a civilization in serious crisis.
It wouldn’t be fair to detail all the trials the script by Gibson and Farhad Safinia puts Jaguar Paw through, though his exploits do make the sprinting in “Run Lola Run” look like a Sunday stroll. Attention must be paid, however, to the pains that have been taken to make the look and feel of this vividly imagined world both authentic and involving.
For one thing, Gibson has insisted that all his actors, most of whom are new to the screen, speak their dialogue in the primary Mayan language of Yucatec. The director also employed a movement teacher to ensure that everybody’s body language would be convincingly primitive.
Equally impressive is the high quality work that has gone into the physically imposing Mayan buildings and pyramids (Tom Sanders is the production designer). Ditto for the convincingly otherworldly head-to-toe look of the urban Mayans themselves, who look like habitues of the “Star Wars” cantina crossed with extras in a Carmen Miranda musical.
Gibson unblushingly intends “Apocalypto” as a clarion call warning modern man to watch his step or risk following the Mayas into decline and near-extinction. To this end he opens the story with a famous quote about the fall of Rome.
This is all well and good, but the reality of “Apocalypto” is that this film is in fact Exhibit A of the rot from within that Gibson is worried about. If our society is in moral peril, the amount of stomach-turning violence that we think is just fine to put on screen is by any sane measure a major aspect of that decline. Mel, no one in your entourage is going to tell you this, but you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. A big part.

TITLE: Majority In U.S. Senate In Danger
AUTHOR: By Mary Jalonick
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON — Democratic Senator Tim Johnson of South Dakota was in critical but stable condition Thursday after late-night emergency brain surgery, creating political drama about which party will control the Senate next month if he is unable to continue in office.
Johnson suffered from bleeding in the brain caused by a congenital malformation, the U.S. Capitol physician said, describing the surgery as successful. The condition, present at birth, causes tangled blood vessels.
“The senator is recovering without complication,” the physician, Adm. John Eisold, said. “It is premature to determine whether further surgery will be required or to assess any long-term prognosis.”
Eisold said that doctors had to drain the blood that had accumulated in Johnson’s brain and stop continued bleeding.
Democrats hold a fragile 51-49 margin in the new Senate that convenes Jan. 4. If Johnson leaves the Senate, the Republican governor of South Dakota could appoint a Republican — keeping the Senate in Republican hands with Vice President Dick Cheney’s tie-breaking power.
Johnson’s condition, also known as AVM, or arteriovenous malformation, causes arteries and veins to grow abnormally large and become tangled.
The senator’s wife, Barbara Johnson, said the family “is encouraged and optimistic.”
In a statement from Johnson’s office Thursday, she said her family was “grateful for the prayers and good wishes of friends, supporters and South Dakotans.”
A person familiar with Johnson’s condition said the 59-year-old senator’s underlying condition caused the stroke-like symptoms and doctors will be watching him closely for the next 24 to 48 hours. The person spoke on condition of anonymity out of respect for the senator’s family.
Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada visited Thursday morning. He had visited the night before as well.
The emergency surgery lasted past midnight Wednesday
Apart from the risk to his health, Johnson’s illness carried political ramifications, coming so soon after the Democrats won control of the Senate. If he were forced to relinquish his seat, a replacement would be named by South Dakota’s Republican Gov. Mike Rounds.
A Republican appointee would create a 50-50 tie, and allow the Republicans to retain Senate control.
Rounds’ press secretary, Mark Johnston, said Thursday the governor was watching events and had nothing new to say.
“We’re watching as much as everyone else,” he said. “The most important thing is making sure Sen. Johnson is OK.”
President Bush awoke Thursday to news of Johnson’s condition, said first lady Laura Bush. “We’re praying like I know all the people of South Dakota are for his very, very speedy recovery,” Mrs. Bush told CBS’s “Early Show.”
Johnson, who turns 60 later this month, was admitted to George Washington University hospital at midday after experiencing what his office initially said was a possible stroke.

TITLE: Record-Breaking Liu But Drugs Resurface
PUBLISHER: Agence France Press
TEXT: DOHA — China’s Olympic champion Liu Xiang won the 110 metres hurdles title in a new Asian record time as drugs and controversy again enveloped the Asian Games.
Liu, the world record holder, clocked a time of 13.15 seconds to beat compatriot Shi Dongpeng, who posted a personal best of 13.28 seconds, with Masato Naito of Japan taking the bronze.
It bettered the 13.20 seconds Liu set at the last Games in Busan four years ago but, at the end of a long season, was well outside his world mark of 12.88 seconds set in Lausanne in July.
“It’s great to win the Asian Games. The Olympics are world famous but the Asian Games remain Asia’s main competition,” said the 23-year-old.
It was also a good night for Bahrain’s Ethiopian-born Maryam Yussuf Jamal, who completed a rare middle distance double by adding the 1500m title to the 800m.
However, their heroics were overshadowed by another drugs scandal, with Iraqi bodybuilder Saad Faeaz thrown out of the Games for attempting to bring banned performance-enhancing drugs into Qatar.
The athlete was caught with 134 ampules of nandrolone, an anabolic steroid which helps build muscle bulk, at Doha international airport on December 4, OCA director general Husain al-Musallem said.
Due to drawn out investigations, Faeaz was allowed to compete in the 75kg category four days later and finished seventh in the pre-judging section.
“His result is cancelled and he is disqualified,” said Musallem, adding that it was the first time in Asian Games history that an athlete had been thrown out for doping offences without a laboratory test. It was the fifth doping case so far.
Controversy also darkened the Games with a row over match-fixing in the field hockey. Malaysian coach Wallace Tan claimed that Pakistan and Japan’s 0-0 draw on Sunday to advance to the semi-finals was a fix. It put Malaysia out of the competition on goal difference even though they finished on equal points.
But his comments drew immediate flak from Malaysian officials in Kuala Lumpur. “Don’t say the game between Pakistan and Japan was fixed,” Malaysian Hockey Federation (MHF) secretary T. Paramalingam demanded of Tan, suggesting that Malaysia missed about because they didn’t play with enough “heart and soul”.
Meanwhile, Thailand’s Olympic boxing champion Manus Boonjumnong revived his career in style when he claimed the light-welterweight title with a 22-11 points win over South Korea’s Shin Myung-Hoon.
“It was really comfortable,” said the 26-year-old who won the Olympic title in 2004.
Featherweight Bahodirjon Sultonov from Uzbekistan outpointed Mongolia’s Enkhzorig Zorigtbaatar for gold, while Violito Payla of the Philippines stunned Thailand’s former world champion Somjit Jongjohor to win the flyweight crown.
On the tennis courts, Indian favourite Sania Mirza knocked-out Chinese top seed Li Na 6-2, 6-2 to secure her place in the women’s singles final where she will face Li’s compatriot Zheng Jie who downed Japan’s Aiko Nakamura 6-3, 6-2.
“I kept thinking she is 21 in the world so she can definitely come back here at any second. But I just tried to do what I knew I had to do,” said Mirza, ranked 66 in the world.
Top seed Lee Hyung Taik brushed aside Cecil Mamiit from the Philippines 7-5, 6-0 to move into the final of the men’s tournament.
Iraq made their first Asian Games football final in 24 years with an emotional 1-0 win over South Korea, a victory greeted by a hail of gunfire in Baghdad.
They will meet Qatar on Friday after the Games hosts pulled off an upset 2-0 victory over defending champions Iran.

TITLE: Philadelphia 76ers Slump To Ninth Successive Loss
AUTHOR: By Dan Gelston
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PHILADELPHIA — Allen Iverson spent another day waiting to be traded, and the Philadelphia 76ers lost again without him. Paul Pierce and Ryan Gomes each scored 18 points, and Tony Allen had 16 to help the Boston Celtics beat the 76ers 101-81 Wednesday, handing Philadelphia it’s ninth straight loss. 
 “It’s a challenge for myself and it’s certainly a challenge for the players,” Sixers coach Maurice Cheeks said.
The Sixers (5-16) have lost nine straight for the first time since a 13-game losing streak in 1996-97, and have lost 13 of 14 overall. Philadelphia has only two wins since a 3-0 start.
Iverson was inactive for the fourth straight game while Philadelphia tries to trade the former MVP. Although Miami coach and president Pat Riley expressed a “level of interest” in acquiring the guard, it’s uncertain if the Heat are actually involved in any serious discussions with Philadelphia about making a deal.
“I would be delinquent in my responsibilities if I wasn’t interested in Allen Iverson,” Riley said Wednesday night. “That’s all I’m going to say. I’m not going to comment any more. It’s like when Shaquille came out there. I was frothing at the mouth. So my level of interest can be gauged on that comment.”

In other games: 

Raptors 91, Magic 84
Rookie Andrea Bargnani had a season-high 23 points and added six rebounds as visiting Toronto snapped a four-game losing streak.

Suns 99, Heat 89
Shawn Marion had 23 points and 13 rebounds and Steve Nash had 18 points and 11 assists to lead Phoenix to its 12th straight victory. The Suns finished a road trip 5-0 for the first time since April 1998.

Pacers 101, Pistons 90
Jermaine O’Neal had 26 points and 14 rebounds to help host Indiana snap a three-game losing streak against Detroit.

Wizards 120, Nuggets 91 
Gilbert Arenas scored 34 points to lead six Washington players in double figures and the Wizards won for the fourth time in five games. Caron Butler had 26 points, nine rebounds and seven assists. 

Cavaliers 104, Bobcats 101 
LeBron James scored 22 points and Larry Hughes made a crucial steal and two free throws in the final 30 seconds to help Cleveland improve to 10-2 at home. 

Knicks 94, Hawks 82 
Eddy Curry had 20 points and nine rebounds and Jared Jeffries added 15 points in his first start of the season for host New York. 

Nets 108, Bucks 95 
Vince Carter scored 36 points and Jason Kidd registered his 80th career triple-double with 10 points, 10 rebounds and 10 assists as New Jersey won consecutive games for only the third time this season. 
 
Trail Blazers 85, Grizzlies 79 
Zach Randolph scored 21 points and grabbed 11 rebounds to lead Portland, which ended a six-game road trip — its longest of the season — with three straight wins. It was the Blazers’ sixth road win of the season, matching last season’s total. 

Spurs 95, Timberwolves 82 
Tim Duncan scored 24 points and Tony Parker added 23 for host San Antonio. 
Kevin Garnett and Mark Blount each had 19 points for Minnesota, which scored a season-low 26 points in the second half.

TITLE: U.K. Police Begin Hunt for Serial Killer
AUTHOR: By Alessia Pierdomenico
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: IPSWICH — Police hunting a serial killer of prostitutes in eastern England said on Thursday two of five victims had been murdered in strikingly similar ways before their naked bodies were dumped.
Anneli Alderton, 24, was strangled and an unidentified woman was killed by “compression to the neck,” detectives said as they appealed for help in one of Britain’s biggest manhunts.
Five bodies have been found in less than two weeks around Ipswich, spreading fear in the usually quiet town.
The murderer has been dubbed the “Ipswich Ripper” after the 19th century prostitute killer Jack the Ripper and the Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe, who killed 13 women in northern England between 1975 and 1980.
Police have linked the murders of prostitutes Anneli Alderton, 24, Gemma Adams, 25, and Tania Nicol, 19.
The bodies of two other women, believed to be missing prostitutes Paula Clennell, 24, and Annette Nicholls, 29, were discovered near the town of Ipswich on Tuesday.
A post mortem on one of those two bodies confirmed the victim had died from pressure to the neck. Police did not elaborate or confirm the identity of the victim.
“The woman died as a result of compression to the neck,” Detective Chief Superintendent Stewart Gull told a news conference. “Her death is being treated as murder.”
The cause of death is similar to the case of Alderton, who was strangled. Details of how the other three victims died have not been released.
Detectives said they were aware that a witness believed she was among the last to see Alderton getting into a blue BMW late last week. Her body was found on Sunday.
The sighting was made by another prostitute, one of the few still working the streets in Ipswich’s red-light district.
“A blue BMW went into the car park and Anneli went up to it and got in and it drove out,” said the woman, named simply as Lou. “I think that was the last time she was seen.
“The driver was chubby, with glasses and dark hair,” she told the Daily Telegraph.
Police appealed for help in finding the women’s clothes. They have received 5,500 telephone calls and 1,000 emails from the public.
A huge police inquiry began on December 2 when the body of Gemma Adams was found in a stream near Ipswich. Police found Tania Nicol’s body in the same stream on December 8.

TITLE: British Police Question Blair Over Cash-For-Honors Case
PUBLISHER: Agence France Press
TEXT: LONDON — Prime Minister Tony Blair has been questioned by police investigating allegations that peerages and other honors were bestowed in return for political contributions, Blair’s office said Thursday.
Downing Street said the interview had not taken place under caution, which would be the case if Blair were considered a suspect.
Police have been investigating claims that all three major political parties awarded seats in the House of Lords and other honors in return for secret loans. 
Several senior figures within the Labor Party have already been quizzed by police. They include the former Labor Science Minister Lord Sainsbury and Blair’s former Middle East envoy, Lord Levy.
Campaign funding rules allow those who offer loans — but not donations — to remain anonymous. 
The Labor Party has said that it accepted, but did not disclose, loans of almost 14 million pounds ($25 million) from 12 supporters of the party. 
The opposition Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties have acknowledged that they have also received secret loans from supporters of their parties.
Blair has been forced to acknowledge that some of the supporters of the Labor party election campaigns who offered the loans were later nominated for seats in the parliamentary House of Lords.

TITLE: Drogba Strike Moves Chelsea Closer to Top
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Chelsea cut Manchester United’s Premier League lead to five points after Didier Drogba scored the winner in a 1-0 victory over Newcastle United on Wednesday. 
Chelsea, desperate for all three points after the champions were held to a 1-1 draw by Arsenal on Sunday, needed Drogba to come off the bench and poke the ball home in the 74th minute. 
Arsenal moved up to third place after their Togo striker Emmanuel Adebayor scored in the 88th minute to give them a 1-0 victory at Wigan Athletic in the night’s other game. 
Manchester United are top with 44 points, Chelsea have 39 and Arsenal are third on 29 after 17 games. 
Chelsea’s performance at Stamford Bridge was at best workmanlike and at times poor against an injury-ravaged Newcastle side. 
Chelsea coach Jose Mourinho said: “They didn’t play very well, but at halftime I think they understood the message — and the message was ‘we cannot lose points today.’ 
“Sometimes you go with quality, sometimes you go with your heart — and I think everyone went with their heart,” he told Sky Sports News. 
Mourinho played down the notion that Chelsea had sent United a message, a few weeks after coming back for a 1-1 away draw with Alex Ferguson’s men. 
“They (United) are not silly, they know what football is about, the manager and some of the players have a lot of experience. They know how strong we are, because they felt our second half at Old Trafford in their skin. 
“And they know we are ready for the challenge.” 
There were rare starts for striker Salomon Kalou and Shaun Wright-Phillips but both fluffed first-half chances and the England winger was replaced at halftime. 
Newcastle’s French midfielder Antoine Sibierski hit the bar with an early header from a James Milner corner, with Chelsea’s third-choice keeper Hilario making a poor start. 
But Drogba came on for the restart and the Ivory Coast striker soon added bite to what had been a pedestrian attack, further strengthened by Andriy Shevchenko. 
The breakthrough came when Arjen Robben provided the pass, Shevchenko skewed a shot and the ball landed at the feet of Drogba, who prodded home his 15th goal of the season in all competitions. 
Arsenal struggled at Wigan but finally came to life after a dour first half in which the hosts enjoyed most of the possession. 
Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger said: “It was a difficult game. It could have gone for them but in the end it went for us. We needed to be really strong to come away with the three points.” 
Chances fell to both sides after the break before Arsenal’s Spanish substitute Cesc Fabregas provided a great ball behind the Wigan defence for Adebayor to beat the offside trip and then keeper Chris Kirkland.

TITLE: Davenport Set to Retire After Birth of First Child
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Three-times grand slam tournament winner Lindsay Davenport has no plans to play tennis again after giving birth to her first child next year. 
“I hate the word ‘retirement’ but this season was such a struggle physically for me and I can’t imagine playing again,” Davenport told ESPN.com (www.espn.com). 
The 30-year-old American missed most of 2006 with back problems before reaching the quarter-finals at the U.S. Open. 
In her career, she has won the Australian Open, Wimbledon and U.S. Open singles titles plus the 1996 Atlanta Olympics gold medal. Her 51 singles titles put her ninth on the all-time list. 
Davenport began her professional career in 1993 and was one of the pioneers of the power game in women’s tennis. 
In the early stages, her strength was offset by a struggle with her weight but she devoted herself to fitness training and in 1998 won the first of her three majors by defeating top seed Martina Hingis 6-3 7-5 in the U.S. Open. 
She beat Steffi Graf in the 1999 Wimbledon final and captured the Australian Open title in the following year. 
Davenport struggled with injuries in 2002 but came back to win 13 tournaments in 2004 and 2005. Her loss to Venus Williams in last year’s Wimbledon final was the longest championship match in the tournament’s history. 
“I can’t say there’s any sadness, yet, about missing tennis. My life is with my husband and my future child,” Davenport said. 
“I feel like the second part of my life is about to begin, and I feel so lucky that if everything goes well, I’m able to go out like this. The timing couldn’t be better.”

TITLE: Police: Gunmen Kidnap Dozens in Baghdad
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGHDAD, Iraq — Gunmen in military uniforms kidnapped dozens of people Thursday from a major commercial area in central Baghdad, the second mass abduction in the capital in a month.
The attackers drove up to the busy al-Sanak area in about 10 sport utility vehicles and began rounding up shop owners and bystanders. Two police officers said 50 to 70 people were abducted.
The al-Sanak area — one of the capital’s main commercial districts — holds stores selling auto spare parts, agricultural equipment and the small power generators that are ubiquitous in Baghdad due to severe power shortages.
The stores are owned by a mix of Shiites, Sunnis and others and it was not immediately clear why the area was targeted. 
But suspicion fell on the militias, which are believed to have infiltrated the police forces and to have killed hundreds in sectarian violence, personal vendettas and kidnappings for ransom.
Mohammed Qassim Jassim, a 37-year-old owner of a clothes store in the area, said the attack started at about 11 a.m.
“We heard cars and shootings in the area and then we saw gunmen wearing Iraqi army uniforms and driving SUVs who were snatching people from the shops and street. It took about 20 minutes for them to fan out and control the area.”
Iraqi security forces sealed off the area and were interviewing witnesses, while panicked store owners closed their shops and fled the area.
A spokesman for the Defense Ministry, which oversees the army, said the Interior Ministry, which oversees the police, is in charge of the area, but stressed the difficulties in controlling the distribution of uniforms.
“Anyone can buy military or police uniforms from the market although we have issued orders to confiscate these uniforms and punish the owners,” spokesman Mohammed al-Askari said. “This issue (uniforms) can’t be controlled as each soldier has more than one uniform.”
AP Television News footage showed boarded and locked store fronts with the blue dome of a Shiite mosque in the background. Few people were on the street of what is usually a bustling area.
Meanwhile, officers were on high alert Thursday after receiving tips that militants were moving bombs into the Shiite Sadr City slum.
A car bomb killed two policemen who were trying to defuse it in Sadr City Wednesday night.
Four civilians were wounded in the blast at 11:30 p.m. on al-Fallah St. in the sprawling district in eastern Baghdad, police Capt. Mohammed Ismail said. He said explosives experts successfully defused a second car bomb in the same area.
Another police officer said authorities had stepped up security in Sadr City after receiving tips that 10 car bombs had entered the area and militants were trying to smuggle more in.
The officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons, said the number of police patrols and checkpoints had been increased and police were intensifying searches of cars entering the district.
The Interior Ministry confirmed that it had received tips about car bombs aimed at Sadr City from people calling into a terror hot line.
Sadr City, which houses some 2.5 million people, is a stronghold of the Mahdi Army, a militia that is loyal to anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and has been blamed in some of the country’s worst sectarian violence.
Elsewhere in the capital Thursday, gunmen stormed a boys’ school in the southwestern Alam neighborhood, killing a Shiite guard, police said.
Two mortar shells also landed on a rural area on the edge of the predominantly Sunni neighborhood of Dora in southern Baghdad, wounding three people and causing a huge fire, police said.
The capital has seen a series of attacks since a Feb. 22 bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra set off a cycle of retaliatory violence between the majority sect and disaffected Sunnis, who were dominant during the rule of Saddam Hussein but lost power with his ouster.
On Nov. 14, suspected Shiite militiamen in Interior Ministry commando uniforms abducted scores of men from an office that handles academic grants and exchanges for the Higher Education, which is predominantly Sunni Arab. 
Several of those kidnap victims apparently were later released, although there were conflicting accounts about how many people were involved.

TITLE: Magic Panesar Puts Aussies in Spin
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: PERTH — Monty Panesar captured five wickets on his Ashes debut to help England bowl out Australia for 244 before struggling to 51 for two on the opening day of the third test on Thursday. 
The left-arm spinner claimed the scalps of Justin Langer, Andrew Symonds, Adam Gilchrist, Shane Warne and Brett Lee to finish with figures of five for 92 and become the first English spinner to take five test wickets in an innings at the WACA. 
Strike bowler Steve Harmison also rediscovered his form to take four for 48, including the prize wickets of Ricky Ponting and Michael Clarke, as England’s bowlers enjoyed their best day of the series. 
England’s batting, however, which collapsed in the Adelaide test to hand a 2-0 lead in the series, looked shaky once again. 
Opener Alastair Cook continued his poor run when he departed for 15 and Ian Bell went for a second-ball duck, leaving Andrew Strauss (24 not out) and Paul Collingwood (10 not out) to battle through to stumps. 
Cook was caught by Langer at fourth slip off Glenn McGrath and Bell edged express paceman Lee to wicketkeeper Gilchrist with the two wickets falling in the space of six deliveries. 
Collingwood, who made a double-century in the last test, had a lucky escape on four when Warne dropped a regulation slip catch off the bowling of Stuart Clark. 
The only Australian batsmen to make a significant score was left-hander Mike Hussey, who finished unbeaten on 74 after chalking up his fourth successive half-century of the series. 
Hussey made 86 in Australia’s 277-run victory in Brisbane and 91 and 61 not out in Adelaide. Another fine innings in Perth gave him 312 runs for the series at an average of 156. 
Panesar was controversially overlooked for the first two tests but was finally given his chance when the English selectors dropped the ineffective Ashley Giles. They also replaced seamer James Anderson with Sajid Mahmood. 
Panesar’s omission from the first two tests appeared even more baffling when he claimed a wicket with his seventh delivery, bowling Langer with the last ball before lunch. 
The left-arm spinner claimed a second scalp before tea when Symonds nicked a catch to wicketkeeper Geraint Jones and a third when Gilchrist was caught by a scrambling Bell at short leg for a duck. Warne was also caught behind and Lee was trapped lbw, giving Panesar his third five-wicket haul in only his 11th test and cementing his place in the team. 
Harmison, who had taken just one wicket in the series after erratic displays in Brisbane and Adelaide, rediscovered his line and length at the perfect time to trap Ponting lbw for two and held a return one-handed catch to remove Clarke for 37, before he and Hoggard  polished off the tail.

TITLE: New Super Series to Raise Badminton Profile, Prizes
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: KUALA LUMPUR — Badminton’s most prestigious event, the All England Championship, will be part of a new cash-driven 12-tournament Super Series tour aimed at raising the sport’s global appeal. 
Governing body Badminton World Federation (BWF), formerly known as the International Badminton Federation, said on Thursday that the inaugural series in 2007 will offer minimum prize money of US$200,000 (102,000 pounds) for each tournament. 
“There will be more prize money, more television coverage and the opportunity for players to make a proper living out of the sport, just like tennis,” BWF deputy president Punch Gunalan told Reuters. 
“The important thing is to make badminton one of the leading racquet sports in the world.” 
The Super Series, running from January to December, will feature tournaments in England, China, Denmark, France, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore and Switzerland. 
China will stage two tournaments while a season-ending BWF Super Series Masters for the top eight in men’s and women’s singles and doubles will be played at a venue yet to be announced. 
Badminton is hoping to make the most of recent rule changes that now sees 21-point rally sets, in which points can be scored no matter who is serving. Previously a point could only be scored by a serving player. 
Canadian top-50 player Bobby Milroy said the series is a major step forward for the sport. 
“This is what we were waiting for the past 10 years,” he said. “We knew it was the only way this sport could take off. 
“Tennis has been doing this for 20 years. We are really excited about this. The new points system is great. Players were sceptical at first but now we can’t imagine going back to the old system.” 
Paisan Rangsikitpho, BWF’s chairman of events, said he hopes the series will encourage more players from Europe, the Americas and Africa to challenge what has traditionally been an Asian-dominated sport. 
“With more prize money, it would mean that players can make a living out of the sport, therefore, it may encourage more players from the US and Europe to play badminton,” said Paisan. 
While minimum prize money is US$200,000, individual tournaments are allowed to offer purses above this amount. 
BWF has also appointed Stockhold-based IEC in Sports to handle global television marketing and distribution. 
“Badminton needs more stars. We expect players and federations to be more professional and change their mindsets,” said Gunalan. 
“We need a Tiger Woods or Andre Agassi. That’s the direction we want to go in.”