SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1234 (100), Friday, December 29, 2006
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TITLE: Ex-Yukos Owner Probed
AUTHOR: By Henry Meyer
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian prosecutors said Wednesday they are investigating the possible role of a former owner of the Yukos oil company in the radiation poisoning death of one-time Russian intelligence agent Alexander Litvinenko.
They did not explain the basis for the allegations against Leonid Nevzlin, who now lives in exile in Israel.
Russia has unsuccessfully pressed for the extradition of a number of Kremlin critics in recent years, including Nevzlin and tycoon Boris Berezovsky, who lives in Britain.
Amir Dan, a spokesman for Nevzlin, dismissed the prosecutors’ allegations.
“We all know the ways of the KGB and the Russian government, and these claims are ridiculous and are not worthy of comment,” he told The Associated Press.
Alex Goldfarb, a friend of Litvinenko’s active in London’s community of Russian expatriates and Kremlin critics, called the charges against Nevzlin a “clumsy effort” by Moscow to shift blame from itself.
“This is sheer nonsense,” he told the AP. “Everybody knows that all evidence points to Russia. The way the Russian government, the Russian prosecutors are handling it is only adding to that suspicion that it is the Russian government behind this.”
Litvinenko died in London on Nov. 23 after he was exposed to a rare radioactive element, polonium-210. In a deathbed statement, he accused President Vladimir Putin of ordering his murder, allegations which the Kremlin has dismissed.
Nevzlin fled Russia after authorities launched a criminal investigation against Yukos, once Russia’s top oil producer, in 2003.
Nevzlin said last month that Litvinenko had given him a document related to Yukos. He said he believed the poisoning death was tied to Litvinenko’s investigations of the Russian government’s dismantling of the company.
On Wednesday, the Prosecutor General’s office said Nevzlin and other Yukos figures wanted by Russia could have ordered Litvinenko’s killing as well as the poisoning of another former agent, Dmitry Kovtun.
“We are checking the possibility that these crimes could have been ordered and organized by the same group of people who are wanted internationally, one of whom is Leonid Nevzlin,” prosecutor’s spokeswoman Marina Gridneva said on state television.
The statement said prosecutors had formed a special investigative unit and were preparing to file international requests for assistance in the case and possible extradition demands.
Britain sent Scotland Yard detectives to Moscow this month to interview witnesses but they were allowed only to sit in on questioning by Russian prosecutors.
Russia also launched its own investigation, seen as a bid to keep control of the politically explosive case, which has threatened to drive relations between Britain and Russia to post-Cold War lows.
Nevzlin, who according to Forbes magazine had a net worth of about $2 billion before Yukos’ collapse, has been charged by Russia with ordering the 2002 murder of a married couple.
A former Yukos security officer has been jailed since mid-2003 in the case, which was allegedly business-related.
Litvinenko fell ill after meeting with Russian businessman Kovtun, Andrei Lugovoi, also an ex-Soviet agent, and Vyacheslav Sokolenko, head of a private Russian security firm, at a bar at the Millennium Hotel in London.
All three men have denied involvement in the former spy’s death. Kovtun himself has been contaminated with radiation and is undergoing treatment at a Moscow hospital.
The unexplained murder has inspired widespread speculation about who may have been behind it.
Many Western analysts suspect the Kremlin, though there is no evidence that the Russian government was involved.
Pro-Kremlin lawmakers have suggested — also without offering evidence — that Berezovsky was responsible, as part of a plan to blacken the reputation of Putin and the Kremlin.
Mario Scaramella, an Italian who also met with Litvinenko the day he fell ill, is seeking release from prison, his lawyer said Wednesday. 
His arrest is not believed to be directly connected to Litvinenko’s murder.
Scaramella was questioned for about six hours by Italian prosecutors in a Rome jail, where he is being detained.
His lawyer, Sergio Rastrelli, said his client is accused of slander. Scaramella’s father and Italian news reports say the suspect was accused of international arms trafficking.
“We intend to seek his immediate release from prison,” Rastrelli told reporters. 
“My client will respond to all questions and will clarify any ... misunderstanding.”

TITLE: Belarus Warns Over Gas
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW — Gas transit through Belarus to Europe will be illegal unless Gazprom relents on demands that Minsk pay steep price increases in 2007, a senior Belarussian official said Wednesday.
Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller responded by demanding still higher prices and insisting that the gas for Europe cross the Belarussian border. Gazprom also said the threat was tantamount to planning to siphon off gas.
If Gazprom and Belarus do not agree on a price for Belarus, that would mean no contract for gas transit, Belarussian First Deputy Energy Minister Eduard Tovpenets said. “How can it transit without a contract? It would be a direct breach of the law,” Interfax quoted him as saying.
He reiterated the stance that Belarussian Deputy Prime Minister Vladimir Semashko made at the Minsk airport late Tuesday after his return from failed talks in Moscow.
In response, Gazprom will ask the government on Wednesday to slap an export duty on the “market” price of $200 per 1,000 cubic meters of Belarus-bound gas, Miller told reporters. With the duty, the price would grow to $260, or an additional $1.3 billion per year, he told reporters late Wednesday.
Even if it cuts supplies to Belarus, which could happen at 10 a.m. on Jan. 1, Gazprom will continue pumping gas through Belarus to Europe, Miller said.
If Belarus siphons off as much gas as it currently consumes, Gazprom will not be able to make up for the loss, deputy CEO Alexander Medvedev said in a telephone call with investors.
About 30 billion cubic meters of gas — or 20 percent of total exports to Europe — go through Belarus. Belarus is consuming some 20 bcm this year.
Gazprom, which says it has offered big concessions on price to Belarus as negotiators raced to beat a Dec. 31 deadline, retorted that it could offer no more sweeteners. “Gazprom is not Santa Claus and cannot give such presents to authorities in Belarus,” spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov said.
About 80 percent of Russian exports to Europe are pumped via Ukraine, with the rest going through Belarus. Russia supplies one-quarter of Europe’s gas to more than 20 countries.
Belarus, whose President Alexander Lukashenko is accused in the West of crushing human rights, has long been a Russian ally.
Relations have soured due to what analysts say is President Vladimir Putin’s distaste for Belarus’ Soviet-style economic policy and reluctance to share enterprises with Moscow.
Gazprom will not supply gas to Belarus until a new contract is signed, but hopes it will not be forced to cut off supplies, Kupriyanov told Radio Mayak on Wednesday.
“I believe we will not have to resort to drastic measures and will reach an agreement,” Kupriyanov said.
“Statements that Belarus will stick to the 2006 price of $46.68 per 1,000 cubic meters until the contract is signed can be described as plans to tap Europe-bound gas in the absence of a contract,” he said.
Kupriyanov said Gazprom had made “unprecedented concessions” to Belarus.
Semashko proposed that Belarus buy 20 billion cubic meters of Russian gas at $75 per 1,000 cubic meters in 2007 and pay $1.5 billion for the supplies. Under the Belarussian proposal, Gazprom would pay $2.5 billion for a 50 percent stake in Beltransgaz plus transit charges, Kupriyanov said.
This means, he said, that Gazprom would not receive any money for its supplies to Belarus, but would have to give over $1 billion to Lukashenko “as a present.”
Kommersant on Wednesday cited a Kremlin source as saying that Moscow had proposed that Lukashenko choose between the market price and Moscow’s conditions of finalizing the union between the two countries.
A Gazprom source said some top employees had been told to cancel their New Year’s holidays: “It looks exactly like one year ago with Ukraine,” he said.
(Reuters, MT)

TITLE: Accused Spy Deported from Canada
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MONTREAL, Quebec — A man accused of being a spy for Moscow while masquerading as a Canadian citizen has been deported to Russia.
Canada’s Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day said the man, who had assumed the name of Paul William Hampel, left Canada under close supervision Tuesday morning.
The Canada Border Services Agency took Hampel into custody Nov. 14, after finding he was carrying a fraudulent Ontario birth certificate under his shirt.
According to documents filed in Federal Court in Montreal, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service believes Hampel is a member of the Foreign Intelligence Service, or SVR, a successor to the Soviet-era KGB. 
Officials had asked for his immediate deportation, suspecting him of acts of espionage that threatened Canadian security.
The man confessed his Russian citizenship in Federal Court earlier this month. In exchange for his admission, a judge agreed to protect his real name after he told the court he feared for his life and the safety of his family.
Day said the man received documentation from the Russian government to allow his deportation.
Calls to the Russian Embassy in Ottawa were not immediately returned Tuesday night.
Despite his department’s allegations the man was spying for Russia, Day rejected the suggestion that the case might harm relations between the two countries.
“We understand that these things go on in the world. The Russians understand that also,” Day said. “This will not hurt relations between the two countries.”
Cases involving alleged Russian spies are rare in Canada. The last case was in 1996, when Dmitriy Olshevsky and Yelena Olshevskaya, who went under the names of Ian and Laurie Lambert, were arrested and promptly deported. Friends and co-workers were stunned to learn they were actually “sleeper” agents for the Foreign Intelligence Service.

TITLE: Aeroflot Plane Hijacked, Forced to Land in Prague
AUTHOR: By Nadia Rybarova
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PRAGUE, Czech Republic — A Russian Aeroflot airliner made an unscheduled landing at Prague’s international airport on Thursday after an apparent hijacking attempt, and a passenger was detained, police said.
The Airbus A320 flying from Moscow to Geneva, landed at Ruzyne airport shortly before 11 a.m., airport spokeswoman Pavlina Hajkova said. Police spokesman Pavel Hantak said that the alleged hijacker was “pacified on board the plane” and the man, a Russian citizen, was taken into custody by Czech police.
Pantak said the man been threatening the crew of the plane but did not elaborate.
Deputy director of Aeroflot, Lev Koshlyakov, told Rossiya television, “One of the passengers said he had an explosive device.”
Hantak said it was not immediately clear when the plane could resume its flight to Switzerland.

TITLE: Russian Orthodox Churces to Reconcile
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Russian Orthodox Patriarchate and a breakaway church-in-exile will formally reconcile in May, ending a split that dates back to the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, Russian news reports said Tuesday.
Russian Patriarch Alexy II and Metropolitan Laurus, the New York-based leader of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, will sign a document formalizing the reunification before conducting a joint service in Moscow on May 17.
Each church would maintain their own council of bishops, but priests could participate and lead Mass in both churches. The churches also could cooperate with religious education, youth programs and missionary activities.
Metropolitan Kirill, the Russian Orthodox Church’s head of external relations, said “there are questions that need to be settled, but these are formal details that will not influence the reunification act,” the ITAR-Tass news agency reported. The emigre church split from the Patriarchate three years after the Bolshevik Revolution and cut all ties in 1927, after Patriarch Sergiy declared the church’s loyalty to the Soviet Union’s communist government.
The Russian Orthodox Church had said that Sergiy’s move was aimed at saving the church. It disavowed the declaration this year.

TITLE: Regional Leader’s Relative Jailed for Contract Murders
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Ali Kaitov, the son-in-law of the president of the republic of Karachayevo-Cherkessia, was sentenced Wednesday to 17 years in prison by the republic’s Supreme Court for ordering seven murders.
The court also handed down lengthy terms to Tamerlan Bostanov and Azamat Akbayev, who fatally shot local lawmaker Rasul Bogatyrev and six other men in a dispute over a local cement plant. Bostanov and Akbayev received life sentences.
Another man, German Ismailov, was also found guilty of aiding in the murders. Ismailov received a 16-year sentence. 
Three other people convicted in connection with the crime received shorter terms.
Kaitov and Bogatyrev belonged to rival clans and had been battling for control of the Kavkaz Tsement cement plant. Bogatyrev arrived at Kaitov’s dacha on Oct. 11, 2004, to discuss the dispute, only to be killed along with his six-man retinue.
Some of those who were on Kaitov’s side at the dacha incident were police officers. Local officials tried to cover up the crime, but public pressure prompted federal officials to step in, which led to the case being solved.
The case sent shockwaves through this area in the Northern Caucasus.
After the seven men were killed, the killers dismembered the bodies, burnt them in a bonfire filled with car tires and disposed of the remains in a pit. But police managed to uncover the remains.
The gruesome discovery, coupled with suspicions that Kaitov had been involved in the crime, led relatives and victims’ supporters to storm the government building in Cherkessk, the republic’s capital, and demand that Kaitov’s father-in-law, republic President Mustafa Batdyev, step down.

TITLE: Bill Moving Court To Petersburg Stalls
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Federation Council rejected a bill Wednesday that would have moved the Constitutional Court to St. Petersburg from Moscow but left the door open for a revised draft permitting for occasional sessions in the capital, as the judges would like.
Out of 177 council members, or senators, 103 voted against. The main objection was that the measure barred the court from holding sessions anywhere besides its official location.
That provision “infringes upon the Constitutional Court’s rights and contradicts the principle of independence,” according to a memo distributed among senators by the council’s Constitutional Law Committee, Interfax reported.
The council vote followed the Constitutional Court having unsuccessfully lobbied the State Duma to amend the bill to allow the court to maintain a branch office in Moscow and periodically meet in Moscow or other locations.
While Duma deputies had agreed to permit the court to meet in Moscow, they ultimately changed their mind, passing a bill earlier this month that restricted the court to St. Petersburg.
Constitutional Court chairman Valery Zorkin was then dispatched to lobby senators Tuesday to reject the bill, Kommersant reported Wednesday. 
Zorkin has also secured President Vladimir Putin’s support for a revised draft, with the understanding the court would not meet too often in Moscow.
The Federation Council also set up a commission with the Duma to hammer out an amended version of the measure. 
If lawmakers act soon, the court could move to St. Petersburg in 2007 or 2008.

TITLE: Forecasts for 2007 Inflation Up
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Economic Development and Trade Ministry has raised its maximum inflation forecast to 7.0 percent in 2008, from a previous 6.0 percent, and to 6.8 percent in 2009, from 5.5, a top ministry official said Wednesday.
Andrei Klepach, the ministry’s chief macroeconomic planner, said the move was due to an increase in domestic gas prices and the partial liberalization of electricity tariffs.
“Electricity-price liberalization and a significant growth in gas prices are all taking place in 2009 to 2010,” Klepach told a news conference.
Last month, the Cabinet cleared a plan to gradually free up domestic gas and power trade and double gas prices by 2011. The share of unregulated power and gas trade will amount to 5 percent of the market from 2007, rising by 5 percent every six months. All industrial consumers will pay market prices by 2011.
The Cabinet agreed to raise prices by only 15 percent in 2007, in line with increases in previous years, in order not to hurt voters ahead of parliamentary and presidential elections.
But in 2008 and 2009, domestic gas prices may rise by 25 and 27.7 percent respectively, the ministry said in its documents.
Klepach said Russia was likely to overshoot its 2006 inflation target after prices rose 0.6 percent in the first 18 days of December as Russians shop and travel ahead of a long New Year and Orthodox Christmas break.
“We will hit the 9 percent target or slightly exceed it,” Klepach said.
He also said the ministry had raised its gross domestic product growth forecast to 6.2 percent from 6.0 percent in 2007, to 5.9 percent from 5.8 in 2008, and to 6.0 percent from 5.9 in 2009.
The ministry saw the ruble appreciating by 4.6 percent in real terms against the basket of currencies of Russia’s trading partners, down from a previous forecast of 4.8 percent.

TITLE: Turkmen Acting Leader is Heir Apparent
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ASHGABAT, Turkmenistan — Turkmenistan’s acting president emerged Tuesday as the heir apparent to the dictator Saparmurat Niyazov, after the country’s main legislature rewrote the constitution to allow the interim leader to run in February’s presidential elections.
The government of the one-party state named a slate of candidates for the presidential ballot. But the chief of Turkmenistan’s elections office pledged his allegiance to the interim president, Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov (pronounced Gur-ban-GOOLY Berdy-moo-kha-MED-off).
Murad Kariyev, the elections chief, said he will “do everything to make him (Berdymukhamedov) president because he is a worthy successor.”
The move dimmed hopes among exiled opposition leaders and human rights groups that the death of Turkmenistan’s president for life, after 21 years of unchallenged rule, would bring reforms.
The desert nation, a major supplier of natural gas to Russia and Europe, lies north of Afghanistan and Iran. It is part of Central Asia, a predominantly Muslim region where several post-Soviet regimes face the threat of Islamic radicalism.
Niyazov, who died last week, ruled Turkmenistan as an autocrat. He cultivated an all-encompassing personality cult — renaming the month of January after himself, requiring school children to study his writings and ordering citizens to call him “Turkmenbashi,” or The Father of All Turkmen.
“We’ll keep alive the legacy of Saparmurat Turkmenbashi the Great,” Berdymukhamedov said Tuesday after the People’s Council unanimously approved him as a presidential candidate.
The council picked five other little-known candidates — a deputy energy minister, two town mayors, one deputy regional governor and one district head — perhaps in a bid to create the appearance of a contested election.
Each of the nominees won about two-thirds of the votes in the People’s Council, which is made up of 2,500 lawmakers who were either elected or appointed.
The council selected candidates out of a slate of nominees proposed by representatives of the country’s five regions and its capital, Ashgabat.
Berdymukhamedov was nominated by Ondzhik Musayev, the leader of the country’s only political party, the Democratic Party.
Kariyev, the elections chief, said Berdymukhamedov was almost certain to win. “We could elect Gurbanguli Myalikgulyevich as president right now,” he said, respectfully using Berdymukhamedov’s first name and patronymic, “but we will not deviate from laws set by our great leader.”
The election, Kariyev added, will be fair and open to foreign observers.
Berdymukhamedov, meanwhile, pledged to preserve the country’s “stability and peace” and “our ancient democratic traditions” that he said were revived by Niyazov. He also urged Turkmen to vote in the February election “to guarantee our future prosperity and demonstrate our unity.”
Berdymukhamedov, who was a deputy prime minister under Niyazov, was unexpectedly named acting president on Niyazov’s death.
Under the constitution, Parliament Speaker Ovezgeldy Atayev was supposed to succeed the president as interim ruler. But within hours of Niyazov’s death, authorities charged Atayev with criminal offenses.
Previously, the constitution stipulated that the acting president could not run for the presidency — but the People’s Council Tuesday eliminated that restriction and cleared the way for Berdymukhamedov’s candidacy.
Opposition leaders who had been exiled by Niyazov have said they intend to return to Turkmenistan following his death. So far, they haven’t been allowed to do so.

TITLE: 32 Warnings to Media
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Authorities have issued 32 warnings to mass media organizations for inciting racial hatred, xenophobia and extremism, Boris Boyarskov, head of the Federal Service for Media Law Compliance and Cultural Heritage, said Wednesday.
The government has also revoked the licenses of 12 adult publications and sued to close down two media organizations for their role in inciting hatred, Boyarskov said, Interfax reported.

TITLE: Scaramella Queried
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ROME — Italian prosecutors on Wednesday were to question Mario Scaramella, who met with a former Federal Security Services agent Alexander Litvinenko in London on the day the Russian man fell ill from poisoning.
Scaramella was arrested Sunday in Naples after returning from London. 
Scaramella is accused of international arms trafficking and slander, and the arrest is not believed to be directly connected to the case of Alexander Litvinenko.
Scaramella met with Alexander Litvinenko at a London sushi bar on Nov. 1, the day the former KGB agent fell ill. Litvinenko died of poisoning from radioactive polonium-210 on Nov. 23.
Scaramella has said he showed Litvinenko e-mails from a confidential source identifying the possible killers of Russian investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya and listing other potential targets for assassination — including himself and Litvinenko.

TITLE: Missile Fails Test
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — A new sea-based ballistic missile has failed in a test launch for the third consecutive time
The failure signals serious trouble with a weapon that has been hailed as a key future component of the nation’s nuclear might, a newspaper reported Wednesday.
The Bulava missile failed during its launch Sunday from a nuclear submarine, Moskovsky Komsomolets reported. Two earlier tests, in September and October, also failed.
The Defense Ministry refused to comment on the report.
Moskovsky Komsomolets said the military decided to keep the latest failure under wraps to avoid damaging the image of Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov.
Ivanov is widely seen as a possible candidate to succeed President Vladimir Putin in the 2008 presidential election.

TITLE: Georgian Elections
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: TBILISI, Georgia — Lawmakers on Wednesday approved a bill that envisages holding simultaneous presidential and parliamentary elections in 2008.
The parliament voted 167-10 to hold the vote in October or November 2008. 
Critics called the move an attempt by President Mikheil Saakashvili to help his allies retain control of the legislature. Saakashvili’s five-year term ends in January 2009; the parliament’s four-year tenure was slated to end in April 2008.

TITLE: More Prison Time for Khodorkovsky?
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Jailed Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky is looking at a possible 15-year prison term in connection with a money-laundering inquiry. The prison term would come on top of the eight years he is already serving.
Prosecutors on Wednesday questioned Khodorkovsky as part of their inquiry.
“Khodorkovsky is suspected of stealing oil revenues from Yukos subsidiary firms and then laundering these funds by donating them to Open Russia,” Khodorkovsky’s lawyer, Yury Shmidt, said by telephone from the regional capital, Chita.
Open Russia is a philanthropic foundation established by Yukos in 2001.
No charges were brought Wednesday against Khodorkovsky, Shmidt said. But, he said, investigators from the General Prosecutor’s Office did inform the former tycoon he was a suspect in the case.
Another suspect, Khodorkovsky’s associate Platon Lebedev, who is also serving an eight-year prison term, refused to answer investigators’ questions, citing the constitution, Shmidt said. 
The penalty for money-laundering can be as much as 15 years behind bars.
Khodorkovsky had been held at a detention facility in the Chita region. Lebedev had been at a facility in the Yamal-Nenets autonomous district. Both were transferred earlier this month to the capital of the Chita region.
A spokesman for the Prosecutor General’s Office declined to comment Wednesday, citing the confidentiality of the ongoing probe.
In March, Moscow’s Basmanny District Court froze Open Russia’s bank accounts, depriving the foundation of about $6 million. 
The court order freezing the accounts said action had been taken to protect the rights of unidentified individuals and firms, said Irina Savchenko, a former Open Russia spokeswoman.
Open Russia spent a total of $60 million from 2001 to 2005, reaching out to more than 500,000 recipients through dozens of regional and national projects, Savchenko said.
The bulk of Open Russia’s money came from Khodorkovsky and other former Yukos shareholders, Savchenko said.
The foundation’s directors had not been contacted about the money-laundering investigation, said Anatoly Yermolin, Open Russia’s deputy chairman and an independent State Duma deputy. Yermolin recalled Open Russia receiving a letter from authorities two months ago demanding the foundation pay $600,000 in tax arrears and fines.
“The tax officers said they could not trace 12 of the several hundred contractors we use, and they decided that the money we paid in 2004 was, in fact, stolen,” he said.
Yermolin said he then set out to track down the contractors. In a matter of hours, he said, he had found eight of the 12 firms in question. Yermolin said he tried to communicate information about the eight firms to officials, “but they didn’t want to listen to anything.”
Shmidt, Khodorkovsky’s lawyer, called the money-laundering accusations “nonsense.” “Criminals launder money to get that money back clean,” he said. “They don’t give money to charity.”
 The Moscow City Court refused Wednesday to postpone the imprisonment of former Yukos legal manager Svetlana Bakhmina, Interfax reported. 
Bakhmina was sentenced to seven years in prison in April for fraud and tax evasion. She had asked to have her imprisonment delayed for nine years, until her younger child reached the age of 14. The law allows for such delays.
Also Wednesday, the General Prosecutor’s Office demanded the United States extradite Leonid Nevzlin, a former Yukos co-owner who is wanted by Moscow on fraud charges. Nevzlin lives in Israel and was visiting the United States. Nevzlin denies the charges against him.
The prosecutor general said Wednesday that Nevzlin may have ordered the poisoning of former security agent Alexander Litvinenko.

TITLE: Shell Signs Secret 
Protocol on Sakhalin
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Royal Dutch Shell signed a secret protocol with the Russian government as part of its deal to sell half of the Sakhalin-2 project to Gazprom, allowing Shell to boost spending but not as much as it wanted, a newspaper said on Thursday.
Shell is now allowed to boost spending in the giant Sakhalin project to $15.8 billion from the previously approved $12 billion, the Vedomosti daily said.
Shell’s spokesman in Moscow Maxim Shub said the protocol was confidential and he would not comment on it. He said details of project costs would be discussed in February at a meeting with the Russian government.
The oil major had initially asked the government to allow it to spend $22 billion. But the government opposed the idea, saying the extra expenditure would delay the moment when the state starts getting its profits from the production sharing agreement (PSA).
Under PSA legislation, all costs can be reimbursed.
The paper said Shell would spend an additional $3.6 billion on top of the approved $15.8 billion and this extra cost would not be reimbursed under the secret protocol.
Earlier this month Shell and its partners in the project, Japan’s Mitsui  and Mitsubishi agreed to sell Gazprom half of the project for $7.45 billion.

TITLE: Former Kremlin Aide Digs Up Grassroots Democracy
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — This year’s most remarkable event was the emergence of grassroots democracy, according to former Kremlin economic adviser Andrei Illarionov.
Citizens across the country defended their interests, rights and property by joint protests, such as the one against the eviction of residents from Moscow’s southern Butovo area where authorities want to build new apartments, Illarionov said in a speech in Moscow, where he presented his personal awards for the year.
Illarionov quit as President Vladimir Putin’s adviser last December saying Russia was no longer “politically free.” He now works for Moscow’s Institute of Economic Analysis and the Washington-based Cato Institute, two think tanks dealing with economic development. 
Illarionov has made a tradition of his end-of-year list of 12 nominations, where he doles out symbolic honors and brickbats in equal measure.
A harsh critic of the Kremlin’s current policies, Illarionov helped to organize The Other Russia opposition congress in July. On Tuesday, he called that diverse grouping another manifestation of grassroots democracy.
Among other signs of democracy, he named blossoming political discussions in Internet blogs. The amount of web-based political debate in Russia exceeds that in the United States, France, Germany and Britain because these countries use the parliament, the media and other democratic institutions to tackle important policy issues, he said.
Illarionov, who last year decried the emergence of a corporate state, said Tuesday that the state had completely devoured liberal institutions this year.
Leaders of the Group of Seven leading industrial economies, which form the Group of Eight together with Russia, came to an understanding this summer that Moscow was not going to pursue Western-style democracy, Illarionov said. Russia chaired the G8 summit in St. Petersburg in July.
“There will be no more advice [from the G7] about how to build democracy because there’s no point,” he said, calling the development the “decision of the year made outside of Russia.”
In his list of 12 nominations, Illarionov named the initial public offering of Rosneft shares in July his “swindle of the year.” 
“It was not a simple swindle, but a squared or cubed swindle — or perhaps even a swindle to the power of five,” he said.
The IPO qualifies as a fraud, Illarionov said, because it involved the offering of Yuganskneftegaz, an asset of the fallen Yukos. He called Rosneft’s acquisition of the asset the top swindle of 2005.
He reiterated that the IPO constituted a theft of state property because funds raised by selling the stock went to the company accounts, not the state budget.
Among his other reasons for calling it a fraud, Illarionov named the falling price of Rosneft shares after the IPO. Russians who bought the company’s shares in the so-called “people’s IPO” part of the share sale would have been better off buying any of the country’s other blue chips, he said.
A campaign against illegal alcohol production and the extensive state media coverage of vodka poisonings in the fall was the “joke of the year,” preparing the ground for the introduction of a state monopoly on selling alcoholic beverages, Illarionov said. 
In fact, the number of alcohol poisonings has abated in the past four years and especially this past fall, he said, projecting statistical charts from his laptop.
Following a series of such reports, United Russia proposed state monopoly on alcohol sales in November. 
Industry lobbying groups have protested against the proposal.

TITLE: Evraz Offer
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Evraz Group SA, Russia’s biggest steelmaker, extended its $2.3 billion cash offer for Oregon Steel Mills Inc. to Jan. 9 from Dec. 28 to allow the U.S. government to complete a review.
The review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. expires on Jan. 8, Evraz said in a Regulatory News Service statement Thursday. The purchase would be the biggest by a Russian company in the U.S.

TITLE: Uranium Profit
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia, the world’s biggest supplier of low-enriched uranium, plans to invest profit from sales of the radioactive material in plants producing centrifuges.
“Being competitive on the enrichment market means having reliable and cost-effective centrifuge production,’’ said Vladimir Smirnov, head of Techsnabexport, one of four nuclear-fuel trading companies in the world. Russia will also invest in modernizing centrifuge technology, Smirnov said Wednesday at a briefing in Moscow.

TITLE: Drawing Bridges
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Investors bought stakes in half of Russia’s bridge-building companies this year as the construction of new roads signals a boom for the $2-billion market, Vedomosti reported Thursday.
AFK Sistema bought a majority stake in Siberia’s Sibmost, the Moscow-based newspaper said. Sistema is a holding company owned by billionaire Vladimir Yevtushenkov. Severstaltrans, 50 percent owned by Severstal Chief Executive Officer Alexei Mordashov, bought a controlling share in Moscow’s Mostotrest, the newspaper said, citing Severstaltrans spokeswoman Anna Vostrukhova.

TITLE: Zinc Swinger
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: CHELYABINSK — Chelyabinsk Zinc Plant, Russia’s largest producer of the metal, had nine-month net income of $80.8 million, reversing a loss in the same period last year after zinc prices more than doubled.
The company had net loss of $1.4 million in the first nine months of 2005, Chelyabinsk said in a regulatory filing Thursday. Sales more than tripled $390.7 million from $108.6 million, said the company.

TITLE: JTI SUPPORTS Artists to "Mail Artissimo"
AUTHOR: Masha Kaminskaya
TEXT: It’s been some decades since art first spilled out of an author’s studio to a public venue, sculpting life itself to fit its purposes. A new value was found in works that not only force reality to become their integral part – like installations or performance art – but themselves transform, welcoming life as an equal partner in creation.

This merger no longer a surprise, a lot can still be offered by those who spot in any element of the mundane a hidden wealth to feed the imagination. That element is all the richer if it is all too familiar or simply pragmatic, but very palpable and weathered by the influences of the surrounding world – like mail.

Mail as an artistic medium – this is what we see at first glance at the new exhibit of the renowned artistic couple Olga and Alexander Florensky, “Postcards and Envelopes. Postal dispatches sent during the period 1998-2006” opened last Friday at the A. S. Popov Central Museum of Communications.

The show has been made possible with the financial help of Russia’s third largest tobacco producer JT International (JTI), a long-time supporter of St. Petersburg’s cultural events and, in the words of the two artists, a “remarkably tactful sponsor.”

The duo has put together a collection of some 500 mailings they created and sent during several trips abroad and in Russia to their daughter Katya and to each other.

So-called mail art is relatively new to Russia, and at the show, one almost forgets about that staple of this largely impassive human routine which ranks along side the grocery store or the drycleaner’s. Two things make one’s soul respond: That, shown next to antique telegrams, this is a fragment of civilization that may soon be outlived by the Internet, and that it is a way to truly connect, through time and space, for those who are on the same page – as a family or aesthetically. 

Though united by the idea – mail as a family art form – the works are arranged to show the two different media developed by the authors: Olga’s photographic cards, where the ready-made address is a sign or a plate introduced organically into the picture, and Alexander’s envelopes bearing the author’s lively, keen renderings of places or scenes he saw on his trip.

“They are both a family archive and artistic works,” says the couple, reminiscing on the project’s beginnings – a three-month trip to Vienna in 1998, where, out of boredom, they made a bet on whether Olga was bold enough to make a chalk inscription on a wall and take a picture. She wrote their home address and photographed it, sending the postcard to 12-year-old Katya.

From then on, there were Alexander’s skillful illustrations made each in one go of anything that caught his eye: churches, bridges, or boats from British provinces, Russia’s towns of Norilsk and Solovki, or Washington and New York, or Prague. Sketched in a few confident strokes with blotches of color to hold the picture and hand-written remarks with arrows pointing at chosen objects – a style characteristic of the artist – they are just as chance as a traveller’s diary. In one, of the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol, he made a mistake writing that it is in Bath – and crossed it out. 
Such slips and attention to detail make the story richer, agrees the artist: “Like in a diary – you wouldn’t tear a page out, would you? You’d just cross the mistake out and move on. And all comments are true, so it’s like a document.” 
From Olga, there were photographs taken in Egypt, East Anglia, Italy, Crete and Paris, with the address making a startling component of the landscape as it was drawn on sand with a twig, or with paint on stone, cardboard or a maple leaf, or with chalk on a wooden railing – each line on its own plank. The pictures take on more contrast as she combines the classic with the everyday, the brand new, as with a motorcycle, with the aged, like the wall behind it. And sometimes, the address box is 
almost lost among other signs in the 
versatility of city life bursting with 
communication. 

Indeed, this is not just about art, but about communication as well. Both envelopes and cards contained a real message – though, the authors admit, sometimes less expressive than the material carrying it. The dispatches represent a rare case when art, life’s elitist outcast unwanted by most in the world, thrusts itself into the daily routine as it passes through dozens of hands, and becomes art to a greater extent the less it is dependent solely on the author’s will.

It is conditional on the one-hour photo-developing shops and on successful hunting for stamps that shouldn’t be too gaudy lest they steal the focus. It gets torn, crumpled or lost – like the whole Paris series that Olga had to reprint and send from Russia, thus losing the authenticity of the Paris stamping. It hangs on the mood of the postal workers, who range from stiff conservatives to willing participants.

“Some bureaucrat in England smacked a stamp right in the middle of the picture: Please print the postcode, and that made it unique. What luck that was!” says Alexander.

Olga remembers how in Crete, feeling as if they were being initiated into art unfolding right in their office, workers wrapped her postcards carefully into a cellophane bundle – thus depriving them of the Russian stamps. 

Today, these mails open the third Christmas festival Mailartissimo-2006 sponsored by JTI – a company that has spent nearly $9m in recent years on social and cultural projects in Russia. As a highlight, JTI presents a series of souvenir envelopes from Alexander, who pictured some of the St. Petersburg sites the company has supported: The Mariinsky Theater, the Hermitage and the Ice Palace, among others. These, of course, were also sent by post.

JTI also paid all the costs of editing and publishing the exhibit’s splendid catalog.

But though it is a beautiful genre, “that song is sung,” admit Olga and Alexander, who were never work with mail art just for the sake of mail art and shy away from stamping it as such. They will leave the collection to the Communications Museum as a gift after the exhibit closes on March 1, 2007.

It is, indeed, where it belongs: By collecting mail art, the museum’s reputed aim is to encourage people to write to each other, maybe someday saving postal services from going extinct.

One wonders if any human acitivity is destined to become art when threatened by life’s callous technological advancements – or whether it is just part of human life to create art out of anything. And to communicate it to others.

The A.S. Popov Central Museum of Communications at 4 Pochtamtsky Pereulok is open daily except Friday and Sunday from 10.30 am to 18 pm. The cost of one adult ticket is RUR 50 ($2).

TITLE: Not Ripe for Change in Turkmenistan
AUTHOR: By Georgeta Pourchot
TEXT: Turkmenistan’s President Saparmurat Niyazov died unexpectedly on Dec 21. Presidents die unexpectedly elsewhere in the world, but this case is different in its geo-strategic implications. If the instability that sometimes comes with political change occurs in Turkmenistan, it could affect Central Asian, Iranian and European gas supplies. Initial handling of the succession question suggests that, in the short-term, the institutional structures that Niyazov created will prevail over instability.
Niyazov was the only former communist leader who retained and consolidated power after the end of the Cold War and the breakup of the Soviet Union. He ruled Turkmenistan from 1985, first as a Communist Party chief, then as the elected president of this newly independent Central Asian country. As former communist countries were firing their communist elites by way of elections in the early 1990s, Turkmenistan was endorsing its 1985 Communist Party chief. As former Soviet republics were asserting their independent-mindedness at the polls, voting leaders in and out of office, Niyazov was confirmed as president for life by the country’s parliament in 1999. The sudden disappearance of a leader with such longevity has historically led to a struggle for power among political factions and/or mass uprisings. These are two domestic sources of instability that observers fear.
Yet, in Turkmenistan, there are no known political factions or groups. The opposition to Niyazov’s leadership had been annihilated over the years by his rigorous state security apparatus. An attempt on his life in the mid-1990s led to the imprisonment or execution of dissenters and to a surge in the number of Turkmen fleeing abroad. Dissenters living in Europe and in neighboring Central Asian countries announced that they were interested in returning to their country and participating in the political process, but such a return has yet to materialize. The political elite Niyazov left behind seems committed to maintaining the status quo. In the aftermath of his death, the government quickly selected an acting president and announced that “the people of Turkmenistan ... will remain committed to the political course of Saparmurat Turkmenbashi.” Instability arising from political infighting is thus difficult to fathom in the short term as long as current politicians view the benefits of maintaining Niyazov’s system as outweighing the costs of changing it.
There is also little indication that instability arising from mass uprisings is likely in the short term. Indeed, Niyazov ruled the country with no concept of basic human rights. Instead, he ensured his countrymen’s loyalty by mandating jobs for everyone and providing free gas, electricity and water and full social security benefits for all.
It is true that Niyazov established a personality cult comparable to predecessors like Adolf Hitler, Kim Jong Il, and Nicolae Ceausescu, only one of whom died as a result of a popular uprising. Although not in the manner the Nazi leader demonized particular ethnic and religious groups or preached the need for military conquest, Niyazov, like Hitler, indoctrinated Turkmen with his interpretation of history and morals by mandating the teaching of his “Ruhnama,” or “Book of the Soul.” Ruhnama was marketed as the sole truth of Turkmen history and ethics. Much like “Mein Kampf,” it was also designed to provide a unifying national identity and preempt the possibility of factional clashes throughout the country. Young generations have little or no exposure to other versions of history and are said to adore the belated president. Like Kim, he built unheard-of structures ranging from a lake in the middle of the desert to an ice castle and greater-than-life statues of himself. Like Ceausescu, he put in place a repressive security apparatus that let no dissent surface. He went even further than Ceausescu in redefining reality, by naming months of the year, in addition to cities, villages, streets and schools, after himself and members of his family. But while Ceausescu drove his country to economic misery and despair, Niyazov kept his relatively well fed and provided for.
It appears that even Turkmen living abroad valued the stability of the Niyazov regime and the fact that he kept the country from becoming a breeding ground for terrorism or Islamic extremism. People inside and outside the country point to both the regime’s good and bad aspects. They admit the size of Niyazov’s big ego, but point out that he also provided free services for his people. He may have built gold statues of himself, but he also developed Ashgabat from a muddy Soviet outpost into a great capital. It is therefore utterly unclear that enough dissatisfaction about the existing undemocratic system has been bred among the Turkmen people to rise up against it. In the short term, as long as the government maintains the level of social services and guarantees jobs for everyone, people are likely to value stability over changing the authoritarian system inherited from Niyazov.
This political stability was achieved primarily due to revenues from the country’s rich gas reserves, which Niyazov spent at will. It is the fate of these gas reserves that worries European, Asian and Iranian leaders. Turkmenistan owns one-fifth of the world largest known gas field, but due to its location and existing pipelines, exports gas only to Russia and Iran. Russia re-exports the gas to Europe and Ukraine. China reached an agreement earlier in the year for the construction of a direct pipeline and delivery of large amounts of gas. Plans for the construction of Nabuco, another pipeline to bypass Russia in connecting Turkmen gas to European markets have also been confirmed. Instability following Niyazov’s death could affect all these projects and existing contracts. For now, Turkmenistan has announced that the country will continue to honor its existing agreements for gas exports.
Analysts from all sides hope that any political change that might come in Turkmenistan will not destabilize the country. Hope, however, has never been a strategy. Educated guesses can be made based on Turkmenistan’s past patterns of political behavior and the likely psychological state of the people in the aftermath of this loss. Absent a more developed political culture, civic or political leaders and an institutional blueprint for change, do the Turkmen people have any other realistic option than to continue the existing pattern of politics? The answer in the short term is “no.” Change will take time, provided powerful outside interests do not use Turkmenistan as a ground for a proxy war over natural resources.

Georgeta Pourchot is senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and director of online programs, Northern Capital Region, at Virginia Tech.

TITLE: Too Many Exceptions to Be a Rule
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: The authorities in the Chita Region are investigating the murder of Federal Security Service, or FSB, Captain Alexander Ovsyannikov. Truth is, there is nothing to investigate: Men involved in illegal logging beat Ovsyannikov to death after he arrived at their site in his own car and demanded they produce the necessary documents for their timber.
After they had killed him, the lumberjacks took his body to the village of Zhimbiry and burned it in a haystack. They then went home. Two days later, they were detained and Ovsyannikov’s pistol and car were found in their possession.
What is unclear about these otherwise run-of-the-mill events is why Ovsyannikov would drive to the site alone, and in his own car?
This is not how you go about catching criminals. In these situations you get a warrant and arrive in a group of security personnel in official vehicles.
If Ovsyannikov arrived alone in his own car, but carrying his badge, then he was most likely on private business: He was either running a protection racket at the logging site or was trying to cut in on somebody else’s. Something must have gone wrong in his conversation with the drunken lumberjacks.
If this is the case, it is also, unfortunately, a pretty run-of-the-mill occurrence.
On the morning of Sept. 1, 2004, police officer Sultan Gurazhev stopped a tanker truck on a country road near the North Ossetian village of Khurikau. According to prosecutors, Gurazhev stopped the truck to check the driver’s documents. In the vehicle, as we now know, were terrorists on their way to Beslan. They purportedly disarmed Gurazhev and shoved him back into his car, forcing him to drive ahead of the truck to provide safe passage.
But why did Gurazhev approach the truck in the first place? Did he think there were terrorists inside? Was he planning to collar them single-handedly? Did he suppose they were transporting illegal oil?
It is not standard practice for a single officer to stop a tanker truck. The only thing he could do in such an instance was to ask for a bribe. Many of the villagers saw Gurazhev and the truck drive directly past Khurikau. Gurazhev’s family was not alarmed to see him escorting the truck. There is only one possible explanation: They thought he was doing something ordinary, providing an escort for a truck transporting something.
Two months after the murder of Paul Klebnikov, the editor of Forbes magazine’s Russian edition, Moscow Police Chief Vladimir Pronin reported a breakthrough in the case. According to Pronin, two Chechens — Aslan Sagayev and Kazbek Elmurzayev — were involved in the murder. The two were arrested later, after they took Dagestani policeman turned businessman Akhmed-Pasha Aliyev hostage. Aliyev had apparently run up a huge debt to the pair. Police operatives listening in on the hostage takers’ telephone conversations concluded that Aliyev was in danger and rescued him.
Everything would have been fine were it not for the freed man’s testimony. According to Aliyev, he was abducted not by Chechens, but by three FSB officers, Roman Slivkin, Oleg Sachkov and Dmitry Frolov. The three sold some land to Aliyev, and then abducted him when he failed to pay off his debt. They then sold Aliyev to the Chechens, with whom they were already acquainted.
Slivkin even ended up in court, but the charges were dismissed in November. Apparently the abduction and sale of a human being is not a crime.
Ovsyannikov, Gurazhev and Slivkin all got some unlucky breaks, running up against drunken criminals, Beslan terrorists and a former police officer who didn’t like being taken hostage, respectively.
All of these cases appear to be exceptions to the rule. But when the exceptions get to be this common, you have to start wondering what the rule is in the first place.

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

TITLE: Review: 2006
AUTHOR: By Alexander Osipovich
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: There was a lot of talk this year about Russia reasserting its presence on the world stage. Whether it was President Vladimir Putin swaggering in front of fellow world leaders at the G8 summit, Gazprom swallowing up new assets or the country’s boxers and tennis players winning titles, the story was much the same: Russia was back.
Much the same thing happened in the cultural sphere, too. Consider the first big arts story of the year: the release of the supernatural blockbuster “Day Watch.” In the run-up to Jan. 1, 2006, Moscow was overrun with gigantic ads for Timur Bekmambetov’s movie. The sequel to “Night Watch” went on to gross over $30 million, becoming Russia’s all-time box-office champ and cementing a trend of homegrown blockbusters. 
Meanwhile, it was a busy year for those two hulking ICBMs of Russia’s cultural arsenal — the Bolshoi and Mariinsky theaters. In a strange turn of events, both theaters sent their opera and ballet troupes to London this summer, sparking talk of a juicy, behind-the-scenes rivalry.
It’s worth noting how the situation came about. As widely reported in the British press, Mariinsky artistic director Valery Gergiev had initially made arrangements with his local partners, Victor and Lilian Hochhauser, to play at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, as he had several times before in the past decade. But then he told the Hochhausers that he wanted to conduct an all-Shostakovich program in honor of the 100th anniversary of the composer’s birth. The Hochhausers demurred. They wanted a program with broader appeal, and they argued that playing the Shostakovich operas “The Nose” and “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” would be discourteous to the Royal Opera House, which had its own versions of them in its repertoire. But the feisty maestro gave his promoters an ultimatum: It would be all Shostakovich or nothing. 
In response, the Hochhausers gave the Covent Garden slot to the Bolshoi, which has been the Mariinsky’s archrival since, um, let’s see, 1783. When Gergiev found out, he promptly rounded up some sponsors and booked the Coliseum, just a short walk from Covent Garden, for a nearly simultaneous season.
The stage was set for a musical showdown. And the results were surprising. Reversing the trend of recent years, critical opinion tended to favor the Bolshoi; Gergiev’s high-handed behavior, as well as the Bolshoi’s underdog status, probably loaded the dice.

TITLE: Chernov’s choice
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
TEXT: Despite millions of dollars spent on the country’s international image, Russia did not look good in 2006, with its out-and-out corruption and political murders. The international music world was affected, when British chart toppers Razorlight got a taste of both.
Razorlight came to Moscow in November only to find out that it was the band that had to pay to play. The band was reported to have had a photo session on Red Square, but failed to perform as the event at which it was to appear was canceled by the authorities hours before it was scheduled to start, “as a result of negotiations with administrative authorities during the day,” as the event’s official web site put it.
“Razorlight were forced to cancel their gig in Russia after shady ‘officials’ demanded thousands of pounds just hours before they went on stage,” reported The Mirror last month.
“The rockers […] were told by promoters at the Moscow venue they had to pay the huge sum to ‘the government’ for a special ‘permit’ to perform.”
On its way back the band was unlucky again and found itself traveling on one of the planes in which traces of radioactive isotope polonium-210 was found. Presumably the same plane had been used by the killer or killers of former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko who was poisoned with polonium in November.
As The Sun reported earlier this month, drummer Andy Burrows and guitarists Carl Dalemo and Bjorn Agren have been in touch with medical experts.
Razorlight’s members suffered flu-like symptoms when they returned from Russia. The Sun cited an unnamed source as saying, “The lads were terrified. They were all feeling run down when they got back from Russia, then switched on the TV and found out the plane they had been on was grounded in the radiation scare. 
“They feared the worst and immediately called their management for advice. Luckily they have all been given the all-clear by doctors.”
Inside Russia, politics mixed with music throughout the year. 
As 5,000 so-called “commissars” of the Kremlin-based “youth movement” Nashi gathered at its camp on Lake Seliger in the Tver Oblast for free meals, free concerts and some heavy indoctrination (as they did last year), more bands held out their hands to take the Kremlin’s oil rubles. 
Although it was mainly Moscow-based pop and rock acts such as BI-2 and Zemfira last year, this year saw St. Petersburg’s own stadium punk rockers Korol I Shut and pop-rock group Vyacheslav Butusov and U-Piter performing for Nashi activists, with local bands Multfilmy and Kukryniksy having performed at the camp’s opening night in  July. 
The anti-Georgian campaign blessed by President Vladimir Putin prevented Tbilisi-based singer Nino Katamadze from performing in Moscow. A concert by the popular Georgian world-music vocalist in Moscow was canceled because of the campaign in October.

TITLE: Performance art: 2006
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: January saw an intense start to the year as the Mariinsky Orchestra performed Gustav Mahler’s titanic Eighth Symphony — often referred to as the “Symphony of a Thousand” — giving a profound rendition that was generous with dark, vibrant color and rich in deep, low sound. The orchestra, renowned for its great strings section, thrived in the exuberance and flaring passion of the intensely-scored work.
By contrast, a ballet premiere that followed, captivated with naivety and romanticism. French choreographer Pierre Lacotte, a restorer of undeservedly forgotten gems of 19th-century choreography, revived the original version of Jules Perrot’s romantic ballet “Ondine” at the Mariinsky Theater in March. The reconstruction of this 150-year old ballet was performed at the opening of the International Mariinsky Ballet Festival. The quintessential 19th-century romantic French ballet, “Ondine” was originally created by Jules Perrot for  London’s Covent Garden in 1843.
Lacotte, Europe’s ultimate restorer of 19th century choreographic relics brought the jewel back to life to highlight the strengths of the French dancing school and challenge modern audiences with a long-lost  ballet antique. With the open naiveté of the plot and its old-fashioned flat painted scenery, the freshly restored “Ondine” is a triumph of romanticism. 
As with every reconstruction of a piece that has been gone from the stage for decades, there was the risk that the revival would be an artistic failure. It was a risk that the Mariinsky and Lacotte willingly took on. The Mariinsky’s restored “Ondine” has the appeal of a dried butterfly: crystal clear lines, whimsical patterns and distinct colors — in a seemingly lifeless body. At the same time, “Ondine” is technically demanding: the piece is a tightly woven fabric of nonstop variations. It is a visual feast that showcases the Mariinsky’s impeccable foot training — an essential requirement in French ballet. But these antique charms can find a new home these days: the Mariinsky, with its taste for reconstructions, is perhaps the best bet for “Ondine.” In choreographic and stylistic terms, the ballet is on the same plane as such Mariinsky favorites as Marius Petipa’s “Giselle” and “La Sylphide.”

MORE AT THE MARIINSKY
David McVicar’s soul-numbing and eerie rendition of Benjamin Britten’s “The Turn of the Screw,” inspired by Henry James’ classic novella of the same name, premiered at the Mariinsky Theater in April and plunged the audience into a powerful gothic atmosphere where the borders between the rational and the emotional are blurred. The show’s minimalist sets and all-encompassing darkness created  a suitably disturbing mood. 
The singing and acting unfolded in a glimmering twilight sporadically dissected by lightning-like beams. The effect served to captivate the spectators in a fragile equilibrium between the human and the surreal. 
Visually, the production — one of the most successful of the Mariinsky’s new shows in 2006 — had a twinkling, somnambulistic feel, deliciously contrasting with the breezy agitation of the orchestra. 
This chamber opera, involving only six performers, is beautifully adapted to the Mariinsky’s spacious stage. Perhaps seeking to create a more mystical and  intimate atmosphere, or to establish a stronger psychological tension, McVicar wrapped the stage in black thus making the edges dissolve into the darkness. Minimalist sets designed in black, white and sepia greatly contribute to the show’s impact: transparent giant wall panels scattered with sand and pockmarked with holes swiftly shift around to enhance the production’s drafty chill and apparently allude to the constant shifts of harmonies and rhythms in Britten’s score. 

STAR POWER
The U.S. opera star Renee Fleming, arguably world’s most popular soprano, gave a solo recital on June 27 at the Mariinsky’s “Stars of the White Nights” festival. The diva lingered in town for almost a month to collaborate with Mariinsky artistic director Valery Gergiev and the orchestra on a recording of works by late-Romantic composers for Decca Records. 
The resulting CD, “Homage.The Age of the Diva,” has already been released.
The recording by the two-time Grammy Award-winning singer, who gained  international recognition in the bel canto repertoire as well as through the works of Massenet, Mozart and Strauss, is comprised of work by Francesco Cilea, Bedrich Smetana, Peter Tchaikovsky, Giacomo Puccini, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Charles Gounod, Richard Strauss, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Giuseppe Verdi, Jules Massenet and Leos Janacek.
These works are relatively new to Fleming who has taken a year to select them and prepare for the recording. On her visit to St. Petersburg, Fleming said that the Mariinsky Symphony Orchestra, with its vibrant, deep sound, is one of the few ensembles in the world that represents and has retained a national character. 
“This is something that we all desire to hear, and there is so much passion and so much low sound, which by the way makes a wonderful contrast to the soprano voice,” she told The St. Petersburg Times. 
During her time in the city, Fleming also performed at a White Nights Ball in the Yekaterininsky Palace in Tsarskoye Selo with pianist Yefim Bronfman and violinist Leonidas Kavakos. 
Mariinsky Theater opera diva Anna Netrebko was granted Austrian citizenship in July, after months of doubt and amid criticism in the Russian media that questioned the singer’s patriotism and accused the charming soprano of being a traitor. Netrebko told The St. Petersburg Times the main motive behind her decision was the humiliating, never-ending process of visa applications and the limitations it puts on her international career. 
The singer, who is a huge star in Austria and Germany and regularly performs in Salzburg and Vienna, was granted fast-track Austrian citizenship for “her special merits as one of the world’s most distinguished singers.” Under ordinary circumstances, gaining Austrian citizenship takes at least 10 years. Netrebko will keep her Russian passport. 
“We all go through this undeserved humiliation — and Valery Gergiev duly submits his application to be reviewed [like everyone else], until people get the chance to get a second citizenship and decide to go for it,” Netrebko said in an interview with The St. Petersburg Times in May. “It is not a question of being disloyal to your home country. It just helps to make our hectic and pressurized lives a little bit less stressful.” 

MUSICAL CONNECTIONS
Perhaps the world’s most admired cellist, musical anthropologist, and winner of 15 Grammy awards, Yo-Yo Ma — joined by British pianist Kathryn Stott, a frequent stage partner for the cellist — performed in concert on Dec. 2 at the St. Petersburg State Conservatory in a program of Shostakovich, Schubert, Piazzolla, Gismonti and Franck. 
Starting with Schubert and Shostakovich, Ma then moved on to play the music of Astor Piazzolla and Egberto Gismonti, and then a piece by Franck. This seemingly eclectic selection of music from around the world presented an extravagant juxtaposition to the uninitiated, yet the cellist justified his choice with ease and pleasure, unveiling the connections linking the music.
Ma performed a Shostakovich sonata, created in 1934, that was often performed and even recorded jointly by the composer himself and prominent Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, who was once Shostakovich’s student at the Moscow Conservatory and eventually became a close friend. In the meantime, Astor Piazzolla’s Grand Tango was written with Rostropovich in mind. And there are more connections to surface.
“Piazzolla, one of the most gifted and exciting composers of the 20th century, happened to study in France with Nadia Boulanger, a great teacher to many people, and she was the one who told Piazzolla: ‘You write very good music, show me what else you do,’” Ma recounted in an interview with The St. Petersburg Times. “And he showed her some of the tango pieces. Boulanger told Piazzolla they were extraordinary, and really urged him to make them his life’s work. Which he did. And she told the same to the Brazilian composer Egberto Gismonti, her another pupil.”
During his visit, Ma also gave a masterclass to young St. Petersburg musicians.

TITLE: Visual art: 2006
AUTHOR: By Andrei Vorobei
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The city’s monopolists of Western art and Russian art — The State Hermitage Museum and The State Russian Museum respectively — were, predictably, the cultural newsmakers of the departing year. 
Looking at the potential of the museums to generate new ideas, to literately and efficiently exploit their collections, to not repeat themselves and to cooperate with other institutions well, the Hermitage took the lead while the Russian Museum came in second.  

Rembrandt Year
On July 15 the world marked the 400th anniversary of the birth of Rembrandt, one of the most exceptional and enigmatic figures in art history. The Hermitage, which holds a notable selection of paintings by the 17th century Dutch master, marked the anniversary with three distinct shows. 
“Rembrandt Etchings,” from the outstanding Russian collection of Dmitry Rovinsky, displayed all of the artist’s prints from the collection for the first time since they were given to the Hermitage in 1897. 
The next event in the series was the premier exhibition of the summer, “Willem de Kooning,” comprising rarely shown works by the American superstar of 20th century art from the late and still-debated period of the artist’s long and prolific career. Although a giant of American art, de Kooning did not become an American resident until the age of 22, in 1926, after leaving Rotterdam in the Netherlands where he was born and where he studied. The Dutch genes in his work was the pretext to insert the exhibition into the Rembrandt anniversary program.
Celebrations concluded with another impressive private Russian collection, that of Pyotr Semenov-Tyan-Shansky. The show featured Dutch paintings from the 16th and 17th centuries, comprehensively covering what came before, at the same time and after Rembrandt. 

Hermitage 
The “Best Curatorial Production” category features “The Rake’s Progress” and “Raising Cupid” — both at the Hermitage. These were undoubtedly the superior exhibitions of the year. 
“Raising Cupid: French Engravings from the Age of Gallantry” featured 18th century French prints on the themes of love and sex from the personal collection of Tsar Alexander II which he partly had inherited from Tsar Nicholas I. What at first seemed an absolutely motley collection of works, in terms of technique, period and quality, became, in the hands of curator Dmitry Ozerkov — the Hermitage’s senior researcher — a consecutive, well-proportioned and intriguing system, of which the “Figures of the Language of Love” was the main and the most inventive part, loosely resembling the brilliant non-fiction work “A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments” (1977) by 20th century French intellectual Roland Barthes.  
Inspired by a famous series of paintings from the 18th century, the show “Hogarth, Hockney and Stravinsky: The Rake’s Progress” included prints by its originator William Hogarth and by contemporary artist David Hockney, who had produced his own version called “The Rake’s Progress in New York” (at the Hermitage and the British Council respectively). 
A video recording of the 1975 Glyndebourne Festival production of Igor Stravinsky’s 1951 opera based on the paintings, with a libretto by W.H. Auden, was also shown. The curator, the Hermitage’s senior researcher Arkady Ippolitov, approached Hogarth’s narrative in the context of the development of the theme of rakes, dandies and other eccentrics. According to him, the story of the light-headed and unlucky young stud of the beginning of the 18th century transcends time and is as meaningful and tragic as parable of the prodigal son. 

The Russian Museum 
The Benois Wing hosted two long-awaited retrospectives of Pavel Filonov, the Russian Avant-Garde’s great exponent, and Michael Vrubel, a key figure in the Russian strain of Symbolism. Near contemporaries, both artists were extremely inventive and had fabulous biographies with tragic ends; both Vrubel and Filonov remain lonely and unreachable figures in Russian art and its history. While the Filonov show was inventively designed, the Vrubel exhibition, which is still showing, is just inelaborate chronological story. 
What can be blurred and skipped in favor of “exposition-biography” of an artist becomes a huge problem when you approach a period, a fragment of a cultural situation in its dynamism and with all its contradictions. In this sense, the Russian Museum’s mega-project “Times Of Change:, The Art of the Soviet Union 1960-85,” was, perhaps, the main failure of the year. Exciting art, an exciting period — whether it is rare examples of official art or well promoted underground works — didn’t a good exhibition make; the show was organized rather than curated. The exhibition was highly criticized: modern art has long gone beyond the traditional division into painting, drawings and sculpture, and, accordingly, requires new display solutions and curatorial strategies.
At the same time, the museum definitely won in the “Best Emerging Name” category for the bewitching photographic series by Anastasia Khoroshilova and also in the “The Best Imported Exhibition” category for its “The Essence of Life / Essence of Art” (graphic, largely studio works by Conceptual Artists from Russia and Eastern Europe), an absolutely surprising and superior selection by the Balkan curator Jadran Adamovic. The Russian Museum’s year was rich in imported exhibitions including retrospectives of Andy Warhol and Lucio Fontana (the first in Russia). 

Tours, Festivals, Galleries	
Among the remarkable smaller projects St. Petersburg witnessed in 2006, “Bauhaus Photography” and a Gerhard Richter retrospective (the first in Russia), organized by the Goethe Institute, should be mentioned. Also in this category falls two projects that were part of the annual festival “Contemporary Art in Traditional Museum”: the refined “Ballet Royal, Arithmetic of Ideal” (curated by Arkady Ippolitov and Pavel Gershenzon with photographer Yevgeny Mokhorev), and the racy “Fokke & Sukke” which brought two famous cartoon characters to the Printing Museum. 
This year the Anna Nova Art Gallery, which is only one year old, featured such a solid shows as “Bella Matveyeva: Bird Flu” (curated by Arkady Ippolitov), “Vladimir Shinkarev: Inward Cinema” and “Sergei Shekhovtsev: Polyurethane Foam World” (both curated by Yekaterina Andreyeva). 
Other projects	
As well as the recent opening of a new museum, “The Museum of Petersburg Avant-Garde” at the Matyushin House, there were two felicitous events affiliated with the Hermitage. Together with Independent Media Sanoma Magazines (publisher of The St. Petersburg Times), the museum as well as the city has relaunched “Hermitage Magazine,” a bilingual art quarterly. The museum also hosted, with the Pro Arte Institute and Christie’s auction house, an important international symposium called “The Museum and the Art Market.” It was the first of its kind held in Russia and attracted an impressive roster of international experts from all branches of the contemporary art industry — museums, galleries, dealers, auction houses, critics and senior researchers and curators. 

Competitions
The city saw two international architectural competitions in 2006. In February, the controversial 30-year saga of the redevelopment of one of the most mysterious sites, a formerly closed military zone in downtown St. Petersburg — New Holland Island — finally came to a close when Governor Valentina Matviyenko announced that a plan by British architect Sir Norman Foster is to be adopted. The project beat proposals by German studio Engel and Zimmermann and Dutch architect Erick van Egeraat among others. The latter, although losing to Foster, had suggested, perhaps, the most memorable renovation: in his proposed masterplan the island resembles a Dutch village, where the group of small Dutch-style houses, the so-called “Hollanse hulzen,” highlighted the project.
A more ambitious and altogether more scandalous architectural competition for Gazprom’s new headquarters, a skyscraper to be built on the other side of the Neva River to Smolny Cathedral by 2012, concluded the year. Intriguing, elegant and diverse suggestions from world-leading architects such as Jean Nouvel, Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, Rem Koolhaas and  Daniel Libeskind lost out to RMJM’s absolutely banal, flashy tower, which changes its color, like a cheap Chinese illuminated tape recorder.

TITLE: Holidays: 2006
AUTHOR: By Michele A. Berdy
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Over the centuries, Russians have inherited and claimed a hodge-podge of New Year’s traditions and superstitions from pagan, Christian, Slavic, Western and Eastern cultures. Here’s a short primer on holiday high jinks.

Holiday History
Until 1700, Russians celebrated two new years: one on March 1 (originally a pagan celebration of new life) and one on Sept. 1 (the Biblical new year). Peter the Great decided to put an end to all this confusion and decreed that starting in 1700, Russians would celebrate the new year on Jan. 1. 
At first, cherry and birch trees were decorated, but by the mid-19th century, fir trees were firmly a part of Russian tradition. During World War I, they came under attack as a “hostile German tradition” and were virtually banned from the 1920s until the mid-’30s, when they were rehabilitated as the state-approved New Year’s Tree. Christmas and St. Nicholas were out; Ded Moroz (Grandfather Frost) and Snegurochka (the Snow Maiden) were in. Church bells and prayers were replaced by the Kremlin chimes and the Communist Party leader’s address to the nation. Today, anything goes, from reindeers to red stars, but the president’s televised address just before midnight remains essential viewing.

What to Wear
According to Russian folk tradition, you should wear something new to symbolize the start of a new life. If you are the kind of person who tries on 17 outfits before walking out the door, you should freely indulge in this annoying behavior on Dec. 31, no matter what havoc you leave behind in your bedroom. In the old days, Russian women would change clothes several times during the day to ensure that the new year would bring prosperity — and new clothing. 
Today, Russians base their sartorial choices for the holiday on the Eastern calendar. 2007 is the year of the Red Fire Pig, so this year you should wear something red, orange or yellow.
What to Eat
To ensure that the new year is plentiful, the table should be abundantly laden with food. The main course for the Year of the Red Fire Pig? Pork, of course. In the European part of Russia, suckling pig was traditionally served at New Year’s. Pigs are a symbol of bounty — think of all those piglets. 

What to Toast
Before midnight, toasts are drunk to the year gone by. Lift your glass to commemorate both the good and bad of 2006, including people who have passed on, those who aren’t or can’t be with you, and significant events in your and your guests’ lives. Only after midnight should you raise your glass to hopes and wishes for the new year.

New Year’s Superstitions
“The way you greet the new year is the way you’ll spend the new year.” So don’t give anyone money, or you’ll be paying out-of-pocket all year. Be sure there is plenty of food and salt on your table to ensure prosperity. Consider using lots of pepper, too: Whoever sneezes on New Year’s will have good fortune in the coming year.

TITLE: Gifts: 2006
AUTHOR: By Svetlana Graudt
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: It’s that time of year again, when couriers are scurrying between offices, delivering thousands of glittering corporate gifts bearing company logos.	
Naturally, all gift-givers want to make the right impression and avoid overstepping the boundaries of what’s acceptable and appropriate: Even if the goal is just to thank one’s partners and clients for a year of doing business together, giving can go wrong if a gift is poorly chosen or the recipient does not have a sense of humor. 
When a senior partner at RP-Com restaurant-management company received a New Year’s tree decorated with condoms instead of the usual ornaments, he did so with humor, but still was perplexed.
“You could have a double view of this situation,” said Svetlana Sergeyenkova, RP-Com’s public relations manager. “This partner just had his third child.” 
Perhaps the sender should have stuck with a “safer” present, such as a bottle of champagne or a desk calendar — popular choices among companies reluctant to risk a creative approach. But how to avoid sending a gift that might go straight into the trash can? 
One solution is to give a personal visit from a company’s general director dressed as Santa Claus, or Ded Moroz. A few years ago, said Irina Yefremova, a corporate marketing manager at Hewlett-Packard, their expat director personally dropped in on company partners dressed as Ded Moroz to wish them a happy new year. 
“You must be careful for your present not to be taken as a bribe or helping your company get new business,” said Yelena Zemskova, communications and community affairs advisor at U.S. oil major ConocoPhillips in Moscow. “It should be a token gift, just to show attention.”
“We don’t give expensive gifts, it is not customary in American companies, which follow the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act,” she said. “All gift lists have to be approved by company lawyers.”
She named among acceptable gifts a bottle of wine or whiskey, a box of chocolates or maybe a scarf or set of pens.
In Sweden, greeting cards are commonly given, said Per Lundberg, head of corporate banking with Swedish bank Handelsbanken, who has been living in Moscow since 1993. “But presents are not as widespread as here,” he said. “Sweden has very strict laws against bribery, so the gifts tend to be quite small, such as a box of chocolates, or Christmas baskets with coffee or a bottle of wine. 
“Russian people are very generous, it is a very nice tradition, and here the main thing is attention — you need to take care not to overlook anyone or forget to wish them happy holidays.” 
Another consideration is Russian law, which stipulates that taxes should be paid on the value of any gift above 4,000 rubles. On a 4,500 ruble gift, for example, 500 rubles is taxed.
One solution to all these gift-giving problems is for a company to show its commitment to a worthy cause — conservation, for example. The environmental group WWF Russia has been offering companies the opportunity to order three photographs from its web site for use in a corporate calendar.
“It has a positive influence on the company’s image — it says that the company is supporting environmental initiatives and is involved in charity,” said Svetlana Belova, a special-projects coordinator at WWF Russia, adding that the interest in such gifts has been growing since 2002. 
This year, charity has been on the agenda at Independent Media Sanoma Magazines, The St. Petersburg Times’ parent company. It decided to give its entire gifts budget of more than 5 million rubles to Liniya Zhizni, or Life Line, a charity working with gravely ill children. The money is to pay for 39 heart operations, and the company’s clients and partners are to receive booklets containing the children’s photos and biographical information. 
“Such practice is widespread in the West, but there was no such mechanism here. We have offered it to our corporate partners, and Independent Media responded,” said Polina Gerasimova, Liniya Zhizni’s public relations and mass media director. She said this new way of giving during the festive season gave a company the chance to show it was socially responsible, which, in turn, was sure to make a positive impression on its partners and clients.

TITLE: Cinema: 2006
AUTHOR: By Leo Mourzenko
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The swiftly departing year of 2006 was a year like any other in the movie world: it had a new box-office deity, another streak of movies that didn’t live up to expectations, a few indie movies that unexpectedly made it big — and last but not least, another horrifying Adam Sandler comedy. 
In Russian cinema, 2006 should be remembered as a year of horror movies since most of what was made in the country this year can only be classified as that, regardless of what was intended. 
On the bright side this slew of turkeys made those few good Russian movies look like masterpieces, regardless of what was intended. 
As we say goodbye to the year that made penguins tap dance and movie critics escape the theaters in terror, let us look back and nod to those who made us happy — and put the last nail in the coffins of the movies that shouldn’t have seen the light of day.
The best news of 2006 was that European and Latin American directors were well-funded and this resulted in some of the year’s best movies. 
Tom Tykwer’s visual masterpiece “Perfume: The Story of a Murderer,” Alfonso Cuaron’s apocalyptic “Children of Men,” and, arguably the top movie of the year, “Babel” by Alejandro González Iñárritu, were the talk of the town. “Babel” did dismal business but judging by the usually prescient selection for recognition made by the Golden Globe awards, “Babel” stands a good chance of dominating the Academy Awards in March. Its financial success is probably yet to come. 
Nobody was really surprised when the second “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie became the highest grossing movie of 2006, however hardly anybody predicted it’d do so well. Pulling in over a $1 billion worldwide, it became the third most successful film of all time. Shamelessly focused on driving the franchise machine forward, the movie made sure fans are sucked in to see the third part. In addition, the film kept stumbling into its own plot complications while the perfection of the first installment was its glorious simplicity. The humor however remained, so did Johnny Depp’s impeccable performance. 
Meanwhile, “Superman Returns” was on the edge of being imbecilic and it seemed like it was made for 10-year-olds to watch while their moms run errands. “X-Men: The Last Stand” turned out to be severely undercooked and it had butchered all the positive momentum of its predecessor. That installment went out of its way to prove that even in a comic-book based film there is room for creativity and thought. Bryan Singer, who directed “X2” in 2003 butchered his reputation by directing “Superman.” “The Da Vinci Code” was pompous and simply boring. “Poseidon” was plain silly. 
The Thanksgiving blockbuster cluster wasn’t abundant and only brought us dancing penguins (the cutesy “Happy Feet”) and a new James Bond in “Casino Royale.” 
“Borat: Cultural Learnings of America to Make Benefit for the Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan” was the year’s underdog, the year’s most offensive feature and the year’s funniest movie. 
Made for less than $20 million it took more than $120 million in the U.S. and generated a fuss that a marketing agency can only dream of. 
The reasons for “banning” it in Russia are unclear. The guy makes fun of absolutely everybody in the world, but Borat’s main target is an American/Western European everyman who has no idea where Kazakhstan is and who is capable of believing that people there drink water from the toilet. Toilet humor is an integral part of Borat’s charm but there isn’t anything to trouble the pro-Russian censorship watchdogs… is there? If the culture bosses were worried about offending Kazakhstan, it was a useless precaution: Kazakhs didn’t ban the movie. 
What those watchdogs should’ve been looking out for were the movies that local studios poured over our heads this year. 
Movies like “Mechenosets” (“Swordsman”) and “Vedma” (“Witch”) make Russia look more idiotic than all Borat’s efforts combined. 
Going against all the rules of moviemaking, films like these and dozens like them not only drowned in their own horribleness, they celebrated it and expected their flaws to be seen as fortes. Substituting action for talking is apparently a sign of intellect, changing good dialogue for delirious lines is an artistic choice and ignoring common logic is how our “mysterious Russian cinema” is better than the corrupted Western vision of art.
Fortunately, there were good Russian films as well. Apart from narrowly  released art-house films there was the impressive “Day Watch,” the action-packed “Obratny Otschyot,” the witty “Peregon,” the introspective “Zhivoi,” the touching “Piter FM,” and others. 
There’s hope that since these will be remembered, the next year will bring more good Russian movies. The first test is no later than next week: on Jan. 1, “Volkodav,” a long-awaited folklore-based fantasy opens.

TITLE: United Opens Four-Point Gap
AUTHOR: By Martyn Herman
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Chelsea’s defensive frailties cost two valuable points in their quest for a hat-trick of Premier League titles on Tuesday when a Michael Essien own goal gave Reading a 2-2 draw at Stamford Bridge.
Leaders Manchester United took full advantage later in the day, extending the gap at the top to four points by cruising past Wigan Athletic 3-1 at Old Trafford with Cristiano Ronaldo continuing his hot streak with two more goals.
United have 50 points from 20 games while Chelsea have 46. Arsenal, who beat Watford 2-1, replaced Liverpool in third place with 36 points, the same total as Bolton Wanderers who edged Newcastle United 2-1.
Liverpool dropped to sixth as their remote title hopes disappeared with a 1-0 defeat at Blackburn Rovers which left them 16 points behind United. Benni McCarthy struck for Blackburn, who had not beaten Liverpool in 17 attempts.
In the absence of influential captain John Terry, Chelsea have conceded six goals in three league matches and manager Jose Mourinho says he does not know how long the defender will be missing.
“I have no idea when John Terry will be back, nobody has told me if he is going for back surgery, if it will be three days, three weeks or three months,” said Mourinho, who was also without midfielders Joe Cole and Arjen Robben.
“The big problem is when you lose more than one crucial player…to lose (goalkeeper) Petr (Cech) and John is a big problem for us. At this moment we are conceding too many goals.
“Normally Chelsea in three consecutive matches have three clean sheets but in the last three we have let in six goals,” Mourinho told reporters.
When Reading and Chelsea met in October the game was marred by a serious head injury to Cech.
Didier Drogba’s 11th and 12th league goals of the season seemed to have sealed victory for Chelsea on Tuesday. 
But Reading, who had equalised after 67 minutes through Leroy Lita’s stooping header, got a deserved point when Ashley Cole’s clearence hit Essien and flew past helpless keeper Hilario five minutes from time.
Ronaldo began on the bench for United but came on after the break to head his side in front after 47 minutes. The Portuguese winger then took his league tally to 10 goals when he knocked in the rebound after Chris Kirkland had saved his penalty.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer made it 3-0 before Leighton Baines pulled one back for Wigan from the penalty spot.
“I was very pleased with the start to the second half,” said United manager Alex Ferguson. “The form (Ronaldo’s) in, he can always change a game.”
Despite the win guaranteeing United would go into the New Year top of the league, Ferguson sounded a note of caution.
“We’ve got a lot of roads to travel yet and there will be points dropped, United and Chelsea will both drop points,” he said.
Arsenal needed a late winner from Robin van Persie at bottom club Watford to maintain their distant pursuit of the top two. Gilberto Silva had given the Gunners a 19th-minute lead before Tommy Smith replied for the home side four minutes later.
Nicolas Anelka scored Bolton’s winner as his side clocked up a fourth successive victory while Portsmouth are in fifth place after a headed double from Linvoy Primus gave them a 2-1 win at West Ham United.

TITLE: Gerald Ford, the ‘Accidental U.S. President,’ Dies at 93
AUTHOR: By Jeff Wilson
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: RANCHO MIRAGE, California — Former U.S. President Gerald R. Ford, who declared “Our long national nightmare is over” as he replaced Richard Nixon but may have doomed his own chances of election by pardoning his disgraced predecessor, has died. He was 93. 
America’s 38th president, and the only one neither elected to the office nor the vice presidency, died at his desert home on Tuesday.
“His life was filled with love of God, his family and his country,” his wife, Betty, said in a statement.
Ford was the longest living former president, surpassing Ronald Reagan, who died in June 2004, by more than a month.
Ford’s office did not release the cause of death, which followed a year of medical problems. He was treated for pneumonia in January and had an angioplasty and pacemaker implant in August.
“President Ford was a great man who devoted the best years of his life in serving the United States,” President Bush said in a brief statement. “He was a true gentleman who reflected the best in America’s character.”
Ford was an accidental president. A Michigan Republican elected to Congress 13 times before becoming the first appointed vice president in 1973 after Spiro Agnew left amid scandal, Ford was Nixon’s hand-picked successor, a man of much political experience who had never run on a national ticket. He was as open and straightforward as Nixon was tightly controlled and conspiratorial.
Former President Carter described him as “one of the most admirable public servants and human beings I have ever known.”
Ford took office moments after Nixon resigned in disgrace over Watergate.
“My fellow Americans,” Ford said, “our long national nightmare is over. Our Constitution works. Our great republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule.”
And, true to his reputation as unassuming Jerry, he added: “I am acutely aware that you have not elected me as your president by your ballots. So I ask you to confirm me with your prayers.”
He revived the debate over Watergate a month later by granting Nixon a pardon for all crimes he committed as president.
That single act, it was widely believed, contributed to Ford losing election to a term of his own in 1976. But it won praise in later years as a courageous act that allowed the nation to move on.
The Vietnam War ended in defeat for the U.S. during his presidency with the fall of Saigon in April 1975. In a speech as the end neared, Ford said: “Today, America can regain the sense of pride that existed before Vietnam. But it cannot be achieved by refighting a war that is finished as far as America is concerned.” Evoking Abraham Lincoln, he said it was time to “look forward to an agenda for the future, to unify, to bind up the nation’s wounds.”
Ford was in the White House for just 895 days, but changed it more than it changed him.
Even after two women tried separately to kill him, his presidency remained open and plain.
Not imperial. Not reclusive. And, of greatest satisfaction to a nation numbed by Watergate, not dishonest. 
Even to millions of Americans who had voted two years earlier for Nixon, the transition to Ford’s leadership was one of the most welcomed in the history of the democratic process — despite the fact that it occurred without an election. 
After the Watergate ordeal, Americans liked their new president — and first lady Betty, whose candor charmed the country. 
In a long congressional career in which he rose to be House Republican leader, Ford lit few fires. In the words of Congressional Quarterly, he “built a reputation for being solid, dependable and loyal — a man more comfortable carrying out the programs of others than in initiating things on his own.” 
When Agnew resigned in a bribery scandal in October 1973, Ford was one of four finalists to succeed him: Texan John Connally, New York’s Nelson Rockefeller and California’s Ronald Reagan. 
“Personal factors enter into such a decision,” Nixon recalled for a Ford biographer in 1991. “I knew all of the final four personally and had great respect for each one of them, but I had known Jerry Ford longer and better than any of the rest. 
“We had served in Congress together. I had often campaigned for him in his district,” Nixon continued. But Ford had something the others didn’t: he would be easily confirmed by Congress, something that could not be said of Rockefeller, Reagan and Connally. 
So Ford became the first vice president appointed under the 25th amendment to the Constitution. 
On Aug. 9, 1974, after seeing Nixon off, Ford assumed the office. The next morning, he made his own breakfast and padded to the front door in his pajamas to get the newspaper. 
Said a ranking Democratic congressman: “Maybe he is a plodder, but right now the advantages of having a plodder in the presidency are enormous.” 
In 1976, he survived an intraparty challenge from Ronald Reagan only to lose to Democrat Jimmy Carter in November. In the campaign, he ignored Carter’s record as governor of Georgia and concentrated on his own achievements as president. 
Carter won 297 electoral votes to his 240. After Reagan came back to defeat Carter in 1980, the two former presidents became collaborators, working together on joint projects. 
“His life-long dedication to helping others touched the lives of countless people,” Carter said Wednesday. “He frequently rose above politics by emphasizing the need for bipartisanship and seeking common ground on issues critical to our nation.” 
At a joint session after becoming president, Ford addressed members of Congress as “my former colleagues” and promised “communication, conciliation, compromise and cooperation.” But his relations with Congress did not always run smoothly. 
He vetoed 66 bills in his barely two years as president. Congress overturned 12 Ford vetoes, more than for any president since Andrew Johnson. 
In his memoir, “A Time to Heal,” Ford wrote, “When I was in the Congress myself, I thought it fulfilled its constitutional obligations in a very responsible way, but after I became president, my perspective changed.” 
Some suggested the pardon was prearranged before Nixon resigned, but Ford, in an unusual appearance before a congressional committee in October 1974, said, “There was no deal, period, under no circumstances.” The committee dropped its investigation. 
Ford’s standing in the polls dropped dramatically when he pardoned Nixon. But an ABC News poll taken in 2002 in connection with the 30th anniversary of the Watergate break-in found that six in 10 said the pardon was the right thing to do. 
The late Democrat Clark Clifford spoke for many when he wrote in his memoirs, “The nation would not have benefited from having a former chief executive in the dock for years after his departure from office. His disgrace was enough.” 
The decision to pardon Nixon won Ford a John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award in 2001, and Senator Edward Kennedy, acknowledging he had criticized Ford at the time, called the pardon “an extraordinary act of courage that historians recognize was truly in the national interest.” 
While Ford had not sought the job, he came to relish it. He had once told Congress that even if he succeeded Nixon he would not run for president in 1976. Within weeks of taking the oath, he changed his mind. 
He was undaunted even after the two attempts on his life in September 1975. Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, a 26-year-old follower of Charles Manson, was arrested after she aimed a semiautomatic pistol at Ford on Sept. 5 in Sacramento, California. A Secret Service agent grabbed her and Ford was unhurt. 
Seventeen days later, Sara Jane Moore, a 45-year-old political activist, was arrested in San Francisco after she fired a gun at the president. Again, Ford was unhurt. 
Both women are serving life terms in federal prison. 
Asked at a news conference to recite his accomplishments, Ford replied: “We have restored public confidence in the White House and in the executive branch of government.” 
As to his failings, he responded, “I will leave that to my opponents. I don’t think there have been many.” 
In office, Ford’s living tastes were modest. When he became vice president, he chose to remain in the same Alexandria, Virginia, home — unpretentious except for a swimming pool — that he shared with his family as a congressman. 
After leaving the White House, however, he took up residence in the desert resort of Rancho Mirage, picked up $1 million for his memoir and another $1 million in a five-year NBC television contract, and served on a number of corporate boards. By 1987, he was on eight such boards, at fees up to $30,000 a year, and was consulting for others, at fees up to $100,000. After criticism, he cut back on such activity. 
Ford spent most of his boyhood in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
He was born Leslie King on July 14, 1913, in Omaha, Nebraska. His parents were divorced when he was less than a year old, and his mother returned to her parents in Grand Rapids, where she later married Gerald R. Ford Sr. He adopted the boy and renamed him. 
Ford was a high school senior when he met his biological father. He was working in a Greek restaurant, he recalled, when a man came in and stood watching. 
“Finally, he walked over and said, ‘I’m your father,’” Ford said. “Well, that was quite a shock.” But he wrote in his memoir that he broke down and cried that night and he was left with the image of “a carefree, well-to-do man who didn’t really give a damn about the hopes and dreams of his firstborn son.” 
Ford played center on the University of Michigan’s 1932 and 1933 national champion football teams. He got professional offers from the Detroit Lions and the Green Bay Packers, but chose to study law at Yale, working his way through as an assistant varsity football coach and freshman boxing coach. 
Ford got his first exposure to national politics at Yale, working as a volunteer in Wendell L. Willkie’s 1940 Republican campaign for president. After World War II service with the Navy in the Pacific, he went back to practicing law in Grand Rapids and became active in Republican reform politics. 
His stepfather was the local Republican chairman, and Michigan Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg was looking for a fresh young internationalist to replace the area’s isolationist congressman. 
Ford got twice as many votes as Representative Bartel Jonkman in the Republican primary and then went on to win the election with 60.5 percent of the vote, the lowest margin he ever got. 
He had proposed to Elizabeth Bloomer, a dancer and fashion coordinator, earlier that year, 1948. She became one of his hardest-working campaigners and they were married shortly before the election. They had three sons, Michael, John and Steven, and a daughter, Susan. 
Ford was the last surviving member of the Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 and concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin.

TITLE: 2007 Looks Bright For Big Easy After Troubles
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LOS ANGELES — Ernie Els gave himself an early Christmas present by winning the South African Open last Sunday. More significantly, he proved he had fully recovered from the knee injury he suffered after the 2005 British Open. 
The smooth-swinging South African has not been at his best over the last 12 months and came desperately close to ending a year without a single title for the first time since 1990. 
The professional game has sorely missed a 100-percent fit Els and his three-stroke victory at Humewood Golf Club in Port Elizabeth finally convinced him his recuperating knee can now withstand the rigours of top-level golf. 
By ending a 12-month title drought with his 23rd European Tour success, he is poised to challenge Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and company for top honours in 2007. 
“The SA Open was my last chance to set the record straight,” Els said on his official website. “Now I’ve done that, the relief is immense. 
“I’m not saying this one win changes an entire season, but it changes the way I feel going into the end-of-year break. 
“This was probably the most frustrating season I’ve had as a pro, but I’ve put all that behind me. I’m looking forward now to 2007. 
“It’s not like I’ve fallen off the map completely. I haven’t been consistent, I know that, but I don’t want to read more into it than there is. These problems were caused by my injury. 

BIG EASY 
“I’m fitter than I ever have been since I came out of the army,” added the 37-year-old who is popularly known as the “Big Easy”. 
“My knee is strong and the important thing is I trust it, I really trust it. That means I can swing the club the way I want to, without feeling that I have to protect it in any way.” 
World number one Woods understood Els’s cautious approach as he missed the first five PGA Tour events of 2003 following knee surgery at the end of 2002. 
“His knee surgery was a lot more extensive than mine,” Woods said after winning his 11th title of 2006 at the Target World Challenge in Thousand Oaks, California on Sunday. 
“He had to deal with a lot more scar tissue and things than I ever had to deal with. 
“So for him to try and battle through all that and as well as get his game back because he took so much time off, it’s not easy to do.” 
Time is gradually beginning to run out for Els as he aims to build on his career haul of three major titles. 

CLOSE CALLS 
Despite several close calls, he has not triumphed at the game’s highest level since his playoff victory in the 2002 British Open. 
Having twice won the U.S. Open, in 1994 and 1997, he covets a career grand slam of the big four events and therefore still needs to win the Masters and the PGA Championship. 
“I see 2007 as the start of a three-year plan, where I totally re-dedicate myself to the game,” said Els, who was sidelined for four months at the end of last season after twisting his left knee on a family sailing holiday. 
“I want to win more majors and start giving Tiger a run for his money. 
“If you look at where he is at the top of the world rankings, it’s a big lead so no one is going to get near him any time soon. 
“I’ve got to give myself a three-year stretch to try to approach him and I really believe I can do it. I wouldn’t be out here if I didn’t.” 
Els will take the next six weeks off before returning to tournament golf at the European Tour’s Qatar Masters from January 25-28. 
Thereafter, expect him to be a significant factor in all four majors, starting with the April 5-8 Masters at Augusta National.

TITLE: Latent Heat Grabs Malibu, Brother Derek Falls Away
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ARCADIA, California — Latent Heat posted a two-length victory in Tuesday’s $250,000 Malibu Stakes, with wagering favorite Brother Derek finishing seventh. 
Ridden by Edgar Prado, Latent Heat rallied in the stretch to win the Santa Anita meeting’s opening-day feature before a crowd of 32,931. 
Spring At Last finished second, with Midnight Lute third in the seven-furlong race for 3-year-olds. 
Garrett Gomez got the ride on Santa Anita Derby winner Brother Derek when regular jockey Alex Solis opted to ride Arson Squad. Arson Squad finished eighth, a nose behind Brother Derek. 
Latent Heat, who had won two in a row before a disappointing ninth-place finish in Keeneland’s Perryville Stakes, went off as the fourth choice in the Malibu wagering and paid $13.40, $8.20 and $5.40 for his first stakes victory. 
The winner was clocked in 1:21.39. 
Spring At Last, ridden by Corey Nakatani, rallied to finish a head in front of Midnight Lute and paid $13.80 and $7.40. 
The show payoff on Midnight Lute was $4.60. 
Latent Heat is trained by Bobby Frankel, who saddled his second Malibu champion. 
Prado kept Latent Heat just off the early pace, then urged his mount past Da Stoops entering the stretch. Da Stoops faded to fourth. 
Latent Heat has won four of nine starts, and the $150,000 winner’s purse increased his career earnings to $327,400. 
Gomez got his fourth victory of the afternoon when he piloted favored Pirates Deputy from next-to-last in the nine-horse field to win the seven-furlong $141,375 California Breeders Champion Stakes. 
The gelded son of Bertrando was timed in 1:23.66 in the event for 2-year-olds bred in California and paid $6, $4 and $2.80.

TITLE: Canadian Champion Held for Abduction
AUTHOR: By Brian Witte
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BALTIMORE — A federal judge on Tuesday ordered Canadian Olympic gold medalist Myriam Bedard to temporarily remain in the custody of U.S. marshals on a charge that she violated a child custody order by bringing her 12-year-old daughter to the United States. 
U.S. Magistrate Judge James K. Bredar scheduled a hearing for Friday in Baltimore to address whether the U.S. government has the authority to detain the former biathlon champion pending extradition to Canada. 
Kevin McCants, an attorney representing Bedard, said he was working on an arrangement that would enable his client to return voluntarily to Quebec on Friday to face the charge. McCants said the holidays have made it difficult to negotiate, but he has been in touch with Canadian prosecutors. 
“We’re hoping to have a deal in place in the next day or so,” McCants said. 
Bedard, 37, was arrested Friday night in Maryland after U.S. marshals found her and her daughter, Maude, at a Columbia hotel. Bedard, of Quebec, Canada, has been in the custody of U.S. marshals since the arrest. Her daughter is back in the custody of Bedard’s ex-husband, Jean Paquet. 
Bedard faces up to 10 years in prison on the child abduction charge, but her attorneys contend she didn’t break the law. 
“She’s confident that when these proceedings are over that … she will be vindicated. She’s done nothing wrong,” McCants said. 
Bedard appeared at her initial appearance in U.S. District Court in Baltimore wearing an orange jail jumpsuit. McCants said Bedard was disappointed she had to remain in custody, but he said she told him she was OK. 
“She was fine with it,” McCants said. “I think I was more disappointed than anyone.” 
Assistant U.S. Attorney Philip Jackson argued that Bedard should be detained because she was a flight risk. 
Quebec City police obtained an arrest warrant against Bedard on Dec. 8 after Paquet alleged she had taken their daughter away from Quebec City without his permission in violation of a child custody order. 
An arrest warrant for Bedard was first issued from Quebec City, Canada. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police contacted the U.S. Marshals Service and the Capital Area Regional Fugitive Task Force on Dec. 15 to help find Bedard. 
When marshals determined she was in the United States, a provisional arrest warrant was obtained on Wednesday. 
John Pepper Jr., an attorney who also is representing Bedard, said Paquet has been unclear about when he wanted to see his daughter. 
“We’re still waiting for him to come forth and make us aware of which periods he would like,” Pepper said. 
He also said Paquet was kept informed of where the girl was and that Bedard “feels absolutely devastated by the fact that Mr. Paquet would act in such a manner.” 
Bedard won two gold medals in the biathlon competition at the Olympic Games in Lillehammer, Norway, in 1994. She won a bronze medal in that same event in the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, France. 
Bedard has been traveling in the United States with her current common-law spouse, Nima Mazhari, who was at the courthouse Tuesday. 
Mazhari has had his own share of legal problems, being charged in 2005 with theft and possession of about 20 stolen paintings worth $100,000.

TITLE: Rockets Blast Nets Into Orbit
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: NEW YORK — The Houston Rockets proved they can win without Yao Ming when they dumped the New Jersey Nets 96-71 on Wednesday, led by a 23 point effort from Shane Battier.
With Yao sidelined for six weeks after sustaining broken bone in his right leg in loss to the Clippers on Dec. 23, the Rockets turned to Battier and all-star Tracy McGrady, who returned to the line-up on Tuesday after missing seven games with a sore back.
Battier’s contribution included a career-high seven three-pointers and nine rebounds while McGrady added 17 points and dished out six assists as Houston won for the first time in three games.
Rafer Alston chipped in with 14 points and Juwan Howard added 12 points and 11 rebounds.
Hassan Adams potted 13 points while Vince Carter and Bostjan Nachbar each had 12 for the Nets, who are having problems of their own, slumping to their heaviest defeat of the season and their fourth loss in a row.
The Rockets and Nets played like two struggling teams in a sloppy opening quarter that saw Houston nose in front 18-12.
In the second quarter, the teams began to find their range as Houston out-scored New Jersey 31-27 to take a 49-39 advantage into the break. 
The Rockets came out firing in the third, opening up an 18 point lead, then cruised to just their third win in nine games.
N In Atlanta, LeBron James poured in 27 points as the Cleveland Cavaliers rolled to an 89-76 win, handing the Hawks their fifth straight defeat.
N Kobe Bryant bagged 27 points and Smush Parker chipped in with a season-high 20, sparking the Los Angeles Lakers to 106-93 win over the Magic in Orlando.
N Gilbert Arenas continued his hot scoring pace, hitting for 39 points as the streaking Washington Wizards tamed the Bobcats 114-107 in Charlotte.

TITLE: Aussies Thrash England Again
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MELBOURNE — Australia thrashed England by an innings and 99 runs at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Thursday, wrapping up a fourth straight win in the Ashes series with more than two days remaining. 
Australia secured victory after tea on the third day when they bowled the tourists out for 161 to remain on course for a first 5-0 whitewash over their oldest rivals since 1920-21. 
Fast bowler Brett Lee captured four wickets while Stuart Clark grabbed three, Shane Warne two and Glenn McGrath one as Australia registered their biggest win over England on home soil since 1954 and their biggest at Melbourne since 1937. 
Warne, who will retire after next week’s fifth and final test in Sydney, was named man of the match after taking seven wickets and scoring an unbeaten 40 in Australia’s innings. 
Warne became the first player to capture 700 test wickets when he took 5-39 in the first innings and finished the match with 999 international wickets to his name. 
England had trailed Australia by 260 runs on the first innings after bowling them out for 419 before lunch but were unable to muster enough runs to make them bat a second time. 
England’s batting, which had let them down badly in each of the three previous tests, failed again with the innings lasting only five hours and less than 66 overs. 
In another collective abject display, only opener Andrew Strauss, with a defiant 31 over almost three hours, and wicketkeeper Chris Read (26 not out) took the fight to an Australian attack that was as ruthless as England were inept. 

QUICK WICKETS 
After polishing off Australia’s tailenders then limping through to lunch without loss, England lost Alastair Cook, Ian Bell, Kevin Pietersen and Paul Collingwood in quick succession before tea then their last six wickets in the final session. 
Cook fell for 20 when he dragged a ball from Clark back onto his stumps then Bell departed for two when McGrath trapped him lbw. 
Pietersen was promoted up the order from five to four after being left batting with the tail in the previous tests but the move failed when he was bowled by Clark for one. 
Collingwood made 16 before he drove Lee straight to Justin Langer at short cover as England slumped to 90-4 at tea with the last six wickets falling in the final session. 
Strauss was caught by wicketkeeper Adam Gilchrist off Lee in the first over after tea, Flintoff was given out lbw to Clark before Warne trapped Sajid Mahmood (no score) and Steve Harmison (4) both lbw. 
Lee had Monty Panesar caught in the slips by Michael Clarke for 14 then finished off the match when he splattered Matthew Hoggard’s stumps. 
Earlier Australia’s Andrew Symonds had added just two runs to his overnight score of 154 when he nicked Harmison behind to Read with the total on 383. 
Clark and Warne then added 34 for the ninth wicket before Mahmood had Clark also caught by Read then McGrath caught by Bell for a duck to finish off the innings after Australia had resumed on 372-7.

TITLE: Wild Oats On Course For Repeat
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: SYDNEY — Australian maxi Wild Oats was on course for a rare second successive victory in the Sydney-Hobart yacht race as it neared the finishing line on Thursday. 
The 30-meter (98 feet) yacht has led for most of the 628-nautical mile race since it started in Sydney Harbour on Tuesday and was sailing strongly in southeasterly winds of up to 20 knots with less than 60 miles to go. 
Race officials said Wild Oats would likely finish some time before midnight local time. 
“It’s like a nervous father, waiting, waiting …,” Wild Oats co-owner Sandy Oatley told local television as he waited in Hobart, capital of the southern island state of Tasmania. 
Skandia, another Australian maxi which won in 2003, was about 20 miles behind, its crew hoping that Wild Oats would be becalmed in the notoriously fickle Derwent River leading to Hobart. 
Skandia was still sailing well despite losing its canard, or forward rudder, on Wednesday. The smaller, 70-foot Ichi Ban was just behind and pressing Skandia for second. 
Last year, the hi-tech Wild Oats became the first boat in 60 years to win the triple honours of race record as well as line and handicap honours. 
It is now set to become the first yacht in more than 40 years to claim back-to-back line honours wins. The last yacht to achieve that feat was Astor in 1963 and 1964. 
Headwinds and rough seas over the first two days robbed Wild Oats of the chance to challenge the race record it set last year of one day, 18 hours, 40 minutes and 10 seconds. 

BEGAN SINKING 
Wild Oats was at least able to avoid the trouble which forced nine boats to retire on Wednesday from a starting fleet of 78. New Zealand maxi Maximus and Dutch entry ABN AMRO had both briefly taken the lead before they were dismasted in rough seas. 
The crew of Australian entry Koomooloo abandoned their 38-year-old timber yacht after it began sinking. Eight crew members on board Maximus were injured and three were winched from its decks by helicopter after it was dismasted early on Wednesday. All crew were later reported safe. 
While rough, the conditions were nowhere near as bad as the 1998 race, during which six sailors died after a terrifying storm slammed into the fleet. 
That tragedy prompted race organisers to impose stringent new safety standards but minor injuries are still common in the annual bluewater classic, regarded as one of the world’s toughest.

TITLE: Fulham Snatch Late Draw at The Valley
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — New Charlton Athletic manager Alan Pardew saw his struggling side come from behind and then concede a stoppage time goal in a 2-2 draw with London rivals Fulham in the English Premier League on Wednesday.
Charlton remain second bottom with 13 points from 20 games while Fulham are in 12th position.
All four goals were the result of defensive mistakes.
Fulham’s Brian McBride put the visitors ahead on 13 minutes when he reacted quickest after Carlos Bocanegra’s unmarked header was tipped onto the bar by Scott Carson.
A woeful punch by Fulham goalkeeper Antti Niemi allowed Darren Ambrose to equalize. 
England striker Darren Bent slotted in Charlton’s second just before halftime after two Fulham defenders had left the ball to each other to clear.
But in injury time Fulham defender Franck Queudrue rifled in after Charlton had failed to clear a controversial Michael Brown free kick.
Pardew, who was sacked by third bottom West Ham United on Dec. 11 after a poor run of results, became Charlton’s third manager of the season on Sunday when he replaced Les Reed.

TITLE: Emery Stands Firm to Help Senators Shut Out Islanders
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: OTTAWA — Ray Emery made 18 saves to collect his second shutout of the season as the Ottawa Senators found a way past the New York Islanders’ Rick DiPietro to register a 2-0 win on Wednesday.
Before the game, DiPietro was in the spotlight after registering back-to-back shutouts against the Columbus Blue Jackets and New York Rangers and not allowing a goal in 156 minutes and 30 seconds of play.
But Mike Fisher brought that streak to an end just over 18 minutes into the first period, sweeping home a loose puck past the New York netminder for his ninth goal of the season.
“We played a good team but I don’t think we had our best stuff tonight,” DiPietro told reporters. “I really didn’t pay much attention to (the shutout string).
“We just wanted this win and that’s all we were focused on.”
Following a scoreless second period, Chris Kelly added an insurance marker, converting a powerplay chance late in the third.
Emery was not overworked earning his fifth career shutout but had to be sharp in the second when he handled 10 of the 18 shots directed at him.
N Rostislav Olesz had a goal and an assist and Ed Belfour made 23 saves as the Florida Panthers downed Philadelphia 3-1 in Sunrise, sending the fading Flyers to a club record 10th straight defeat.
N In Pittsburgh, Slava Kozlov collected the game winning goal in the third period and Bobby Holik added an insurance marker into an empty net as the Atlanta Thrashers downed Pittsburgh 4-2.