SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1237 (3), Tuesday, January 16, 2007
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TITLE: Russia, Belarus End Spat
AUTHOR: By Miriam Elder
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia and Belarus appeared to put an end to their acrimonious energy dispute on Friday, as Russian officials acknowledged that Moscow’s reputation as a dependable energy supplier had been damaged.
Moscow would cut its oil export duty from $180 to $53 per ton, after Belarus rescinded a transit fee that Russia had refused to pay, Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov said after meeting his Belarussian counterpart, Sergei Sidorsky.
Russia would have the right to revise the export duty every two months starting next year, Interfax reported.
Russia will also start receiving most of the profits from the duty on Russian oil that Belarus re-exports to Europe, Fradkov said.
Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko indicated Sunday that the deal might be temporary. “Specific contracts and prices for January and February have been negotiated. They are more than acceptable to us,” Lukashenko said, Interfax reported.
“The dispute has definitely damaged our reputation as a reliable supplier,” Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref told reporters Saturday.
“We must create a system whereby supplies will depend only on us, not on the transit stage.”
Russia has been seeking to extend control of oil and gas pipelines beyond its borders, and in late December, Gazprom pushed through a deal with Belarus that saw it double gas prices and gain control of 50 percent of the country’s pipeline network.
Moscow and the European Union hope to sign a new bilateral cooperation treaty this year, and energy talks are due to top the agenda. The EU, which gets about one-quarter of its gas from Russia, harshly criticized Moscow as oil imports were disrupted for three days last week.
The dispute’s outcome is also a blow to Lukashenko, whose government must now fork out over double the price it paid last year for Russian gas and pay an oil import tariff for the first time.
Moscow’s imposition of the export duty on New Year’s Day prompted Belarus to slap a transit fee of $45 per ton on all Russian oil passing through its territory. Russia refused to pay the fee and Belarus tapped oil from the Druzhba pipeline as payment. Russia then shut down the pipeline for three days, cutting exports to Germany, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
The phasing out of subsidized Russian energy could put Lukashenko’s authoritarian regime under greater strain as the two countries are increasingly at odds over the terms of a long-stalled political union.
“The Belarus economy will now struggle to survive,” said Alexander Rahr, program director of the Korber Center for Russia and CIS Affairs in Hamburg, Germany. “We have seen a crucial break in the economic relationship between Moscow and Minsk.”
Russia is by far Belarus’ largest trading partner and one of its few political allies. U.S. President George W. Bush reinforced Lukashenko’s pariah status in the West on Friday, signing into law an act that tightens sanctions against the country and provides money to independent media and opposition groups.
Yet the country could still find ways to pressure Russia into boosting support, Rahr said. Belarus provides a key transport link to Kaliningrad, he noted, with the only other means of reaching the Russian exclave passing through EU member Lithuania.
And the country remains Gazprom’s second-largest customer in the former Soviet Union after Ukraine, importing around 20 billion cubic meters per year.
The decision to impose an export duty was designed to gain revenue from Minsk’s practice of exporting oil to Europe at market prices after refining the cheap crude it takes in from Russia.
Russia lost out on an estimated $3 billion to $4 billion per year as a result of the scheme.
A customs union deal signed between the two countries in 1995 stipulated that Belarus would hand over 85 percent of the duty profits to Russia, but Minsk stopped paying in 2001.
Under Friday’s deal, this year Russia will receive 70 percent of revenues from Belarussian exports of refined Russian oil, rising to 80 percent next year and 85 percent in 2009, Fradkov said.
Industry and Energy Minister Viktor Khristenko told President Vladimir Putin last week that Russia had held off until this year to react in part because it wanted to continue subsidizing the Belarussian economy until after presidential elections last March.
Lukashenko was overwhelmingly re-elected in the vote, which was validated by Russia but widely criticized in the West as neither free nor fair.
Analysts said Lukashenko, as well as the centrally planned Belarussian economy, had emerged as the biggest loser in the dispute.
“The crisis puts a question mark over his authority,” Rahr said. “The Belarussian economy has been much too dependent on cheap Russian energy. Valuable time [to reform] has been lost.”
Russia’s reputation and its relations with Europe were the other casualties of the crisis, said Tanya Costello, a London-based analyst with Eurasia Group, a risk consultancy.
“While the crisis won’t have any effect on specific projects, we will see greater calls over the next few months and years to look for non-Russian sources of oil and gas,” she said. “In the end, Belarus is entirely dependent on Russia economically. This will put a great strain on [Lukashenko’s] government.”
Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, which took over the rotating presidency of the European Union this month, said in the midst of the crisis that Germany should look into alternative fuels and reconsider its decision to shut down its nuclear power program.

TITLE: Activist Stabbed
20 Times
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A twenty-one-year-old antifascist campaigner was stabbed twenty times on Sunday night in south-western St. Petersburg in an apparent attack by extremists. 
Ivan Yelin was taken to the intensive care unit of St. Petersburg Hospital No. 26 on Ulitsa Kostyushko, where his condition is described as severe. Yelin underwent an operation for wounds sustained to his liver, kidney, solar plexus and other areas, suffering massive blood loss.
The St. Petersburg Prosecutor’s Office has opened a criminal case for attempted murder. No suspects have yet been detained.
Immediately prior to the attack on Sunday, Yelin had been taking part in an international humanitarian initiative titled “Food, Not Bombs,” giving food to the local homeless people and street kids just outside Vladimirskaya metro station in central St. Petersburg. 
The initiative takes place on a regular basis at several fixed places, including areas close to Vladimirskaya and Vasileostrovskaya metro stations. 
The attack took place between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. near Yelin’s home on the corner of Ulitsa Ziny Portnovoi and Leninsky Prospekt in a south-western district of the city.
Antifascist campaigners are convinced that local nationalists and extremists are behind the attack. 
“Members of skinhead gangs routinely show up at antifascist and human rights meetings,” said Ruslan Linkov, head of the St. Petersburg organization Democratic Russia. “Nationalists take photographs of the participants and also follow human rights activists to their homes.” 
“On Sunday, Ivan was more noticeable than the others: he was putting food into bowls and giving it to people, and naturally drew more attention,” said fellow antifascist campaigner Oleg, who asked that his real name not be used because of fears for his safety. “After they finished, most volunteers went to a rock concert in a nearby club but Ivan went home on his own, making himself an obvious target.”
Timur Kacharava, a frequent participant in antifascist meetings who was stabbed to death outside a bookstore on Ligovsky Prospekt in November 2005, was also reportedly followed after taking part in a “Food, Not Bombs” event.
As skinhead violence against foreigners and ethnic minorities rises in Russia, growing numbers of antifascist campaigners are considering giving up street politics, they say.
Not only do they fear physical attack by skinheads, but they say they are treated with suspicion and hostility by the police, while adding that the political elite and general public are indifferent to their goals. Most depressingly, they say, at their own rallies they are usually outnumbered by police and nationalists.
“We have to face it: ordinary citizens prefer to stay away from human rights or antifascist meetings,” said Iosif Skakovsky of the human rights group Memorial. “It does not help things that the authorities and law-enforcement organizations both on a local and federal level demonstrate an outrageous lack of leadership and seem to be content with the state of denial they have adopted about hate crimes.” 
As a result, many antifascist activists are losing faith that they can make a difference. 
“More and more of us are strongly considering giving up the fight,” Oleg said. “I have personally been attacked by skinheads who kicked me in the head with their heavy boots. But it is not the fear of a physical assault that makes me doubtful about defending the cause. Rather, it is our failure to make a difference in the minds of ordinary Russians that is most frustrating.”
Those who want to continue their activism are thinking of changing strategies as street fights between antifascist campaigners and nationalists are becoming increasingly common. The most recent clash between members of the Antifa group and nationalists took place in September. The street fights broke out when activists from Antifa tried to disrupt a meeting of the nationalist Movement Against Illegal Immigration. 
“After the murder of Timur Kacharava we figured that the only way to stop the fascists is to counter them physically,” said antifascist campaigner Mikhail. “If the authorities do nothing, we have nothing left to do but fight.”
Linkov is worried by the tendency of the authorities and the mainstream media to portray antifascist campaigners as yet another breed of extremist.
“They think things would look better if this were seen as the problem of youngsters drinking too much, rather than the problem of nationalist groups getting stronger,” Linkov said. “They seem to be trying to spread the responsibility for street violence more evenly among various political forces.”

TITLE: Russia Takes Litvinenko Case to UK
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW — Prosecutor General Yury Chaika said Sunday that a team of investigators would soon be sent to Britain to investigate the poisoning death of former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko.
Chaika said investigators had submitted a lengthy request for assistance in the case to British authorities, totaling more than 100 pages, and were expecting full cooperation, RIA-Novosti quoted him as saying in an interview with Rossia television.
“Our investigators are preparing to travel to Britain in the nearest future to carry out their work,” Chaika said.
The investigators planned to sit in on interviews and examine venues connected with Litvinenko’s murder, he said.
Litvinenko died in a London hospital Nov. 23, several weeks after being poisoned with the rare radioactive isotope polonium-210. In a deathbed statement, he blamed President Vladimir Putin for his poisoning. The Kremlin has denied the allegation.
Scotland Yard investigators who went to Moscow in December were not allowed to question anyone directly, but only to sit in while Russian authorities conducted the interviews. Russia also has begun its own investigation, seen as a bid to keep control of the politically explosive case.
“We have established very good, constructive working relations with the British. They came here, we gave them all possible assistance in the course of their investigation on the territory of the Russian Federation,” Chaika said.
Moscow has asked Britain for permission to interview more than 100 people, Deputy Prosecutor General Alexander Zvyagintsev said in an interview published in Rossiiskaya Gazeta on Friday. He declined to name the people Russia wanted to interview, and it was unclear whether any were considered suspects. The Home Office declined to comment.
Chaika said the investigators would be operating under the same constraints as their British counterparts in Moscow, able only to attend interviews. Litvinenko fell ill after meeting with businessman Dmitry Kovtun; Andrei Lugovoi, also a former security officer; 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 death.
Alex Goldfarb, a Kremlin critic and friend of Litvinenko, on Sunday accused Russian authorities of blocking the British investigation and pointlessly traveling to London. “This is nothing but a stunt designed to detract attention from Russia, a PR exercise to create an appearance of reciprocity,” he said by telephone from London.
British authorities, meanwhile, are working with officials from 48 countries to evaluate about 450 people who were in London in November and fear they might have been exposed to the polonium-210 that killed Litvinenko. Britain’s Health Protection Agency declined to identify the countries, but the United States was among them, U.S. health officials said. People who think they might have been exposed are invited to submit urine samples.
(AP, WP)

TITLE: Arrest Made in Kozlov Case
AUTHOR: By David Nowak
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Prosecutors said Friday that they had detained a boxing promoter suspected of helping banker Alexei Frenkel find triggermen for the contract killing of Central Bank First Deputy Chairman Andrei Kozlov.
The suspect, Liana Askerova, was taken into custody Wednesday, and the Basmanny District Court officially approved her arrest Friday afternoon on charges of abetting the September killing of Kozlov in the parking lot outside the Spartak sports center.
Ekho Moskvy reported Friday that Askerova had served as an intermediary who found the men who shot Kozlov.
Three Ukrainian men surrendered last year to Moscow authorities, confessing to the murder. But they said a middle-aged man — not a woman — had hired them to kill the banking official.
Askerova’s lawyer, Yevgeny Martynov, shared few details about his client Friday. He said that her professional work was in no way related to banking. “I managed to speak to her in the courtroom for three to five minutes before I was asked to leave,” Martynov said. “She and all her relatives are in shock.”
Askerova heads an association of boxing promoters, Interfax reported.
Also Friday, Frenkel, who has been identified by prosecutors as the prime suspect in the killing, was slated to be arrested in the Basmanny District Court. The suspect’s lawyer, Igor Trunov, said his client, who was detained Thursday, had been beaten and denied food and water while in custody. Frenkel maintains his innocence.

TITLE: French Free Prokhorov
AUTHOR: By Carole Bianchi
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LYON, France — French authorities freed Norilsk Nickel chief executive Mikhail Prokhorov on Friday following four days of questioning in connection with a probe into a high-class prostitution ring, the prosecutor said.
But Prokhorov, who at 41 is one of Russia’s wealthiest men, and four others have all been designated material witnesses, prosecutor Xavier Richaud said. That designation does not exclude charges in the future.
The arrests Tuesday capped a six-month investigation into a suspected prostitution ring operating at the upmarket Alpine ski resort of Courchevel, a favored playground of Russia’s rich.
Being designated a material witness means no charges are being filed, but does not exclude the risk — however slight — that charges could be filed in the future if the investigation shows cause.
“The Courchevel mountain gave birth to a judicial mouse,” said a lawyer for one woman, an executive who works with Prokhorov, released from custody Friday.
“There was a lot of agitation, a lot of noise for nothing. These were evenings and trips arranged by tour operators,” said the lawyer, Yvan Guillotte.
Large black cars with tinted windows were seen leaving the Justice Palace in Lyon, apparently whisking off the five.
The prosecutor said the investigation was continuing but indicated that the five were free to return home. Asked whether they were returning to Russia or to Courchevel, he said: “That is not our problem.”
A total of 26 people have been detained in the case, with all but five released after questioning.
Police investigators suspect that Russian call girls were brought to the resort, near the Lyon region of France, and paid mainly with gifts from luxury boutiques — a tactic that could complicate efforts to prove the women were prostitutes and not simply friends. 
The prosecutor said three judges specialized in organized bands were continuing the investigation, but provided no details.

TITLE: Same-Sex Railways
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: ST. PETERSBURG – Rail passengers traveling overnight in sleeper cars to and from St. Petersburg from Monday no longer have to share compartments with members of the opposite sex. 
Russian Railways has announced that travelers can pick male, female or mixed compartments when they buy rail tickets, Regnum news agency reported on Monday.

TITLE: Governor Painting
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: ST. PETERSBURG – A painting by St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko was sold for 2.2 million rubles ($83,175) in a charity auction on Saturday, Interfax news agency reported.
The new owner of “Hedgehog Under the Christmas Tree” is the general director of the Maxidom home improvement chain Sergei Golikov. 
“I haven’t seen [the painting], so I am not able to assess its artistic value,” Golikov said immediately after acquiring the picture.

TITLE: Hollywood To Portray Litvinenko
AUTHOR: By D’arcy Doran
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON — Director Michael Mann and Columbia Pictures are racing against actor Johnny Depp and Warner Bros. To make a film about former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko, the trade paper Variety reported.
Columbia Pictures had agreed to pay $1.5 million for the film rights to a book about Litvinenko being co-written by his widow, Marina, and Alex Goldfarb, a close friend, said Los Angeles-based Variety’s web site.
The book is expected to be published in May by Simon & Schuster’s Free Press imprint, the report said.
Warner Bros. Has bought the rights to a different book about Litvinenko for Johnny Depp’s production company, Infinitum Nihil, the paper said. Depp will produce the film and could star in it, it said.
Variety said Warner Bros. Had tried to buy the rights to the book by Litvinenko’s widow, but was outbid. The studio has acquired the rights to a book by New York Times journalist Alan Cowell, which is expected to be published next year by Doubleday, the report said.
Studio officials were not immediately available for comment.
Braun Entertainment Group, based in Beverley Hills, said in a statement Saturday that it had bought an option on film rights for a third potential movie project — based on Litvinenko’s own book “Blowing Up Russia: Terror From Within.” Mann is known for his often violent crime sagas such as “Collateral,” “Heat” and “Miami Vice,” while Depp often takes on eccentric character roles in films such as “Pirates of the Caribbean,” “Finding Neverland” and “Edward Scissorhands.”
The report said Columbia envisioned an espionage thriller “exploring the collision between the deep rooted Russian power structure enforced by the KGB … and the new wave of wild west capitalism” that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, Variety said.
Braun Entertainment — which previously produced “Freedom Road,” a movie starring Muhammad Ali, said it was in talks with Litvinenko’s widow over its project.
The former security agent’s book was published in 2004 with financial support from self-exiled tycoon Boris Berezovsky and alleged the Federal Security Service was behind a string of bombings at apartment buildings in 1999 that killed more than 300 people and were blamed by the Kremlin on Chechen separatists.
An updated version of the book will be published in Britain next week, London publishing house Gibson Square said in a statement.

TITLE: British Prodigy to Premiere New Vocal Cycle
AUTHOR: By Yelena Andreyeva
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Alex Prior, a 13-year old singer and composer from the U.K. of Russian descent and a great-great-grandson of Konstantin Stanislavsky, will perform his own vocal cycle based on “Pokayannye” penitential verses on Wednesday. The concert is being held as part of the Star of Bethlehem Christmas Festival held in St. Petersburg between Jan 9-19.
The penitential verse cycle called “Primi mya pustynya” was written by Russian monks in the 17th century and presents not only religious but also philosophical, secular thoughts about life and its meaning. Prior began learning to  read ancient Russian Orthodox texts in February 2006 at lessons given by Albina Kruchinina, his teacher at the St. Petersburg State Conservatory.
“I was deeply impressed by these quiet but very intense words. I enjoy the special melody of Church Slavonic language, which such distinguished Russian composers as Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Modest Mussorgsky used in their compositions,” said Prior.
Prior is also writing an all-night vigil that is, when finished, to be blessed by the Russian patriarch Alexy II.
“You need to be very careful when writing religious music,” Prior said. “It is very important to pick up the church acoustics.”
The child prodigy said that besides the all-night vigil, he is working on a number of other compositions. Among them is a new opera, “Beowulf”, written in Old English, which he also enjoys. 
“Prior’s compositions are one of the most successful and profound examples of modern sacred music that accurately reproduce the emotional connotations of the text,” said Yekaterina Smirnova, director of the Star of Bethlehem Festival. “In my opinion, in his creative work, Prior has inherited the best Russian musical traditions of ‘Khovanshchina’ and ‘Boris Godunov’ by Mussorgsky. Prior’s penitential verses have great potential and can be preformed as separate opera pieces. I am sure they will take a significant place among the best modern compositions of sacred music.”
Prior’s concerto for piano was performed in St. Petersburg in September at the St. Petersburg State Academic Cappella to an overcrowded hall. In June 2007, Prior’s ballet, “Mowgli,” will be staged by Natalia Kasatkina and Vladimir Vassiliyev and presented by the Moscow State Classical Ballet at the Kremlin Palace. On Wednesday, besides Prior’s music, the concert will feature religious compositions by Andrei Petrov, Grigory Korchmar, Igor Drukh, Boris Arkhimandritov, and Anton Lubchenko. 
The concert starts at 7 p.m. at the St. Petersburg House of Composers on 45 Bolshaya Morskya Ulitsa.

TITLE: Lukashenko Slams Russia During Belarus Elections
AUTHOR: By Yuras Karmanau
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MINSK, Belarus — Belarussians voted Sunday in local elections seen as a test for the ex-Soviet nation’s isolated regime, following a bitter oil dispute with neighboring Russia that could have economically painful effects.
Leaders of the embattled opposition, one of whom withdrew from the race on the grounds they could not compete fairly, said the elections took place under tight official control and predicted widespread falsification.
But the polls still represented a rare opportunity for the opposition to communicate directly with the electorate. Under the hard-line rule of President Alexander Lukashenko, television is under state control and few independent media are allowed.
Some 7 million voters were eligible to take part in the election of 1,581 local councils. Turnout two hours before polls closed stood at about 70 percent, the electoral commission said.
Belarus’ Soviet-style, state-controlled economy has long relied on cheap Russian energy, which Lukashenko has used to buttress his popularity during his almost 13-year rule. 
But last week, Russia stopped shipping oil through a major pipeline that crosses Belarus, accusing its neighbor of siphoning oil from the pipeline to cover a transit fee Minsk had imposed in response to a duty Russia had placed on oil exports to Belarus.
The 72-hour oil blockade cut off Belarus and also disrupted supplies to Germany, Poland and other European countries.
Russian oil shipments resumed after Belarus lifted the transit fee, and the two countries agreed to lower the Russian export duty by about 70 percent. They also agreed that Russia would get most of the profits from refined oil products Belarus makes using Russian oil and sells to Europe.
Belarus stands to lose billions in revenue from refined oil products. Russia this year also doubled the price it charges Belarus for natural gas.
Lukashenko lashed out Sunday at Russia, which has become a target on state-controlled television networks, in what appeared to be an effort to bolster his image among Belarusians.
“They thought that they could put a noose around Lukashenko’s neck and get everything they wanted. It didn’t work out,” he said as he voted at a polling station in the capital, Minsk.
The main opposition leader, Alexander Milinkevich, suggested the local elections would not accurately reflect public opinion, contending that they were being held “under colossal pressure from the authorities” and would be falsified.
But he said the opposition would use the elections to tell voters about “the dangerous situation in which Lukashenko has placed Belarus.”
Only 200 opposition candidates were able to register for the election of 22,500 local council seats. Most seats were being sought by a single person, unopposed.
“I have lost trust in Lukashenko and his policies, but there is no one from the opposition among the candidates and I crossed out all the names from the list,” said Andrei Turovsky, a 48-year-old engineer who was voting in Minsk.

TITLE: Russia, China Use Rare Veto
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: UNITED NATIONS — China and Russia cast a rare double veto of a U.S. resolution calling on Myanmar’s military government to release all political prisoners, speed up progress toward democracy, and stop attacks against ethnic minorities.
The vote in the Security Council on Friday was 9-to-3 with three abstentions. South Africa, a new council member without veto power, joined China and Russia in opposing the resolution while Indonesia, Qatar and the Republic of Congo abstained.
The council put Myanmar on its agenda Sept. 15 over strong objections from Russia and China who argued then — and again Friday — that the UN’s most powerful body was not the proper place to discuss Myanmar because the country did not pose a threat to international peace and security.
The United States called for a vote, knowing in advance the resolution would be vetoed, which clearly annoyed China and Russia. 
It also raised questions about council unity in the months ahead when it will have to deal with difficult issues including Sudan’s conflict-wracked Darfur region and the follow-up to sanctions against North Korea and Iran.

TITLE: Amnesty Ends For Rebel Forces
AUTHOR: By Sergei Venyavsky
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ROSTOV-ON-DON, Russia — More than 500 armed militant fighters in Chechnya and other parts of Russia’s troubled North Caucasus surrendered to authorities as part of an amnesty that expired Monday, a Russian official said.
The amnesty was proposed by the authorities last summer as part of efforts to secure peace and normalcy in Chechnya. 
The offer, which expired at midnight, promised that surrendering militants would avoid prosecution unless they were suspected of grave crimes such as murder, rape or terrorism.

TITLE: Greens Praise EBRD Stance Over Sakhalin
AUTHOR: By Tom Bergin
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development said it had decided not to invest in the Shell-operated Sakhalin-2 oil and gas project after state-owned Gazprom agreed to become majority owner.
Environmental campaign groups welcomed the bank’s pullout Friday, and said they would now focus their pressure on commercial banks and government lenders considering loans to the project.
The EBRD said in a statement late Thursday that it had ended discussions on a loan to the project, which is expected to cost over $20 billion.
Environmentalists have long criticized Shell’s management of the project, saying it poses risks to the endangered Western Gray Whale and that it has caused damage to rivers and forests on Sakhalin Island.
“I, as well as my colleagues, welcome this decision very much,” Dmitry Lisitsyn of Sakhalin Environmental Watch said in an e-mail from the island.
“Sakhalin Energy is not able to meet the high international standards and to follow the Russian environmental legislation.”
While the EBRD was under pressure to rule that the project did not meet its strict environmental and social criteria for lending, the decision to pull out was prompted by the new shareholder structure.
Gazprom’s purchase of a controlling stake in Sakhalin-2 at a knockdown price amounts to renationalization of the offshore fields and this is at odds with the EBRD’s role of helping the former Soviet bloc move toward a market economy, analysts said.
State-backed Japan Bank for International Cooperation and Britain’s Export Credits Guarantee Department said Friday that they were still considering whether to extend financing to Sakhalin-2.
A number of banks, including ABN-Amro and Royal Bank of Scotland, are also considering loans, said James Leaton, an oil and gas policy officer at environmental group WWF.
After years of badgering the EBRD, the nongovernmental organizations will now target their campaigning on these other lending institutions.
Some analysts say Russian control of Sakhalin-2 will make it harder for NGOs to exert influence over the project.
Leaton said he was not concerned about a loss of NGO influence. “Shell hasn’t responded to our suggestions, so I don’t think that it can get worse,” he said.
One environmental benefit of the involvement of Gazprom is that the island is now more likely to have a gas network installed, Lisitsyn said.
Currently, Sakhalin generates power and heat by burning low-grade coal at a plant in the capital, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk.
“You cannot imagine how dirty the air in our city is in the winter. We really need the gas, at least for the Yuzhno power station,” Lisitsyn said.

TITLE: Dollar Prestige Falls Among Russians
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Russians are increasingly losing confidence in the U.S. dollar, experts from the Public Opinion Foundation said last week as it published its report, “The Dollar in Russia.”
“In recent years the dollar in Russia has lost significantly more in prestige than in real exchange value,” POF’s Grigory Kertman said.
In 2002, a poll showed that 35 percent of Russians trusted the dollar more than the ruble and the euro while 37 percent said they preferred the ruble. About 11 percent of respondents preferred euros.
“Since then the situation has changed dramatically. Today almost two-thirds of respondents (63 percent) say they trust the ruble most of all, while only 5 percent trust the dollar and 15 percent the euro,” Kertman said.
The data is based on a poll conducted at the end of December in 100 Russian cities with 1,500 respondents.
Elderly people demonstrated the highest loyalty to national currency. About 75 percent of respondents over 54 years old prefer the ruble with only 2 percent preferring the dollar and 3 percent the euro.
Most young people (51 percent) trust the ruble with just 8 percent believing in the dollar and 26 percent backing the euro, the POF report said.
The decreasing value of the dollar against the ruble worries only 10 percent of respondents. Savings in dollars as a cause of nervousness was indicated by only 1 percent of people. About 1 percent of respondents said their current income depends on the dollar rate. Only 32 percent of respondents said they monitor the dollar exchange rate and 71 percent of people said they are definitely not worried by the dollar exchange rate (mainly because they do not have dollars).
Seventy-seven percent of respondents said that a decrease in dollar value would not affect their welfare. Four percent said they benefit from the decreasing dollar rate while 8 percent claimed the opposite.
As for possible effects on the Russian economy, 51 percent of respondents were unclear. Seventeen percent of respondents denied any correlation between the dollar rate and the Russian economy, while 18 percent believe that decreasing the dollar’s value could negatively affect Russian economy.
About 23 percent of Russians expect the dollar rate to remain relatively stable this year. Twenty-one percent expect it to keep decreasing, while 4 percent, on the contrary, expect the dollar to gain against the ruble. The rest refused to make any forecasts.
In everyday life dollars also are becoming increasingly rare. Sixty-six percent of Russians said they never used dollars. Two thirds of people who had used dollars said that in the last two to three years they came across the greenback less often than before.
Only 4 percent of respondents said that they deal with dollars more frequently than before. Seven percent said that nothing has changed.
Denis Mukhin, analyst for banks and currency markets at BrokerCreditService, said that, considering currency market trends in 2006, ruble deposits were preferable to euro deposits and that these were preferable to dollar deposits.
However, he said, whatever the currency, all deposits provided negative real profitability. He estimated profitability of ruble deposits at about -0.1 percent, which is the best result among the ruble/euro/dollar group.
“Considering the economic environment in the United States and the eurozone and the Central Bank’s activities, next year the dollar rate is likely to keep decreasing. Maybe not so fast as in 2006, but still it will decrease,” Mukhin said.
Mukhin forecasted that the Central Bank will follow the same policy and the ruble will continue to strengthen.
“Although the profitability of ruble deposits could decrease still further, it would be most worthwhile to choose ruble deposits. I mean in terms of saving, not in terms of making profit,” Mukhin said.
According to Interfax-TsEA, last week the dollar exchange rate increased by 24 kopeks to 26.59 rubles “due to positive macroeconomic data on the American labor market published on Jan. 5.” 
Employment level and average hourly wages in the U.S. increased faster than the experts expected while foreign trade deficit decreased to $58.2 billion.
This week Interfax-TsEA expects the dollar to continue its growth to 26.66 or 26.67 rubles, Interfax reported Monday.

TITLE: Back in Business
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: ST. PETERSBURG — Leningradslanets, a crisis-hit company based in the Leningrad Oblast, resumed operating Monday with planned production volume of 50,000 tons of shale oil a month, RBC reported Monday.
After six months of operating the company expects to increase production to 100,000 tons a month — the output it provided before it closed due to bad debts.
Attracting an investor, Renova, Leningradslanets paid off its debts and Renova will spend 102 million rubles ($3.84 million) on equipment. 
It will also co-invest in the construction of a new processing complex. This complex will allow the extraction of 2.5 million tons of shale oil a year.

TITLE: Inchcape Invest in Axel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: ST. PETERSBURG — To increase its share of the Russian car market, the leading international car distributor, Inchcape group, acquired 75.1 percent of shares of Axel Car, a local Toyota dealer, Prime-TASS reported Monday. The cost of the deal was not indicated.
Inchcape also plans to establish a joint venture with Nezavisimost Group, one of the leading car retailers in Moscow. Inchcape will open two Toyota distribution and service centers in Moscow in the second half of 2007.

TITLE: Profit Up at CIT
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: ST. PETERSBURG —  The net profit of CIT Finance investment bank totaled 4.9 billion rubles ($184.56 million) in 2006 as opposed to 887.7 million rubles ($33.4 million) in 2005, Prime-TASS reported Monday.
In the fourth quarter of 2006 CIT Finance earned 1.39 billion rubles ($52.35 million) net profit. 
Assets increased by 2.4 times up to 59.534 billion rubles ($2.24 billion) last year.

TITLE: Bank Assets Increased
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: ST. PETERSBURG — The St. Petersburg Social and Commercial Bank increased its assets by 22.8 percent last year up to 4.76 billion rubles ($180 million), Interfax reported Monday.
Balance sheet profit increased by 15.6 percent up to 134 million rubles ($5 million). 
Bank-owned funds increased by 19.3 percent up to 610 million rubles ($6 million).

TITLE: Russian Visitors Swarm to Finland
AUTHOR: By Jari Tanner
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: HELSINKI — Russian tourists flocked back to Finland in record numbers over the traditional holiday season, after a lull since the boom of the late 1990s.
An estimated 80,000 Russians — a surge of 60 percent on one year ago — have packed hotels, holiday resorts and stores, said Finnish Tourist Board spokesman Arto Asikainen.
Frontier officials warned of major delays over the weekend along the 1,300-kilometer joint border when most of them returned home.
During the three-week period since Christmas, hundreds of extra trains, planes and buses were run for the visitors, mostly from St. Petersburg and Moscow — both with major railway, road and air links to Finland.
Russian tourists no longer visit just southern urban centers near the capital, Helsinki, but also venture to ski resorts in central parts of the country and Arctic Lapland — where some of the last remaining wilderness in Europe is located.
Finnish State Railways ran 20 extra trains between Russian cities and Finland, twice as many as one year ago.
“That’s a record number,” said Maarit Haavisto-Koskinen, a railway spokeswoman. “Last year, we had 11 extra trains.”
Many Russians see Finland as a stable, clean and nature-friendly nation that provides ideal holiday conditions, travel officials said. Also, Finland’s past as part of the tsarist Russian empire and familiar architecture — including a prominent Orthodox church and Russian statues in Helsinki — help them feel at home.
But shopping remains the major attraction.
“We are here to rest, but of course we plan to do some shopping,” said Vladimir Shakhrai, 50, an architect, browsing through clothes in the men’s section of the Stockmann department store.
Shakhrai, who drove from St. Petersburg with a female companion, said he would spend up to 2,000 euros ($2,600) during their three-day Helsinki visit.
Since Christmas, Russians have been a prominent sight on city streets as thousands of Muscovites and natives of St. Petersburg descend on stores, attracted by the sales. They make tax-free purchases ranging from furs to computers in greater numbers, and are spending much more than in the 1990s, officials said.
This season, Russian tourists are expected to leave behind about 50 million euros ($65 million), according to estimates by Finnish tourism officials.
“It looks like being a record year in all respects,” said Jani Makinen, a researcher at the Finnish Tourist Board.
Stockmann, Finland’s leading department store, is familiar to many visitors from Moscow and St. Petersburg. In 1989, it became one of the first Western stores to open an outlet in the Soviet Union, in Moscow.
“By far, Russians are our biggest tax-free clients,” said Paula Nakki, who oversees the store’s tax-free sales. “Fashion and clothing are the main attractions for them.”
After the Soviet collapse, the number of Russian visitors to Finland steadily grew through the 1990s, peaking in 1997. But one year later, the devaluation of the ruble and the ensuing financial crisis caused a downturn, and Russians turned their attention to domestic concerns.
Also, many Finnish enterprises started overpricing their goods and services, further discouraging visitors, Asikainen from the tourist board said.
But, the Finns learned their lesson and the Russians are back as the economy has improved, he added. “Now, the Russians again have more money to spend abroad,” Asikainen said.

TITLE: New Immigration Rules Aimed at CIS Migrants
AUTHOR: By Tai Adelaja
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — New regulations that took effect on Monday tighten immigration requirements and quotas for CIS citizens and increase the penalties for illegally employing foreigners.
The new legislation puts a cap of 6 million work permits in 2007 for migrants from countries that have visa-free travel agreements with Russia. These are overwhelmingly CIS countries, including Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
Migrants from CIS countries are currently the main source of cheap labor for Russia’s booming construction industry and often take menial jobs that Russian citizens do not want.
Foreign citizens who came to Russia under a visa-free arrangement will now be able to receive work permits within 10 days of submitting a package of documents, including a passport, migration card and application receipt.
Employers can now hire such individuals without obtaining additional permits, but must still notify the migration, tax and employment authorities. All foreigners face a stricter registration-notification policy, with new rules requiring both temporary and permanent residents to register annually with their local Federal Migration Service office.
Under amendments to the code of administrative offenses, foreign citizens breaking the new regulations may face administrative fines of up to 50 times the minimum monthly wage, which is currently 1,100 rubles ($40).
Employers in violation of rules governing the stay of foreign citizens will likewise face harsher financial penalties, with the maximum fine being 40 times the minimum monthly wage for individuals, 500 times for officials, and 5,000 times for legal entities, which may also face a 90-day suspension of operations.
The brunt of the tougher new rules will be borne by migrants from the CIS, who have traditionally dominated many of the country’s outdoor food markets.
Last October, President Vladimir Putin ordered tighter immigration rules and a crackdown on the country’s markets. Starting Monday, the percentage of foreigners permitted to work in the retail trade sector and in outdoor clothes and food markets will be set at 40 percent. From Apr. 1, foreigners will be barred completely from these sectors.
Hefty fines, from 400 times to 8,000 times the minimum wage, will be imposed on those violating these rules.
Federal Migration Service officials said last year that over 20 million people came to Russia every year as part of a post-Soviet “migration boom,” and estimated that half of those people were in the country illegally.
Critics of the measures have pointed out that they come as the country faces an acute demographic crisis and the labor force is shrinking.
The regulations will “disrupt the economic ties that are the lifeblood of outdoor markets … where low-income people go to shop,” wrote Andrei Kolesnikov, a commentator.

TITLE: Chinese Embassy Objects To Russian Gum Advert
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW — Complaints from the Chinese Embassy in Moscow forced an advertising agency to scrap an Orbit chewing gum commercial playing on Russian television that featured China’s national anthem as backing music.
China’s People’s Daily newspaper said the commercial for chewing gum produced by the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company using the “March of the Volunteers” had “harmed the dignity of China.”
Igor Kirkchi, general director of BBDO, an advertising subsidiary of Omnigroup in Moscow, which designed the advertisement said it was immediately withdrawn after complaints from China.
“It was a monstrous misunderstanding,” he said. “We bought the music and the rights to use it in an ad from an English company owning banks of music tracks intended for commercial purposes. It was impossible to determine that it was the Chinese national anthem by the name of the track.”
The advertisement was aired on a number of national television stations, including the Sports Channel, TV3, and STS from Jan. 3., before being pulled Jan. 8, Xinhua news agency reported. The advertisement took as long as five days to be removed as it first appeared over the New Year Holiday season, embassy employees said, Xinhua reported.

(Reuters, SPT)

TITLE: Market Puts Hopes on IT As Investment in Oil Loses Luster
AUTHOR: By Simon Shuster
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Oil revenues, the bedrock of the country’s economy for more than a decade, went soft this month beneath the nation’s feet.
Warm weather cut into U.S. demand for heating oil, while the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries fell short on its promised supply cuts. Global stockpiles soared, and the oil price bottomed out at about $55 per barrel over the holiday break. Then, in the year’s first week of trading, commodity stocks fell hard across the board.
The bulls of the fourth quarter of 2006, in which the blue chip-heavy RTS index gained 24 percent, suddenly looked weak in the knees.
The trend may continue if the oil price stays at about $50 per barrel and commodity stocks sour in 2007 — a scenario that analysts would not dismiss.
The main hope for picking up the slack in such a scenario would be the IT sector, said Peter Westin, chief economist at MDM Bank, adding that the sector had enjoyed annual growth of at least 30 percent for the past five years.
Arguably the biggest Russian IT breakthrough was the invention of the Tetris video game two decades ago. Since its inventor, Alexei Pazhitnov, went to work for Microsoft, things have been pretty quiet.
The IT sector only showed new signs of life after President Vladimir Putin made his 2004 visit to Bangalore, the hub of India’s IT sector. Putin earmarked $2 billion for IT development and pledged vast tax breaks to help businessmen create “Russian Bangalores.”
Seven technology parks — town-sized clusters of high-tech firms with room for thousands of live-in employees — have since gone into development around the country. But Russian IT exports only topped the $1 billion mark in 2005, while India exports around $22 billion worth of software per year, said Alexei Sukharev, president of Moscow-based IT consultancy Auriga.
Opportunities for private investment in the country’s IT sector are also straggling. IBS is the only listed IT firm in Russia, and Sitronics the only one slated to go public this year.
There is much more promise in the country’s IT outsourcing industry, said Barry Schumaker, IT analyst at Alfa Bank. Russia is the world’s No. 3 outsourcing market after China and India.
But it is a distant third. Russia’s largest IT outsourcing brokerage, Luxoft, announced $65 million in revenues for 2006, while Wipro, its Indian counterpart, brought in about $3 billion.
“In absolute terms, [IT outsourcing in Russia] is tiny next to India and China. And as a part of the larger economy it is microscopic,” said Kim Iskyan, head of research at MDM Bank. But, according to a study released last week by Silicon Valley, California-based consultancy NeoIT, Russian outsourcing will grow by 40 percent to 45 percent in 2007, possibly making it a “major competitor” with India as early as next year.
Russia’s advantage is not in its labor cost but in the expertise of its IT workers, analysts said.

TITLE: Metals Quota Scrapped
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — The government has scrapped export quotas on precious metals and diamonds, the Kremlin’s press service said Saturday.
President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree allowing unlimited exports of most uncut diamonds, platinum group metals and other precious metals and ores. Exports will still require a license from the Economic Development and Trade Ministry, the Kremlin said in a statement.

TITLE: Suzuki Sales Up 64.4%
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Japanese automaker Suzuki increased its car sales by 64.4 percent in 2006, Interfax reported Saturday.
Authorized Suzuki dealerships sold 16,118 cars last year, an increase on the 9,804 sold in 2005, Interfax reported, citing a statement from the Moscow office of Itochu, which represents the automaker in Russia. The company attributes the rise in sales to growth in foreign car sales on the Russian market.

TITLE: Vyksa Pipe Up 53%
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Vyksa Metallurgical Plant, part of Russian steel-pipe maker United Metallurgical, raised steel pipe output 53 percent in 2006 on booming demand from the country’s oil and gas sector, the company said in a statement Friday.
United Metallurgical said the Vyksa plant produced 1.54 million tons of steel pipes last year.

TITLE: Clearstream Takes Ruble
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Clearstream, a leading European supplier of post-trading services, said Friday that it would accept the ruble as a full settlement currency from Jan. 15, following a similar announcement by its rival Euroclear.
“The ruble will be accepted as a full settlement currency in Clearstream Banking as from 15 January, 2007,” the company said on its web site.

TITLE: Ukrainian Industry
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Ukraine’s industrial output increased 6.2 percent in 2006, double the pace of the previous year, as steel surged on stronger demand on world markets.
Output rose an annual 12 percent in December alone, helped by steel and machinery building, the State Statistics Committee said Friday on its web site.

TITLE: Digital Urals Telecom
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Uralsvyazinform, the fixed-line telephone monopoly in the Urals region, said Sunday that the company received a television license that might help it benefit from the government program to switch to digital broadcast.
Uralsvyazinform got the license late last month from the Federal Service on Communications Monitoring, the Yekaterinburg-based company said in a regulatory filing.

TITLE: No Bildt Investigation
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: STOCKHOLM — Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt was spared further investigation into stock options he received as board member of an oil investment company after the country’s chief prosecutor refrained from a formal probe.
Bildt was paid 4.8 million kronor ($689,000) in options in Vostok Nafta Investment, which invests mainly in Gazprom, Svenska Dagbladet reported Jan. 8.

TITLE: MTS Switches to Rubles
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Mobile TeleSystems switched to ruble-based tariffs in Russia after the ruble gained against the dollar.
MTS will calculate the new tariffs by using its internal rate of 28.7 rubles to $1, the company said in a statement Friday.
MTS last June introduced a flat exchange rate for its dollar-denominated tariffs of 28.7 rubles, higher than the Central Bank’s rate.

TITLE: Kazakh Metals Output
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: ALMATY, Kazakhstan — Kazakhstan’s metals production rose 5.1 percent last year compared to 2005, led by growth in ferroalloy output.
The Central Asian country’s ferroalloy production increased 5.5 percent to 1.62 million tons, the Almaty-based State Statistics Service said in a statement Friday, without giving a reason for the change.

TITLE: UES Plant in Turkey
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: ISTANBUL — National power utility Unified Energy Systems and Rosenergoatom, the country’s state-owned nuclear power generator, will build a $400 million coal-fired power plant in northwestern Turkey, Sabah newspaper reported Sunday.
The companies have set up a new firm that will partner with Turkey’s TGR Enerji to build the power station near the town of Gonen in Balikesir province, Sabah reported, citing TGR’s general coordinator Ibrahim Artvinli.

TITLE: Refinancing Rate Cut
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Central Bank can cut its key refinancing rate, currently at 11 percent, in January or February, Interfax quoted Central Bank First Deputy Chairman Alexei Ulyukayev as saying Friday.
“I think the board of directors will consider this issue soon. It can happen as soon as in January or February,” Ulyukayev said.

TITLE: The Image Matches Reality
AUTHOR: By Mark H. Teeter
TEXT: The Pew Global Attitudes Project reported late last month that favorable views of the United States were on the decline among Russians in 2005-06, while unfavorable views rose, overtaking the positives by a margin of 47 percent to 43 percent.
The administration of U.S. President George W. Bush likely lost little sleep over this news, preoccupied as it was with the mismanagement of two wars (in Iraq and on terror) and the continuing fallout from a massive electoral rejection at home. And even without its current mega-crises, the current U.S. regime would hardly have blinked at such a trend. One of this administration’s hallmarks is an Olympian indifference to what others — other governments, nations, individuals, flora, fauna, you name it — think about the United States.
For that matter, the Pew data could be seen as merely a popular confirmation of the state of the two countries’ official relations. The ineptness of the Bush people has been matched by the clumsiness of their Russian counterparts, producing a chill that has made the phrase “Cold War II” seem decreasingly hyperbolic over the past year.
Yet however unpopular the current U.S. administration has made itself and its country among Russians, it would be premature to assume that further anti-American drift in Russian public opinion is inevitable over the final two Bush years. Historians and various “old Russia hands” will testify that Russian perceptions of the United States have a history of fluctuation — and that some periods of U.S. popularity have occurred when official relations were perhaps as strained as they are now.
The late Brezhnev era is a prime example. While there was no Pew project to measure popular attitudes in the Soviet Union of the late 1970s and early 1980s, the fact that a sizeable proportion of the Soviet citizenry held the United States in high regard then can be confirmed by a number of reliable sources, including me.
Over seven months in 1978 and 1979, with Cold War I going full tilt, it was my job to exchange opinions with a cross-section of Soviet citizens — individuals and groups, six hours a day, six days a week — as a guide for a U.S. cultural exhibition touring three Soviet cities. If the impressions from this experience represent only “anecdotal evidence” to the strict sociologist, one basic message was unmistakably clear over thousands of conversations: The vast majority of our Soviet visitors had something favorable, or very favorable, to say about the United States.
This was in the immediate wake, let’s recall, of the two greatest systemic crises in U.S. postwar history — the prolonged Vietnam debacle and the wrenching, divisive Watergate scandal. These disasters were not hidden from Soviet citizens by their government’s pervasive censorship, which hid almost everything positive it could about the United States. But their dark tones did not prevail against three things: a vast reservoir of good feeling toward the United States accumulated over previous decades, and especially during the World War II alliance; the abstract nature of the self-inflicted U.S. wounds (there wasn’t even a word for impeachment in Russian); and the all too concrete shortcomings of the already-decomposing Soviet system, which made almost any vision of the United States glow in comparison. Whatever else it was, U.S. society was perceived as economically advanced and politically dynamic — while the Soviet Union was decidedly neither.
Many if not most of today’s post-Soviet Russians by comparison do not see the United States as either a distinct or overwhelmingly attractive alternative to the “sovereign democracy” unfolding around them. While U.S. popular culture and economic stability are still admired, the United States itself is perceived by many — including many of my students — as a country off course and losing ground. And it is hard to disagree with them. That said, it is also true that Russian disillusionment with the reality of the United States is not irreversible — or is no more irreversible, let’s say, than the disillusionment of a sizeable portion of the U.S. population itself.
The U.S. image problem in Russia needs to be recognized in Washington as the indicative symptom it is. And once recognized, it needs to be understood as a problem more ours than that of our Russian observers. Such a two-stage epiphany might conceivably dawn before 2009. Afterward, steps could be taken to reverse the decline in the perception by changing the reality behind it.
Only with that under way can the concept of a functional, reality-based Russian-U.S. partnership re-enter the realm of the possible — and Cold War II perhaps be frozen in its tracks.

Mark H. Teeter teaches English and Russian-American relations in Moscow.

TITLE: South Ossetia’s Battle Of Hearts and TV Screens
AUTHOR: By Matthew Collin
TEXT: The shooting war for control of South Ossetia may have ended more than a decade ago, but the propaganda war has intensified in recent months. Georgia has been stepping up its efforts to win back the tiny region in the shadow of the Caucasus Mountains that wants to break away and join Russia. An alternative government has been established in a Georgian-controlled village just a few kilometers from the separatists’ own parliament in the region’s capital, Tskhinvali, and some Georgian companies say they are going to start working in the area to show off the benefits of returning to central government control.
Then there’s the media offensive. Alania TV, a Tbilisi-based televison channel that is vague about its exact location and ownership, broadcasts what one of its producers calls “positive propaganda” about Georgia into the conflict zone, while portraying the separatist leadership as a gangster cabal. The producer admits that the channel gets some support from the Georgian government as well as from unidentified businessmen, although many believe that officials in Tbilisi are running the show completely.
One of Alania’s star news anchors, Vladimir Sanakoyev, is a genial character who enjoys a joke and a glass of wine — until the subject turns to the South Ossetian separatist leadership. “Criminals,” he snarled. Sanakoyev lived in Russia for more than 20 years before returning to his birthplace, Tskhinvali. But he says that after he declared that South Ossetia was part of a Georgian homeland, he was taken from his house at gunpoint and thrown out of the separatist-controlled territory. “I’m still hoping that this is only temporary and that I will be able to return,” he said. It’s unlikely to happen soon. Sanakoyev has emerged as one of the key figures in Georgia’s campaign for control of the region. He was one of the organizers of the alternative election last November and has been appointed information minister in the alternative government.
Sanakoyev said Alania TV is trying to break through what he calls the separatists’ “information blockade.”
“We’re giving people hope things can be solved in a peaceful way, without Kalashnikovs,” he insisted.
Not surprisingly, South Ossetian authorities see things a little differently. They say Alania is a negative PR operation run by the Georgian government to discredit the separatist leadership and sow discord in their territory. Meanwhile, viewers of local South Ossetian television are likely to be informed that the real criminal aggressors are the perfidious Georgians. The long struggle for South Ossetia is sometimes described as a frozen conflict, but the television signals coming out of the region suggest that it’s starting to heat up.

Matthew Collin is a journalist in Tbilisi.

TITLE: Making Moscow an Easier Sell
AUTHOR: By Gustav Hafren
TEXT: What strikes any foreigner who visits Moscow regularly is the sheer size of the city and the speed at which it’s changing and developing. What isn’t changing, unfortunately, are the complaints from prominent Muscovites about the notoriously negative attitudes toward the city reflected in much of the media coverage both in Russia and abroad.
Moscow must be one of the hottest places on Earth right now. There are a multitude of projects under way, including the creation of Europe’s biggest business center and plans to build the world’s tallest building. There is also a major drive to make the historic center more appealing to tourists. The problem is that nobody has heard of any of these fine programs. For people around the world, it’s the same old Moscow.
This isn’t a problem Moscow can solve with a slick public relations drive, like the one the Kremlin attempted last summer when it appointed a U.S.-based PR firm to improve Russia’s image ahead of the Group of Eight summit in St. Petersburg. Nor can it be solved by the kind of propaganda used in Soviet times. Instead, what is involved is finding a distinct idea for Moscow. 
Think about it this way: More than 200 countries and around 300 cities with populations of more than 1 million are competing in the global market for tourism and business, as well as for the attention and respect of the international media, other governments and the people of other countries. In such a busy and crowded marketplace, positioning the capital of the nation is a necessity.
To make its mark in the world, a big city like Moscow needs a great deal of collaboration and cooperation between the many different individuals and organizations with a stake in its success. It is reasonable to expect City Hall to take primary responsibility for building Moscow’s position in people’s minds, but the city’s business sector and population should also join as partners for the government in making that position a success.
So what is Moscow waiting for? The time has certainly come for it to take its rightful place in the world — it is, after all, the world’s eighth-largest city. Being late to the party, it can avoid making many of the costly mistakes other cities have made when embarking on million-dollar city-branding projects or traditional tourism promotions without a distinct idea.
Look at what happened in Central Europe after the collapse of communism. With Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland and Lithuania all claiming to be “the heart of Europe,” they fail to stand out and are stuck with meaningless slogans.
Another mistake to avoid is that of branding a country or city. There is a common misconception that the image of a country can be built with attractive logos and clever slogans in the same way as with automobiles or breakfast cereals. This is not so. What Moscow needs least of all is a campaign singing the praises of its wonderful location. Instead, what Moscow really needs is a program laid out over the long term that addresses and copes with a broad range of its shortcomings.
One important step would be to sort out the situation with the airports and the transportation links with the city itself. At present, the airports are a nightmare. They regularly face arriving passengers with long lines and send loud, unwelcoming signals. Why not visit Shanghai or Hong Kong to take a look at two of the world’s best functioning airports, both of which offer very fast connections to their city centers?
Moscow traffic is probably the worst in Europe. While Mayor Yury Luzhkov has done much to unwind traffic by having big roads built or put underground, it’s still pure chaos. Build more, dig more underground, tow away all the parked cars and remember: If you want to attract business, you need to have a working infrastructure.
Increase the usage of English (or even Russian written in Latin script) for the signs providing directions at train stations, and airports, on public transport and on the streets.
Another positive move would be to become a “connected” city. Build a WiFi network to cover the most important parts of the city, including hotels and other hot points, and issue cheap WiFi passports to foreign travelers and businesspeople. Again, business likes functioning infrastructure.
For tourists, create a Moscow passport with unlimited free use of public transportation as well as entrance to museums, exhibitions and similar sights. The more sights and culture you feed the tourists, the more they will spend on wining and dining and shopping.
These are just a few of many possible measures that could be adopted to improve the city’s position in the market to attract both more tourism and business.
Moscow has a lot going for it. I’m sure money invested in finding the right idea to position Moscow would be money well spent. Not only will it produce a positive effect for the city’s economy by attracting investors and travelers, in the end it will also enhance Moscow’s role internationally. Managing the Russian capital’s international reputation has become one of City Hall’s most important tasks. It’s time for powerful voices in the City Hall to call out loudly for action.

Gustav Hafren is the co-author, with Jack Trout, of “Differentiate or Die” and president of Trout & Partners Northern Europe, which provides advice on positioning in the Nordic and Baltic countries and Russia.

TITLE: Gone Fishing
AUTHOR: By Richard Lourie
TEXT: The new Russia is in some ways more opaque than its Soviet predecessor. The new Russia is too young to have rituals. Apart from providing a sense of order and continuity for society, Soviet rituals also afforded outsiders clues as to the country’s internal politics. Who was next to whom on Lenin’s tomb, who officiated at the funeral of the previous leader, whose ghostwritten memoirs were published in editions of several hundred thousands — all were signs of shifts in political fortunes.
In Soviet times, the official media could be mostly ignored except as an indicator of official opinion. In 1986, during the Chernobyl incident, many residents of Kiev completely disregarded government assurances and launched into orgies suitable for the end of the world. Some people were highly embarrassed when they didn’t die.
But in the old days, there was plenty of clandestine publishing, in the form of samizdat, to offset the official press. There’s really nothing of the sort now, if only because there are reliable sources available — Ekho Moskvy, Novaya Gazeta and Kommersant. But the media are mightily hemmed in. Television is state controlled and journalists — like Anna Politkovskaya, Paul Klebnikov and Yury Shchekochikhin — who dig too deep or otherwise offend are censored by way of murder.
Some real information is available, but it’s never enough to answer important questions like, for instance: Who killed those three journalists?
Things seem particularly murky at the moment, which may be because 2007 was the year that wasn’t. Both in Russia and the United States we have gone directly from 2006 to the political year of 2008. Candidates have already dropped out of the race in the United States. And it may well be that the recent spate of murders in Russia is part of a power struggle behind the scenes.
Another cause of diminishing transparency is the lack of any clear distinction between politics, business, crime and the police and security forces. In most societies, there’s some leakage between compartments — New York cops become Mafia hit men, Enron execs loot corporations — but never a slosh that leads to an outright blurring and blending. So, part of the confusion about today’s Russia lies in our own thinking — we’re applying clear-cut categories to a violent, shifting mess.
And then there’s the opposite problem — seeing too many connections when events are more related by type than cause. The murders of Central Bank First Deputy Chairman Andrei Kozlov, journalist Politkovskaya and ex-KGB man Alexander Litvinenko are more related by the matrix of lawlessness from which they all emerged than from any coordinated plan. There were a lot of assassinations in the United States in the late 1960s — President John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X — and although there is a tendency to see some sinister hand behind them, the more likely explanation lies in the radical turbulence of the times. When a society loses faith in itself, it solves its problems with murder.
It may be that President Vladimir Putin is losing control as the end of his administration nears. When in Moscow, I always flag down “gypsy cabs,” people who make a few rubles picking up rides. The drivers are a good source of the grass-roots sentiment you don’t hear when talking to experts and prominent people. I remember one hefty, hearty country woman who had lost all her money in a pyramid scheme. She sliced green apples from her garden with one hand as she drove, peering through her cracked windshield. “Putin?” she said. “Russia’s too big for him. He’ll never be able to deal with it all.”
Her words may yet prove prophetic now that the boyars of Gazprom and the gangs of siloviki are jockeying for power. In any case, the situation is likely to remain murky for a while because, as an old Russian saying has it — the fishing’s good in troubled waters.

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

TITLE: AK Bars Claims Euro Ice Hockey Crown
AUTHOR: By Christopher Hamilton
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Led by MVP Alexei Morozov, AK Bars Kazan defeated HPK Hämeenlinna of Finland 6-0 in the Gold Medal Match of the 2007 International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) European Champions Cup at St. Petersburg’s Ice Palace on Sunday night. 
For the third consecutive year a Russian team won the right to be called European Champions, while a Finnish team had to settle for the silver medal. 
But unlike the last two finals that went into overtime to determine a winner, this year’s Gold Medal game was a lopsided and dominated by the Russian side from Tartarstan.
Kazan’s top line of former Pittsburgh Penguins star Morozov, Danis Zaripov, and Sergei Zinoviev was unstoppable during the competition, so it was no surprise when the trio led AK Bars to an early 3-0 lead in the first period of the final.
AK Bars first lit the lamp at 8:21 with a dubious goal on a power play as Zinoviev, sliding towards the goal after a rebound from the boards, deflected the puck off his skate and into the net.
Zinoviev and Zaripov struck again at 11:49. Skating in tandem with some give-and-go action, Zaripov crossed the puck to Zinoviev, who got HPK goaltender Miika Wiikman committed to the close side. Zinoviev then found Zaripov who easily scored through the open back door with a wrist shot. 
Morozov took advantage of a poor line change and broke down the right flank and slapped the puck past a scrambling Wiikman. 
HPK outshot AK Bars 26-22 for the day, but AK Bars’ Finnish netminder Mika Noroman stood on his head stopping everything his countrymen could throw at him. He held off a number of attacks in the middle frame as well as some late barrages, but held on for the shutout. 
AK Bars ran away with the game in the third, running up the score with goals from defencemen Ilya Nikulin, Andrei Pervyshin, and Igor Shchadilov. Morozov assisted on Prevyshin’s goal for his 10th point of the tournament. 
For the first time, the media-selected all-star team was comprised of players from only one team — an AK Bars squad with Morozov, Zinoviev, Zaripov, Nikulin, Proshkin, and Noronen. Morozov and Noromen were named the tournaments best forward and goalkeeper, respectively, while Dick Tarnstron of Switzerland’s Lugano picked up the best defenseman honors. 
Officials from the IIHF and the Russian Hockey Federation spoke with journalists prior to the start of final. 
As reported earlier this year, officials confirmed that St. Petersburg would host the fourth ECC next year in January 2008. 
“We are working on reviving and developing a European Hockey League that will involve the national champions,” IIHF General Secretary Horst Lichtner said. “We still need to develop the concept of this league and work on its stability. We feel that ECC is good, but for the good of the sport it could be expanded. This is going to take at least one year, but we hope to start this new champions league in October or November of 2008. We believe we can do it together, however if it takes us more than a year to organize this, then we will stick to this ECC format until we are ready.”
Lichtner added that the greatest difficulty was finding space in all the different league schedules and national team competitions. 
In 2005, AK Bars assembled an all-star team signing 15 locked-out NHL players in an attempt to win the Russian championship during Kazan’s 1000th anniversary. 
That attempt failed, but the team became the Russian champion last season with a mostly Russian team that went 12-1 in the playoffs. AK Bars are currently on top of the Russian Professional Hockey League standings with 82 points.

TITLE: Saddam Half Brother, Ex-Official Hanged
AUTHOR: By Qassim Abdul-Zahra
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGHDAD, Iraq — Saddam Hussein’s half brother and the former head of Iraq’s Revolutionary Court were hanged before dawn Monday, two weeks and two days after the former Iraqi dictator was executed in a chaotic scene that has drawn worldwide criticism.
In confirming the executions, government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said the head of one of the accused, Barzan Ibrahim, had been severed during the hanging in what he called “a rare incident.”
But he stressed that all laws and rules were respected during the proceedings, choosing his words carefully after Saddam’s execution became an unruly scene that brought worldwide criticism of the Iraqi government. A video of the execution, recorded on a cell phone camera, showed the former dictator being taunted on the gallows.
“Those present signed documents pledging not to violate the rules or otherwise face legal penalties. All the people present abided by the government’s rule and there were no violations,” he said, adding the hangings occurred at 3 a.m. “No one shouted slogans or said anything that would taint the execution. None of those charged were insulted.”
Barzan, Saddam’s half brother and former intelligence chief, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, head of Iraq’s Revolutionary Court, had been found guilty along with Saddam of the killing of 148 Shiite Muslims after a 1982 assassination attempt on the former leader in the town of Dujail north of Baghdad.
The announcement drew outrage from some in the Sunni community while majority Shiites who were heavily persecuted under Saddam’s regime expressed joy.
Khalaf al-Olayan, a leader of the main Sunni bloc in parliament, demanded to see any video taken during the execution. It was not known if the government took an official video, as it did during Saddam’s execution.
“It is impossible for a person to be decapitated during a hanging,” he told Al-Jazeera television. “This shows that they (the government) have mutilated the body and this is a violation of the law.”
“We want to see the video that was taken during the execution of the two men in order for them (the government) to prove what they are saying,” he added.
A government official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose the information, said the families of Ibrahim and al-Bandar would collect the bodies later Monday.
“The two bodies are being held at a morgue at the present time,” the official said, without specifying which morgue.
The executions reportedly occurred in the same Saddam-era military intelligence headquarters building in north Baghdad where the former leader was hanged two days before the end of 2006, according to an Iraqi general, who would not allow use of his name because he was not authorized to release the information. The building is located in the Shiite neighborhood of Kazimiyah.
The two men were to have been hanged along with Saddam on Dec. 30, but Iraqi authorities decided to execute Saddam alone on what National Security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie called a “special day.”
Last week, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani urged the government to delay the executions.
“In my opinion we should wait,” Talabani said Wednesday at a news conference with U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad. “We should examine the situation,” he said without elaborating.
On Tuesday, al-Maliki said that Khalilzad asked him to delay Saddam’s execution for 10 days to two weeks, but added that Iraqi officials rejected the demand.
Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon, along with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour, had called on the Iraqi government to refrain from executing Ibrahim and al-Bandar.
The Iraqi foreign minister, meanwhile, called on Sunday for the release of five Iranians detained by U.S. forces in what he said was a legitimate diplomatic mission in northern Iraq, but he stressed that foreign intervention to help insurgents would not be tolerated.

TITLE: A Galaxy Far, Far Away For Beckham
AUTHOR: By Jennifer Steinhauer
PUBLISHER: The New York Times
TEXT: LOS ANGELES — It is far from clear whether the soccer star David Beckham will put bodies in seats here at Home Depot Center, home to the Los Angeles Galaxy soccer team. 
His wife, though, is likely to be responsible for the employment of even more paparazzi outside Spago. 
The Galaxy announced Thursday that Beckham would join the team after his contract with Real Madrid expires June 30. His acquisition is seen as a shot in the arm with a platinum needle for Major League Soccer, which has struggled since its birth nearly 12 years ago, 
But as sports towns go, Los Angeles is hardly among the nation’s most rabid. It has no professional football team, and there has been no full-throated local outcry for one. Most fans cheer for the Dodgers and the Lakers, when they are winning. 
Beckham the athlete hardly picked the American equivalent of Manchester, England, where he played in his prime. But Beckham the brand could hardly have picked a better place to flourish.
Rumored to want a career in the entertainment business, he is represented by 19 Entertainment, the creators of “American Idol” and other successful television shows. His contract was negotiated by the Creative Artists talent agency, with most of the $250 million salary he will reportedly earn coming from endorsements and the like. 
As the singer Posh Spice, Beckham’s wife, Victoria Beckham, was once the darling of the tween and young teenage set. Today, she has her own lines of jeans and sunglasses, and is widely thought to want to either expand her fashion brand, DVB, into an international business or perhaps star in her own television show about fashion. She is, after all, the co-author of a book on the subject.
Beckham has said his main goal is to expose more Americans to the sport that made him a star. Despite soccer’s popularity among children, it has trailed well behind other sports when it comes to adult fans — and the merchandise they buy. 
“I didn’t want to go out there at 34 years old and for people to turn around and say, ‘He’s only going there to get the money,’” he said in a satellite interview released Thursday by Major League Soccer and his management team. “It’s not what I’m going out there to do. I’m going to hopefully build a club and a team that has a lot of potential.”
Between his ever-changing hairstyles, rumor-dappled personal life and a face that causes middle-age mothers to squeal embarrassingly in the middle of the supermarket check-out lane, Beckham brings a lot more to soccer than a hot foot. 
In the United States, the sport has lacked two central features: “stars and money,” said Tom Pollock, a film producer and former head of Universal Studios. 
“I think that is the context into what the Beckham thing falls,” Pollock said. “If he can become a big star in the United States then you have a powerful face for the sport.”
One source of committed fans is in Los Angeles’s large Hispanic population, and Beckham’s pending arrival has generated much excitement among them. 
Outside El Tepeyac restaurant in East Los Angeles, Jorge Galván, who helps coach a girls’ soccer team, said he was thrilled just to see him play. 
“Some people said he’s going to save the league,” Galván said. “But the league doesn’t need saving. I think its going to create a lot of buzz and excitement around town. It will just inject the league with more excitement.”
At his sporting-goods store in Boyle Heights, a largely Mexican neighborhood, Pedro Prieto Jr. said customers had already been coming in to buy Beckham Galaxy jerseys. “The world likes him,” Mr. Prieto said. 
Nearly 3,000 season tickets had sold since the announcement that Beckham was coming on board, a Galaxy spokesman said Friday. 
Victoria Beckham already has a following in the American entertainment media, which chronicles her shopping exploits somewhere between Lindsay Lohan’s underwearless antics and celebrities’ emerging from private jets to tell the rest of us which car to drive if we want to save the world from choking on pollution.
“A lot of it has to do with fashion,” said Brandy Navarre, co-owner of X17, one of the city’s largest celebrity photo agencies, which has already assigned a “Beckham expert team” to trail the couple once they arrive. “With Victoria, I don’t think anyone can have as much money to spend on clothes as she does. I think upon arrival they will be really a lot of people’s focus.”
California has had big sports stars before, and some have crossed over to other areas of entertainment. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was a bodybuilder before he became a star of action movies, and the former Laker center Shaquille O’Neal has had some modest film roles. Another ex-Laker, Rick Fox, has a recurring part in the new FX cable network drama “Dirt.” He plays a basketball star who cheats on his wife. Wayne Gretzky generated new interest in hockey when he joined the Los Angeles Kings, and his wife, Janet Jones, had some movie parts while here.
“It happens from time to time,” Pollock said.” But major movies don’t get made simply because an athlete is in them. That is not the way the business works anymore.”

TITLE: Bush Stands Firm Over Iraq Plans
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON — President Bush concedes he isn’t popular, and that the war in Iraq isn’t either. Yes, progress is overdue and patience is all but gone. Yet none of that changes his view that more U.S. troops are needed to win in Iraq.
“I’m not going to try to be popular and change principles to do so,” Bush said in a television interview that aired Sunday night.
Digging in for confrontation, Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney say they will not budge from sending more U.S. troops to Iraq no matter how much Congress opposes it.
“I fully understand they could try to stop me,” Bush said of the Democrat-run Congress. “But I’ve made my decision, and we’re going forward.”
As the president talked tough, lawmakers pledged to explore ways to stop him.
“We need to look at what options we have available to constrain the president,” said Democratic Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, a possible White House candidate in 2008. Democrats remain wary, though, of appearing unsupportive of American troops.
A defiant Cheney, meanwhile, said Democrats offered criticism without credible alternatives. He pointedly reminded lawmakers that Bush is commander in chief.
“You cannot run a war by committee,” the vice president said of congressional input.
The aggressive White House reaction came as the House and Senate prepare to vote on resolutions opposing additional U.S. troops in Iraq.
As the White House watched even some GOP support peel away from the war plan, it went all-out to regain some footing.
Bush gave his first interview from Camp David, airing Sunday night on CBS’ “60 Minutes.” 
It was his second prime-time opportunity in five days to explain why he thinks adding U.S. troops can help stabilize Iraq and hasten the time when American soldiers can come home. He addressed the nation from the White House last Wednesday evening.
“Some of my buddies in Texas say, ‘You know, let them fight it out. What business is it of ours?’” Bush said of Iraqis.
“And that’s a temptation that I know a lot of people feel. But if we do not succeed in Iraq, we will leave behind a Middle East which will endanger America.”
Yet when asked if he owes the Iraqi people an apology for botching the management of the war, he said, “Not at all.
“We liberated that country from a tyrant,” Bush said. “I think the Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude.”
Bush announced last week he will send 21,500 more troops to Iraq to halt violence, mainly around Baghdad, as an essential step toward stabilizing the country’s government.
Democrats in Congress — along with some Republicans — were unimpressed and frustrated. Beyond promising to go on record in opposition to the president’s approach, the Democratic leadership is considering whether, and how, to cut off funding for additional troops.
“You don’t like to micromanage the Defense Department, but we have to, in this case, because they’re not paying attention to the public,” said John Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat who helps oversee military funding.

TITLE: Contents Of O.J. Simpson Book Leaked to Newsweek Magazine
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: SAN FRANCISCO — Newsweek magazine said on Sunday it obtained the crucial chapter in the scrapped O.J. Simpson book in which he told how he might have killed his ex-wife if he were the murderer, including arguing with her and finding himself holding a bloody knife.
Newsweek said it obtained from a source who asked not to be identified the chapter in “If I Did It,” in which the former football star makes “a seeming confession” about the murder of his ex-wife and a friend.
In a 1995 criminal trial, Simpson was found innocent of murdering Nicole Brown Simpson and friend Ron Goldman.
In the chapter Newsweek obtained, the magazine said Simpson tells of arguing with his ex-wife outside her home, of her falling and hitting her head and of finding himself holding a bloody knife with both her and her friend dead.
Newsweek assistant managing editor Mark Miller said the chapter seems like a confession because it closely meshes with evidence in the case, he said.
The book was to have been published late last year by Regan Books, an imprint of HarperCollins which is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.
But it was dropped amid public outcry at the crassness of the project. Murdoch apologized, and all 400,000 copies of the book were recalled and destroyed. Judith Regan, the publisher of Regan books, was later fired.
Miller, in this week’s Newsweek, said, “What is striking about the chapter I read … is how closely it tracks with the evidence in the case — and how clearly Simpson invokes the classic language of a wife abuser.
“In his crude, expletive-laced account, Simpson suggests Nicole all but drove him to kill her,” he said.
Miller said that Simpson tells how he drove to his ex-wife’s home with a friend called Charlie and encountered her and Goldman. But Simpson stops short of describing their stabbings.
Miller said Simpson wrote that his ex-wife came at him like a “banshee.”
He added, “She loses her balance and falls hard, her head cracking against the ground. Goldman assumes a karate stance, further angering Simpson. He dares the younger man to fight. Then, in the book, Simpson pulls back. He writes, ‘Then something went horribly wrong, and I know what happened, but I can’t tell you exactly how.”’
Miller said Simpson wrote that when he regained control of himself, he realized he was holding a bloody knife and was drenched in blood. His ex-wife and Goldman were dead.
Simpson has always denied committing the murders and said this was a hypothetical account written for a large sum of money and not meant to be taken as truth. Although acquitted of murder charges, Simpson was found liable for their deaths in a civil trial brought by the families of his former wife and Goldman.

TITLE: Kuznetsova Leads Russian March On Australian Open
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MELBOURNE  — After playing the waiting game for almost three hours, St. Petersburg’s Svetlana Kuznetsova sprinted past Australian wildcard Jessica Moore 6-2 6-0 on Monday to book her place in the second round of the Australian Open. 
The third seed led a sextet of Russian women through. She was joined by fifth seed Nadia Petrova, seventh seed Yelena Dementyeva, Maria Kirilenko and Yelena Vesnina. 
Olga Putchkova earned the unenviable task of taking on defending champion Amelie Mauresmo following a 6-2 6-4 win over Poland’s Marta Domachowska. 
Kuznetsova had to hang around in the locker room as Mardy Fish battered men’s fourth seed Ivan Ljubicic into submission on Vodafone Arena. 
Once she stepped on court she overpowered the 16-year-old Australian, ranked 914th in the world, and carved out victory in 59 minutes under fading lights. 
Earlier Roger Federer and Mauresmo led a parade of champions into the second round, while police ejected about 150 tennis fans from the grounds after Croatian and Serbian fans clashed. 
Fighting flared for the first time at a grand slam event after spectators exchanged insults during the match between Croatian Mario Ancic and Japan’s Go Soeda. Police said no arrests were made. 
“They were mostly Serbians ejected as they were upsetting the Croatians,” Victoria state police spokeswoman Katherine Jess said. “Police are now meeting with Tennis Australia officials to work out the next move.” 
The clashes failed to overshadow the on court action on the opening day of the Open, with Croatian fourth seed Ljubicic becoming the most notable casualty. 
Mauresmo was the first to take center stage in her defence of the women’s crown, brandishing winners from all angles to consign American Shenay Perry to a 6-3 6-4 defeat. 
Men’s champion Federer overcame a wobbly first set before gliding to a 7-5 6-0 6-4 victory over Bjorn Phau as he began his pursuit of a 10th grand slam title. 
They were joined in the last 64 by former winners Serena Williams and Thomas Johansson, with 2005 champion Marat Safin offering the late-night action. 
A tortured and tormented Andy Roddick provided the early drama. 
The American staggered into round two after dousing the fireworks produced by a little-known Frenchman. 
Jo-Wilfried Tsonga had barely registered on the tennis radar until his trip to Melbourne Park. 
So low is his ranking, that he does not even merit an entry in the ATP handbook. But he penned his name into tennis folklore when he won a marathon first-set tiebreak 20-18, equalling the record for longest breaker in the tournament’s history. 
The 212th-ranked wildcard, however, was unable to sustain his heroics and despite being a set and 5-2 up he went down fighting 6-7 7-6 6-3 6-3, much to the relief of the sixth-seeded American. 
The fired-up American was left fuming and swearing at 10-10 in the first set tiebreak when he thought the 21-year-old Tsonga’s shot had landed beyond the baseline. 
After Roddick was reduced to even swatting the ball on bended knees, 10-10 went on to 15-15 and then 18-18 — thus eclipsing the famous 18-16 tussle between Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe in the 1980 Wimbledon final. 
Just as it seemed there was no end in sight, a netted error from Roddick handed Tsonga the set if not the match. 
“I was thinking if we were ever going to finish the tiebreaker,” grinned the 2003 U.S. Open champion.  
The only blip Mauresmo had was when she was a set and 5-1 up. Perhaps blinded by Perry’s fluorescent lime green outfit, Mauresmo went on to lose three games on the trot but regained her focus in the nick of time to close out a 74-minute win.

TITLE: 330,000 U.S. Homes Left Without Power by Storm
AUTHOR: By Betsy Taylor
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ST. LOUIS — Utility crews tried to restore electricity to about 330,000 Missouri households that were still without power following a storm blamed for 21 deaths across four states.
Waves of freezing rain, sleet and snow since Friday have caused at least 12 deaths in Oklahoma, six in Missouri, two in Texas and one in New York.
Crews hoped to take advantage of moderate weather expected for Monday — including a few lingering snow showers and flurries — to bring power back online before an expected drop in temperatures to below zero Monday night.
The storm system was expected to continue heading northeast, said National Weather Service meteorologist Joe Pedigo. While the Ohio region was expected to see rain Monday afternoon, lower Michigan and parts of New England were expecting more than a foot of snow.
Most of the outages — a majority in southwest Missouri — were caused when freezing rain caused tree branches to break off and crash onto power lines, officials said.
Guardsmen went door-to-door checking on the health and safety of residents in the hardest hit parts of the state and helping to clear slick roads.
Amtrak canceled Sunday service between Kansas City and St. Louis due to fallen trees and other debris on railroad tracks.
In the St. Louis region, about 150,000 people remained without power Sunday afternoon, after a pattern of freezing and thaws.
About 122,000 customers lacked power in Oklahoma as of Sunday night, the state Department of Emergency Management said. A gymnasium roof collapsed in Del City, Okla., under the weight of ice and snow, but no one was inside or injured, authorities said.
In Texas, 415 flights were canceled Sunday at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
In Nebraska, which has been pummeled by winter storms in the past month, the weekend storm dropped even more snow, making roads treacherous.
As the storm began to fade from the nation’s midsection, parts of the East began to suffer.
In Albany, N.Y., a 22-year-old died after falling about 90 feet from a bridge to a road below after climbing a railing to avoid being hit by a sliding car. He had gotten out of his vehicle around 2 a.m. after a crash.
In Syracuse, N.Y., Interstate 81 was closed for about two hours after about 30 cars were involved in six accidents early Sunday. Several people were taken to hospitals.