SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1243 (9), Tuesday, February 6, 2007
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TITLE: Registration Rules Cause Confusion
AUTHOR: By Carl Schreck and Natalya Krainova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Thinking of jetting down to Sochi for a week for some rest and relaxation this summer? If you’re a foreigner and you want to spare your employer from a possible $30,000 fine, you’d better make sure the government knows you’re leaving town.
According to a new law that came into effect Jan. 15, foreigners are now required to hand over their registration papers to migration officials — via their employer or other sponsor — every time they leave the country and re-register upon subsequent entry into the country.
But the law is steeped in vagaries. Visa agencies say foreigners could incur heavy fines for their employers if they neglect to inform them of even a short trip out of town.
Hotels, for their part, say the amount of documentation on their foreign guests has become unduly burdensome. At least one St. Petersburg hotel has stopped admitting foreigners altogether.
The new law says a foreigner’s “inviting party” — an employer, landlord, hotel or other Russian host — is required to inform local migration officials of the foreigner’s arrival within three working days of entering the country.
The inviting party is also required to inform authorities if the foreigner leaves Russia and it has two working days from the day of departure to do so.
“The foreigner has to be stricken off the Federal Migration Service register, because he can’t be registered with the Federal Migration Service if he is not in Russia,” said Zalina Filimonova, spokeswoman for the Moscow branch of the migration service. “That’s pure logic.”
The law has been touted by migration officials as a simplification of the registration process. On paper, after all, the inviting party is merely required to submit information about the foreigner’s passport, visa and migration card to the local branch of the migration service.
Migration officials then issue a registration card that the foreigner carries at all times as proof of being in the country legally. The card makes obsolete the previous practice of placing a registration stamp in passports.
In theory, the entire process can even be done at the post office, with a post office receipt serving as confirmation of a foreigner’s registration.
But the new procedures could prove to be quite a hassle for foreigners who travel often — either internationally or within Russia, said Yekaterina Elekchyan of Your Lawyer, a legal firm specializing in visa and work-regulation issues.
“On the one hand, it’s easier in that the landlord doesn’t have to physically go down to the DEZ,” Elekchyan said, referring to the local building-utilities administrator offices that were obligatory stopovers for foreigners’ landlords under the old registration rules. “But for a foreigner who enters and leaves the country quite often, it’s not very convenient to have to turn in documents every time.”
Foreigners must turn in their registration card when they leave for another region, Filimonova said. Then, upon arrival, the inviting party must register the foreigner with local migration officials within three days and inform them of his departure no later than two days after he leaves.
Under the law, the inviting party is fully responsible for registering the foreigner. According to information posted on the web site of the Moscow branch, fines for breaching the rules run up to 4,000 rubles for a Russian citizen hosting a foreigner and up to 800,000 rubles ($30,000) for employers.
One large Western-managed company informed its foreign employees recently in an internal memo that they would have any fines deducted from their salaries if they did not inform the company of their international travel plans.
Federal Migration Service spokesman Denis Soldatikov said Friday that authorities would not be “hunting” down violators. “But if people are found in violation, they will be fined,” he said.
Inexplicably, Soldatikov contradicted the deadlines and procedures given in the law itself. He said the inviting party must inform authorities of a foreigner’s arrival within 30 days and departure with 10 days.
Soldatikov — in another contradiction of what the law says — also insisted that a foreigner does not have to turn in the registration card upon leaving the country.
Alexei Filipenkov, deputy chairman of Association of European Businesses’ visa task force, said the law is so muddled and riddled with holes that it is impossible to enforce. “Nobody knows what is going on,” he said. “I ask one migration official what to do, and he tells me one thing. On the same day I go to another official, and they tell me something completely different. Nobody knows what is going on because the rules are constantly being changed.”
One group that is already lobbying for changes in the law are hoteliers.
One large Moscow hotel said it has had to hire two employees to deal exclusively with filling out the increased paperwork for foreign guests, and because the local branch of the migration service is understaffed, the employees themselves must sit down and enter the data into the migration service’s system.
“Until our employee sits down and enters every single form in to their system by manually typing, no one is registered,” said an executive from the hotel, who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing company policy.
Soldatikov, the migration service spokesman, denied that hotel employees might be entering information into the migration service’s database. “Access to those computers is restricted,” he said.
Soldatikov said hotels had no grounds for complaint and that the system had changed little for them.
One small hotel chain in St. Petersburg, however, has stopped accepting foreigners for fear that a single violation of the new law could result in a hefty fine.
“Fortunately it’s not high season yet, and primarily Russian citizens are on business trips,” Marina Slesareva, deputy head of the Rinaldi chain, told Komsomolskaya Pravda. “It’s scary to think what will happen in the summer. Not one single branch of the Federal Migration Service can tell us what to do under the new rules.”

TITLE: Khodorkovsky, Lebedev Face New Charges
AUTHOR: By Oleg Shchedrov
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian prosecutors on Monday brought a series of new charges against Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a move likely to bury the politically ambitious tycoon’s hopes of release from imprisonment before 2008 presidential elections.
Khodorkovksy, the founder of the Yukos oil major who is already serving an eight-year sentence for fraud and tax evasion, will now be tried on money-laundering charges, his lawyer said.
Money laundering is punishable in Russia by up to 10 years in prison. 
If the charges are proved in court, some of the new sentence could be added to Khodorkovsky’s existing term.
“One thing all lawyers agree on is that the new charges are absurd,” Khodorkovsky’s lawyer Karina Moskalenko said by telephone. “They are crazy from start to end.”
Khodorkovsky’s business associate Platon Lebedev was also charged with similar offences on Monday. He too is serving an eight-year sentence for fraud and tax evasion.
Khodorkovsky’s imprisonment has been widely seen as part of a Kremlin campaign to punish him for his involvement in politics, a taboo for tycoons under President Vladimir Putin.
The Kremlin has denied any political motivation behind the trial, which ended in May 2005.
Under Russian law, Khodorkovsky could apply for early release from October this year, when he will have served half of his sentence.

2008 ELECTION
A member of the Khodorkovsky legal team linked the new charges with the 2008 presidential election, when Putin must step down and a successor is to be chosen.
“(The) important thing is the tremendous fear Russia has … that Mr Khodorkovsky might either become politically active because he was due for a possible parole later this year or that he might finance political parties,” said lawyer Robert Amsterdam.
Analysts say Khodorkovsky, who made a fortune in murky privatisations in the early 1990s, is not popular among voters and has no chance of becoming a key figure in the presidential polls.
But his political independence, backed by solid financial resources, could cause headaches for a Kremlin keen to ensure a smooth handover of power to a new leader who will continue Putin’s policies.
Yukos, once Russia’s biggest and most profitable oil company, had been driven into bankruptcy by back-tax claims. 
The firm’s receiver last month said that Yukos owes its creditors 667.8 billion rubles ($25.1 billion), up from the previously announced 492 billion rubles.
“The Prosecutor-General’s office views as criminal practically all Yukos activities, its creation, oil extraction and sales,” Lebedev’s lawyer Konstantin Rivkin said commenting on the new charges.
“Every step, every sneeze of theirs … has been found to be criminal.”
Rivkin said the charges against Lebedev, similar to ones filed against Khodorkovsky, were contained in a 148-page document.
It was officially announced to the two in the city of Chita, close to the Chinese border, where they are being held.

TITLE: Two Foreigners in Metro Line Attacks
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Two dark-skinned foreigners were attacked in separate incidents on Sunday and are now undergoing medical treatment in local hospitals. 
Both attacks took place at stations on the same Metro line within less than a hour of each other on Sunday afternoon.
At about 1 p.m., police received a call from a witness of the first incident, which took place at Politechnicheskaya Metro Station. 
The witness told the duty officer that three young men were beating a man. The caller also described the attackers as “resembling skinheads.” 
The police found a man bleeding at the scene and established he was a 35-year old native of Cameroon who is a post-graduate student of the St. Petersburg Forestry Academy. 
The man was admitted to City Hospital No. 3 with head injuries, a knife wound in his shoulder and severe bruising all over his body.
Within half an hour, violence broke out at Vyborgskaya Metro Station — two stops on the Vyborgsko-Petrogradskaya line from the scene of the first attack — where a 28-year-old Moldovan woman of Roma origins was assaulted. 
The woman, who received several stabs in the chest and shoulder area, is now at a hospital in satisfactory condition.
The St. Petersburg Prosecutor’s Office has opened two separate criminal cases. There are no suspects and neither case is being treated as racially motivated. 
The first attack is so far being classed as an act of hooliganism while the second is being classed as second-degree physical assault.
In 2006, at least 19 people died and 166 were injured in Russia as a result of hate crimes, according to the Sova center, a Moscow-based group that monitors racism. 
In St. Petersburg six people died from racially motivated attacks in 2006, the city’s African Union said.
Despite these overwhelming statistics, local officials and representatives of law enforcement often admit they find it difficult to determine what are racially motivated hate crimes and what are simply acts of hooliganism or drunken disorderly conduct. 
Criminals brought to trial for attacking people with non-Slavic appearance, are typically charged with hooliganism.
Iosif Skakovsky of the human rights group Memorial says the current political climate in Russia is unwelcoming towards ethnic and racial minorities.
Skakovsky and other rights activists say there has been an a lack of leadership from Russia’s political elite and from law-enforcement bodies, which often appear to be in a state of denial about hate crimes.
“The authorities tend to use force against activists or brand all critics as ‘marginals’,” he said. “They are apparently too short-sighted to realize that the rampant violence against ethnic minorities is yet another shortcoming of their policies suppressing civil society and human rights groups.”

TITLE: Georgia, Russia Cooperate on Nuclear Smuggling
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Georgia’s foreign minister said Friday that Moscow and Tbilisi had agreed to cooperate in investigating a nuclear smuggling case that has sparked further friction between the two neighbors.
Foreign Minister Gela Bezhuashvili said he had discussed by telephone with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov how prosecutors from both countries could work together.
Georgia announced a week earlier that it had arrested and jailed a Russian citizen last year for trying to sell a small amount of weapons-grade uranium to an agent posing as a rich foreign buyer.
The episode appeared to cast doubt on Russia’s ability to avert black-market trade in nuclear materials and renewed concern about security at its nuclear facilities.
But Lavrov branded the announcement a “provocation” at a time of strained relations between Moscow and its small, West-leaning former Soviet neighbor, which has angered the Kremlin by seeking NATO membership.
Russian authorities have stressed that the origin of the 100 grams of uranium is unknown.
The Foreign Ministry issued a brief statement earlier in the week on the telephone talks between the foreign ministers that made no mention of any pledge for joint cooperation.
Georgia complained that attempts to trace the source of the nuclear material and investigate the man’s claim that he had access to larger quantities had failed because Russia had not helped. But Russian officials countered that Georgian authorities had given Russia too small a sample to determine its origin and had refused to provide other information.
Bezhuashvili was speaking after signing an agreement between Georgia and the United States on combating the smuggling of nuclear material at a ceremony with U.S. Ambassador John Tefft. Under the accord, the United States will provide equipment and training for Georgian experts. “Georgia intends to closely cooperate with all neighboring countries in this area, including Russia,” the top Georgian diplomat said.

TITLE: Electricity Back On in Sochi
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW — Officials said Friday that electricity had been fully restored to hundreds of thousands of homes after winter weather led to power outages in the Black Sea resort that is bidding to host the 2014 Winter Olympics.
High winds and heavy snowfalls pulled down power lines across Sochi, located at the foot of the Caucasus Mountains in a nearly 150-kilometer stretch of coastline, cutting electricity supplies to the 400,000 residents of the city.
Officials earlier in the week said electricity had been restored in full, but the lights went out a second time, snarling traffic, bringing business to a halt and fraying nerves in the seaside region.
Regional emergency officials said Friday that workers had fully restored power supplies to the area, but warned that heavy snowfalls would continue.
Sochi is competing against Salzburg, Austria, and Pyeongchang, South Korea, for the right to hold the 2014 Games and the outage came ahead of a visit by the International Olympic Committee evaluation commission later this month.
President Vladimir Putin voiced hope that the outage would not affect Sochi’s bid.
“That must have no impact on our plans for hosting the Olympics,” Putin said at a news conference Thursday. “I don’t have any doubt that if the International Olympic Committee favors Sochi, we will build all necessary facilities on schedule.”
Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref said a federal development program for Sochi included funds to ensure stable energy supplies regardless of the weather.
Sochi’s bid for the Olympics came under criticism Friday from leading environmental groups, which charged that it would destroy the habitat of such species as brown bears and red deer.

(AP, Reuters)

TITLE: Prostitutes’ Mass Grave 
Unearthed In Siberia
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Law enforcement agents in the Urals have uncovered a mass grave containing the remains of up to 30 girls and women kidnapped and forced to work as prostitutes before being killed, Komsomolskaya Pravda reported Friday.
The grave was found outside the small town of Levikha, situated between the cities of Nizhny Tagil and Yekaterinburg.
Eight men aged 25 to 46 have been detained and charged with murder.
So far, 15 of the bodies have been identified. Forensics experts are working to establish the identity of the others.
Most of the victims went missing between 2002 and 2005. Those identified include a 15-year-old girl and her 13-year-old friend, both of whom disappeared in July 2005, Alexei Prokhorov, a senior Sverdlovsk region prosecutor, was quoted as saying.
The girls were reportedly lured to an apartment, raped and told they would have to work as prostitutes. Both refused and, like the other victims, were then killed, their bodies dumped in the forest. The eight men charged in the killings were based in Nizhny Tagil.

TITLE: Three Get Life for 2004 Metro Bombings
AUTHOR: By Svetlana Osadchuk
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Three men convicted of helping pull off the 2004 metro bombings that killed more than 50 people were sentenced Friday to life in prison by the Moscow City Court.
Murat Shavayev, Maxim Ponaryin and Tamby Khubiyev were found guilty of murder, terrorism and other charges for their roles in organizing the two bombings.
Shavayev, a former Justice Ministry official, had denied any role in the attacks, while Ponaryin had plead guilty to some of the charges and Khubiyev to all of them, Prosecutor Alexander Kublyakov told reporters outside the courtroom.
The first attack took place Feb. 6, 2004, when suicide bomber Anzor Izhayev detonated explosives as a train approached the Avtozavodskaya station on the green line. The bombing killed 42 people and wounded 250.
The second bombing, on Aug. 31, 2004, was outside the Rizhskaya station on the orange line. That attack killed 10 and injured another 30. Both the female bomber and her senior handler, Nikolai Kipkeyev, died in the attack.
In the verdict, Shavayev and Khubiyev were found guilty of transporting the explosives used in the bombings from the southern city of Nalchik to Moscow.
“The driver who took Khubiyev and Shavayev to Moscow, as they were transporting the detonators and explosives, was able to identify Shavayev,” said Kublyakov, the prosecutor. “The terrorists used a television set to hide the explosives, and whenever the car was stopped for inspection by authorities, Shavayev just flashed his ministry ID.”
The defendants’ lawyers said they would appeal the verdict.
The verdict was issued behind closed doors because prosecutors were said to be presenting classified information.
According to the verdict, the attacks’ mastermind was the Jordan-born warlord Khattab. The goal of the attacks was to frighten Russian authorities into withdrawing troops from Chechnya, the verdict stated. Russian agents had earlier killed Khattab.
The prosecutor identified two other men involved in planning the attacks, Abu al-Walid and Abu-Kuteip.
Shavayev, Ponaryin and Khubiyev were also ordered to pay more than $264,000 to the victims and relatives, the victims’ lawyer, Igor Trunov, said.
“The court reduced what we were seeking by one-third,” Trunov said. “There was no reason for doing this.”
Trunov added that he would take up the matter of compensation with a new trial that is slated to take place at Tverskoi Court “in the near future.”
Trunov said victims were pleased that Shavayev received the same punishment as the other two even though he was a high-placed government official.
“I think the press should have been admitted, at least for part of the hearings,” Trunov told the 100 or so journalists at the courthouse, “so people would know that justice was handed down.”

TITLE: Relief On the Way for Public Toilet Users
AUTHOR: By Ali Nassor
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: St. Petersburg’s water and sewage monopoly has taken up the challenge of meeting about half the city’s demand for new, permanent public toilets within three months, Vodokanal announced.
The initial phase of a five-year plan to establish a network of 166 six-stall facilities in the city and surrounding towns marks a shift from the current non-hygienic, randomly located and poorly equipped mobile bio-toilets that are not connected to the city’s sewage and drainage systems, Vodokanal said.
The first 77 units of the new-generation toilets, which are also designed to serve the disabled, are expected to be ready to use in time for the city’s 304th anniversary celebrations on May 27.
“We will then have four years to think about, plan and build the other 89 advanced toilets,” Aina Muktepavel, spokeswoman for Vodokanal said. “It’s not a shift from our traditional profile as a sewage company and water supplier, but rather an attempt to control the prevailing ‘toilet chaos’ by getting [public toilets] connected to the drainage system,” she said.
“In the long run we have to look civilized,” she added.
She said the move is a response to Governor Valentina Matviyenko’s call last year for a “long-term solution to a problem that had long stained our city and sometimes served as a repellent to foreign tourists.”
Tour operators, however, believe Matviyenko’s pronouncement was a little off-target. 
“Tourists don’t consider the shortage of public toilets as a big issue. The annual average of 3 million tourists to the city has been consistent in the last five years,” said Tatyana Demeneva, spokeswoman for the St. Petersburg branch of the Russian Tourism Industry Union. 
But she said: “Valentina Ivanovna (Matviyenko) was right that those shabby cabins near metro stations and the shortage of public toilets in general were spoiling the image of our beautiful city.”
As a short-term solution, Governor Matviyenko had appealed to the owners of cafeterias and shopping centers to allow the public use of their toilets in exchange for City Hall’s sympathy.
A prominent City Health official has hailed Vodokanal’s scheme, saying that “although it is only a tip of the iceberg in keeping to the required standard of hygiene in the city, it is nevertheless a good omen.” 
“The current situation where a pedestrian is forced into looking for a nearby garbage dump to relieve himself is unbearable,” said Vitaly Antonov, City Hall’s chief mycologist, or fungus scientist. “On the other hand, I would have ordered the removal of all those filthy cabins near the metro stations, had I any authority… it’s non-hygienic.”
Meanwhile, an elderly female bio-toilet attendant near the Ploshchad Vosstaniya complained of having to serve a long line of customers, especially during rush hour. 
“Sometimes people fight in their rush to the toilet,” she said.

TITLE: Litvinenko Investigators Hope to Visit U.K.
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Prosecutor General’s Office said Sunday that it hoped to receive permission as early as next week to send investigators to Britain to probe the poisoning death of former security agent Alexander Litvinenko.
Prosecutors want to question Kremlin critic and self-exiled oligarch Boris Berezovsky, among others.
British authorities have yet to respond to prosecutors’ request, a source at the Prosecutor General’s Office said.
British Home Secretary John Reid gave formal permission to countries that want to send investigators to Britain as part of ongoing inquiries, The Observer reported Sunday.
Litvinenko died in a London hospital Nov. 23. Doctors said he had been poisoned with polonium-210, a rare radioactive isotope.
British investigators traveled to Moscow in December and participated in the questioning of Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun, two businessmen who were formerly in the security services and who met with Litvinenko in London on Nov. 1, hours before he said he fell ill.
Meanwhile, Lugovoi, Kovtun and Vyacheslav Sokolenko — reported to be another possible suspect — on Friday flew to the North Caucasus ski resort of Dombay to escape unwanted media attention, Ren-TV television reported.
Lugovoi, who maintains his innocence, says there is no evidence proving he is the killer.
Kovtun dismissed talk that the security services were responsible for Litvinenko’s death, saying they could have done it more “efficiently.”
Sokolenko, from his house 30 kilometers outside Moscow, quoted a chant that appeared on the web site of his favorite football team, CSKA Moscow: “We’re eating endless polonium, we’re CSKA fans, and we believe with all our hearts that we will poison Spartak,” he said, referring to one of the club’s chief rivals.
In the television broadcast, Lugovoi, Kovtun and Sokolenko are seen loading their skiing equipment into an sport utility vehicle with tinted windows and driving to a Moscow airport.
Lugovoi, Kovtun and Sokolenko are seen joking about turning the whole Litvinenko affair into a Hollywood movie featuring them.
(AP, SPT)

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>Ski Race Back On</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The St. Petersburg stage of “the country’s biggest winter competition,” a mass cross-country skiing race (Lyzhnya Rossii) will finally start Sunday in the Leningrad Oblast after having been rescheduled a number of times as a result of unsuitable weather conditions, Rosbalt news agency reported. 
More than 18,000 sportsmen are planning to take part.

<b>Cold Snap Expected</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A cold snap is expected in St. Petersburg from Tuesday, with temperatures in the outskirts plummeting to minus 20 deg C, Rosbalt news agency quoted the Ministry of Emergency Situations as saying. 

<b>Days of Scotland</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The traditional “Days of Scotland” event kicked off Monday in the new building of the Russian National Library, Rosbalt news agency reported. 
The event has been hosted by the city for more than 35 years and features “Scotland and the Scots,” a literary exhibition, “Scottish Art in St. Petersburg” and a photographic exhibition by Yevgeny Petrushansky called “Edinburgh and its People.”

TITLE: Markets Bear the Brunt of New Immigration Policies
AUTHOR: By Tai Adelaja
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — The mood at the Cheryomushkinsky market in southwest Moscow, normally a buzzing Oriental bazaar with a hubbub of diverse accents from the Caucasus and Central Asia, is subdued: One-third of the stalls stand empty.
Some Uzbeks and Azeris, former traders, wander about aimlessly, and the rows of luscious fruits and the spicy aromas that used to be a permanent feature here have all but disappeared.
In the two weeks since the government imposed a quota of 40 percent on foreign workers at the country’s markets, rows of empty stalls have appeared at markets across Moscow, while city officials and market administrators readily admit they are having a hard time filling the void left by migrant workers.
With greater or lesser effect, it’s a picture being repeated across the country. Proportionally, the largest exodus appears to be in the sparsely populated Far East, where hundreds of thousands of Chinese and Vietnamese traders are reported to be packing up and preparing to depart, leaving whole markets deserted.
“See for yourself,” said Uzbek citizen Maruf Yusupov, a trader at the Cheryomushkinsky market, barely hiding his exasperation as he pointed to a row of stalls left empty after the quotas came into force Jan. 15. “Do you think Russians will stand here from dawn to dusk every day to sell vegetables and tomatoes?”
“If they don’t want us here, we’ll leave,” he said. “I’m certain these stalls will remain empty.”
The gaps at the markets are set to grow come April 1, when a full ban on foreign traders in retail markets comes into force.
The crackdown was ordered by President Vladimir Putin in October, when he urged the government to “protect the native population” in the country’s markets. His comments came after ethnic tensions flared in anti-migrant riots in the Karelia region and amid a spy dispute with Georgia that led to the deportation of planeloads of Georgians.
Critics of the migration changes say the authorities are playing into the hands of right-wing nationalist groups, such as the Movement Against Illegal Immigration, who have been whipping up sentiment against migrants and claiming that they are taking jobs from ethnic Russians.
Along with the markets crackdown, the government has set a quota of 6 million work permits for countries that have visa-free agreements with Russia. But this figure falls well short of the 10 million illegal migrants in the country, according to the Federal Migration Service, which has been charged with implementing the new regulations.
A new, 10-day registration procedure for migrant workers, touted as a simplified “one-stop shop” by the Federal Migration Service, also came into effect Jan. 15. But so far the change has led to chaotic scenes in overcrowded offices, with hundreds of people besieging clerks amid complaints that there are not enough application forms to go around.
PRICE HIKES
Government officials have stressed that the new regulations are being implemented as “painlessly” as possible, and insist that there were will be no problems in filling the places left by migrant workers. But so far the picture on the ground at Moscow markets tells a different story; notices at main entrances read, “We are looking for traders with Russian citizenship.”
At the city’s central Danilovsky market, where most of the stallholders were from Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan, some Slavic faces could be seen behind the stalls selling cucumbers, honey and a few homegrown vegetables. Prices for most foodstuffs have gone up, sometimes by as much as 200 percent.
Tamara, a shopper at the market who refused to give her last name, said she did not care “who is selling as long as price is right.”
“These tomatoes cost 100 rubles less last week, but see what we have now,” she said, pointing to a heap marked at 250 rubles per kilogram.
“Without competition, price hikes are to be expected,” said Fauna, an Uzbek vendor of fruit and vegetables at the market, who also declined to give her last name. “Nothing I sell here is grown in Russia. It’s all imported, so I don’t know how this law is going to work.”
Fauna said her papers were in order, but her main concern was that she would now have to deal with more middlemen to buy her produce.
Irina Chichikova, who runs a clothes stall at the Luzhniki market in central Moscow, said she had never suffered from competing with Chinese and Vietnamese traders, whom she described as industrious and agile.
“We Muscovites have a hard time standing from 10 in the morning until 9 o’clock in the evening, selling garments,” she said. “The reason [migrant workers] can do this is that they are content with little turnover from great efforts.”
“Who crafted those laws?” Chichikova said. “This was probably concocted by some corrupt officials to milk the traders.”
The Moscow city government official in charge of retail markets, Vladimir Malyshkov, said in an interview last week that 30,000 migrant traders were being pushed out of the city’s markets and that he saw few signs that Muscovites were willing to take up their low-paying jobs.
This was borne out by the director of the Cheryomushkinsky market, who identified himself only by his first name and patronymic, Alexander Vladimirovich. Even though “there’s an invitation out there, not one Russian is knocking on the door,” he said in an interview at the market last week.
“I’m not a magician,” he said in response to a follow-up question about whether he had yet managed to replace the migrant workers.
At the Cherkizovsky market in northwest Moscow, the exodus of the mainly Chinese, Vietnamese and Central Asian stallholders has left business partially paralyzed. Last year, the market was hit by a bomb suspected of being planted by nationalists, leaving 10 people dead, among them five Chinese and one Vietnamese.
Kolya Stratechuk, a Ukrainian migrant trader who owns a number of stalls at the market, said officials would “backpedal as soon as they realize the futility of their efforts to reduce the number of migrant traders.
“There’s nothing good coming out of this apart from reduced competition and price hikes,” he said.
The director of the Cherkizovsky market declined to comment, saying only that the problems were the making of the migration service and so all complaints should be directed to them.
Zhenya, a Tajik loader at the Tyoply Stan market who sleeps inside a goods container at the market, said he would be staying put, as he had nowhere else to go to.

FAR EAST EXODUS
In the Far East cities of Vladivostok, Khabarovsk and Blagoveshchensk, local journalists said Chinese and Vietnamese migrant workers were bearing the brunt of the new regulations.
Retail trade there is dominated mainly by Chinese and Vietnamese vendors, and with the introduction of the new rules, many of them have packed their stock, creating shortages of goods and price hikes.
Vladivostok’s Tsentralnaya Sportivnaya market, controlled by Chinese and Vietnamese traders, was closed down after most of the traders left.
“Constant raids by the immigration authorities coupled with the upcoming Chinese New Year have led to complete disaster in many markets in the city,” said Alla Rudnikova, a business reporter for the city’s Prima Media news agency.
Rudnikova said city authorities were desperately looking for ways to mitigate the impact of the new rules. “Chinese and Vietnamese immigrants are now offering between 3,000 and 4,000 rubles to local pensioners and invalids to stand in their place in the markets,” she said.
In Khabarovsk, where the city’s proximity to the Chinese border has led many to rely on Chinese retailers for cheap food and clothes. City center markets were closed completely.
After Federal Migration Service officials carried out document checks on the handful of Chinese traders left, most of them also packed up their goods and prepared to leave. Others were handing over their stalls to Russian partners for quick “clearance” sales, Rudnikova said.
The new rules are putting pressure on some 100,000 Vietnamese immigrants living in Russia, with the vast majority working in markets and roadside shops.
In Ufa, the capital of Bashkorstan, two Vietnamese markets closed down. Many retail shops in the area sold their goods at reduced prices to clear stock, the online edition of Vietnamese newspaper Thanh Nien Daily reported Jan. 19.
Last month, as rumors of the impending measures gained credence, Vietnamese-owned retail shops were selling fur coats, jeans, sweaters, sports pants, and T-shirts at half of the original prices.
In Yakutsk, the capital of the Sakha region, retail trade was “literally paralyzed,” said Alexander Yakovlev, editor of the city’s Ekho Stolitsa newspaper. “Overzealous officials conduct daily raids at the city’s markets, prompting most of the Vietnamese and Kyrgyz immigrants to flee.”
Yakovlev said there was no one to replace the migrant workers because they sold specific wares, most of them imported.
“Vietnamese exporters to Russia are worried about lost revenues to the lucrative market as a result of the regulation, as Vietnamese retailers there have been a key channel for export businesses for many years,” Thanh Nien Daily said.
Nguyen Ba Anh, the head of the Vietnamese Business Association in Russia, said: “A lack of accurate information on trade and government regulations left most Vietnamese businesspeople unaware of the ban on foreign involvement in the Russian retail sector.”

ECONOMIC FALLOUT
Apart from losing their small businesses in Russia, most of the migrants face an uncertain future and often-chronic unemployment in their native countries if they fail in their bid to work legally here.
The economic effects of the crackdown are likely to be felt especially in the CIS countries that supply most of the country’s migrant labor force, a World Bank report released last week said.
CIS countries are particularly dependent on the remittances migrant workers in Russia send home to their families. According to official figures, remittances constitute more than 20 percent of gross domestic product in Moldova and over 10 percent in Armenia and Tajikistan, the report said.
With migrant workers comprising 10 percent of the population, Russia is now second only to the United States in the number of migrant workers, the report said.
The benefits accruing to Russia from migrant workers include the growth of small businesses and construction companies, and relief from its chronic demographic problems, the report said.
The CIS countries most affected by the crackdown have been negotiating with Moscow to increase their respective work quotas, with Tajikistan asking for its quota to be raised from 600,000 to 800,000 workers, and Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan also reported to be in talks.
Russians living on low incomes could be hit by the lack of cheap goods if the places in the markets are not filled by April, Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref told State Duma deputies earlier this month.
“Russians buy 40 percent of their meat, 44 percent of their vegetables and more than 50 percent of their winter clothes from these markets,” he said.
Gref said the government might consider delaying the complete ban on foreigners in retail markets until later in the year if there were a threat to the supply of basic goods.
As well as making basic goods more expensive, the new rules will likely lead to more corruption at the markets, said Yelena Tyuryukanova, a senior researcher at the Institute of Social and Economic Problems of Population at the Russian Academy of Sciences.
“Such measures will lead to price increases, especially for groceries and clothes, and make life unbearable for the low-income groups who rely on the markets to satisfy basic needs,” she said.
“The markets will not be paralyzed,” Tyuryukanova said. “The situation will simply allow corruption to fester and lead to backdoor tactics that will allow migrant workers to work using locals as fronts.”
Crowds and Chaos Develop At Official Migration Offices
A spokesman for the Federal Migration Service contacted last week sought to deflect criticism of its role in implementing the new migration rules, and insisted it was doing everything it could to ensure that they were applied “as painlessly” as possible.
Konstantin Poltoranin said most of the difficulties encountered during the implementation of the new regulations were not of the service’s making.
“We do not make the laws,” Poltoranin said. “But we are trying to enforce them as painlessly as possible.”
Poltoranin conceded, however, that the federal program to attract ethnic Russians back to the country, launched in September, had run into problems due to lack of preparation.
He said the Moscow city government could negotiate with federal authorities about modifying the regulations or introducing local bylaws to alleviate labor shortages.
On the chaos at Federal Migration Service offices since Jan. 15, Poltoranin said most of the long lines “resulted from excitement generated by the absence of correct information on the procedures,” Poltoranin said. “Many people came to reception points after being misinformed that those points would close within 20 days,” he said.
Migration service offices in Moscow were still being besieged last week, with hundreds of people scrambling to obtain registration forms at the central Bolshaya Ordynka reception point, one of the three functioning in the city.
Vanya, a Moldovan construction worker, said last week’s visit was his third fruitless attempt. “There were not enough blank forms to go around, not to talk of moving an inch forward,” he said.

TITLE: Starbucks Unveils Plans For Russian Expansion
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: U.S. coffee giant Starbucks has announced plans to open its first coffee shops in Russia later this year. This summer ten coffee shops will start operating in St. Petersburg and Moscow, Bloomberg news agency reported last week. The stores’ franchisee will be Kuwaiti retailer M.H. Alshaya.
“We’ll start opening our first stores in Moscow and St. Petersburg in August, then review expansion plans every six months,” Bloomberg cited Mohammed Alshaya, CEO of M.H. Alshaya, as saying.
At the end of the last year Jim Donald, Starbucks CEO, said the chain would add 2,400 stores worldwide in 2007. The firm’s target is to attain a total of 40,000 stores around the world.
And Russia presents “significant opportunities,” according to Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz. Starbucks has opened its first coffee shops in Brazil and Egypt. By the summer it will enter the Russian and Indian markets, Howard Schultz said to Bloomberg.
At the moment Starbucks operates over 13,000 shops across the world. In the last quarter of 2006 Starbucks Corporation reported a net revenue of $2.4 billion, an increase of 22 percent. Net earnings accounted for $205 million, an increase of 18 percent. The company opened 728 stores during that period.
M.H. Alshaya is a leading international franchise retailer. According to its web site, the company operates 1,200 stores, trading 42 brands in 13 countries. M.H. Alshaya operates stores such as Body Shop, Next, Mothercare and River Island. Last year its sales amounted to $1.2 billion.
In Russia the Kuwaiti company is Mothercare’s franchisee. M.H. Alshaya has spent $40 million on acquisitions and new infrastructure in Russia.
“We know retail, and where we see an opportunity we’re prepared to take the risk for our partners by investing in expansion ourselves,” Bloomberg quoted Alshaya as saying.
A local market expert was positive about the prospects of Starbucks in Russia, though he noted that the company has to take local conditions into account to be successful.
“Moscow, St. Petersburg and other Russian cities with populations over one million people have far fewer coffee shops than their western counterparts,” said Mikhail Podushko, marketing director at WorkLine Research.
According to WorkLine Research data, about 55 percent of citizens in St. Petersburg visit coffee shops at least once a month. In Moscow this figure is 50 percent. The largest chains in Russia are Coffee House and Shokoladnitsa. In St. Petersburg, Idealnaya Chashka, Marko, Republic of Coffee and Sladkoyezhka are the most popular.
Despite high competition in St. Petersburg’s center, there is room for expansion in the suburbs, Podushko said. “The market has great potential. Besides, coffee shops are a convenient place for meeting. Their growing popularity is related to the lifestyle of the young,” he said.
“Starbucks obviously has a strong brand, the technology and financial resources. The question is — what type of coffee shop will they choose to launch. If they offer take-away coffee and no smoking zones, I seriously doubt that they will become popular. Having said that, for young people Starbucks is a legend,” Podushko said.

TITLE: Ford Workers to Go On Strike
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A union representing workers at the Ford plant in the Leningrad Oblast is to go on strike again this week, Interfax reported Friday. Union head Alexei Etmanov hopes this radical step will force the company’s administration to increase wages. He has promised the continuous strike will start on Feb. 14 at midnight.
The ongoing conflict between Ford Motor Company and its employees began in 2005 when the trade union demanded a 30 percent increase in pay. After two “Italian strikes” the company negotiated a compromise. Salaries increased by between 14.25 and 17.5 percent depending on the worker’s qualifications.
At the same time, however, the plant doubled production putting additional pressure on its workers. At the moment the plant produces 72,000 cars a year.
Workers were expecting to sign a collective labor agreement for 2007, which should include guarantees of wage indexation, work safety requirements and social security.
After a number of meetings with managers, the union registered a collective dispute at the Service for Solving Labor Disputes. However, according to Etmanov’s statement, Ford managers refused to participate in the reconciliatory committee. On Feb. 1, a meeting of employees resulted in the decision to strike.
Ford managers were not available for comment Monday. 
According to Interfax on Friday, a company press secretary denied receiving any formal notice of the strike.
Though a collective labor agreement is not a compulsory document, the company cannot avoid collective negotiations if employees decide to initiate them, said Alla Golovanova, lawyer of Beiten Burkhardt St. Petersburg.
“Within seven days of receiving written notification about collective negotiations the company should reply indicating who will represent it at the negotiations and their rights,” Golovanova said.
As well as creating a reconciliatory committee, the company and the union could use a mediator or apply to a labor arbitrator to solve the conflict, Golovanova indicated. “However a reconciliatory committee is a compulsory stage,” she said.
“Employees can hold meetings, demonstrations and pickets to express their demands during the labor dispute – they can also go on strike,” Golovanova said. If employees observe all legal requirements, they do not carry any liabilities for financial losses that the strike causes to the company, the lawyer said.
“Employees can stand up for their interests and rights, not least through creating a trade union and going on strike. Companies that negotiate with employees constructively and take their demands into account normally do not face such problems,” Golovanova noted.
However, she alluded to “Tocqueville’s Law,” saying that “people start to protest not when things are unbearable but, on the contrary, in periods of improvement, in relatively prosperous regions and industries when managers fail to meet the growing material needs of the population,” she said.

TITLE: Strong Ruble, Filling McDonald’s
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: The ruble’s real value is 15.2 to the dollar, according to The Economist’s annual Big Mac index.
The index is a simple approach to calculating purchasing power parity by accounting for the strength of individual currencies by pegging them to the cost of a single Big Mac sandwich.
The latest rate, published Thursday, is a slight drop as compared to findings in the Big Mac index in January 2006, when the ruble was valued at 14 to the dollar. This decline slightly contradicts the officially noted trend over 2006, which saw the ruble rise against the dollar. Big Mac indicators for the ruble have been relatively stable over the last three years.
Big Mac sandwiches in Russia cost 49 rubles ($1.85), or 42.5 percent cheaper than the cost of the same item in the United States, where the burger costs $3.22. The disparity between the official exchange rate and the relative costs of Big Macs in the respective countries puts the Economist valuation for the ruble at more than 11 rubles higher than the current official rate of 26.48 rubles.
But the ruble was far from being the most undervalued currency, according to the Economist’s calculations. 
China, where the cheapest Big Mac listed on the survey can be bought, was found to have its currency, the yuan, ranked at 56 percent below its purchasing power parity.
The Economist’s index also found the Ukrainian hryvna to be undervalued against the dollar by 47 percent.

TITLE: U.S. Set to Appoint Russia Spy Manager
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: Retired U.S. Navy Vice Admiral Michael McConnell told his Senate confirmation hearing that he would focus more attention on Russia and on the risks of foreign-oil dependence as U.S. director of national intelligence.
“I’ve been troubled by some of the trends in Russia over the last year or so,’’ McConnell said, when asked whether the country was becoming a strategic threat because of its oil wealth. “So that’s a scenario that needs attention,” he said, adding that his efforts would include the naming of an official to oversee intelligence efforts on Russia.
He said he would consider creating a “mission manager” position to focus on Russia. 
“I think we need to understand it. We need to know where it’s going,” McConnell said. “Having someone focused on it as a mission manager at the national level would serve us well to stay focused and continue to review it.”
The first director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, created the mission manager positions following the 2005 recommendations of Bush’s commission on weapons of mass destruction.
The focus of current mission manager positions now includes Cuba and Venezuela, North Korea, Iran and counterterrorism. In testimony to the intelligence committee last month, Negroponte highlighted Russia in his annual review of global threats. He raised concerns that Russian foreign policy tactics have been creating friction with the West.	
(Bloomberg, AP)

TITLE: Putin and Oligarchs Seek Diversification
AUTHOR: By Anna Smolchenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin will meet with the country’s top business leaders next week to discuss how to diversify the economy away from oil and gas, in a meeting tentatively scheduled for Tuesday. 
Putin is due to talk with a group of about 20 leading members of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, or RSPP, a day before it celebrates its 15th anniversary Wednesday. 
“The talk will focus on churning out products with high added value,” an official familiar with the RSPP plans said Friday. The official, who requested anonymity because he said the event had yet to be confirmed, said the businessmen hoped to secure Putin’s support as they pursue that task.
The meeting is tentatively scheduled to take place in the Kremlin on Tuesday, said Oksana Alekseyeva, a spokeswoman for the RSPP. 
“There is a preliminary agreement about the meeting,” she said.
A Kremlin official said Friday that “it looks like [the meeting] will happen,” without elaborating.
About 20 business leaders, including TNK-BP’s Viktor Vekselberg, Interros Group’s Vladimir Potanin, Alfa Group’s Mikhail Fridman, LUKoil’s Vagit Alekperov and Russian Aluminum’s Oleg Deripaska, would meet with Putin, Vedomosti reported Friday. 
CEOs invited include Gazprom’s Alexei Miller, Rosneft’s Sergei Bogdanchikov, and Sistema’s Yevgeny Yevtushenkov.
The Kremlin has yet to approve the final guest list, the newspaper said, citing a source. 
A spokeswoman for Basic Element, Deripaska’s holding company, said Deripaska planned to attend the upcoming meeting and “actively participate in the discussion of questions on the agenda.” She did not elaborate.
The companies represented in the RSPP, known informally as the “oligarchs’ trade union,” account for more than 70 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, according to the group.
Vedomosti said the agenda and the date for the meeting had been in the works for several months and RSPP chief Alexander Shokhin had persuaded Putin to time the meeting to the group’s anniversary. 
The businessmen plan to ask Putin whether export duties on finished goods can be reduced and import duties abolished, among other things, Vedomosti said. 
Oil and gas accounted for about 46 percent of exports last year, Vedomosti reported, citing Central Bank figures. 
Attendees at the RSPP’s 15th anniversary conference Wednesday are expected to include Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Education Minister Andrei Fursenko and Severstal chairman Alexei Mordashov.
Under Putin’s rule, the balance of power between the state and the oligarchs has shifted beyond recognition, as the RSPP has gone from setting the agenda to following the Kremlin’s lead. 
The turning point was widely seen as coming in 2003 with the arrest and prosecution of then-Yukos chief Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Since then, the oligarchs have sought to stay in the Kremlin’s good books in an apparent effort to avoid a repetition of the Yukos affair.

TITLE: State to Tighten Grip on Metals
AUTHOR: By Miriam Elder
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Alrosa’s president said Friday that he would step down, fueling speculation that the state was preparing to take control of the metals industry and turn Alrosa into a state mining giant.
The metals sector is a key part of the economy that remains out of state hands. Speculation is rife that the Kremlin plans to fashion Alrosa into its state mining champion, starting with a takeover of Norilsk Nickel.
Alrosa said in a statement that Alexander Nichiporuk, who became president of the diamond monopoly in December 2004, would step down because he had fulfilled his main tasks, including “safeguarding government ownership of the diamond industry.”
The statement did not give an exact date for his departure or indicate his next move.
Nichiporuk is likely to be replaced by Sergei Vybornov, the head of Alrosa’s investment arm and a former senior manager at Norilsk Nickel, the country’s leading producer of palladium, platinum, copper and nickel, Interfax reported, citing industry sources. 
A shift in ownership structure at Norilsk is priming the company for a takeover. Vladimir Potanin, the country’s ninth-richest man, will own 54.8 percent of the company after striking a deal to buy out his business partner Mikhail Prokhorov last week. Prokhorov also is stepping down as CEO of the company. 
The deal is part of a larger restructuring of Potanin’s Interros holding company.
Al Breach, chief strategist at UBS, said a takeover of Norilsk was a sure thing. “It has to happen before the election,” he said, referring to the 2008 presidential election marking the end of Putin’s second term.
“We are moving forward with seeing Norilsk Nickel going back into state hands,” said Roland Nash, head of research at Renaissance Capital. 
“We have seen two significant changes in two parts of the strategic economy which are an anomaly in that they remain outside Kremlin control,” Nash said.
The federal government has been seeking to increase its 37 percent stake in Alrosa, which produces around one-quarter of the world’s diamonds, placing it second only to De Beers, to a controlling 50 percent plus one share.
The remaining shares in Alrosa, whose board is chaired by Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, are owned by the Sakha regional government, several Sakha districts and by company staff.
The federal government is struggling to buy up shares from the Sakha government, which owns a 32 percent stake and relies on the company for most of its revenue.
Alrosa officials could not be immediately reached for comment Sunday.
The state has taken large strides to re-exert its influence over key parts of the economy in recent years. The most visible national champions to emerge lie in the energy sector, with Gazprom dominating the gas industry and Rosneft leading in oil. 
Both companies have spearheaded attempts to impose a large state presence over major energy projects, from taking over private Yukos assets to muscling into the formerly Shell-led Sakhalin-2. Rosoboronexport has paved the way in arms and autos, taking over car giant AvtoVAZ last year.
Potanin and Prokhorov had been in talks on the Norilsk shakeup for most of last year and had agreed in December that Prokhorov would step down in April of this year, Kommersant reported Thursday, citing company sources.
Potanin said on state television Sunday that Prokhorov’s high-profile detention in France last month as part of an investigation into a high-class prostitution ring prompted him to speed up the process.
“This scandalous situation … sped up the announcement, which we made in order to close this chapter,” Potanin said.
Asked what could be done to repair the damage, Potanin replied: “To behave better.”

TITLE: Dependence on Oil Could Hurt When Luck Runs Out
AUTHOR: By Simon Shuster
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — News that the GDP grew a healthy 6.7 percent in 2006 met with as much anxiety as cheer among analysts, who said the economy got lucky last year with the oil price but is not diverse enough to stay ahead if that luck runs out next year.
Reaching $981 billion, gross domestic product climbed almost one-third of a percent faster in 2006 than it did the previous year, according to preliminary data released Wednesday by the State Statistics Service.
But Natalya Orlova, chief economist at Alfa Bank, said the sensitivity to oil prices was intensifying. “While the prices were high, it was not such a concern. But if they continue falling as they have been, it will affect every industry that depends on consumption,” including everything from finance to food, she said.
Alfa Bank’s oil price forecast for 2007 is $55 per barrel, about $12 per barrel less than last year’s average. Brent crude was trading at $58.41 per barrel in London at Friday’s close. 
The construction industry saw the most resilience of all last year, growing 14 percent as the building boom continued. 
And at first glance, the financial and communication sectors, both with around 10 percent in yearly growth, seem to be signs of a diversifying economy. But Orlova said this was deceptive. Both of these markets rely heavily on the capital inflows from oil and gas, which accounted for 63 percent of the economy last year. 
There were also disappointing numbers for household consumption, whose share in GDP use fell by about one percentage point. This was combined with a spike in imports, partly as better-paid Russians demand more goods produced abroad. But even though imports were 38 percent of GDP, the trade balance was still positive, with exports outpacing imports by 12.7 percent. 
About 40 percent of these imports, however, were heavy machinery — a good indication that Russians are investing in major industrial projects, not just flat-screen televisions, said Peter Westin, chief economist at MDM Bank.
Still, the role of investment in GDP use stayed at around 18 percent, which is “sufficient for moderate growth but too small to expect successful diversification away from fuels and metals in the near future,” Renaissance Capital said in a research note. 
The need for this diversification was underscored last week by The Economist’s Big Mac index. The index assesses the value of various currencies on the basis of their purchasing power, and it found that the ruble was undervalued by 43 percent. If this is true, the ruble should soon strengthen, and the commodity exporters will take the biggest hit in their labor and production costs.
One hopeful development came last week from a change in the policies of the RTS exchange. On Friday, the RTS began posting the prices and volumes of all of its over-the-counter trading, which is the trading of small companies’ stock through informal dealer networks.

TITLE: Turning the Tables With an Electric Knack for Business
AUTHOR: By Yelena Andreyeva
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Pavel Stogar is what one might call an authentic entrepreneur. He might not have studied the first principles of economics, but that did not stop him, at the age of 16, launching his first business. Perhaps he has what they call “business acumen.” That is what has allowed him to succeed in a variety of areas, from transport to computing, loans to entertainment.
Born in 1972 in Leningrad, Stogar launched his first business project at the age of 17 when he began to sell photographs of Western rock singers to his classmates in high school. 
“Although it was illegal to sell them in the Soviet Union, they were in big demand among teenagers and it was a very profitable business,” Stogar said.
Even after entering the College of Civil Aviation to study air transport management, he found the time to develop his music business and started organizing discos for students. 
“Normally I not only arranged discos but also acted as a DJ. It was great fun!” he said. 
With growth in the popularity of Stogar’s discos, he was invited to run parties in the students’ dormitories. And in order to earn money for the disco equipment, Stogar illegally sold chicken eggs from a van in the street. “In the beginning of the 1990s my whole family was involved in that eggs business and it gave us money,” he said. 
In 1992, Stogar graduated from college and planned to enter the Academy of Civil Aviation but admissions were suddenly suspended, forcing him to take a year out.  
“At that time it was fashionable in Russia to go into business and I was desperate to try it too,” he said. Stogar’s father, who worked as an administrator in Civil Aviation helped his son to set up a transport business. “I used a situation to my advantage — two big travel agencies had come into conflict with each other. They had already sold tickets on a charter flight to the United Arab Emirates but did not want to share seats between themselves on one plane. So I was the one who was leased the TU 154 plane with the purchased seats. It was really unthinkable but it took me only four days to sell the rest of the tickets,” Stogar said.
Stogar worked in the field of tourism for about two and a half years. He sold travel packages to the United Arab Emirates, first from St. Petersburg and then from Volgograd where he moved to try and gain a share of a new market. 
“At first my packages were much in demand — no other local travel agencies had offered trips to the United Arab Emirates in Volgograd before. Gradually the competition increased, however, and, in 1996, I sold my business for a profit and came back home to St. Petersburg” Stogar said.
After some thought he launched the first consumer loan company Nadezhda (“Hope”) which provided consumer loans for the personnel of the Leningrad Nuclear Power Station. 
Although Stogar has no degree in finance, he said he always clearly understood what was needed to make businesses work. “It’s hard to explain how it works out in business,” he said. “You just see the whole picture, try to combine different elements that are lacking and, as a result, get something new. To my mind, that’s what you call the business acumen essential for every businessman. I believe I do have it.”
Stogar closed the consumer loan company after the financial crisis in 1998 and it took him more than a year to find a new business opportunity. But throughout this time he remained interested in music and continued to spin hardcore techno music as a DJ, as well as promote new music projects. “It has always been creative work for me. It supplemented my other occupations, often gave me a second wind in hard times and I really enjoyed it,” he said.
Soon he was back in the business of transport services and launched the outsourcing courier delivery service for Pulkovo Express, which subsequently operated the General Air Transport Sale Agency.  But Stogar had ambitions on a larger scale. In 2000 his friend offered him the opportunity to start an IT company. “I had no real idea about the IT business and it took me some time to think it over before I agreed and we founded Dr. Comp, a company providing technical support for PC users,” he said.
Stogar said that at first almost nobody believed Dr. Comp would be a success. “It was said that there was no demand for such services because most people who bought computers had higher education and were able to fix them without professional assistance,” he said. “Now the situation has changed. Modern computers are just another household appliance available to common people and our services are very much in demand. Among Dr. Comp’s clients are large firms such as ADSL Avangard and Peterstar,” he said.
In Stogar’s opinion, no problems are insoluble and you just need to look for new ways of finding solutions. 
Another of his business ideas came from his continued involvement in music. As a promotor of open air festivals, such as the non-commercial festival Mednoye Ozero (“The Brass Lake”), Stogar saw at first hand the vast amounts of electric power needed to operate them. Thus, in 2003, he set up a new branch of his multi-faceted business — the lease of electric generators and provision of corresponding technical support. Stogar’s power generators operate at most open air events, including last year’s G8 summit. 
But despite the variety of his business activities, Stogar always remains on the look out for something new.  
In 2000 he started the transport company Aerocomplex, which with Marinecomplex, launched last year, lease VIP forms of transport by air and sea as well as appropriate technical support. 
“My main business credo is to hire professionals and manage them efficiently. If you apply the right business model you can run plenty of profitable companies, operating in various spheres of business,” Stogar said.

TITLE: Soviet Roots Thicken Nicely in Bright Glass Container
AUTHOR: By C.J. Chivers
PUBLISHER: The New York Times Service
TEXT: MOSCOW — In a city starved for winter light, little could seem more out of a place than this: On a day dimmed to gray by a canopy of clouds, Russian workers in short sleeves picking green lettuce and fresh herbs, all while illuminated by brilliant light. 
This is the strange late-January scene at Agrokombinat Moskovsky, a maze of greenhouses at Moscow’s southwestern edge conceived by the Communist Party under Leonid Brezhnev in 1969.
Warmed by gas and lit by almost uncountable electric lights, the sprawling complex once fed the party elite, keeping the Kremlin stocked with mushrooms and greens no matter the winters swirling outside. 
Now, nearly four decades on, it has survived the turbulence of post-Soviet transition to undercut common perceptions of Russian agriculture and life and to become a measure, in its way, of Russia’s change. 
Much of the country’s agricultural infrastructure is in disrepair, and across many rural regions farm production and labor are in disarray. The government has made reviving the agricultural sector one of its so-called national projects, a target for investment and recovery.
But the sights in Agrokombinat Moskovsky show that such problems are not universal. The business, now privatized, claims to have registered more than $75 million in sales in 2006. Its managers point to the crowded produce shelves in Moscow’s supermarkets and dare an unlikely boast. 
“People remember when it was hard to find greens in Moscow, but today you can find them in every single decent supermarket,’’ said Yevgeny Sidorov, the general director. 
“Moscow has the freshest green plants in the world.’’
That last claim, unverifiable, is nonetheless no longer absurd. 
Moscow’s food stores, formerly famed for bare shelves and long lines, are now kept stocked with fresh champignons and greens — even in the freeze one year ago that almost paralyzed much of the capital, with temperatures from minus 22 to minus 30 deg.C for more than a week.
One reason can be seen here in the nearly 120 hectares under glass, a midwinter microclimate where workers roam semi-automated greenhouses, surrounded by a continuous spring. 
As many as 1,700 people work in the business, from delivery truck drivers to those who breed and raise the predacious insects that are released, instead of pesticides, to keep the plant-eating insect population in check. The sights and smells that surround them seem far out of place.
In several greenhouses small pots with lettuce seedlings are arranged on long plastic trays and then placed atop a moving frame that looks like an elevated and elongated football field.
The holders are packed tightly and move slowly by automation to the greenhouse’s far end, watered along the way.
When the full-grown plants reach the opposite end they are plucked from the pots, bagged by hand and wheeled off on carts, bound for any of the 800 Moscow markets that the complex supplies. Under the company’s rules, all of the produce that does not sell within three days is retrieved and thrown away.
Behind the freshly picked greens, more are coming, an assembly line that continues past the seedlings to an automated seeding machine where the process begins. 
The oyster mushroom rooms are even stranger: huge, cold, silent chambers where the spores are cultivated in thigh-high bags of wheat straw mixed with water and chicken manure.
Mushrooms sprout through slots in the bags, and the workers cut them away by hand, harvesting repeated crops over the course of several months.
Cultivating mushrooms this far north comes with inviolable local requirements, including that the temperature never fall below 6 deg.C, the warmth required to melt snow quickly. “Otherwise the roof could collapse,’’ said Alexander Zimenko, a sales director and specialist in mushroom cultivation. 
Agricultural resourcefulness aside, the complex now also serves as a marker of the evolution of business and Moscow’s landscape since Soviet times. 
It was established by the Central Committee of the Communist Party, and with the intensity that often accompanied Soviet mandates, it was swiftly created on idle land, reaching nearly half its current size within two years. About 60 more hectares were added in the 1980s, when the party ordered an expansion. 
With the greenhouses came the accompaniments of Soviet life: blocks of housing for the workers and schools and kindergartens for their children. It was an agri-city on the capital’s edge, demonstrating Soviet science and progress. 
Its longtime workers look back on the achievement fondly; here was an investment that worked. “One has to pay tribute to the leadership of the country,’’ said Sidorov, who began here in 1983 as an engineer working on the boilers. 
Today the complex sits beside the expanding Vnukovo Airport, where more flights come and go than could have been imagined back then. 
Travelers flying into Vnukovo in the evening see the complex’s brightness, which often sets a swath of the cloud deck aglow on the approach. 
Kievskoye Shosse, which passes by the greenhouses, is crowded with foreign cars, which have replaced most of the Zhigulis and Volgas. 
The grounds themselves have also changed. The company invested $30 million in new greenhouses that opened last fall for the city’s expanded flower market. The plants are tended in part by a robot that rides through the complex on rails. 
Beside these new glass buildings, the large, single-family homes of Moscow’s expanding upper middle class have crept to the boundaries of the property, just as long ago happened in the farmland outside New York. 
As his black Mercedes waited outside, Sidorov shook his head at the change in a city rapidly remaking itself and spreading beyond its old footprint. “All of this was once bare field,’’ he said. “There was nothing there.”

TITLE: Coca-Cola Has the Bottle To Satisfy National Tastes
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling, the world’s second-largest bottler of Coke beverages, may team up with an international or a Russian beverage company to produce a national drink, kvas, Kommersant reported, citing company spokesmen.
Coca-Cola HBC held talks at the end of last year with Efes Breweries International over bottling the drink and no final agreement has yet been reached, the newspaper said, citing Efes-Russia spokesman Kirill Ustinov.
The company first plans to use the production facilities of a partner and will decide on whether to continue after analyzing the drink’s sales, the daily said, citing an unidentified person at Coca-Cola.
Coca-Cola HBC also aims to buy Russian and Ukrainian water companies to capitalize on consumers’ changing tastes. The beverage maker has been seeking more water purchases in former Soviet countries to tap growth that is stronger than in Western Europe and become less dependent on sodas. Coca-Cola HBC bought six water and juice companies in the last two years including Russian juice maker Multon, acquired in 2005 with Coca-Cola.
“Consumers in Russia are adopting more Western consumption patterns and are hungry for more types and variety of products,” said George Toulantas, a spokesman for the Greek company.
Coca-Cola HBC has also been in talks with brewing company InBev and beverage producers Borodino and Polyustrovo, Kommersant said, without citing anyone.

TITLE: Stay Loyal To Illusions Of Choice
AUTHOR: By Anna Shcherbakova
TEXT: Sometimes free choice is pure illusion as well as a market force. Several years ago the old ugly water heating equipment in my apartment was replaced with something brand-new. It was produced by a German company with more than a hundred years of history, and was pretty expensive, so I was confident that my problems with warm water would be alleviated, if not for a century then at least for a decade. The state-of-the-art technology broke twice within four years. The second time was particularly disappointing because it was the most crucial part and could only be replaced by authorized staff. 
While most companies provide technical assistance almost around the clock, seven days a week, authorized ones don’t venture beyond business hours, something particularly inconvenient for me as well as for many of their clients, I would suggest. But who cares, if we have no choice and need this particular service and component made by the company with a long history. 
Some companies behave like girls. When they are lonely they have, let’s say, a very flexible schedule. But after finding a strong partner they no longer care because all wild competition is over. It’s probably good for girls who want to start a family, but it’s not great for a company. After getting an important client they put a certificate on the wall, saying “We did it” and begin operating from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., with no contingency for those who might be at work at that time. 
For customers it is an inevitable question of dependence — on choosing any equipment or brand switching to another one becomes difficult and expensive. 
“We’ll depend on someone anyway, so we better depend on you,” said the top-manager of a big enterprise to a prospective partner who was proposing the installation of an informational system. These systems costs hundreds of thousands of dollars and installation needs hundreds of hours of work. Signing the contract makes the client doomed to work with a particular IT company for years. It’s like a marriage. 
As every girl should know, marriages are fragile and every business should always be aware: the good times could soon be over. 
The latest changes in telecommunications are a good example. First new independent players started to provide long distance calls by shedding prices. Now that local calls are being charged for, customers will prefer to use mobile phones and a new round of competition between operators is to be expected. The state-owned monopoly still exists but is already under threat.
In many industries the risk of losing clients is extremely high. As a result we have supermarkets and gyms that work around the clock, bonus miles on airlines, “compliments of the chef” in restaurants and boutiques that congratulate you on your birthday. 
These nice things might well increase customer loyalty from those who have already used such services at least once. The competition is strong, and businesses cannot stop caring for their clients. I’m aware of it not only as a customer, but also because of my role in the highly competitive media industry. 

Anna Shcherbakova is St. Petersburg bureau chief of business daily Vedomosti.

TITLE: Developing a Good Banking Idea
AUTHOR: By Igor Nikolayev
TEXT: President Vladimir Putin’s administration has introduced a bill to the State Duma calling for the creation of a national development bank to stimulate economic growth by attracting more investment to the economy and increasing the effectiveness of investment already in place. The focus is to be on the consumer goods, labor and service sectors that have so far been unattractive for private banks.
The creation of such a bank is timely. Similar institutions in other countries have helped develop the type of investment activity Russia so clearly needs. The economy would continue to grow on its own on the strength of increasing consumer demand, but this is unlikely to be enough to keep growth rates at current levels over the long term. A different foundation, in the form of investment, is necessary.
There are 750 development banks in the world, and they play a major role in stimulating national economies. There are even interstate banks linking national economies. The role that these institutions play is key.
What is important in the Russian case is to understand the country’s own experience with such institutions, what lessons have and have not been learned, and what needs to be done to ensure success this time. There is no point in pretending that we are starting with a blank slate. We need to examine the local history.
The Government Investment Corporation, or Gosinkor, was established in February 1993 to stimulate foreign and domestic investment. It was liquidated in 2003. According to the corporation’s own statistics, it managed to attract $1.1 billion in foreign investment alone. Gosinkor consisted of about 30 organizations, including Guta Bank, Inkor Bank, Gosinkor Trust and others. But the increase in the quantity of new financial entities did not seem to be matched by a growth in their quality. If the corporation had really been effective, there would have been no reason to break it up. Some of the individual projects, like Guta Bank, did go on to further success, but not in line with the original rationale behind Gosinkor’s creation.
The Russian Financial Corporation, or RFK, was founded at almost the same time as Gosinkor, in March 1993. It established the same goal of increasing investment effectiveness by creating favorable conditions for the attraction of financial resources. The RFK was initially a state-owned enterprise, but was incorporated in 2003, and then sold to a single individual in 2005. According to RFK statistics, the bank was able to attract more than $70 million of nongovernmental funds to its various investment projects. This paltry sum demonstrates that, despite some positive accomplishments, the RFK did not exactly become a development institution of national scope. Today it functions as a small commercial bank.
There was a clear difference in the amount of capital provided for the two institutions, with the RFK being given a mere 50 million rubles in core capital, against a substantial sum of $1 billion for Gosinkor. The funds involved didn’t really matter in the long run, as the problem in both cases ended up being poor execution.
There was one more attempt on the development front, with the creation of the Russian Bank of Development in 1999. Created as a private company and functioning as a state credit organization, it provided credit for investment projects, receiving part of its funding from the state development budget. The primary function of both that and the current development has been to finance infrastructure projects identified as being of strategic significance and to manage their development. The initial capital provided for the Russian Bank of Development was only 3 million rubles.
But the bank’s initial experiences with providing credit for investment projects raised doubts as to whether the organization actually functioned as a national development institution. In 2001, the bank provided credit for 15 investment projects. They were all more or less typical projects, but had proven unable to receive credits on purely commercial terms. This sparked a debate over whether this was what the bank was created to do. Even the Audit Chamber chimed in with questions about these lending practices.
So, by December 2006, when the government decided to create a new national Bank for Development, there had already been three similar attempts. Unfortunately, nobody has made much of an effort to explain how attempt No. 4 will differ from those in the past or what might deliver greater success this time out.
The new project, however, is different in some ways. One of the key differences is that the new bank is to be set up as a state corporation, meaning that it will be a noncommercial organization. As such, the bank’s main activities will not be aimed at turning a profit. Gosinkor, the RFK and the RBD, on the other hand, were all commercial organizations. The new bank will enjoy the advantage of functioning in the current economy, which differs significantly from the deep economic crises of 1993 and 1999.
The government officials behind the plan have maintained from the outset that the Bank for Development will not finance projects that could otherwise arrange for adequate financing at favorable terms on the commercial market. This is the right approach. But it must also be kept in mind that those applying for loans will always try to portray the specifics of the programs in question in the most positive light possible. This means that the bank will have to develop a formal system for evaluating projects right from the start. Otherwise, large-scale investment projects of a national scope and operating with a zero-loss policy will quickly be replaced by purely commercial projects of lesser importance.
All ambiguities and discrepancies in the bank’s aims and procedures have to be cleared up in advance if it is to function effectively. The planners maintain, for example, that the bank should provide credit services to medium- and long-term projects in priority sectors of the economy.
This automatically raises a number of questions: What are the priority sectors? How is this to be determined? Will these priorities be left up to the bank itself to define? Without answers to these questions, the bank will again be eviscerated as a national institution.
The need for a national development bank is real, and questions surrounding its creation are related to its form rather than its existence. Given Russia’s own experience, the simple explanation that the idea has been successful in other countries is not enough. But clearly defining the bank’s objectives and activities right off the bat is vital. The bank’s reputation and the reputations of the people who will manage it are already being formed, and for a financial development institution, reputation is everything. 

Igor Nikolayev is director of the strategic analysis department at FBK Company. This comment appeared in Vedomosti.

TITLE: Sakhalin-2 a Good Deal for Shell and Gazprom
AUTHOR: By Alf D’Souza
TEXT: The Sakhalin-2 integrated oil and gas project is the world’s largest, operated by the Sakhalin Energy Investment Co., with Shell as one of its shareholders and technical adviser to the project. With a budget of $20 billion, the project represents the largest foreign investment project in the country’s history.
Robert Skidelsky’s comment “Coming Out Negative in the Balance,” published in The Moscow Times on Jan. 19, made a number of assertions about the Sakhalin-2 project that I believe call for clarification.
To date, government revenues from the project have been more than $600 million. Once the project has reached cost recovery, the annual benefit to Russia in royalties, hydrocarbons profits and taxes will rise to around $2 billion per year.
In July 2005, Sakhalin Energy increased its development budget from $10 billion to $20 billion. The higher costs reflect sustained energy and raw material inflation, wage increases and the complexity of the project, which was originally underestimated. Despite the higher cost and schedule delay, Russia still stands to receive some $50 billion of revenues from the project at an assumed oil price of $34 per barrel, and much more at higher prices. The revised unit costs for many elements of the project are comparable to other projects around the world. Note that total development costs are around $5 per barrel, including major infrastructure investment and large-scale construction.
The production sharing agreement mechanism is such that the private investor bears most of the burden resulting from the decrease in economic efficiency of the project, meaning that Sakhalin Energy and its shareholders have a strong motivation to keep costs low. Contrary to Skidelsky’s assertion, there is no guaranteed rate of return in this project and the final profits for investors depend strongly on cost control.
A comparison of tax regimes shows that the government’s take from the Sakhalin-2 PSA is actually much bigger than in many other countries, including that in the United States.
We welcome Gazprom’s entry into Sakhalin Energy as a leading shareholder. All shareholders see as their foremost priority getting Sakhalin-2 onstream and turning it into an international LNG hub.
Sakhalin-2 is a truly global undertaking and should be making headlines for much more positive and accurate reasons — the pioneering Sakhalin-2 project itself. Not only is it the world’s largest integrated oil and gas project, but it also represents Russia’s first offshore oil production, its first offshore integrated gas platform and first LNG plant.

Alf D’Souza is vice president for corporate affairs in Russia for Shell Exploration and Production Services.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>Korean Exchange</b>
SEOUL (Bloomberg) — Korea Exchange Bank, controlled by Dallas-based Lone Star Funds, aims to start operations in countries such as India and Russia.
Korea Exchange Bank plans to open about 10 offices in these and other countries, the Seoul-based company said in an e-mailed statement Monday. It didn’t provide further details.
Korea Exchange Bank, the country’s fifth-largest bank, and its Korean rivals are looking overseas as rising competition at home threatens their profit growth.
The banking units of Shinhan Financial Group Ltd. and Woori Finance Holdings Co., the country’s second- and third-largest financial services companies, opened investment bank operations in Hong Kong last year.

<b>UralSib Loan</b>
DUBAI (Bloomberg) — UralSib Bank, Russia’s biggest privately owned lender, hired Emirates Bank International PJSC and the U.K. unit of India’s ICICI Bank Ltd. to help it borrow $100 million for its trade-finance business.
Emirates Bank and ICICI are bookrunners for the one-year loan, the Dubai, United Arab Emirates-based lender said in an e-mailed statement Monday. They began syndicating the debt to other banks on Feb. 1.
UralSib Bank, which has more than $10 billion in assets and more than 17,000 employees, is seeking to borrow $100 million to help finance trade with Asia, Deputy Chairman Alexander Dementiev said in a Dec. 11 interview.

<b>TMK Components</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — TMK, the world’s second-largest producer of steel pipes used by the oil and gas industry, bought a pipe-components maker in central Russia to help cut costs.
The company acquired 75 percent of its long-term parts supplier Orsk Engineering Plant, located in the Orenburg region, according to a statement released Monday by the Regulatory News Service. Control of the plant passed to TMK on Feb. 1.
“The purchase is in line with TMK’s stated objective of increasing the share of the oil and gas services in its sales,’’ Chief Executive Officer Konstantin Semerikov said in the statement.
The Orsk plant, based in the town of the same name, specializes in tool joints for drilling pipes, couplings for tubing pipes and hydraulic cylinders for mobile drilling machines. It also provides service for three of Russia’s biggest oil companies, Rosneft, Surgutneftegaz and Gazprom Neft.
Tenaris SA, based in Luxembourg, is the world’s biggest producer of steel pipes for the oil and gas industry.

<b>Beluga Trade</b>
GENEVA (Bloomberg) — The United Nations agreed to let Iran, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Russia export a small amount of beluga caviar, the most valuable form of the delicacy, ending a yearlong ban on condition they work to save the species.
The decision to lift the ban and allow 3,761 kilograms (8,291 pounds) of caviar from the beluga species to be exported follows some shipping quotas for other species from the Caspian Sea region set last month. The UN’s Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species sets limits in an effort to conserve falling numbers of the caviar-bearing sturgeon.
CITES, based in Geneva, said the quota represents a 29 percent cut on the approved amount for 2005, the last year catches were allowed. Caviar is rare and expensive because sturgeon species mature slowly, producing eggs at seven to 15 years old, and only every two to six years thereafter. Beluga sturgeon can live for a century in the wild, growing up to 6 meters (20 feet) in length and weighing 1,000 kilograms.

<b>Lukoil Board</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — ConocoPhillips proposed Donald Evert Wallette, the U.S. oil company’s president of Russia and the Caspian region, as its  representative on the board of Lukoil, a Russian oil company in which it has a 20 percent stake.
Wallette would replace the U.S. company’s former Russia chief Kevin Meyers, who held the held the post for ConocoPhillips until December last year, according to a statement on the Regulatory News Service.
Wallete is one of twelve nominees to the 11-person board of Lukoil, Russia’s biggest oil producer. Others include Lukoil President Vagit Alekperov; head of the management board at Uralsib Financial Corp. Nikolai Tsvetkov; and Alexander Shokhin, President of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs.

<b>Gazprom Directors</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Gazprom’s board will nominate two former state officials for independent director seats, Kommersant said, citing a person close to the current board.
The board Monday will officially nominate Alexander Shokhin, head of the Russia’s Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, or RSPP, and Yevgeny Yasin, now rector of the Higher School of Economics, the newspaper said.
Russia’s natural-gas export monopoly currently has two independent directs and that may rise to three if foreign ownership of the company’s stock increases, Kommersant said.
All of Gazprom’s current 11 board members have been nominated again. A total of 19 people will vie for the 11 seats, including current independent directors Boris Fyodorov, founder of United Financial Group, now called Deutsche UFG, and Burckhard Bergmann of Ruhrgas AG.

<b>Vekselberg Spending</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Renova-Media, a unit of Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg’s ZAO Renova, plans to triple spending as the company rolls out networks in regional centers.
The company, which provides cable-TV and broadband Internet services, plans to boost investment to $300 million in 2007 from $100 million last year, Yuri Pripachkin, chief executive officer or Renova-Media, told reporters Monday in Moscow. The company will roll out broadband in St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-biggest city, and Yekaterinburg, an industrial center in the Urals.
Renova-Media plans to raise its subscriber numbers to 1.5 million by the end of the year, Pripachkin said. The company currently has 900,000 subscribers in Moscow and Minsk, the capital of neighboring Belarus.

<b>Baltic Site</b>
KALININGRAD (Bloomberg) — Baltic Oil Terminals, which plans to export Russian gasoline and heating oil, intends to buy real estate in the Kaliningrad port where it will build a shipping terminal.
Baltic is “in advanced negotiations’’ to buy a 358-acre site through its Tetoil Baltic unit from Cepruss for $11 million in cash, the company said Monday in a Regulatory News Service statement.
The site is located in the center of the Kaliningrad port, a Russian exclave on the Baltic sea, and will expand Baltic’s shipment capacity by adding to its other terminal being built nearby by Tetoil.
The two terminals will by the end of this year operate at capacity of 400,000 tons a month, and double that during 2009, the company said in the statement.

<b>Mordashov Stake</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Steel billionaire Alexei Mordashov sold his 49.3 percent stake in Severstal-Avto to the company’s General Director Vadim Shvetsov, Ria Novosti said Monday.
The transaction gives control of the carmaker, a unit of Mordashov’s Severstal Group Holdings, which includes the country’s biggest steel company, OAO Severstal, to Shvetsov, whose stake increased to 58 percent, the agency said.
The deal was closed at the end of January at “a market price,’’ Shvetsov said, adding that the company’s value is $976 million. Shvetsov added he intends to increase his stake in the automaker by buying shares on the market, the agency said.

<b>Fradkov Plans</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov may cut the powers of the economy, health and industry and energy ministries as part of a restructuring of the government, Kommersant newspaper reported Monday.
Fradkov suggested at a Feb. 2 meeting with President Vladimir Putin boosting the power of federal agencies at the expense of ministries to establish the Federal Agency for the Supply of Arms, Military Equipment and Material,’’ the Moscow-based newspaper said.
The government restructuring will start in spring and probably result in agencies becoming more autonomous, including reporting to several ministers instead of one, Kommersant said.
The changes may end conflicting polices between Russia’s environmental and natural resource agencies, the newspaper said.
They may also cut the power of Economy Minister German Gref, who has clashed with Fradkov on government policy, Kommersant said.

TITLE: UN’s Science by Committee Doesn’t Work
AUTHOR: By Philip Stott
TEXT: I confess I was afflicted by a profound world-weariness following the release Friday of the latest gloomy machinations from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The United Nation’s global warming caravansary, founded in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Program, had this time pitched camp in Paris in order to issue the “Summary for Policy Makers” relating to Working Group One of its “Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2007.”
This is the group that focuses on the physical science basis of climate change, and its summary was greeted with the usual razzmatazz, the Eiffel Tower’s 20,000 flashing bulbs being symbolically blacked out the evening before. Further reports from the panel are due this year, one in April from Working Group Two, on the impacts of and adaptation to climate change, and another in May, from Working Group Three on climate-change mitigation.
But it is the science summary that always gives rise to the jamboree — with journalists, politicians and eager environmentalists desperate to claim that this particular report is the last word on climate change, that it represents a true consensus, that the world is doomed, and that we must recant our fossil-fuel ways. Moreover, as in 2001 with the Third Assessment Report, Friday’s release was preceded by speculative leaks, the political shenanigans and spinning, beginning even before the final text had been haggled over and agreed upon.
Unfortunately, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change represents science by supercommittee, as Rule 10 of its procedures states: “In taking decisions, and approving, adopting and accepting reports, the Panel, its Working Groups and any Task Forces shall use all best endeavors to reach consensus.” I’ll bet Galileo would have had a rough time with that.
In this context, it is vital to remember that science progresses by skepticism and by paradigm shifts: A consensus early last century would have given us eugenics. Moreover, the panel does no original research, nor does it monitor climate-related data; its evidence is instead from selected secondary sources. But, above all, this supercommittee is more political than is often recognized, Rule 3 firmly reminding delegates that: “Documents should involve both peer review by experts and review by governments.”
Friday’s summary and “best estimates” of temperature rise by 2100 (as compared to pre-industrial times) are thus little more than a committee compromise chewed over by governments with different agendas: an average potential rise of 3 degrees Celsius (up from 2.5 degrees in 2001); a probable rise of between 1.8 to 4 degrees; a possible rise of between 1.1 to 6.4 degrees. So you can take your pick, also bearing in mind that there are groups outside the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that predict cooling by 1 or 2 degrees Celsius. Moreover, the conclusion that climate changes seen around the world are “very likely” to have a human cause is wonderful Alice-through-the-Looking-Glass talk.
Unsurprisingly, the report will please neither a Humeian skeptic nor a rabid apocalyptic. Indeed, even before it appeared, environmentalists were incensed that predictions for the rise in sea levels this century have been lowered to between 28 and 43 centimeters. They want the polar bears to be drowning now!
For the skeptic, however, the problem remains, as ever, water vapor and clouds. Enormous uncertainties persist with respect to the role of clouds in climate change. Moreover, models that strive to incorporate everything, from aerosols to vegetation and volcanoes to ocean currents, may look convincing, but the error range associated with each additional factor results in near-total uncertainty. Yet, there is a greater concern.
Throughout the history of science, monocausal explanations that overemphasize the dominance of one factor in immensely complex processes (in this case, the human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases) have been inevitably replaced by more powerful theories.
Worryingly for the panel’s “consensus,” there is a counterparadigm, relating to the serious uncertainties of water vapor and clouds, now waiting in the wings. In the words of Dr. Henrik Svensmark, director of the Center for Sun-Climate Research at the Danish National Space Center: “The greenhouse effect must play some role. But those who are absolutely certain that the rise in temperatures is due solely to carbon dioxide have no scientific justification. It’s pure guesswork.” A key piece of research in this emerging new paradigm was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A (October 2006): “Do electrons help to make the clouds?”
Using a box of air in a Copenhagen lab, physicists managed to trace the growth of clusters of molecules of the kind that build cloud condensation nuclei. These are specks of sulfuric acid on which cloud droplets form. High-energy particles driven through the laboratory ceiling by exploded stars far away in the galaxy — cosmic rays — liberated electrons in the air, which helped the molecular clusters to form much faster than atmospheric scientists have predicted. This process could well explain a long-touted link between cosmic rays, cloudiness and climate change.
The implications for climate physics, solar-terrestrial physics and terrestrial-galactic physics are enormous. This experiment ties in elegantly with the work of certain geochemists and astronomers who for some time have been implicating cosmic rays and water vapor, rather than carbon dioxide, as the main drivers of climate change. Indeed, they have put down up to 75 percent of all change to these drivers.
Cosmic rays are known to boost cloud formation — and, in turn, reduce earth temperatures — by creating ions that cause water droplets to condense. Calculating temperature changes at the earth’s surface — by studying oxygen isotopes trapped in rocks formed by ancient marine fossils — scientists then compared these with variations in cosmic-ray activity, determined by looking at how cosmic rays have affected iron isotopes in meteorites. Their results suggest that temperature fluctuations are more likely related to cosmic-ray activity than to carbon dioxide. By contrast, they found no correlation between temperature variation and the changing patterns of CO2 in the atmosphere. But the mechanism remained far from understood — until last October, that is, when the team in the Copenhagen lab may have discovered it.
Who knows where this exciting research will lead? What it unquestionably shows, however, is that the science of climate change is far from settled, and most certainly not by a government-vetted committee policy “summary” from a UN supercommittee.
The inconvenient truth remains that climate is the most complex, coupled, nonlinear, chaotic system known. In such a system, both doing something (emitting human-induced gases) and not doing something (not emitting) at the margins are equally unpredictable. What climate will we produce? Will it be better? And, if we get there, won’t it, too, change?
This is the fatal flaw at the heart of the whole global warming debacle. Climate change must be accepted as the norm, not as an exception, and it must be seen primarily as a political and economic issue, focusing on how best humanity can continue to adapt to constant change, hot, wet, cold or dry. The concept of achieving a “stable climate” is a dangerous oxymoron.
We must hope that IPCC Working Group Two on adaptation will set a wiser agenda in their April report.

Philip Stott, professor emeritus of biogeography at the University of London, is co-editor of “Political Ecology: Science, Myth and Power.” This comment appeared in The Wall Street Journal.

TITLE: At the Con Artist’s Mercy
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko has given his administration the assignment of replacing the $3.5 billion its economy lost as a result of higher prices for gas and crude oil from Russia. The two options suggested were the introduction of a rental fees for the land on which the pipeline to Europe stands and slapping a transit tax on Russian oil.
How Lukashenko arrived at the figure of $3.5 billion isn’t clear. At the end of last year he said Moscow was subsidizing the Belarussian economy to the tune of a mere $180 million. Now, for some reason, the figure has climbed to $3.5 billion.
And $3.5 billion is not even the maximum. Lukashenko mentioned another figure, $20 billion to $25 billion, which he claims is the volume of Belarussian subsidies to Russia. So if and when he gets his $3.5 billion back, it’s entirely possible he will be asking for another $25 billion.
What the actual sum might be is a moot point, since Lukashenko’s grievance is groundless in the first place. It is like a con artist walking into a restaurant and confronting the owner, saying, “I ate a bad shrimp here and nearly died. I want $100,000 in compensation.”
It’s clear that the problem here is not the shrimp, but the con artist, who is engaged in a simple act of extortion.
It is important to understand that Lukashenko is behaving like the con artist in this story not because he lost his confrontation with Russia, but because he won. Russia had started out in April by demanding $200 per 1,000 square meters, but in the end settled for just over $46, plus a 50 percent share in Beltransgaz, the Belarussian pipeline operator, at a wildly inflated value of $5 billion. Russia had wanted to impose customs duties on oil exports to Belarus, but ended up backing off, thus making it possible for Lukashenko to resell the same oil to Europe after tacking on the same duties himself. Lukashenko managed to force Russia’s hand with his insistent complaining about one bad shrimp.
It is clear why Russia ultimately caved in to Lukashenko’s demands. In an extended conflict involving a pipeline closure, Russia stood to lose more than Belarus. As an oil producer, Russia would first have been forced to top off its storage tanks, and then to stop pumping oil, thereby violating contracts with foreign customers. This would have meant billions of dollars in losses. Belarus, as an oil importer, could have simply purchased the necessary quantities of oil from Ukraine. Lukashenko’s tactics were designed to punish his Russian ally. The closure of the pipeline cost Russia more than it cost Belarus.
The two ways to deal with an irrational leader located in a strategically important zone are to: a) Send in the army, which is impossible because the Russian Army is a mess, as high- profile cases of hazing and the general reaction on the part of Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov have shown; or b) Support the opposition to the irrational leader and hope for his downfall, which is also an unacceptable approach due to the Kremlin’s chronic allergy to the threat of regime change through revolution.
In other words, Russia, by virtue of its own phobias and weaknesses, stood before Belarus like the unfortunate restaurateur, trapped in his own restaurant by the con artist. There is no way the police can help, so the restaurant owner’s hands are tied.
Taken all together, this is what Russia gets for being, at least according to the Kremlin, a great energy power. This is the way that energy riches increase the country’s international influence.

Yulia Latynina hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.

TITLE: Trying to Find the True Value of Brotherhood
AUTHOR: By Vladislav Inozemtsev
TEXT: After Moscow and Kiev managed to settle their dispute over prices for Russian gas deliveries at the beginning of last year, a concerted effort was made by the Russian side to portray the whole imbroglio as an anomaly. But the New Year’s holidays again brought another energy standoff — this time with Belarus over oil and gas prices — and the realization that showdowns between Russia and its closest neighbors over energy resources have likely become the normal state of affairs. No country in the neighborhood can now claim to be an exception. From Azerbaijan and Georgia to Ukraine and even Belarus — there appears to be a broad new theater of war in the making for both Gazprom and the Kremlin.
Is it fair to consider this 2007 offensive a “just war?” There should be no doubt on this front. President Alexander Lukashenko’s Belarus is a sovereign state with its own version of “sovereign democracy” and a just as sovereign economy that has managed to provide a relatively comfortable and stable standard of living for its people by reselling Russian oil and gas and smuggling foreign goods into Russia without paying duties or taxes.
In 2006, for example, Belarus needed about 10.5 billion cubic meters of natural gas to keep its homes heated and its businesses running. But the amount of gas it bought from Russia was much higher, at almost 19 bcm. Given the bargain-basement price of $46.80 per 1,000 cubic meters it was paying Russia for gas, and the price of $230 to $260 per 1,000 cubic meters it was charging its European customers, Lukashenko was doing pretty well in what amounted to a wholesaling operation.
Lukashenko’s activities in the oil business were not quite as profitable. In this case Belarus’ only advantage was that it didn’t have to pay Russian export duties, which had reached $180 per ton by the end of 2006 and accounted for about half of the price of oil delivered elsewhere. Given GDP growth of about 10 percent in 2006 — about 3 percent higher than that in Russia — Belarus could allow the import of consumer goods to rise by a staggering rate of more than 54 percent without any worries about negative economic fallout. The bottom line is that Moscow was subsidizing Minsk to the tune of more than $7 billion per year.
The obvious question is: What was Russia receiving in return? Formally, these arrangements were the result of an official union between Russia and Belarus, put in place by Lukashenko and then-President Boris Yeltsin to allow Yeltsin to maintain the illusion that he would be able to restore the late Soviet Union in some form. This illusion was vital to helping him turn back a challenge from Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov in the 1996 presidential election.
But any further development of the union remained only talk and, no real supranational institutions were ever created. For 10 years, therefore, Lukashenko had been selling Russia an intangible asset, the chance at maintaining its sense of empire, at a steadily increasing price.
But as oil and gas prices soared after 2000, Russia began to develop a sense of its own power based on its energy resources, rendering superfluous any attempts to play up a union with “Europe’s last dictatorship.” Sure, close ties with Belarus still provided brotherhood and solidarity, and these maintained their own value for a while.
This brotherhood was based more on a shared past than collaboration in any significant way in the present. In World War II one out of every four Belarussians was killed, either as soldiers fighting to defend the Soviet Union or by Germans in their villages or concentration camps. After the invaders laid waste to their homeland, the survivors returned to nothing. It was with the help of all of the peoples of the Soviet Union that Belarus was rebuilt. The experience of this “greatest generation” did the most to cement Belarussian-Russian ties.
As the last generation that experienced these times is passing away, however, so is this sense of unity. The new elites in both Minsk and Moscow are more interested in raising their own incomes and securing their own power by creating new national ideas, and these often cross the line from the national to the nationalistic.
The situation in Belarus today is part of a larger trend. The days of brotherhood have also come to an end in the case of Ukraine, after the 2004 presidential elections there had to be run a second time. The recent campaign against Georgians made it clear that brotherhood would not form the basis for official relations on this front either.
So if the wholesale value of brotherhood has fallen, the obvious question is: “How low?”
Not dramatically, as it turns out. Even with the new oil and gas contracts between Moscow and Minsk, Russia will still sell energy resources to Minsk at a total discount of about $5.8 billion in 2007. This is equal to roughly 10 percent of Belarus’ gross domestic product and 41 percent of total projected budget revenues.
Nevertheless, Lukashenko still appears to be disappointed with, if not angry at, the revised conditions. Given the control the state has over the media in Belarus, you can be sure that Lukashenko will launch some kind of sophisticated anti-Russian campaign without any real danger that the Kremlin will be able to fight back.
So an evaluation of the results of the “winter campaigns” of 2006 and 2007 reveals paltry gains for Russia at best. Russia now sells gas it buys from Turkmenistan for $100 per 1,000 cubic meters to Ukraine for $130. This is a much less lucrative business than in 2005, when the price paid to Turkmenistan was just $35. With transportation costs factored in, there’s not much left in the way of profit. On the Belarus front, Russia ends up receiving about $1.5 billion in cash as compensation for the innumerable political problems that still remain to be resolved.
As justified and reasonable as the goals of both campaigns might have been, the way in which they were mismanaged meant that they brought no real benefit. The Russian leadership still fails to see that if it wants to be recognized as a non-threatening energy superpower, the only strategy is to switch from the pipelines that make it dependent on neighboring countries to the freedom that shipping liquefied natural gas from its Baltic, Northern and Pacific seaports offers. There is really no future in waging wars with its neighbors over gas that is intended for an increasingly unfriendly Europe.

Vladislav Inozemtsev is a professor of economics, director of the Moscow-based Center for Post-Industrial Studies and editor of the Russian edition of Le Monde Diplomatique.

TITLE: The Bare Bones
AUTHOR: By Michael Scammell
TEXT: Not long ago, the London-based Russian novelist Zinovy Zinik speculated in the quarterly journal Kriticheskaya Massa on Western writers’ fascination with “wicked Russia,” concluding that it rested ultimately on envy: “For holding the wrong views in Russia you could be exiled to Siberia or executed, but the poet’s status as a superior being who conversed with tsars (and accordingly possessed real political power) was never in question.” In other words, the writer in Russia seems to count for something, whereas Western writers feel superfluous and marginalized. Zinik’s observation was both apt and timely. Even as I write, Tom Stoppard’s historical trilogy of plays, “The Coast of Utopia,” about the intellectual precursors of the Russian Revolution (Bakunin, Belinsky, Stankevich, Herzen, Turgenev and so on), is playing to packed audiences in New York, and now Martin Amis has come along with a new novel about the phenomenon of the gulag and its consequences for post-communist Russia.
Despite its love story and historical setting, the novel offers thin pickings in terms of human interest. The pairing of the two brothers, one a man of action and the other an indecisive intellectual, recalls some early works of Socialist Realism, while the voluptuous Zoya is little more than a projection of male fantasies. The description of Soviet everyday life bristles with improbabilities (two brothers in the same camp, windows wide open in November), and the narrator’s supposed Americanness is undermined by a plethora of British idioms (“effing and blinding,” “skivers and chancers,” to name only two). Dialogue between the two brothers more often reflects the formality of a British drawing room than the raw vulgarity of the gulag.
All of which makes one wonder why on earth (other than for the reasons Zinik gives) the enfant terrible of English letters would decide to “go Russian,” and why he would go to such lengths to revisit a life and a social system that have been so vividly and accurately dissected by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Yevgenia Ginzburg and innumerable other memoirists. Did he know, for instance, about the superb chapter on a house of meetings (dubbed “public house”) in “Goodnight,” the late masterpiece of Abram Tertz (Andrei Sinyavsky)? Why not simply refer readers to this rich existing literature instead of appropriating and trying to compete with it? 
Two further reasons spring to mind after reading the novel. The first is perhaps obvious in the wake of Amis’ book of essays on Josef Stalin, “Koba the Dread,” where he expressed his conviction that the evils of the Soviet system still haven’t been fully absorbed and understood. The Soviet nightmare, according to Amis, has been dismissed by an older generation and isn’t even on the radar of the younger generation, so what better time to remind everyone of what exactly transpired in the name of socialist idealism, and at a length more palatable to an iPod-toting readership than the three vast volumes of Solzhenitsyn’s “Gulag Archipelago” or the two volumes of Ginzburg’s memoirs? 
Less obvious but more striking is Amis’ apparent desire to “translate” this dissident literature (and the Soviet experience behind it) into terms more easy to digest by young Western audiences. In this context, the Anglicisms and the solecisms don’t matter, for they help, rather than hinder, the process of familiarization. The following passage, for example, could have been written by Solzhenitsyn, but not in this sort of language and terminology: 
This was how power was distributed in our animal farm. At the top were the pigs — the janitoriat of administrators and guards. Next came the urkas: designated as “socially friendly elements”. … Beneath the urkas were the snakes — the informers and one-in-tens — and beneath the snakes were the leeches, bourgeois fraudsters (counterfeiters and embezzlers and the like). Close to the bottom of the pyramid came the fascists … the enemies of the people, the politicals. Then you got the locusts, the juveniles. … Finally, right down there in the dust were the shiteaters, the goners, the wicks. …
You won’t find shiteaters, snakes or leeches in existing translations of camp literature, nor references to George Orwell’s pigs and “Animal Farm,” but they clarify the gulag hierarchy for British and American readers in an idiomatic language that more truly reflects the world they describe than most translations do. Similarly, Amis brushes aside the euphemisms used by even the most outspoken dissidents to talk about the seamy side of camp life in favor of explicit terminology that leaves nothing to the imagination. In doing so he is correcting the last vestiges of censorship in 20th-century Russian literature — not political censorship, of which the dissidents were free, but moral censorship or self-censorship, which reflected the norms of polite society, but involuntarily airbrushed the gulag experience and exaggerated the heroic at the expense of the sordid. 
The only place where I would fault Amis in this regard is in his blanket condemnation of Russia during and since the Soviet era. His inclusion of the Beslan school massacre purports to show that Vladimir Putin’s Russia is barely better than its Soviet predecessor, while the narrator’s nihilistic bloodlust and sexual sadism are made to appear those of a Russian everyman. It’s as bleak a picture of Soviet and post-Soviet Russia as one is likely to find in print today. Yet fascination and imitation suggest admiration. Amis’ is a frustrated love of Russia. His bitter arraignment of Russia’s tragic past and chaotic present suggests not hopelessness, but a desire for an awakening of Russia’s moral conscience, and a search for a way back to contrition and redemption.

Michael Scammell is the author of “Solzhenitsyn, a Biography,” and has just completed a biography of Arthur Koestler.

TITLE: Literary Salon
AUTHOR: By Victor Sonkin
TEXT: In “The People’s Act of Love,” author James Meek has all the ingredients for an energetic adventure novel. Yet he does not write one.

Demonstrating the speediness of the Russian publishing industry, James Meek’s acclaimed novel “The People’s Act of Love,” first published in Britain in 2005, appeared in Russian translation in late 2006. This may seem less surprising if one takes into account that the book is set in 1919 Siberia, and is thus something of a Russian historical novel.
Meek lived in Russia in the 1990s, working as a reporter for The Guardian and The Observer. His years in the former Soviet Union inspired him to write a work of fiction. His novel has several intertwining stories, each focusing on a different character: the young revolutionary Kyrill Samarin, an escapee from a gulag-like tsarist prison camp; Anna Petrovna, a young woman living in the drowsy Siberian town of Yazyk; Gleb Balashov, a member of a sect of castrates who emasculate themselves for the love of God; and Josef Mutz, a lieutenant in the Czechoslovak Legion, lost in Siberia amid the chaos of the Civil War. Add to that the somber chilliness of the Siberian taiga, the peculiar rites of a Tungus shaman, the disorder of the revolutionary years and some nostalgic memories of a more peaceful past — and you have all the ingredients for an energetic adventure novel
Yet Meek does not write one. His plot lines are long and meandering; they intertwine but do not crisscross as in a typical thriller. And his narration is mellow and reserved. It is perhaps this trait that made many critics call “The People’s Act” a typically Russian novel, albeit one written in English. I think this is a misunderstanding caused by some innocent stereotyping. But the book is diligently researched, and there is very little in the way of klyukva — or “cranberry” — as Russians call the unlikely, stereotyped observations of outsiders.
The Russian edition, though, leaves much to be desired. Translator Adam Asvadov is not fully comfortable with English, and the Russian style he chose for the book predates the time of the novel by about a century (that is, if Meek had Chekhov and Nabokov in mind, the Russian text goes all the way back to Karamzin). Finally, there are fake blurbs on the back cover; one, supposedly from The Observer, compares Meek with “Mayne Reid and Pasternak.” Not a soul in the West knows that obscure Irish-American adventure writer; his fame was a purely Russian phenomenon. So, kudos to James Meek and a subdued boo to St. Petersburg’s Amphora publishing house.

TITLE: In His Own Words: Putin Answers to the World’s Media
TEXT: President Vladimir Putin began his annual news conference with more than 1,000 national and international journalists on Thursday with an introductory speech putting his administration’s achievements into context. Then Putin opened the floor and took questions. Beginning with the words: “Thank you for your attention. I am ready now to answer your questions.” What follows is an edited transcript of some of Putin’s answers. 
G. FEIFER (National Public Radio, USA): Last year marked a turning point for Russia’s foreign policy. Moscow demonstrated that it will use its energy resources in its own interests. At the same time, relations with Western countries are at their worst levels since 1990, perhaps even since 1985.
You said recently that the term ‘superpower’ is an outdated notion from the Cold War era, and you said that it is other countries that seek to portray Russia as the enemy. Could you please name these countries? Does this include Washington and London? If not, who is it specifically that is trying to damage Russia’s image?
VLADIMIR PUTIN: We are constantly being fed the argument that Russia is using its current and emerging economic levers to achieve its foreign policy goals. This is not the case. The Russian Federation has always abided by all of its obligations fully and completely, and it will continue to do so.
But we have no obligation to provide huge subsidies to other countries’ economies, subsidies as big as their own national budgets. No one else does this, and so why are we expected to do it? That is the first point. 
Second, our actions, and the agreements we reach with the transit countries, are aimed above all at ensuring the interests of our main consumers. I can assure you that the experts understand this full well. Just recall how it was when we signed a contract each year with Ukraine for both gas supplies to Ukraine and for gas transit to Western Europe, and our consumers in Western Europe always depended on us being able to reach an agreement with our partners in Ukraine. But now we have separated these two aspects and created market conditions for transit.
As I just said, the experts understand this situation very well; thanking us would be more appropriate, but instead, we see a dishonest attitude to the interpretation of events taking place. This is, of course, the work of Russia’s ill-wishers. 
I am not suggesting that this is something going on at a state level, but there are people out there who do not wish Russia well. The people who write these kinds of things, it’s them who are our ill-wishers. So, if you write these kinds of things, then you are among their number, but if you give an accurate and objective portrayal of events, then you are not included in this category.
YELENA GULSHAKOVA (RIA Novosti): In your opinion, what have been the past year’s main foreign policy results? Several experts believe that Russia has created a ring of unfriendly neighbors around itself. Do you agree with this opinion? 
VLADIMIR PUTIN: We are building partner relations with all countries and of course we have closer relations with several countries — for example with the CIS as a whole — though there are some problems there. We admit that in the last little while we have in no way been able to regulate our relations with Georgia. But we have the Eurasian Economic Community where integration processes are developing intensively and the Collective Security Treaty Organisation.
As to our relations with other countries, as a whole we are satisfied with their development. And you know that praising or taking pleasure from the fact that you are being praised as you betray national interests is very simple, but to construct pragmatic, business-based relations while defending your national interests is not always possible without a certain amount of tension and problems. 
But in those cases I always remember a well-known old saying: “If you become angry then it means that you are not right”. We do not want complications with anyone. When I hear, as you said, that we are surrounding ourselves with a ring of malevolence, then it is not so.
Last year, at the beginning of the year, Russia had tense relations with our Ukrainian friends and partners because of energy, because of energy transport. One — well, I actually remember who, but I am not going to say so now – of my European partners said: “Look, there will be political changes in Ukraine. Yanukovich will come to power, you shouldn’t then change your energy policy.” I said: “we are not going to do this. We made an economic decision, not a political one.” 
Last year Ukraine received energy and gas for $95 and this year for $135 despite the fact that well-known, significant political changes took place in Ukraine. But our relations with Ukraine did not deteriorate because of this — they became better, stronger and more reliable, both for us and for Ukraine. We are always ready to help the Ukrainian people, the Ukrainian government and the Ukrainian President if they ask for our help and, in this case, in the energy sector. They know this. We said that we are always ready to help if necessary, even if it is not compatible with market principles.
But the most important thing we did was agree that our relations would be market-based. We signed documents on a soft transition to market-relations with all countries that transport our energy. This is what we are referring to. This does not depend on our political relations with these countries. For example, we have very stable and not simply trusting, but also strategic relations with Armenia. Yet Armenia pays market prices.
This year we had well-known difficulties with Belarus but we nevertheless signed an agreement on transport and on energy changing prices in the future to have entirely market-based relations. And in the end this is the most important thing. It is not even important how much Belarus pays today, rather it is important that we have determined the stages of a transition to market relations in documents.  But we did this softly – over four years – and in an absolutely friendly way. Of course, [they] might hope for everything that they had before in the future, but to have the same is not possible. This is not possible if we are different states. Do you understand? 
Belarus and Russia intend to nevertheless continue to build a Union State – we are very happy with and welcome the changes that the Belarusian leadership has made to work out common tariffs on crude oil and oil products. This is a real step towards creating a fully operational customs union. 
We believe that all is not lost with respect to having one currency. I am confident that our Belarusian partners are in a position to analyse reality, able to understand the reliability of the Russian economy and the Russian currency, and perhaps introduce a common currency. Not the Russian ruble or the Belarusian ruble but perhaps, as we had initially planned — because we planned to do this — to first of all use the Russian ruble. This is all possible.
MARINA LAPENKOVA (France Presse): Do you agree with [Moscow Mayor] Yuri Luzhkov’s opinion that the gay parade is the work of satanists?
VLADIMIR PUTIN: With regards to what the heads of regions say, I normally try not to comment. I don’t think it is my business.
My relation to gay parades and sexual minorities in general is simple – it is connected with my official duties and the fact that one of the country’s main problems is demography. But I respect and will continue to respect personal freedom in all its forms, in all its manifestations.
OLGA SOLOMONOVA (Gudok): Please tell us how you rate Sochi’s chances of hosting the 2014 winter Olympics? And considering the latest reports [on power cuts], it will probably be difficult and do we really need this?
VLADIMIR PUTIN: I have already said many times that the 2014 Olympics would be a good excuse for us to develop southern Russia, Sochi and the nearby regions. What happened now, a failure in electrical supplies, happens every year. 
When I used to work in the Supervision Directorate of the Presidential Executive Office, I went to Sochi for this reason, when there was a power failure. Every year the same thing happens: the wires ice over, the wires fail and so on. But this should in no way affect our plans to host the Olympics. 
As I already said in my opening address, we are now in the position to carry out large-scale regional investment projects that we couldn’t even dream out before. And Sochi is one of these projects. The planned investments amount to 314 billion rubles [$11.8 billion] and perhaps even more. If the Olympics take place then it will be a bit more. And if they do not take place then the amount would be a little less, because then we won’t need, say, to build two ice palaces in Sochi – that would simply be superfluous. 
But in any case we are going to carry out that investment project for us, for Russian citizens, so that people have the opportunity to vacation in their own country, to ski, to relax on the Black Sea coast. At present we have few opportunities of this kind. And in any case, we need to develop this. Not only for those who live in Sochi. For the whole country. And I have no doubt that if the International Olympic Committee decides in favor of Sochi then we shall certainly be able to prepare all necessary facilities in time.
STEVEN GUTTERMAN (Associated Press): After Anna Politkovskaya’s murder you said that there are people hiding from Russian justice who would like to damage Russia’s reputation. And after Alexander Litvinenko’s death your aide Sergei Yastrzhembsky said that this could be part of a plot with that same goal. Can you now tell us a few more details, several months after the tragedy, or say more precisely who you think is behind these murders? Do you think they are foreigners or Russians living abroad? And if yes, then who? Can you name them?
VLADIMIR PUTIN: Only an investigation can determine whoever is behind these murders. And, moreover, only a court can do so, because at the end of the day it is the court that, having weighed all the pros and cons — both the prosecutors’ arguments and the defense of the accused — makes the final decision.
As to prominent murders, then it is true that the problem of the persecution of journalists is a very acute problem both for our country and for many other countries. And we acknowledge our responsibility in this. We shall do everything possible to protect members of the press.
I recall not only Anna Politkovskaia — she was quite a sharp critic of the authorities and that is a good thing. I recall other journalists as well, including Paul Khlebnikov. And not long ago one of our American partners said something very true: “Paul Khlebnikov died for a democratic Russia, for the development of democracy in Russia.” I completely agree with him. I fully agree with this evaluation.
As to other well-known crimes, you know that just recently the investigation into the murder of the Vice-President of the Russian Central Bank has been finished. I very much hope that the law enforcement agencies will manage to find the criminals who have committed other, no less prominent crimes, and ones that are no less harmful to our country.
With regards to Litvinenko, I do not have much to add here, except what I have already said. Alexander Litvinenko was dismissed from the security services. Before that he served in the convoy troops. There he didn’t deal with any secrets. He was involved in criminal proceedings in the Russian Federation for abusing his position of service, namely for beating citizens during arrests when he was a security service employee and for stealing explosives. I think that he was provisionally given three years.  But there was no need to run anywhere, he did not have any secrets. Everything negative that he could say with respect to his service and his previous employment, he already said a long time ago, so there could be nothing new in what he did later. I repeat that only the investigation can tell us what happened. 
And with regards to the people who try to harm the Russian Federation, in general it is well-known who they are. They are people hiding from Russian justice for crimes they committed on the territory of the Russian Federation and, first and foremost, economic crimes. They are the so-called runaway oligarchs that are hiding in Western Europe or in the Middle East. But I do not really believe in conspiracy theories and, quite frankly, I am not very worried about it. The stability of Russian statehood today allows us to look down at this from above.
ALEKSEI IAUSHEV (Internet newspaper Fontanka.ru, St Petersburg): Vladimir Vladimirovich, St. Petersburg’s citizens are divided about the construction of the Gazprom City tower at the mouth of the Okhta River. As is well known, it will be more than three hundred meters high. What is your opinion on constructing a tower in the center of St Petersburg? 
VLADIMIR PUTIN: First of all, I would like to say that it is the business of the regional authorities — the governor and the deputies of the legislative assembly.
The second is that you know where they are going to build this tower (and as far as I know it is not just one tower — they are also planning other buildings and installations, and talking about constructing a so-called Gazprom City); they are going to build it by the Okhta River. 
I lived there for almost five years, literally close by, and I know what architectural jewels there are there. These buildings were built by captured German soldiers after the Second World War, so-called bulk buildings. I remember the first time I tried to hammer a nail in the wall, it just fell out! The walls are bad quality, and though from the outside these buildings do not look bad — they look quite solid — in general they do not have any value. 
I understand the concerns of those who say that it is very close to the historic center. I basically share these concerns. It is also certainly true that in earlier generations Petersburg became an outstanding center for world culture and architecture but our generations have done almost nothing. And, of course, we need some fresh air here, we need some centers that would stimulate development, including business activities.
I repeat once again that I do not confirm that this is the very best decision and, moreover, I do not want to influence decisions made by the city authorities. It is certainly true that such buildings would not damage the city. But where to build them — and I would like to repeat this once more — is a decision that must be taken at the level of the city authorities. It is not necessary to give these decisions to me, I have enough of my own problems.
BBC Correspondent: We would like to know your view on the Iranian leader’s proposal to create a gas consortium or some kind of organization similar to OPEC. You are going to visit Qatar and Saudi Arabia soon, and these are both countries that also have large gas reserves. Is this visit about energy cooperation between Russia and these countries?
VLADIMIR PUTIN: A gas OPEC is an interesting idea and we will think about it. In this initial stage we agree with the Iranian specialists, with our Iranian partners and with some of the other countries that are large suppliers of fossil fuels, above all gas, to world markets, and we are already trying to coordinate our activities on the markets of third countries. 
We have no plans to create some kind of cartel, but I think it would be a good idea to coordinate our activities, especially in the context of achieving our main aim of ensuring certain and reliable supply of energy resources for our main consumers. 

The original English-language transcript of the press conference was taken from <i>www.kremlin.ru</i>

TITLE: How to Be A Star At A Meeting With Putin
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Ask President Vladimir Putin a sharp question, and you are a star, no matter what he mumbles in response. 
Vladivostok journalist Maria Solovyenko won the loudest applause at Thursday’s news conference in the Kremlin when she expressed fears that state funds for a new investment program in her native Primorye region would be stolen. She started her request by calling Putin “incomparable.”
“You confuse me,” the president replied, feigning meekness.
To the other journalists’ delight, Solovyenko immediately laid into Putin, telling him that Primorye’s top officials were contrabandists, thieves and bandits and asking him to introduce direct presidential rule over the region.
Afterward, the television reporters from the national channels lined up in the lobby of the Kremlin’s ornate Round Hall to interview Solovyenko, as tired journalists streamed past to the exit. 
Putin’s sixth annual news conference, which state television referred to as “the big press conference,” beat the previous record set last year in attendees, length and questions. A total of 1,232 journalists, including 262 from foreign media, got accredited, while 1,150 showed up, said a Federal Guard Service officer who cleared arriving journalists having to stand back. The news conference lasted three hours and 30 minutes, four minutes longer than the previous one. Putin answered 65 questions. 
“The record is not beaten yet,” a group of journalists from provincial newspapers yelled 2 1/2 hours into the news conference when Putin said he was ready to leave. 
Not everyone was pleased that he stayed on. “Putin is just dragging out the time to set a new record,” moaned a Moscow radio journalist when the Q&A session passed the three-hour mark.
Having initially pounded the audience with statistics about the economy and spending, Putin loosened toward the end of the news conference, often cracking jokes. 
Perhaps the loudest laughter came when a reporter asked for Putin’s opinion about Mayor Yury Luzhkov’s recent decision to label gay parades as “satanic.”  “My attitude toward gay parades is simple and relates to my official duty, and I believe that the biggest problem in our country is demography,” Putin said with a slight smile. Putin, however, added that he respected “man’s freedoms, whatever forms they take.”
The annual news conferences show how Putin has learned to handle media attention and likes it, said Dmitry Oreshkin, a public relations consultant with the Mercator think tank. This may be why his annual news conferences are growing, from 40 minutes with 400 journalists at the first one in 2001, he said. 
Asked to identify his friends, he would not give names, saying only that they included former colleagues, including those from his years in the KGB.

TITLE: Colts Gallop to Victory at Super Bowl XLI
AUTHOR: By Steve Ginsburg
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MIAMI, Florida — Peyton Manning added the missing ingredient to his Hall of Fame credentials by leading the Indianapolis Colts to a 29-17 victory over the Chicago Bears in Super Bowl XLI on Sunday. 
Manning, a seven-times All-Pro quarterback slammed by his critics for failing to win when it matters, exorcised his big-game demons by completing 25 of 38 passes for 247 yards and one touchdown in steady rain at Dolphin Stadium. 
“In years’ past when our team’s come up short, it’s been disappointing,” Manning, the game’s Most Valuable Player, told reporters. 
“Somehow we found a way to have learned from some of those losses and we’ve been a better team because of it.” 
Indianapolis coach Tony Dungy believes the criticism of Manning was unfair but will probably linger. 
“Maybe people will say now, ‘If he doesn’t win two in a row, it’s not good enough,”’ the coach said. 
“But he’s done it, he’s got it behind him. I don’t think there’s anything else you can say now other than this guy is a Hall of Fame player and one of the greatest players ever to play the game.” 
With Indianapolis nursing a five-point lead early in the final period, cornerback Kelvin Hayden picked off a pass by Rex Grossman and returned it 56 yards for a score that increased the Colts’ advantage to 29-17. 
Grossman’s pass toward the right sideline was intended for Muhsin Muhammad and Hayden leaped in front of him before racing down the sideline accompanied by a cordon of blockers. 
Chicago’s offense, which had sputtered most of the night, never recovered, allowing Dungy to become the first African-American head coach to win the Super Bowl. 
“I thought about all the guys who came ahead of me, who could have done it and didn’t get the opportunity,” said the 51-year-old Dungy. “I dedicate the game to them.” 
Grossman completed 20 of 28 passes for 165 yards and a touchdown but had two crucial interceptions in the fourth quarter.
The Bears (15-4), seeking their first title since the 1985 season, also lost three fumbles. 
“It was slippery,” said Grossman, who fumbled twice. “When the ball was snapped up from center, it would just kind of slide off my hands.” 
Dominic Rhodes had 113 yards on 21 carries for the Colts, who amassed 191 yards on the ground. 
The Super Bowl victory was the Colts’ first since the 1970 season when the club, playing in Baltimore, defeated the Dallas Cowboys 16-13. 
Indianapolis recovered from a dazzling — and demoralizing — 92-yard touchdown on the game’s opening kickoff by Bears rookie sensation Devin Hester. 
Hester raced up the middle and cut to the outside, needing just 14 seconds to give Chicago a 7-0 lead. It was the first time in the Super Bowl’s 41-year history the opening kickoff was returned for a score. 
“Whenever you come out on the first play of the game and set the tempo, it says a lot,” said Hester, who scored six touchdowns on kick returns during the regular season. 
“It builds up the team’s confidence that we’re going to win. But it didn’t happen.” 
Indianapolis (16-4) responded to Hester’s score with a 53-yard touchdown pass from Manning to wide receiver Reggie Wayne but the conversion attempt was botched and the Bears held a 7-6 lead. 
A four-yard touchdown from Grossman to Muhammad following a fumble by Indianapolis gave the Bears a 14-6 lead with 4:34 left in the opening quarter. 
Adam Vinatieri kicked a 29-yard field goal to slice the Bears’ lead to 14-9. 
Indianapolis took a 16-14 lead, an advantage it never lost, with six minutes left in the half on a one-yard touchdown by Rhodes, capping a seven-play, 58-yard drive. 
Two Vinatieri field goals in the third quarter gave the Colts a 22-14 lead before the Bears’ Robbie Gould countered with a 44-yarder to trim the Chicago deficit to five. 
But the Bears could not close the gap, plagued by turnovers and the slippery conditions. 
Chicago coach Lovie Smith, like Dungy an African-American, said he was very disappointed. 
“When you turn the ball over as much as we did, it’s really hard to win,” he said. “We got off to a great start and had an eight-point lead. The turnovers really did us in tonight.” 

n 

U.S. troops in Iraq tuned out of the war and tuned in to the Super Bowl — staying up late to watch the Indianapolis Colts beat the Chicago Bears and for just a few moments remind themselves of home.
Football fans of all ranks said they didn’t mind staying up all night to watch the game as it was broadcast live — at 2:30 a.m. Monday in Iraq.
“It reminds me of all the people back home who are watching it,” said First Lieutenant Lea Ann Fracasso, 26, of Cincinnati. 
“Even though they’re not here, it’s like we’re watching it together.”
Fracasso, who is with Task Force 134 and was rooting for Chicago, joined about 80 other troops for a Super Bowl party in a mess hall at Camp Victory, complete with chicken wings and hot dogs and a large cake covered with white icing and decorated with a football field and helmets for both sides.
She also said she knew the game would dominate her next telephone conversation with her husband, who is in Chicago.
It was not likely to be a happy conversation as the Colts defeated the Bears 29-17 during a rain-soaked game in Miami.
The U.S. military went all out to make sure the troops could watch the game in style, putting up a big screen surrounded by three smaller TVs while paper footballs and cheerleaders hung from the ceiling and the walls.

(AP)

TITLE: At Least 29 Dead in Jakarta Flooding
AUTHOR: By Zakki Hakim
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: JAKARTA, Indonesia — Horse-drawn carts rescued residents from flood-stricken districts in the Indonesian capital on Monday after flooding burst riverbanks, killing at least 29 people and forcing some 340,000 to flee their homes in recent days. 
Clearer skies brought some relief on Monday, and witnesses said floodwaters were receding in several areas while levels at key rivers were dropping.
However, large areas remained submerged under waist-high waters and officials warned that rain to the south, which causes rivers that flow into Jakarta to swell, might result in more flooding later in the day.
Authorities estimated that between 40 percent and 70 percent of the city, which spans an area of 412 square miles — about the size of San Antonio, Texas — had been inundated.
“We expect residents to stay alert because water may rise again and very fast,” said Sihar Simanjuntak, an official monitoring the many rivers that crisscross this city of 12 million people.
People living in one upscale area hired carts and horses to pull them to safety.
“The government is awful,” said Augustina Rusli, who for five days was trapped on the second floor of her house with her 10-month old baby, expecting the floods to be short-lived. “We have a neighbor who is sick with cancer but no one has come to rescue her.”
Jakarta’s heavily criticized governor said he could not be held responsible for the worst floods to hit the city in living memory, saying they were a “natural phenomenon” that occur every five years.
“There is no point in throwing abuse around,” Governor Sutiyoso, who goes by one name, told el-Shinta radio station. “I was up until 3 a.m. this morning trying to handle the refugees.”
Incessant rain that starting falling Thursday on Jakarta and the hills south of the city triggered the floods. Tens of thousands of homes, school and hospitals — in poor and wealthy districts alike — were inundated.
Indonesia’s meteorological agency has forecast rain for the next two weeks.
The government has dispatched medical teams on rubber rafts into the worst-hit districts amid fears that disease may spread among residents living in squalid conditions with limited access to clean drinking water.
As of Monday, 29 people had died, mostly by drowning or electrocution, officials said.
“We have to be alert for diseases like typhoid, those transmitted by rats and respiratory infections. Hopefully, there will be no dysentery,” said Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari. “We know it’s hard for the residents (to keep clean) under the circumstances, but they have to.” Dr. Rustam Pakaya, from the Health Ministry’s crisis center, said nearly 340,000 people had been made homeless, many of whom were staying with friends or family or at mosques and government buildings.
Jakarta regularly floods, though not on this scale. Dozens of slum areas near rivers are washed out each year. Residents either refuse or are too poor to vacate the districts.
Seasonal downpours cause dozens of landslides and flash floods each year in Indonesia, a sprawling archipelago of 17,000 islands, where millions live in mountainous areas or near fertile plains.

TITLE: Baghdad Crackdown Begins Amid Killings
AUTHOR: By Sameer N. Yacoub
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGHDAD, Iraq — Violence raked the capital Monday as the general who will lead Iraqi forces in the coming security crackdown in Baghdad took charge and a senior U.S. military official said the much-vaunted joint operation with American forces to curb sectarian bloodshed would start “very soon thereafter.”
At least 27 people were killed Monday in bomb and mortar attacks.
Elsewhere, two key members of radical anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s political and military organization were killed as the top ranks of the organization continue to come under attack from both Sunni insurgents and U.S. and Iraqi forces.
With the major security push in Baghdad believed to be just days, perhaps hours away, the U.S. military confirmed that Lieutenant General Abboud Gambar, whose choice to lead the operation was reported by The Associated Press nearly a month ago, would lead the operation in Baghdad. He was named to the top position under pressure from the United States military, which rejected Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s first choice — Lieutenant General Mohan al-Freiji.
Gambar will have two Iraqi deputies, one on each side of the Tigris River that splits Baghdad north to south. The city was to be divided into nine districts, and there were to be as many as 600 U.S. forces in each district to back up Iraqi troops who will take the lead in the security drive.
The coming security drive, for which President Bush has dispatched 21,500 additional American forces, was seen as a last-chance effort to quell the sectarian violence ravaging the capital and surrounding regions. It will be the third attempt to restore calm since al-Maliki took office nearly nine months ago.
On Monday, a bomb placed in a garbage bin killed at least eight people and wounded 18 in a central Baghdad neighborhood shortly after noon, police said. Within minutes, two other car bombs blew up in quick succession in the south of the city, killing at least 15 and wounding 60.

TITLE: After Riots, Soccer Ban Shocks Italy
AUTHOR: By Phil Stewart
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: ROME — Italy’s football industry urged government and sporting authorities meeting on Monday to lift a ban on soccer matches as the nation prepared to bury a policeman killed by rioting fans. 
A soccer-mad nation which only seven months ago celebrated a World Cup victory was stunned by the outcome of riots at a derby between rival Sicilian teams Catania and Palermo on Friday, in which one man died and more than 70 people were injured. 
Ministers and soccer federation officials have vowed to hammer out emergency measures. Possible steps reportedly being considered include banning spectators from unsafe stadiums and redirecting a percentage of TV profits to improve security. 
But the industry was worried that officials could decide to prolong a costly suspension imposed last Friday on a sport that, beyond being a national obsession, rakes in an estimated $7.81 billion a year. 
Antonio Matarrese, who represents the financial interests of the teams as president of the football league, said hooliganism was a largely a police matter and matches should be resumed. 
“We are pained, but the show must go on,” he told La Repubblica newspaper. “Soccer must never shut down.” 
Speaking about the death of 38-year-old policeman Filippo Raciti, Matarrese said: “Deaths in the soccer system unfortunately are part of this enormous (hooligan) movement that the police have not been yet able to control.” 
The prime minister described the riots in the Sicilian city of Catania as a “guerrilla war.” Hooded youths wielding metal poles and large firecrackers lashed out at police, as streams of fans fled down city streets to safety. 
“It was terrible, terrible, terrible,” Pierluigi Zotta, one Rome soccer fan who had had time to reflect said. “Unfortunately most people on Sunday spend their day watching football, I didn’t know what to do with myself, but after this terrible thing it was right that soccer was stopped.” 
A firecracker which exploded in Raciti’s face was initially considered the cause of death, though a prosecutor said an autopsy showed it was due to a blow from a blunt object. 
Catania readied for a funeral to be led by the archbishop and attended by Interior Minister Giuliano Amato. Prime Minister Romano Prodi sent a message to Raciti’s widow and two children. 
“The sacrifice of your husband and your father, chief inspector Filippo Raciti, has shocked and moved Italy,” Prodi said. 
“To die on a day of celebration, during a sporting event that dozens of criminals transformed into a guerrilla war, is, if possible, even more absurd.” 
Raciti was the 13th person to be killed in or around Italy’s football stadiums since 1962.  
The Italian Olympic Committee (CONI), at an emergency meeting on Sunday, urged clubs to break off all relations with violent fans and said stadiums which fail to adopt tough measures could be banned from staging games next season.

TITLE: Blair Faces Pressure to Resign
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Most Britons think Prime Minister Tony Blair should step down now, according to an opinion poll published on Sunday after a week of damaging headlines for the premier over an investigation into political funding.
Blair, who plans to resign later this year after more than a decade in power, was questioned by police for a second time last month about the case which has also seen some of his closest aides arrested.
Blair said in a speech to activists from his Labour Party on Saturday that he did not underestimate the scale of the problems facing his government. But he has said the cash-for-peerages probe will not force him to bring forward his departure date.
The ICM poll published in the Sunday Express found 56 percent of those polled believed Blair should resign now. Even among those who termed themselves as Labour voters, 43 percent said Blair should leave his post immediately. 
Blair has refused to name a date for stepping down but many politicians expect him to hand over to Chancellor Gordon Brown in July.
Police are investigating whether Labour and other parties recommended donors, or those giving loans, for state honours that come with seats in the unelected upper house of parliament.
Labour’s top fundraiser and a Blair aide were arrested last month on suspicion of obstructing justice, leading opposition politicians to draw parallels with Watergate, the scandal that forced former U.S. President Richard Nixon to resign in 1974.
The affair has added another dent to the image of a government battered by the Iraq war, and the Conservatives now consistently lead Labour in opinion polls.
The ICM poll found that 66 percent of those interviewed believed Blair’s Downing Street office had tried to cover up evidence regarding the investigation into political funding.
Of Labour supporters, 56 percent of those questioned shared the view that there had been an attempted cover-up.
In December, Blair became the first serving prime minister to be questioned by police in a criminal investigation.
Police have interviewed him both times as a witness, not a suspect. No one has been charged and all those questioned deny wrongdoing.

TITLE: British Turkey Farm Hit by Bird Flu
AUTHOR: By Luke MacGregor
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: HOLTON — Britain aimed to complete the cull of 160,000 turkeys on Monday as a government crisis team met to tackle the nation’s first exposure to the latest deadly strain of the bird flu virus in farmed poultry. 
The birds were being gassed and incinerated after the discovery of the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of avian flu on a farm at Holton in eastern England run by Europe’s largest turkey producer, Bernard Matthews.
The slaughter of turkeys at the farm started late on Saturday with the dead birds being transported in sealed trucks to be incinerated. The cull is expected to end later on Monday.
The government’s emergency planning committee, Cobra, was due to meet on Monday to co-ordinate the response.
About 2,500 turkeys died in the initial outbreak of the virus. The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said the virus had been confined to the farm near Lowestoft.
“I am satisfied that everybody has moved as quickly as they possibly could have,” Environment Minister Ben Bradshaw told BBC radio. “We are exploring very carefully what the possible avenues for that infection might have been.”
Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt said on Sunday the government was preparing “very, very seriously” for the remote risk of a flu pandemic.
Workers wearing white protective suits, black gloves and masks loaded the turkeys into crates to be gassed at the huge farm and processing factory on a former airfield.
Farm workers were offered anti-viral drugs and restrictions were imposed on the way birds are housed and moved.
Within 3 kilometers of the farm, poultry must be kept indoors. A surveillance zone covers the area within 10 kilometers of the outbreak. In that area, bird fairs are banned and there are restrictions on bird movements. Red road signs demarcated the area.
Poultry must be separated from wild birds and movement must be licensed in a wider area, covering more than 2,000 square kilometers.
Defra said the virus was the same pathogenic Asian strain found last month in Hungary where an outbreak among geese on a farm prompted the slaughter of thousands of birds.

TITLE: No Malfunction at Super Bowl Half-Time Show
AUTHOR: By Douglas J. Rowe
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: Phew! CBS got through the halftime show without a “wardrobe malfunction.” The Artist Formerly Known as a Munchkin of Wardrobe Dysfunction began by singing “Let’s Go Crazy,” but he didn’t.
Prince, who became a Jehovah’s Witness in the mid-1990s, no longer wears yellow, butt-baring pants as he did at the 1991 MTV Video Music Awards. The closest thing to a fashion statement Sunday night was an odd kerchief on his head. So the NFL had no repeat of the 2004 Janet Jackson/Justin Timberlake show, which happened the last time CBS broadcast the game.
The 48-year-old Prince, who rose to stardom in the ‘80s with his distinctive fusion of R&B, funk, soul and rock, once looked androgynous and produced songs that drove Tipper Gore nuts.
Musically, the diminutive, erstwhile prodigy from Minneapolis kept it old-school, rockin’ the house with “Purple Rain” and other golden hits.
He delivered one of the best Super Bowl halftime shows — ever. Consequently, he didn’t come across as a painfully safe choice — or a has-been, the rap against the previous couple of Super Bowl halftime acts, Paul McCartney and the Rolling Stones.
Before and after Prince took the midfield stage (shaped like his symbol when he was The Artist Formerly Known As Prince), Jim Nantz and Phil Simms gave a bravura performance in the booth. Now in their third season together, the duo have a nice rapport.
Making his Super Bowl play-by-play debut, Nantz kept viewers on top of the action. Simms managed to be self-effacing about at least one comment that was off the mark. He insisted the weather would not be a factor; but the rain got heavier than he anticipated, and after the third of four turnovers in the first quarter, he chuckled about what he said.
“The rain is absolutely having a little effect,” he acknowledged.
It had an effect on CBS, too.
CBS Sports spokeswoman Leslie Anne Wade explained that the production crew kept cutting away from cameras that had condensation from the soggy conditions and kept wiping down the lenses as fast as possible between shots. In the control truck, they could see which of the 48 cameras needed to be cleared up.
“They’re working pretty hard, and they’re getting pretty clear pictures for the most part, for what the weather’s like here,” she said.
“Not easy conditions for anyone. Even our crew,” Nantz noted on the air.
Maybe high-definition TV owners annoyingly got more than their money’s worth, being able to see every drop and just how sharp — or not — fog can look on their fancy flat screens.
But it certainly was refreshing to see the elements affect a Super Bowl.
As usual, much of the day’s viewing diet had more to do with quantity than quality. But, how can the nation’s highest-rated TV program — and the run-up to it — not be bloated?
Ingesting 10-plus hours of Super Bowl coverage forces you to act like an anaconda: Just unhinge your jaws, swallow your prey and try not to be too conscious of your distended, distorted body.
There isn’t enough party dip in the world to give you that much indigestion (although the food segment with chef Bobby Flay came close). 
The six-plus hours of pregame hoo-ha began at noon EST with an NFL Films recap of the season, “Road to the Super Bowl,” with Tom Selleck capably filling the old John Facenda role of narrator.

TITLE: Quirky Ads Entertain TV Viewers
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: NEW YORK — Some 90 million viewers tuning into Super Bowl XLI were served up commercials featuring an accidental kiss, a lonely dog and a questionable hairstyle by advertisers looking to cash in on the year’s biggest TV event. 
Even everyday people got in the act on Sunday, with Doritos and General Motors’ Chevrolet airing commercials made by customers who had won nationwide contests seeing the best amateur advertisement.
Aired on CBS, the game was viewed by what is likely to be the biggest U.S. television audience of the year. About 20 marketers paid up to $2.6 million for a 30-second commercial spot during the game.
“From an advertisers’ perspective, this game is very unique,” said Tim Calkins, professor at the Kellogg School of Management, where he oversees their Super Bowl advertising review.
“The ad profiles keep going up, but so do the costs,” he said. “As a result, I think this year the spots were very broad-based, very safe, nobody was pushing the limits creatively.”
Anheuser-Busch Companies Inc., the largest U.S. brewer, was once again the biggest presence in the football game, running nine ads including a 60-second spot featuring its famous Clydesdales and a lonely, lost mutt posing as a Dalmatian.
“That was a very nice spot, a cute spot,” said Jonah Bloom, editor of Advertising Age. He said other Anheuser-Busch commercials, particularly the ones promoting Bud Light, “were of varying quality, but, generally mildly amusing.”

TITLE: Hollywood Actor Arrested for Son Assault
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MALIBU, California — Oscar-nominated actor Ryan O’Neal was arrested for investigation of assaulting his adult son at the actor’s Malibu home over the weekend, officials said. 
Deputies and paramedics were called to O’Neal’s Malibu residence at 12:30 a.m. Saturday “regarding a battery that had occurred,” said Los Angeles County sheriff’s John Benedict.
“Deputies determined … Griffin O’Neal, his son, had been assaulted by his father,” Benedict said.
The elder O’Neal, 65, was arrested and accused of assault with a deadly weapon and negligent discharge of a firearm. He was released on a $50,000 bond.
It was unclear what started the dispute, but O’Neal’s manager, Neil Hassman, claimed the actor was defending himself after his son began “wildly swinging a fireplace poker.” Griffin O’Neal’s pregnant girlfriend was slightly injured in the incident, and was treated at a hospital and released, Hassman said. He maintained that her injuries were caused by the younger O’Neal.
“It is unfortunate that what should have been an internal family disagreement was escalated to the point that Ryan felt he had to defend himself from Griffin’s aggressive, extremely menacing physical behavior,” Hassman said in a statement to “The Insider.”
Griffin O’Neal could not be reached for comment; there was no listing for his phone number.
The twice-divorced Ryan O’Neal went from a TV soap opera to an Oscar-nominated role in “Love Story.” He also appeared in films including “Paper Moon,” “Barry Lyndon,” “Green Ice” and “Zero Effect.”
O’Neal had two children with his first wife, Joanna Moore: actor Griffin O’Neal and actress Tatum O’Neal, his co-star in the 1973 movie “Paper Moon,” for which she won an Oscar for best supporting actress. He was romantically involved with Farrah Fawcett for years; they never married but had one son, Redmond.
Griffin O’Neal, 42, was given an 18-day jail sentence for not performing 400 hours of community service ordered by the judge who found him guilty of reckless boating in the 1986 accident that killed Gian-Carlo Coppola, the son of director Francis Ford Coppola.
Griffin O’Neal also pleaded no contest to a drunken driving charge in 1989 and was sentenced to probation.

TITLE: Apple and The Beatles Give Trademark Peace a Chance
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Apple Inc. has settled its long-running trademark dispute with The Beatles’ company Apple Corps Ltd., in a deal which could pave the way for the band’s songs to be played on Apple’s iTunes music store. 
In a statement, the companies said Apple Inc. would now own all the trademarks related to “Apple” and would license certain trademarks back to Apple Corps for continued use.
The trademark lawsuit between the companies will also end with each party bearing its own legal costs.
“We love The Beatles, and it has been painful being at odds with them over these trademarks,” Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs said in a statement.
Neil Aspinall, manager of Apple Corps, said it was great to put the dispute behind them and move on.
“The years ahead are going to be very exciting times for us. We wish Apple Inc. every success and look forward to many years of peaceful co-operation with them.”
Apple won a trademark dispute over Apple Corps in May 2006 when a judge at London’s High Court ruled that it had not violated the companies’ former agreement by using its logo to sell music. 
Apple Corps responded by saying it would appeal.
The Beatles are high-profile holdouts from Internet music services such as iTunes, but it emerged during the trial that Apple Corps was preparing the band’s catalog to be sold online for the first time.

TITLE: Potter Book Only On Paper
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK — Sorry, e-book fans, whoever you are. You will be able to read the new Harry Potter on paper, listen to it, probably purchase it in Braille. But don’t expect to download the text — at least legally. 
Author J.K. Rowling has not allowed the first six Potter stories to be released as e-books and has no plans to change that for the seventh and final work, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” Neil Blair, a lawyer with Rowling’s literary agency, told The Associated Press on Sunday.
Rowling has cited two reasons over the years: concern about online piracy, and the desire for readers to experience the books on paper. E-books, hyped as the future of publishing during the dot-com craze of the late 1990s, remain a tiny portion of the multibillion dollar industry.
The author herself writes in longhand, a preference that led to a rather amusing delay in Potter VII last April.
“Why is it so difficult to buy paper in the middle of town?” the author, a resident of Edinburgh, Scotland, lamented in a diary entry posted at the time on her web site.
“What is a writer who likes to write longhand supposed to do when she hits her stride and then realizes, to her horror, that she has covered every bit of blank paper in her bag? Forty-five minutes it took me, this morning, to find somewhere that would sell me some normal, lined paper. And there’s a university here!” she wrote.