SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1248 (14), Thursday, February 22, 2007
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TITLE: Putin Takes to Slopes to Back Olympic Bid
AUTHOR: By David Nowak
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: SOCHI — As if to show the whole world that Russian mountains are fit for kings, President Vladimir Putin took to the slopes here Tuesday, expertly negotiating powder-packed bumps for cameras, schoolchildren and International Olympic Committee members.
It was day three of a high-profile, high-stakes IOC visit to Sochi, which is bidding to host the 2014 Winter Games, and Putin wanted to make it clear to the delegates that he puts a premium on his favorite ski resort getting the gold.
After he came to a dramatic swoosh of a halt, the president removed his goggles and declared: “The cities in Austria and South Korea are worthy. But we are the best.”
Salzburg, Austria, and Pyeongchang, South Korea, are also vying for the Olympics. The IOC will announce the winner July 4.
Speaking to reporters following his run down Psekhalo Ridge, the proposed venue for the biathlon and cross-country events, Putin sought to allay environmental concerns about the Sochi bid and urged the European Union to eliminate visas between Russia and Europe.
“It would be a huge mistake not to take into account what the environmental organizations think,” Putin said, apparently chiding the construction firms now working round-the-clock to get Sochi up to speed.
He added that “we are going to make sure that builders maintain contact with” environmentalists, who have voiced concerns about the impact of construction on Sochi National Park, in the North Caucasus mountains.
Turning to the matter of visas, Putin said eliminating travel barriers between Russia and its neighbors to the immediate West would benefit everyone.
“Europe should be a continent without borders,” he said. “Unfortunately, some of our partners are not ready for that.”
If it were up to him, Putin said, he would scrap visas for people from EU countries “tomorrow.”
The president turned philosophical when asked whether he thought Sochi would win the right to host the Games. Sochi and the nearby Krasnaya Polyana ski resort lack much of the infrastructure the other cities have. 
As one Sochi official put it in an interview last month, “Salzburg was made for the Winter Olympics.”
“Sports,” Putin said, “it’s always a fight, and there are always surprises.”
Also supporting the Sochi bid were former Olympic figure skating medalists Yevgeny Plyushchenko and Irina Slutskaya, who performed Monday for the IOC members.
Plyushchenko, in an interview, angrily rejected talk that Sochi’s lack of developed slopes, chairlifts, gondolas and other facilities would jeopardize its bid.
“You can say that there is weak infrastructure in Sochi right now: narrow streets and a lack of facilities that come up to Olympics standards,” said Plyushchenko, who won a gold medal at the 2006 Turin Games. “But all that will come.”
Regurgitating what has become the party line among Sochi officials — that Russia, with its history of Olympics greatness deserves, finally, to host a Winter Games — Plyushchenko said: “We have so many Olympics champions in this country that you can say we have actually earned the Games. We simply must have the Games.”
Slutskaya, who won bronze at Turin, sounded particularly upbeat. “The atmosphere here is just wonderful,” she said. “It shows how much the city wants the Games.”
Plyushchenko performed his medal-winning routine at a show Monday evening for the IOC members. The magnificent skating contrasted with the small, temporary skating rink that had been erected for the delegates’ visit.
The evening was further marred by malfunctioning microphones and a failing CD player. Still, a spectacular green laser show and an extravaganza put on by young figures skaters and so-called extreme skaters wowed the crowd.
Later Tuesday, Putin was expected to make Sochi’s case personally to the 13 members of the IOC evaluation commission.
The president appeared to be taking a page from British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose last-minute lobbying is said to have helped London score the 2012 Summer Games.
The leaders of South Korea and Austria are also doing their part to woo the IOC. South Korean Prime Minister Han Myung-sook hosted the commission last week at a dinner. Austrian Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer will be on hand when the evaluation commission visits Salzburg next week.

TITLE: Bird Flu Clean-Up Continues 
In Moscow
AUTHOR: By Max Delany
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Veterinary workers wearing masks and white protective suits carted off refuse and burned it Tuesday inside the quarantined section of the popular Bird Market as guards patrolled the perimeter.
But other parts of the market, which has been linked to an outbreak of the deadly H5N1 strain of avian flu, remained open for business, with sellers hawking dogs, cats and fish.
“Of course it doesn’t affect the dogs,” saleswoman Maria Ivanova said, sitting in front of a cage of playful Alsatian puppies selling for $200 each.
“They’ve said the quarantine of the bird section will last 21 days, and I’m not at all worried about it. It’s the poor birds I feel sorry for,” she said.
All 1,924 birds found in the market had been culled by Tuesday morning, city veterinary official Sergei Filatov said.
All of the infected birds that were found in five villages in the Moscow region were bought at the bird section of the Sadovod complex, located just southeast of the Moscow Ring Road.
The deadly virus might have spread to two more locations in the region, state veterinary official Nikolai Vlasov said Tuesday. “We are unable to confirm the strain, but the pattern is the same as in the previous cases,” he said, Reuters reported.
A Sadovod market spokesman insisted that it was perfectly safe to come to market and buy other animals. “Apart from the section selling birds, the rest of the market is working and it is fine to buy animals there,” he said.
Federal and foreign experts rated the risk from low to nonexistent.
“Hamsters and dogs are not able to catch the virus. There is a small probability that cats that have eaten a lot of infected meat could get sick, but cats will not catch the disease from them, nor will people,” said Alexei Alekseyenko, spokesman for the Federal Service for Veterinarian and Vegetation Sanitary Supervision.
World Health Organization spokesman Dick Thompson agreed that the most likely way for cats to be infected by the virus was to eat infected bird carcasses but was more circumspect about the danger of infected animals.
“There is no indication that cats can or have [passed on the virus to humans], but that is still an open question because this is a virus which hasn’t been around very long, especially in animals such as cats,” he said.
Moscow residents are getting more cautionary advice on a telephone hotline set up by the Moscow region veterinary service to deal with bird flu inquiries. 
“You’d be better off just going to a regular pet store,” a woman who answered the hotline said Tuesday.
The Bird Market has a checkered history. Viewed as a flea market where people could buy hard-to-find pets during the Soviet period, the market was moved to its current location after city officials closed down its previous site nearer to the city center in 2002 due to health worries.
Yevgeny Duka, a veterinarian with the state veterinary service, said that although controls were tight for people selling animals inside the new Bird Market, no such checks existed for people selling animals beyond the perimeter of the official market.
“The problem is that people sell animals next to the official part of the market, and nobody can control them there,” he said.
Guards patrolling the quarantine zone at the market seemed unfazed by the cleanup.
“I’ve been told to stand here and not let people in, and that’s what I’m doing. I’m not thinking of any danger,” said Igor Pavlenko, a guard wearing a protective mask over his nose and mouth.
A market saleswoman also said there was nothing to worry about. She spoke as she stroked the head of a stray dog at her stall selling chunks of meat for dog food. “No, the dog has not been in the quarantined area,” she added.

Staff Writer Svetlana Osadchuk contributed to this report.

TITLE: War Zone Real Estate Booms in Georgia
AUTHOR: By Kevin O’Flynn
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: SUKHUMI, Georgia — For sale: Large two-story house w/ garden, Black Sea view and beach access — all for under $50,000.
The ideal summer getaway for sun-starved Muscovites? Maybe, but there’s a catch. This property is located in a country that doesn’t officially exist.
This detail has done little to slow the growth of the real estate market in Abkhazia, which has enjoyed de facto independence from Georgia since the end of a bitter civil war in 1993. The self-proclaimed country’s lack of international recognition has not deterred many Russians from snatching up its undervalued beachfront property.
In the Soviet era, Abkhazia was one of the country’s most popular tourist destinations. With its 220 days of sunshine each year and an average temperature of 22 degrees Celsius, the region was the favorite getaway of the nomenklatura. Stalin alone had five dachas there.
“You can’t get anything for these prices elsewhere on the Black Sea coast,” said Sergei Mikheyev, an analyst at the Center for Political Technologies.
Mikheyev said Russians had been scooping up property in Abkhazia for years. “They have money now, they want to invest it and real estate is too expensive in other places,” he said.
Eduard, an ethnic Abkhaz, is offering a two-story house with a large garden near the sea in the capital, Sukhumi, for 2 million rubles (just under $75,000). He has advertised the property in the popular Russian newspaper Iz Ruk v Ruki.
“Prices are doubling each year,” said Eduard, who declined to give his last name.
The house once belonged to ethnic Georgians, who fled Abkhazia during the war. For this reason it is known as a “trophy house.”
An estimated 250,000 Georgians fled Abkhazia after the war, abandoning 90,000 houses, according to statistics compiled by Georgian authorities. Many of the houses in Sukhumi still stand gutted, their walls riddled with bullet holes. On the east side of Sukhumi, where the fighting was heaviest, many houses still stand empty.
The Abkhaz government says it has “nationalized” these buildings and allocated them to local residents.
The federal government in Tbilisi and most refugees maintain that the houses were seized and their owners expelled.
“People who didn’t fight in the war are welcome to return,” said Konstantin Katsiya, deputy head of the Abkhaz State Property Department, who is himself a veteran of the war.
Katsiya insists that the Georgians left of their own free will.
Yury Turkiya, who fled Abkhazia in 1993 with his family, disagrees. “My sister was shot in my house,” he said.
Turkiya left behind three homes. “They were worth millions [of rubles], and now I live in a six-square-meter room in a hostel,” he said.
Last month, the Georgian government launched a program called My House, which will use satellite images to document every dwelling and parcel of land that once belonged to the Georgians who fled Abkhazia during and after the war.
“These people will definitely get their property back,” said Lasha Bregadze, head of the federal ministry that deals with refugees. “The Georgian government guarantees this.”
Some 100,000 refugees have already signed up for the program and submitted the titles to and photographs of their former homes. It is illegal to sell property that belongs to refugees from the war, Bregadze said.
With no progress in sight on the conflict between Sukhumi and Tbilisi, however, the real estate market in Abkhazia is thriving.
“It’s all legal,” said Eduard, who has offered the $75,000 beachfront “trophy house” for sale. The property works out to less than 10,000 rubles ($380) per square meter.
A few hours’ drive away, in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi, residential real estate runs $2,000 per square meter — without the sea view.
Prices have shot up by 50 percent in Sochi in the last two years as investment has flooded in on hopes that the city will be successful in its bid to host the 2014 Winter Olympics.
“There’s very little left,” said Maxim Grebinyukov, an agent from Sochi’s City Realtor Center, adding that some customers were beginning to shop in Abkhazia despite the uncertainties.
“There are people who like to take risks,” said Mikheyev of the Center for Political Technologies. “They buy properties and rent them out. Even if the Georgians come back in 10 years, the speculators will have made a profit.”
Since Russia reopened the border with Abkhazia in 2002, tourists have flooded to the beach, taking advantage of cheap accommodation and the absence of a visa requirement.

TITLE: Rossia Airlines Denies Blame For Plane Crash in Ukraine
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Rossia airlines issued a statement on Tuesday expressing its disagreement with the verdict of Russia’s Aviation Committee that said human error caused one its planes to crash in eastern Ukraine on Aug. 22, killing all 170 people on board.
“The committee’s decision implies that the crew were responsible for the disaster, and we cannot agree with this conclusion,” reads the statement. “The pilots actions fully corresponded to instructions. The height and speed requirements were also carefully adhered to.”
The airplane, operated by St. Petersburg-based Pulkovo Aviation Enterprised which has since been renamed Rossia after a merger, was traveling from Russia’s Black Sea coast to St. Petersburg.
The Aviation Committee said it was a mistake to place an unexperienced trainee in the co-pilot’s seat. Leonid Kashirsky, head of the technical commission of the Russian Aviation Committee, said the crew failed to come up with an adequate solution when the flight began to go wrong and develop a consistent response to the crisis. But Rossia insisted that bad weather was responsible for the crash. 
“A severe storm had formed spontaneously near Donetsk, and the crew was not informed about it in advance and in sufficient detail,” the company statement said. “Upon reaching a zone of turbulence, the crew acted according to instructions.”
When the plane reached an altitude of 11,600 meters it entered turbulence. The crew then asked for permission to climb to 11,850 meters, but the pilots lost control of the plane. At the critical altitude, the TU-154 stalled and went into a flat tailspin. 
Rossia claims the technical specifications of TU-154M were a negative contributing factor as they limit possibilities for the pilots to lead the plane out of a flat tailspin.
“The crew did everything possible to save the passengers but in the circumstances it was impossible,” reads the Rossia statement. “A string of objective factors did not allow the pilots to prevent the disaster.”
The prosecutor general’s office is still investigating the incident.

TITLE: General’s Remarks Slammed by Rice
AUTHOR: By David McHugh
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BERLIN — U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Wednesday called a Russian general’s warning that Poland and the Czech Republic risk being targeted if they host U.S. Missile defense bases “extremely unfortunate.”
Rice also repeated assurances the system does not threaten Russia.
General Nikolai Solovtsov of Russia’s strategic missile forces, said Monday that Russia might train its missiles on the two countries if they accept a U.S. Proposal to base 10 missiles in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic.
“I think that was an extremely unfortunate comment,” Rice said at a news conference in Berlin.

TITLE: Mutko Confirmed as Senator
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Federation Council confirmed Wednesday that Russian Football Union president Vitaly Mutko will represent St. Petersburg in the body.
Mutko was assigned to be the representative of St. Petersburg’s government in the Federation Council, or the upper chamber of the Russia’s Parliament, on Jan. 30. He was approved by St. Petersburg’s Legislative Assembly as the city’s representative last Wednesday by 35 votes for and one vote against, Fontanka news agency reported Feb.14.
“In such a fashion we agreed with the nomination of V. Mutko to represent the city’s government on the Federation Council and we wish for him that the Russian national soccer team wins by the same score,” the chairman of the Assemby’s Audit Commission Igor Artemyev said summarizing the votes, Interfax news agency reported. 
Mutko, who carries the title of senator, “acted exceptionally effectively, supporting the network between the city government and the Federation Council, and executing all their assignments to the utmost,” vice governor Viktor Lobko said before the vote, as quoted by Nevskoye Vremya daily on Thursday.
The senator is also the head of the council’s committee on youth and sport and a former head of FC Zenit, St. Petersburg’s Premier League team.

TITLE: State Press Organization Targets Expatriate Readers
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — State news agency RIA-Novosti is financing a remake of the Moscow News in the state’s latest effort to reach out to English speakers.
The relaunch of the newspaper, which is to take place early next month, will follow RIA-Novosti’s creation of the Russia Today satellite television channel in late 2005. Earlier that year, it began publishing the Russia Profile journal in conjunction with Independent Media Sanoma Magazines, the parent company of The Moscow Times.
The Moscow News has moved into the RIA-Novosti building on Zubovsky Bulvar near the Park Kultury metro station, appointed Anthony Louis as its editor and is hiring more Western reporters, RIA-Novosti deputy editor Leonid Burmistrov said. Louis is the former owner and editor of the Moscow Tribune, a newspaper that started in the early 1990s but closed in 2002.
While Russia Today was created with the aim of presenting the government’s view on news about Russia, the Moscow News will have no obligation to run reports about the Kremlin, Burmistrov said.
“You will not find stories that could be classified as political or ideological,” he said. “For us, it is above all a business project.”
The Moscow News will be run by a nonprofit organization called English-Language News of Moscow, controlled 50-50 by RIA-Novosti and the media company Moskovskiye Novosti, which owns the paper, Burmistrov said. Moskovskiye Novosti — once owned by Yukos billionaire Leonid Nevzlin — is now the property of billionaire Arkady Gaidamak, who lives in Israel.
In addition to the English-language weekly, Moskovskiye Novosti owns a newspaper of the same name, a radio frequency and French publication France Soir.
Burmistrov refused to say how much money would be invested into the overhaul.
RIA-Novosti, as “a financially stronger structure,” is contributing more money to the project, while Moskovskiye Novosti is overseeing its management and promotion, Moskovskiye Novosti director Daniil Kupsin said.
Burmistrov said the proportion of staff stories would increase and that the newspaper’s design would change. The Moscow News hopes to publish 32 pages per issue by year end instead of the current 16 and increase its print run, he said.
Currently, the Moscow News mostly carries translations from its Russian-language sister weekly, Moskovskiye Novosti.
Burmistrov said that the new Moscow News would strive to compete with The Moscow Times, which is a daily.
Mikhail Doubik, the director overseeing newspapers at Independent Media Sanoma Magazines, expressed confidence that any competition would not hurt The Moscow Times’ readership or lead to a loss of advertisers.
Oleg Panfilov, director of the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations, cautioned, however, that The Moscow Times could experience problems in reaching readers because of the state’s involvement in the Moscow News.
The Moscow News’ editor, Louis, also has worked for United Press International, a U.S. news agency. He did not return repeated calls for comment this week and last. His deputy, Robert Bridge, also was unavailable for comment.

TITLE: Court Denies Budanov Parole
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A court has rejected a parole request from former Colonel Yury Budanov, convicted in 2003 of kidnapping and murdering a Chechen woman, Interfax reported Tuesday.
Andrei Koshkin, acting head of the Federal Prison Service’s branch in the Volga Federal District, told reporters in Nizhny Novgorod that Budanov, whose sentence ends in 2010, had sought parole late last year.
Ziyad Sabsabi, the Chechen government’s representative in Moscow, told Interfax that he was pleased with the court’s ruling.
“The decision is entirely correct. It testifies to the fact that the judicial system in Russia is acquiring independence and is not subject to any political pressure,” he said.
A military court in July 2003 found Budanov guilty of kidnapping and murdering Elza Kungayeva, 18, in Chechnya three years earlier.
Budanov received a 10-year sentence, including time served, and was stripped of his rank and decorations.
Kungayeva’s family said she had been abducted by federal troops from her home in the Chechen village of Tangi and subsequently was beaten, raped and strangled. 
The rape charge against Budanov was dropped in an earlier trial.
In 2004, Budanov twice appealed for a pardon, but withdrew his request each time.

TITLE: Czechs, Poles Hit Back at Kremlin Stance
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: WARSAW — Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski suggested on Tuesday that Russian opposition to a U.S. proposal to build a missile-defense system in Poland stemmed from Moscow’s hopes to regain influence over its former satellite.
Also Tuesday, the Czech Republic said it would not be intimidated by Russia over plans to place parts of the system on Czech territory and said attempts at “blackmail” by Moscow would backfire.
Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s comments came one day after the commander of Russia’s Strategic Rocket Forces, General Nikolai Solovtsov, warned that Poland and the Czech Republic risked being targeted by Russian missiles if they agreed to host U.S. missile defense installations.
“To make it clear — this is not about Russian security. These installations do not in any way threaten Russia,” Jaroslaw Kaczynski said on state Radio 1.
“It’s about the status of Poland and about Russian hopes that the zone, in other words Poland, will once again find itself … in the Russian sphere of influence,” he said.
“From the moment the missile bases are installed here, the chances of that happening, for at least decades to come, very much declines,” he said.
Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg said threats by Russian officials over the plans, which would involve placing a radar system on Czech territory and a missile battery in Poland, would only make the Czech people more determined to defend themselves.
“The Czechs will now think the shield is even more necessary,” Schwarzenberg said. “We have quite an experience with Russians. You have to make clear to them you won’t succumb to blackmail. Once you give in to blackmail, there’s no going back. We have to be strong.”
The United States wants Poland and the Czech Republic to host elements of its multibillion-dollar global system designed to counter missiles fired by what Washington calls “rogue states,” such as Iran and North Korea.
Moscow views the system as an attempt to shift the post-Cold War balance of power, and relations between Moscow and Washington have soured since the announcement of the U.S. plans.
Both the Polish and Czech prime ministers have said their countries would likely accept the installations, which would tie their interests to Washington in the long term.
On Tuesday, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov tried to calm the waters, saying Russia wanted to avoid an arms race and that it hoped to work as a team with the West.
(AP, Reuters)

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>Litvinenko Investigation</b>
LONDON (AP) — Scotland Yard said police investigators from Russia were in London on Tuesday to discuss the inquiry into the poisoning death last November of Alexander Litvinenko.
“Officers from the Metropolitan Police Service’s inquiry team are currently meeting representatives from the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office to discuss the progression of their request for mutual legal assistance regarding the death of Alexander Litvinenko,” a Scotland Yard official said on condition of anonymity in line with force policy.
The Russian Embassy in London confirmed that a Russian official had arrived to talk to police, adding that he was making a preparatory visit ahead of the possible arrival of a larger team of investigators. 

<b>Monument Vandalized</b>
KIEV (AP) — A monument to Holocaust victims and 240 Jewish graves have been defaced with swastikas in southern Ukraine, an activist with a local Jewish community said Tuesday.
Unidentified vandals desecrated the Holocaust Monument late Sunday with red swastikas, the inscription “Congratulations on the Holocaust” and painted swastikas on 270 graves in a Jewish cemetery in the Black Sea port of Odessa, said Boleslav Kapulkin, a spokesman for Odessa’s Jewish community.

<b>Zakayev Invited to Act</b>
MOSCOW (SPT) — Acting Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov has invited rebel envoy Akhmed Zakayev to return to the republic and perform in a theater, Interfax reported.
“Zakayev is a good actor. Everyone knows that,” Kadyrov said.
“I know him very well. I know that he’s not a fighter; he is an actor,” he said.
“If he isn’t guilty of anything, if his conscience before the Chechen people and Russia is clear, we’re offering for him to come to Grozny to work in our republic,” Kadyrov said.
Zakayev told Ekho Moskvy radio that he had no intention of commenting on Kadyrov’s offer of employment, Interfax reported.

TITLE: Local R&D Lab Central To EMC’s Russian Investment
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The world’s leading provider of solutions and technologies for information systems, EMC corporation, will invest $100 million into Russia over the next three to four years, a considerable part of which will go into a new R&D center in St. Petersburg. 
The company is seeking to take advantage of the emerging Russian IT market.
“Russia is one of the most promising and dynamic regions for EMC. In 2006 our business in Russia grew four times faster that EMC growth worldwide,” Prime-Tass news agency cited Luc Brunet, general manager of EMC for Russia, CIS and the Baltic states, as saying at a press conference in St. Petersburg Tuesday.
High-end systems (Symmetrix DMX, CAS and EMC Documentum) and solutions for state governance, telecom and power industries were the most dynamic areas of growth.
According to a recent report by the IDC analytical agency, the Russian IT market has potential for significant expansion over the next few years.
In 2005, it grew by over 24 percent. Data prior to 2006 suggests similar growth. Along with Brazil, India and China, Russia is considered one of the fastest growing IT markets in the world.
Within the next five years EMC plans to increase the share of profits earned abroad from the current level of 43 percent to 50 percent, focusing on its activities in Russia, India and China, where the American corporation already has research centers.
In Russia EMC has been operating since 2000. By the end of the year EMC will increase the number of its employees in Russia and CIS from 100 people to 250 people. New offices will open in Almaty (Kazakhstan), Yekaterinburg and Novosibirsk. EMC already has offices in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Kiev (Ukraine).
At the press conference on Tuesday Rona Newmark, senior vice president of EMC, announced the opening inJune of a new R&D center on Vasilievsky island in St. Petersburg which will employ 150 people. The center will work on all EMC technologies and solutions including content management and data storage.
EMC is not the only company to recognize the potential of the Russian market.  According to a statement from Microsoft, the company increased turnover in Russia by 72 percent in the financial year 2006, while worldwide Microsoft’s total turnover increased by only 11 percent.
“Impressive sales growth is a result of increasing demand for various types of software. We considerably improved ties with our larger clients as well as with small and medium-sized business. We have also considerably expanded our business in the regions,” said Birger Sten, general manager of Microsoft Rus, commenting on the Russian market and company performance.
Microsoft Rus’s share of regional sales increased from 29 percent in 2001 to 55 percent last year. According to Sten, most growth was associated with operational systems and MS Office applications. Server applications and development solutions were also in high demand.
Microsoft also expects to benefit from an anti-piracy campaign that should increase sales of licensed software and contribute to the expansion of the Russian IT market, which is estimated by some experts to be worth over $9 billion.

TITLE: Rich Reward For Heineken in Russia
AUTHOR: By Meera Bhatia
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: AMSTERDAM — Heineken NV, the Dutch brewer whose beer is sold in more than 170 countries, said full-year profit rose 59 percent on increased revenue in Russia and proceeds from selling land in Spain. 
Net income climbed to 1.21 billion euros ($1.59 billion) from 761 million euros in 2005, the Amsterdam-based company said Wednesday in an e-mailed statement. That beat the 1.06 billion-euro average of estimates from 19 analysts compiled by Bloomberg. Sales rose 9.6 percent to 11.8 billion euros, helped by soccer’s World Cup and record summer heat in Europe. 
Heineken has become Russia’s third-largest beer company by sales as western European markets grow at slower rates or contract. The amount of beer brewed in Russia rose 10 percent last year as the nation’s consumers shunned spirits after tax changes and deaths linked to bootleg vodka. 
“This has been a strong year,’’ Chief Executive Officer Jean-Francois van Boxmeer said in the statement. Higher costs “remain a challenge for the entire industry,’’ he said on a conference call. 
Heineken posted extraordinary gains of 291 million euros in the period, mostly stemming from the Spanish land sale. The company today said it expects profit growth, excluding acquisitions, of as much as 13 percent. 
Shares of Heineken slid 94 cents, or 2.3 percent, to 39.36 euros in Amsterdam Tuesday. Beer stocks fell across Europe yesterday after Carlsberg A/S, which co-owns Russia’s largest brewer with Scottish & Newcastle Plc, said growth in the Russian beer market this year will be at the “low end’’ of a 3 to 5 percent range. 
Heineken, which sells beer in Russia under brands such as Volga and Ochota as well as its own name, bought four companies with six breweries in the country in 2005 to make up for a lack of growth in western Europe. The company, which got about 70 percent of its 2005 sales from Europe, is aiming for a 20 percent share of the Russian beer market. 
Shares of Heineken gained 35 percent in 2006, about the same larger competitor InBev NV of Belgium, the brewer of Beck’s lager and Bass ale. 
Heineken sold 11 percent more beer in 2006, with volumes rising 19 percent in central and eastern Europe, 12 percent in the Americas and 15 percent in Africa and the Middle East. Western European beer volumes rose 0.6 percent to 32.1 million hectoliters.

TITLE: EBRD May Fund Stores In Regions
AUTHOR: By Maria Ermakova
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is considering financing Russian superstores and consumer-electronics chains to help them tap rising spending in the region.
The EBRD, which doubled financing in Russia in 2006, will open three new offices in the cities of Samara, Krasnoyarsk and Rostov-on-Don this year, Bruno Balvanera, head of the bank’s St. Petersburg office, said Wednesday on the sidelines of a conference in the city. The expansion is part of the EBRD’s plans to increase financing in regions that account for 70 percent of the bank’s Russian projects.
The bank is raising its investment in Russia as the country’s economy expands for the ninth straight year. The lender last month paid $125 million for a stake in Lenta, the biggest retailer in northwest Russia. In 2006 it also bought 20 percent of Nezabudka retailer that operates 49 stores in Russia’s southwest, UBS AG said in a Feb. 8 report.
“We are talking with other retail companies in Russia and are looking at large stores,’’ Balvanera said at the conference. The EBRD’s minimum financing is $30 million, which is enough to open three Lenta outlets, he said. 
 This year the lender will also increase financing of Russian infrastructure development, “particularly in St. Petersburg,” he added.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>Electric Turnover</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Petersburg Distribution Company increased turnover by 27 percent last year compared to 2005, Prime-Tass reported Wednesday.
City residents paid four billion rubles ($154 million ) to the company for electricity last year.

<b>Quick Stop</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Neste St. Petersburg, a subsidiary of Neste Oil, has opened its first Quick Stop filling station in the city. The company invested over one million euros ($1.25 million) into the station located near the Lenta supermarket on Moskovskoye Schosse, the company said Tuesday in a statement.
The new concept will be introduced close to other large retail centers. Last year the company opened five new stations in St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast. This year 20 million euros will be invested into opening a total of eight to ten stations.

<b>Stocking Up</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — City Hall has forecast that three million square meters of residential real estate could be added to the existing housing stock by 2009, Interfax reported Tuesday. “If the current dynamic of construction growth continues, we’ll get 3 million square meters of new housing by 2009 and a further 3.5 million square meters in 2011,” vice governor Alexander Vakhmistrov said at a government meeting Tuesday.

TITLE: Yukos Assets to Be Auctioned in March
AUTHOR: By Alex Nicholson
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — The assets of the bankrupt Yukos oil company will be liquidated at an auction in late March, a company official said Wednesday. The series of sales are expected to be dominated by state-controlled energy companies.
 Yukos was partly renationalized in 2004 against billions of dollars in disputed back tax bills, while its former owner Mikhail Khodorkovsky was jailed on fraud charges in an apparent attempt to silence the Kremlin opponent and cement the government’s control of the crucial oil sector.
The company’s remaining assets include some 470,000 barrels per day of potential production capacity as well as several refineries.
Details about which assets will be included and the date of the auction will be announced in the government newspaper on Thursday, Nikolai Lashkevich, the spokesman for Yukos’ court-appointed bankruptcy supervisor, told The Associated Press. 
The auction would take place around the end of March and the official announcement would indicate starting price, he said. He provided no further details of the assets expected to go on the block.
Lashkevich declined to comment on a report in the Vedomosti business daily, which cited unidentified sources as saying that the first assets to be sold would be Yukos’ stakes in state-controlled oil companies  Gazprom Neft and Rosneft, where it holds 20 percent and 9.44 percent respectively.
The newspaper said that the proposed starting price for the Rosneft stake was about $7 billion — representing a 9 percent discount based on its Tuesday share price, according to Dow Jones Newswires. The paper said the proposed price for the Gazprom Neft stake was $4 billion, or about $100 million more than its market value on Tuesday.
State gas monopoly Gazprom, which owns Gazprom Neft, and Rosneft, are expected to purchase the shares as well as key production and refining assets in later sales. Rosneft bought Yukos’ biggest production unit in December 2004 after a disputed auction against its tax bills.
Rosneft President Sergei Bogdanchikov said the company would wait to see what price the Yukos assets were offered at. “We cannot buy assets at any price,” he was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.
Interest in the auctions has been broad: bankruptcy officials say U.S. oil company Chevron Corp. has inquired about participating, as well as other foreign companies.
Were Chevron to bid it would mark a striking change in attitude toward the events around Yukos. The U.S. administration and industry officials have criticized the legal campaign, saying it raised questions about the rule of law and the sanctity of property rights in Russia.

TITLE: Mosenergo Shares Hit the Gas
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Trading in Mosenergo, the country’s largest thermal power generating company, was suspended for an hour on the Russian Trading System after the stock rose as much as 13 percent.
Trading was halted at 3:45 p.m. and resumed one hour later, said Oksana Zaitseva, a spokesman for the RTS. The exchange suspends trading when a stock rises more than 10 percent in a day. Mosenergo shares most recently traded at 26 cents on the RTS.
On the MICEX stock exchange, Mosenergo shares rose as much as 11 percent to 6.88 rubles and traded recently at 6.68 rubles.
Trading in the stock was suspended Feb. 9 on both exchanges. The shares climbed 36 percent to 7.21 rubles on the MICEX that day.
“It’s hard to say who is buying, but given that Gazprom has some big plans for Mosenergo, it could go a lot higher,” said Kirill Surikov, director of international equity sales at Alfa Bank.
Gazprom, the world’s biggest producer of natural gas, plans to swap a stake in its petrochemical unit Sibur Holding for 13 percent of Mosenergo, Vedomosti reported Tuesday, citing unidentified managers at Gazprom.
Gazprom owns 20 percent of Mosenergo directly and another 13 percent via its banking unit Gazprombank and pension fund Gazfund. Gazprom’s board will discuss the swap at the end of February, the newspaper said.
Gazprombank Deputy CEO Alexander Sobol said Monday that the bank owns about 10 percent of Mosenergo shares. He added that the bank is a “portfolio investor” rather than a strategic investor. “Owning a stake in Mosenergo is not our strategic goal,” Sobol told reporters. 
A spokesman for Gazprombank on Tuesday declined to comment further on Mosenergo.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>Tax Boss</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — The deputy chief of Russia’s Federal Tax Service, Mikhail Mokretsov, was named the head of the agency today, state-run news service RIA Novosti reported Wednesday.
Mokretsov replaces Anatoly Serdyukov, who was last week named defense minister by President Vladimir Putin. Serdyukov replaced Sergei Ivanov, who was promoted to first deputy prime minister, the same rank as Gazprom Chairman Dmitry Medvedev.
Serdyukov oversaw the multibillion tax assault on Yukos Oil Co. that began in 2003 and led to the jailing of former Chief Executive Officer Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the bankruptcy of what was once Russia’s largest company.

<b>Sberbank Shares</b>
LONDON (Bloomberg) — Sberbank, Russia’s state savings bank, raised about 230 billion rubles ($8.8 billion) selling new shares in the country’s second-biggest stock sale ever, the Finance Ministry said.
Sberbank sold shares for 89,000 rubles ($3,394) each and received orders for about 260 billion rubles of stock, Finance Ministry spokeswoman Irina Yershova said by phone in Moscow Wednesday, without saying how many shares were sold.
The lender, Russia’s biggest, had said it would sell as many as 3.5 million shares. JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Credit Suisse Group organized the sale. State-run oil producer Rosneft raised $10.6 billion in an initial public offering last year, the country’s biggest stock sale.

<b>Transneft Bonds</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Transneft, Russia’s state-owned oil-pipeline operator, will sell at least $1 billion of seven-year bonds at the lowest-ever rate for a Russian company.
Moscow-based Transneft cut the yield premium on the securities to 55 basis points more than the dollar mid-swap rate, a benchmark for borrowing, from an initial spread of 60 basis points, said a banker involved in the deal. Credit Suisse Group and Goldman Sachs Holdings Inc. are managing the sale, which was completed Wednesday.

TITLE: Multi-Level Explanations
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: Last week’s government shuffle and removal of Alu Alkhanov as Chechen president demonstrated yet again the lack of connection between the abilities and accomplishments of government officials, their career-growth paths and appointments to senior government positions.
Issues of administrative reform, downsizing government and establishing criteria for effectiveness on the part of ministers are all interesting, but they go right out the window when it is time to actually appoint or promote someone. This process follows its own, particular logic.
The government has already publicly given itself good marks for its work last year and, just before the New Year, President Vladimir Putin said he was happy with the work of his ministers. All of this, of course, following a year that brought increasing problems in immigration and interethnic relations and continued problems with hazing in the army. Corruption remained a major issue in 2006 (one case surrounding the Health and Social Development Ministry involved bribes totaling, according to the Prosecutor General’s Office, $240 billion) and increasing incidence of crime (and, according to Interior Ministry statistics, with regard to murders in particular). It was the year of an alcohol crisis caused by the government itself, a slowdown in reforms to the residential service sector and a full halt to pension reform. The list of mistakes and mismanagement could go on. According to the government’s own statistics, almost 40 percent of all objectives set by Putin or Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov were either not met or were not carried out in a satisfactory manner. This number is up from 2002, when only 27 percent of these targets were missed.
All of this discussion about how effective officials are sounds a bit naive. Appointments and dismissals are determined by entirely different factors. What we generally hear are explanations at two different, entirely unrelated levels. Level A represents the official justification: Ivanov was promoted to allow him to work on diversifying the economy. “One of the main objectives is to support innovation in our economy — this will be Sergei Ivanov’s role in the government,” Putin said while appointing Ivanov to the post of first deputy prime minister.
The second level — we’ll call it level B — involves the explanation we get from the talking heads. Here, Ivanov has finally been freed from a collapsing ministry and put on an equal standing with the other potential presidential “successor” (although, officially, there is no successor). “The most important thing with this decision is to make Ivanov and [First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry] Medvedev figures of the same stature,” Dmitry Orlov, general director of the Agency for Political and Economic Communications, told Rosbalt news agency. It’s the same with the change of leadership in Chechnya. “Alu Dadashevich, I have reviewed your appeal … to be transferred to a different position,” Putin told Alkhanov in nationally televised remarks on Thursday. “I want to express my hope that in your new job — and it is an immense and difficult field of work —you accomplish just as much for Chechnya and for the country as a whole as you have already done.” The explanation from level B follows a different logic: “This is a big success for Ramzan Kadyrov in the political battle with Alu Alkhanov. He has maximized his influence and scored a victory in interclan conflict,” Politika Fund president Vyacheslav Nikonov told Rosbalt. “Kadyrov has realized his presidential pretensions and the government structures there are now ready to fulfill any order.”
So the official justification involves an attempt to improve the government’s effectiveness and Alkhanov’s personal desire to change jobs. At the analytic level, it all comes down to “operation successor” and a personal agreement between Putin and Kadyrov. The media just follow the analysts in laying bare these secret motives. It’s hard to imagine what would have happened if Putin had just gone on television and told Alkhanov, “I am removing you from this post because Ramzan should be president, so you have to move over to the Justice Ministry for a while.”
The only places levels A and B run into each other are news conferences where Western journalists take part and ask Putin questions about democracy, civil society, high-profile murders and so on. All of the answers are clearly understood by Russians interested in politics, who explain them at level B (political expediency, pre-election alignments). 
The answers the foreigners hear at level A (democracy here is no worse than there, nobody is stifling non—governmental organizations and the murders will be solved) don’t do much to convince, occasionally leading the president to abandon his normal state of calm.
This, of course, is not a problem peculiar to Russia. There are official and unofficial explanations just about anywhere when things like this happen. Differences between an official’s professional abilities and his or her ability to rise above more deserving rivals is also common worldwide. The difference here is the magnitude of divide between levels A and B.
In Russia, level A is strictly ceremonial and virtual. Any real competition between political players probably doesn’t even occur at level B, but at some unseen level C, which we might deduce involves the struggle between power groupings for influence in the Kremlin. 
All kinds of experts analyze what is happening and sell their secret knowledge, but this is all speculation. We can never know what is really going on because all facts are filtered and interpreted at levels A and B. There could be multiple other levels — the level at which Putin justifies his political decisions to his closest friends, for example.

This comment was published as an editorial in Vedomosti.

TITLE: Ramzan Barbarossa
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: The circumstances of Chechen President Alu Alkhanov’s departure and replacement by Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov, right down to the date, was worked out with President Vladimir Putin in December 2006. This information comes from Kremlin and Southern Federal District sources who have become more talkative since the announcement.
One of the terms of the deal was that all of the parties concerned would stick to the agreed-upon script during the announcement. Strangely, Kadyrov, who is often considered difficult to manage, stuck to the bargain. It was Alkhanov’s side that staged a counterattack in the press, suggesting that they should hang on to their positions or at least be provided with golden parachutes.
Up until last week, there had been two centers of power in Chechnya: the actual leader of the republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, and Russia’s ambassador to Chechnya, Alu Alkhanov. Alkhanov was clearly no threat to Kadyrov, whose attention had been focused on next year’s national presidential election. Because Kadyrov’s authority is based on Putin’s personal support, the only way he could avoid losing his position amid the Kremlin’s pre-election power struggles was either to immediately become president of Chechnya or hope that Putin would remain president past 2008.
Let’s be frank here: Any way you look at it, Chechnya is a mess. NATO ranks Chechnya’s guerrilla forces as the strongest of their type in the world. It’s not hard to understand when you consider that the republic was laid to waste three times in the 20th century: in 1944, 1995 and 1999. It is hard to hope for much when dealt such a hand, and it is hard to spell out a positive future using the letters “m,” “e,” “s” and “s.”
The only realistic options open to the Kremlin under the current circumstances — besides granting Chechnya independence — are simple. One is to create a federal regime free of strict Kremlin oversight. This is what we would have had under federal military officers like Captain Eduard Ulman and Colonel Yury Budanov, for whom every male Chechen is a terrorist and every female Chechen they rape is a sniper. Theirs was a reign of terror during which a “clean-up operation” involved tossing a grenade into a cellar full of children, ultimately creating more separatists than they destroyed. Such a regime would be run by a political puppet who would have no realistic hope of maintaining order. In that case, the Kremlin would end up having to sacrifice the lives of federal soldiers to kill Chechens in order to prop up the government.
The second option could be labeled “Ramzan Barbarossa,” in which Chechnya has a single functioning social institution by the name of Ramzan Kadyrov. Can anyone really doubt that Kadyrov would ever do anything but follow his own best interests in his dealings with Russia? And if Moscow can set things up so that Kadyrov’s interests become identical to Russia’s, he would manage the republic pretty much on his own. The results aren’t likely to be pretty, but they give those in power on both sides what they want.
The Kremlin siloviki favor the first option, while Putin prefers the second. It is hard to say whether or not the decision he reached in late December came as a result of political squabbling, but it is clear that there are two ways to govern Chechnya: with Putin’s personal support or with a bureaucrat puppet loyal to the Kremlin. These two systems are too contradictory for the state to allow them to try to weather the pre-election storms this year.
What remains to be seen is whether current loyalties in Chechnya will shift along with conditions there and in Moscow. The Spanish grandees of the 12th century solemnly swore they would maintain vassal loyalty to the king “as long as the king could force it from them.”

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

TITLE: War and remembrance
AUTHOR: By Tom Birchenough
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: When the television miniseries “Leningrad: City of the Living” was screened for an advance audience this month, there could hardly have been a more appropriate location than St. Petersburg’s Museum of the Siege and Defense of Leningrad. 
Watching the film surrounded by enormously evocative artifacts from the 1941-44 siege, and by many audience members who had lived through it, proved to be a moving experience indeed.
The first episode of the four-part miniseries aired Monday on Channel One, which produced the film. The television premiere marked the culmination of a long, hard and uncertain process that saw shooting stretch out over nearly three years — an uncanny reflection of its subject matter.
“Leningrad” actually ended up in two different versions: a four-hour television miniseries and a two-hour feature film. Although that’s a common practice in the local film industry, in this case the two resulting works could hardly be more different in subject and tone. In an interview in Moscow last week, director Alexander Buravsky said they shared only about 10 percent of their material. 
“When I wrote the original script, it was as a feature film,” he said. “When I took it to the producers, their response was: You wrote ‘Schindler’s List,’ now add ‘Indiana Jones.’ So I wrote around the original, and that was pretty difficult.”
Buravsky’s script blends the lives of ordinary Russians caught in the siege with the story of two foreign journalists, the British Kate Davis (played by Oscar-winning Hollywood actress Mira Sorvino) and the American Philip Parker (Gabriel Byrne).
It’s an international mix that reflects Buravsky’s research into the subject. He cited his two main sources as “The Blockade Book,” a 1981 compilation by the Soviet writers Daniil Granin and Ales Adamovich, and “The 900 Days,” an earlier work by British journalist Harrison Salisbury, the Moscow correspondent for The New York Times during much of World War II. A third source was historian Nikita Lomagin’s “The Unknown Blockade” from 2004.
The word “unknown” certainly strikes a chord with Buravsky, who admitted there was much he hadn’t known about the siege before delving into his research. Now, however, he is something of an expert. 
“I could be a lecturer on the siege,” he said. “Once you start, you can’t stop. This country needs 100 feature films and maybe 500 documentaries. It’s an endless theme.” 
The director remarked that many people today, especially among the younger generation, know little about it — neither general facts, like how long exactly it lasted, nor details, such as the famous metronome, the “heartbeat of life” that played on the radio during broadcasts. “If people stopped hearing it, they’d know it was the end,” Buravsky said.
Part of that historical ignorance was the result of pressure from Stalin, who, the director said, didn’t want people to remember the siege, and from the postwar crackdown in the city instigated by local party boss Andrei Zhdanov (who features prominently in the film). One can find poignant testimony to that forgetfulness in the story of the city’s Siege museum. Set up in the immediate postwar years with an ample collection that included planes and tanks, it was soon reduced to a one-room premises, before expanding again in the 1990s to the more generous space it occupies today.
Buravsky draws a political conclusion from that history. “If Russia wants to find its identity, it needs to be proud of the experience of that time, and remember it,” he said. The director acknowledged that paying close attention to the period can be grueling. Describing his own reactions to reading Granin and Adamovich’s book, he said: “You scream out of desperation. You eat a lot because you read about this hunger. It’s like you’ve swallowed a huge stone.”
On the topic of nutrition, incidentally, Buravsky noted some of the privileges enjoyed by the party elite: Documents reveal that as the general population was having its rations reduced to 150 grams of ersatz bread per day, NKVD officials were in correspondence with Moscow about how much black caviar would arrive for their Nov. 7 holidays.
One of the principal difficulties in making the film — besides funding delays — involved the challenge of working with foreign actors in the lead roles. Buravsky expects that bringing in foreign characters may prove controversial, although the experience of journalists from Allied nations (and how they were treated by the Soviet regime) is fleshed out in such sources such as Salisbury’s war memoir. 
The director seemed somewhat apprehensive about how certain parties in today’s Russia would receive the result. “If you listen to the radio reports of those years, there is the sense that Russia was part of the wider European war,” Buravsky said. “Today, that approach is beginning to look different. I may be accused of selling the country’s sacred history, in the same way as some are selling its oil and gas.”
Indeed, it’s a charge that some patriots may level against a figure who certainly counts as a Westernizer on the cultural front. Born in Moscow in 1954, Buravsky became known as a playwright in the late ‘80s. He first worked in film as a co-director, with Sergei Bodrov, on the 1989 film “The Gambler.” From 1990 to 1998, he was based mainly in the United States, although his first solo feature, 1995’s “Sacred Cargo,” had a strong Russian connection.
That was followed by 1999’s “Out of the Cold,” the story of a U.S. tap dancer caught in Estonia on the eve of World War II and later engulfed in Stalin’s gulag. “Leningrad” brings back the same approach. “How will I write about it if I don’t have an outsider involved, an ignorant eye‚ like Kate? … Sometimes I feel I’m stubbornly trying to build bridges between Russia and Europe, or the West,” he said.
That gulf in perceptions is evident in the differences between the television and feature-film versions of “Leningrad.” The feature — which Buravsky insists was made for Russia and not for the international market — evoked more tension in audiences at its initial screenings than the television miniseries. Buravsky described the film as a character-driven work about the interactions between Kate and the Russians who save her, and whom, in turn, she refuses to abandon.
In contrast, the television miniseries is dominated by the “road of life,” the supply route across Lake Ladoga that was the only means of supplying the besieged city. In particular, the miniseries focuses on the critical weeks when ice disrupted boat transport but was not yet strong enough to allow vehicles to cross; that sends city authorities in frantic search of a scientist, previously suppressed by the Soviets and now stuck behind German lines, who is the only source of reliable charts on when and where deeper ice might accumulate.
Vladimir Klimov’s cinematography is equally impressive — although it raises the question, articulated at the St. Petersburg screening, as to whether it’s too glossy. “I wanted to show the color of Leningrad, not to repeat the black and white of ‘Schindler’s List,’” Buravsky said. “You can’t compete with documentary footage.”
Buravsky is ready to admit some historical mistakes. Some airplanes shown in scenes from 1941 are of a type that didn’t appear until two years later. “I couldn’t get another plane, and the important thing was to tell the story,” he said.
In the end, images may speak louder than words. The visual emblem from the titles of “Leningrad” is an icon-like painting by Leonid Chulyatov, an artist who died of hunger during the siege. Scholar Dmitry Likhachyov once called this image the most sincere expression of the spirit of the siege: It shows the Virgin Mary, arms outstretched, looking down with pain on the sufferings of the city.

The final part of “Leningrad” airs on Channel One on Thursday at 9:25 p.m.

TITLE: Chernov’s choice
TEXT: Some things never change. Just as it was in the mid-1990s, there are posters advertizing the Gipsy Kings in the streets of St. Petersburg, and just  as then the band is fake.
“A live acoustic concert by the famous band <b>Gipsy Kings</b>,” an advertisement on the ticket-selling web site www.bileter.ru says about the concert due at Lensoviet Palace of Culture on Wednesday.
“The band’s lineup at this concert will be as close to the original as possible — it will feature 10 guitarists, with Manolo as the soloist.”
These statements have little to do with reality, according to the Gipsy Kings’ manager Pascal Imbert.
“The Gipsy Kings are on a U.S. tour right now and will come back home on Feb. 26. They have no plans to tour in St. Petersburg on Feb. 28,” he wrote in an email to The St. Petersburg Times.
“The person you mention, Manolo, has never been a member of the Kings, but he has tried many times to use the name Gipsy Kings as he cannot sell tickets on his own name.
“We have sued him successfully in the U.S., that is why he is now changing territory. Please warn your public that this is a fake band and has nothing to do with the original.”
According to the official Gipsy Kings web site at www.gipsykings.com, the real band will perform the last concert of its current tour at Radio City Music Hall in New York on Saturday. It does not have any further dates on its concert schedule.
Not everything is so bad this week: for one fake band there are dozens of real ones performing in St. Petersburg, including Helsinki’s <b>Giant Robot</b>. The funk-electro-rock band that brought us “Helsinki Rock City,” an ode to its hometown, will play at Maina on Saturday.
<b>Tequilajazzz</b>, the city’s leading alternative band, will perform at Tsokol on Saturday, but the band’s frontman Yevgeny Fyodorov will be seen again on Thursday when his split-off band <b>Optimystica Orchestra</b> performs at Maina featuring a host of well-known local musicians.
Hailing from Petrozavodsk in Karelia, the garage-band <b>Revolver</b> will play at Fish Fabrique on Friday. The same band will wear second-hand velour suits and spectacles and appear as another band called <b>SuperMotoZoids</b> as part of <b>George Harrison’s Birthday Concert</b> at Griboyedov on Sunday.
Originally formed for fun, SuperMotoZoids perform weird covers of rock classics including “Yesterday,” “Love Me Tender” and “Light Fire.”
“We keep the lyrics but change the music, so that it becomes almost unrecognizable,” said guitarist Nikita Vlasov by phone this week.
Also watch out for the punk band <b>PTVP</b>, a.k.a. Posledniye Tanki v Parizhe (at Port on Sunday) and alt-rock instrumental band <b>Skafandr</b> (at Fish Fabrique on  Friday).

<i>— By Sergey Chernov</i>

TITLE: An official sale of unofficial art
AUTHOR: By Andrei Vorobei
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: With its first sale last week of modern and contemporary Russian art, which followed a unique sale in Moscow in 1988 that introduced Soviet-era unofficial art to the world, auction house Sotheby’s marked another turning point in the Russian art market. 
The Feb. 25 sale in London achieved total sales of $5.1 million and beat the $4.0 million record of its legendary Moscow forerunner. 
“We are thrilled with the results of this landmark sale,” Joanna Vickery, Senior Director and Head of Sotheby’s Russian department said. “This sale has now brought Russian contemporary art onto the international stage for the first time ever and the overall result of 80 percent of the lots being sold provides a strong springboard for future growth in this area.”
Sotheby’s runs twice-yearly Russian sales in London and New York, but these have mostly featured icons, and painting, sculpture, porcelain, jewellery, furniture and arms from the 18th century to the beginning of the 20th century. 
However, last year Sotheby’s sensationally sold Vladimir Nemukhin’s “Unfinished Game of Patience” (1966) for $240,000 and Dmitry Krasnopevtsev’s “Still Life With Three Jugs” (1976) for $1 million, seemingly stimulating the market for post-1960 art and leading to last week’s dedicated auction 
Although the sale offered lots covering diverse Moscow and Leningrad artistic groups from abstract experiments to works by artists of the Moscow Conceptualist School and Sots Art movements, all were in artistic opposition to official Soviet mainstream art. 
A major surprise was the top lot — Yevgeny Chubarov’s work “Untitled” — which sold for $560,000, more than four times its high estimate of $116, 000. The mature work surprised experts by its popularity since it seems derivative of American Abstract Expressionist art of the 1950s. 
However, the other top lots such as Erik Bulatov’s “Revolution-Perestroika,” Mikhail Shvartsman’s “Paternal Structure,” Vladimir Weisberg’s “Nude,” Oleg Vasiliev’s “Landscape and Space,” Oleg Tselkov’s “Acrobat with Portrait of Acrobats,” and Victor Pivovarov’s “Eros” were predictably desirable and subject to the most intense bidding, according to auction officials. 
The sale featured almost all the significant figures of the underground scene, including such names as Vladimir Yankilevsky, Vitaly Komar, Grisha Bruskin, Dmitry Prigov, Vadim Zakharov, Alexander Kosolapov, Leonid Sokov, Eduard Gorokhovsky, Francisco Infante, Ivan Chuikov, Boris Mikhailov and others. 
According to Vickery, there was also a strong taste for works from the 1990s; there were noticeable purchases of  works by Aidan Salakhova, Valery Koshlyakov, Alexei Kostroma and Arsen Savadov. 
Two pieces by the prominent St. Petersburg artist Timur Novikov from a remarkable cycle employing his “semantic perspective” principle were also sold. One of them, “White Night,” was used to illustrate the auction’s catalogue. 
At the Moscow sale in 1988, the art was purchased by Western collectors who were attracted by its novelty and relative cheapness, as well as its significance. At Sotheby’s sale last week, many works came from foreign collections and the major buyers were Russian. 
“In staging this historic and pioneering sale, Sotheby’s has established beyond doubt that there is now a burgeoning market for Russian Contemporary Art,” Vickery said. 
According to Aidan Salakhova, director of Moscow’s Aidan Gallery, there are about 200-300 serious art collectors in Russia and the scene is growing.
“There was extremely competitive bidding for top names, producing 22 world auction record prices and bidding came from over 150 international buyers, a truly staggering phenomenon for a new sale,” Vickery said. “The room was packed and applause broke out at the end of the sale as recognized the historic importance and achievement of the sale.” 
Sotheby’s is planning another sale of modern and contemporary Russian art in 2008. 

www.sothebys.com

TITLE: Sound and vision
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: British musicians Ian Brown and Brett Anderson are not the type of people who Russian filmmakers typically approach to do their movie soundtracks.
But that’s exactly what the creators of “Paragraph 78” did.
The sci-fi action thriller opens in local theaters this week accompanied by a huge promotional campaign that includes vast billboards and a two-day music event in Moscow called “Paragraph 78 Fest” with Brown and Anderson as headliners.
“Paragraph 78” is the debut feature by Mikhail Khleborodov, best known for directing music videos for pop acts like Mumy Troll and Valeriya, as well as for television commercials. 
As well Brown and Anderson, the film’s soundtrack also uses tracks from Death in Vegas, Crystal Method, Paul Oakenfeld and The Rosebuds, while “The Matrix: Path of Neo” composer Tobias Enhus composed the score.
Brown — who won the NME’s Godlike Genius award last year — founded The Stone Roses, the seminal group that spearheaded the Manchester guitar band craze of the late 1980s and early ‘90s. 
Anderson is best known for fronting Suede, the influential British pop-rock band of the ‘90s. He plans to launch his solo career next month with an album called “Brett Anderson.”
This international music involvement reflects the personal music tastes of the film’s director and Yusup Bakhshiyev, its producer. 
“Luckily, our tastes are absolutely the same; we both like guitar rock, Manchester and Britpop at its best — as well as electronic music, that’s why we got Death in Vegas and Crystal Method,” Bakhshiyev said in a recent phone interview from Moscow. 
The choice of using British music also had something to do with the poor state of Russian pop music, said Bakhshiyev, who was active in the 1990s Moscow music scene and who founded the music clubs Moskovsky, Ministerstvo and Bulgakov and the music enterprise Eklektika, before he moved into the film industry in 1999.
“I like some of the Russian artists, but on the whole I can’t say they have advanced much in recent years,” he said.
“We wanted to make a good product, which would look appropriate not only to Russian viewers but internationally too.” 
Bakhshiyev’s film company, MB Productions, had dealt with Brown’s work before, when Brown’s track “Corpse in Their Mouth” was used in the soundtrack of the film “Zhest” (Junk) last year.
“He’s been always one of my favorite musicians, even perhaps not at the time of The Stone Roses, but rather when he started his solo career. When we started working on the soundtrack for ‘Paragraph,’ I said, ‘Maybe we can try to commission a song from Ian Brown?’ It sounded absurd at first, but then we found how to contact him and wrote to him,” said Bakhshiyev.
Brown, who composed and recorded an original number called “On Track” for the film, spent much of last year working on an ambitious, yet-to-be-released album with former Smiths bassist Andy Rourke and a 30-piece orchestra to follow up his 2004 “Solarized.” 
“Most surprisingly, he came to Russia two weeks after receiving the first letter from us,” said Bakhshiyev. 
“He had not been to Russia before. He flew in all alone, without a manager, without any bodyguards, without any entourage. I don’t know how to explain what I felt when we met him at Sheremetyevo Airport [in Moscow]. His face, the way he was walking with just a bag across his shoulder, in Russia — all this was, of course, very unusual.”
Anderson launches his solo career next month with a new album and sold out three concerts in London to showcase the record in just five minutes, the NME reported last month. However his work for “Paragraph 78” is something of a concession to local tastes.
“Scorpio Rising,” Anderson’s song for the film, is a duet with Ilya Lagutenko of the popular Russian band Mumy Troll. The combination was intended to generate radio exposure in Russia, and popular radio stations are already playing it.
“It was a ‘producer’s decision,’ because we understand that foreign artists can not be as hugely popular [in Russia] as local ones are, but [Anderson and Lagutenko] perform in rather similar styles so there’s no reason to talk about it as if it was messy,” said Bakhshiyev.
“We wanted to downplay the Britishness slightly, and that might have worked. Perhaps because of this, the song reached No. 2 in Radio Maximum’s chart after a week. 
“If the song were fully in English, much fewer people would hear it, I think. Perhaps there’s a certain dissonance for a sophisticated music ear, but I like it now; and when I listen to the song sung by Brett alone, I feel like I miss something.”
The song’s original, solo version will be on Anderson’s new album, “Brett Anderson,” due out on Drowned in Sound Recordings on March 26. In Russia, the licensed edition will be out on Arnold and Gregor Records, MB Productions’ record label.
Russian audiences, with music tastes spoiled by what  Bakhshiyev describes as “pseudo pop culture,” are not open to quality pop music, he said.
“The market in the rest of the world is much broader, and even a band such as Tool has hundreds of thousands of fans who buy its music in the West, while in Russia there is maybe a thousand people who listen to this kind of music,” Bakhshiyev said.
“For instance, I know that Brown is bringing 16 musicians with him [to Moscow]. It will be a full-fledged live show, with a lot of different instruments. But I can’t say there’s a stir about it.”
<i>www.mbpro.ru, www.arnoldandgregor.ru</i>

TITLE: Comrade scientist
AUTHOR: By Susan Eisenhower
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: As the 20th century recedes, it becomes increasingly difficult to explain to younger generations the peculiar combination of idealism, naivete, cynicism and brutality that was the hallmark of that century’s totalitarian states. 
Ethan Pollock’s “Stalin and the Soviet Science Wars” looks at this phenomenon through the lens of Soviet science policy in the immediate postwar period to explain Josef Stalin’s determination to articulate and demonstrate “the compatibility of its ideology with all fields of knowledge.” 
While savage dictatorships in Nazi Germany and China played at the edges of harnessing science and its theories for the advancement of their ideological dogmas, nowhere was the attempt more comprehensive than in the Soviet Union. And nowhere before or since has a national leader involved himself in such detailed analyses of science and philosophy to assure their affinity with the conceptual underpinnings of his political power.
Stalin desperately wanted to put the fruits of scientific discovery and technological progress in service of the “first socialist country in the world,” and the role of scientists and engineers in that process was well understood by the regime. Communist ideology demanded that there be no contradictions between the laws of nature and the teachings of Marxist philosophy. Yet who was to interpret the issues inherent in the wide and very specific areas of scientific and technical research? Until the end of World War II, Stalin stayed rather aloof from such debates. But in the immediate postwar period his involvement intensified. Only Stalin, “the greatest philosopher ever,” would be the final judge.
During this time, Stalin’s hidden hand guided a tumultuous series of campaigns, which the Soviet leader himself orchestrated. To create the impression that open and rigorous scientific debate had produced a consensus on the fundamentals of Marxism and science, Stalin cleverly drew these communities out into the open. From 1945 to 1953, the Soviet authorities sponsored a number of highly visible campaigns focused on several major areas of the natural, social and political sciences. 
The net effect on the development of each specific discipline was different. Physics, whose role in making the atomic bomb was critical, remained almost untouched. 
Other disciplines were not so lucky. The result was the purging of scientists and the hijacking of whole areas of academic and scientific research. Theories that had drawn on Western rather than Russian thought were especially vulnerable.
Much has already been written about some of the most egregious cases of ideology run amok. Among the most famous is the “biological war” that was waged by pseudo-biologist Trofim Lysenko just after World War II. 
His condemnation of the “bourgeois” nature of the chromosome had a devastating impact not only on this science but on Soviet agriculture more broadly. 
So what was Stalin’s motivation in supporting this semi-literate homegrown agronomist who tried to kill contemporary genetics? It would be too easy to attribute it to the conceptual contradiction between Marxism’s unspecified environmental, evolutionary beliefs and Western-oriented genetics, which was based on the fundamentals of molecular biology. 
Stalin, Pollock shows us, never bought Lysenko’s arguments on the “class nature” of this science. In the margins of a draft speech by the biologist, Stalin scoffed: “Ha-Ha-Ha!!! And what about Mathematics? And Darwinism?” 
Rather, Stalin and the Party’s support for Lysenko was the outgrowth of the desperation that had set in once it was clear that collectivization had failed to transform Soviet agriculture. Stalin counted on Lysenko to provide practical, indeed miraculous, results for the food supply. This gamble, however, assured that vast armies of serious scientists would perish and that Soviet biology would be damaged for generations.
The story of what happened to the physics community is also well known. After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Stalin needed the bomb. Unlike the peculiarly nationalistic arguments advanced by Lysenkoites, Stalin had difficulty rejecting Western physicists’ discoveries, especially since he had personally instructed security-police chief Lavrenty Beria to steal their secrets. Soviet physics was saved, but not without considerable drama and risk to its key scientific players. The reprieve may have come because the Soviet regime needed these scientists, who were close to delivering an atomic device. 
However, some important places like the physics department at Moscow State University, or MGU, were dominated by ardent critics of the best in modern (Western) physics, such as quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity. While Pollock describes the intervention of the Soviet Union’s leading physicists, including Igor Kurchatov and Andrei Sakharov, he misses the role played by rebellious MGU students in demanding changes in the physics curriculum and in the roster of lecturers — a precursor of the independent thought that physicists would play decades later during perestroika. 
With the death of Stalin, no Soviet leader was inclined to be the arbiter of all philosophical and scientific things. 
“It was only a matter of time,” Pollock writes, “before some scientists used this privileged access to truth to challenge the rationality of the ideology and thus the legitimacy of the regime.”
While “Stalin and the Soviet Science Wars” foreshadows the hard lessons that the Soviet regime would learn from these policies, the story sometimes bogs down in too much detail. The reader also, inevitably, wishes to know some of the human story. The subject, for instance, begs more background on Stalin’s own missionary zeal (the result, perhaps, of his early years in a theological seminary) and how it evolved. Pollock tells us only that: “[Stalin’s] interest in science was too thorough and too consistent across time to be about politics alone. … [He wanted] to become a great theorist in the tradition of Marx, Engels, and Lenin.”
The book would have also been enriched by some of the Stalin generation’s stories, such as the one about the physicist Pyotr Kapitsa, who carried on an ironic correspondence with the Soviet leader while under house arrest. Or the tragic story of two brothers who were the pride of Soviet science — Nikolai and Sergei Vavilov. Nikolai was a leading geneticist and a staunch opponent of Lysenko. He perished in the gulag. Sergei, on the other hand, was a physicist who, at the behest of Stalin, served as chairman of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Their contrasting fates were emblematic of the times.
As the Soviet regime was to discover, science policy by fiat comes at great cost. For those scientists who did not successfully “deviate with the Party line,” as the Soviet anecdote went, it was their last mistake: “Countless scientists in every discipline miscalculated what ideologically correct science was supposed to look like. Stalin was the only person who could keep up with his own evolving interpretations.” 
Pollock’s main contribution is in adding to what we know about Stalin’s involvement in these “wars” through analysis of his essays, notations and memos. 
The result provides additional nuances and brings this cautionary tale to a new generation of readers. It does not, however, change our overall understanding of this epoch, which was chronicled by eyewitnesses and well documented in official Soviet publications. 
As is so often the case in medicine: To determine the true diagnosis, one does not necessarily have to wait for the autopsy.

Susan Eisenhower is a co-author, with Roald Z. Sagdeev, of “The Making of a Soviet Scientist: My Adventures in Nuclear Fusion and Space From Stalin to Star Wars” and the author of “Partners in Space: U.S.-Russian Cooperation After the Cold War.”

TITLE: In the spotlight
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: This month, Ksenia Sobchak, Russia’s lone It Girl, dipped her polished toe into the world of cinema by voicing Paris Hilton in the silicone-enhanced comedy “National Lampoon’s Pledge This!” Despite going straight to DVD in the United States, the film got a theatrical release over here, and Sobchak has been busy promoting her role.
On the one hand, the match-up makes perfect sense. Sobchak is blonde, tanned and prosperous, and does a lot of things that Hilton does too. Her own reality show? Check. Her own perfume? Check. Flirtations with using dogs as accessories? Check. On the other hand, though, what we’re talking about here is a strong contender for the worst film in history.
Poor Ksenia got a bit of a third-degree grilling last week from eccentric actress Renata Litvinova, who hosts a movie-themed talk show on Muz-TV. “Why did you do it?” the presenter asked, airing footage of Sobchak gamely voicing a sex scene. The would-be starlet looked slightly uncomfortable, but talked about saving up money to do a decent movie. She admitted that without the right looks and acting skills, it’s hard to break into Mosfilm.
That’s typical of Sobchak, who tends to use “Ksyusha from the block” self-deprecation to defuse hostility. And goodness knows, there is plenty of that. The daughter of former St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak has created a media empire that includes her own book on fashion, a perfume she markets together with novelist Oksana Robski, a job as the host of TNT’s reality show “Dom-2” (a sort of “Big Brother”) and the lead role in her own reality show, Muz-TV’s “The Blonde in Chocolate.” And she did all that with a frustrating lack of effort.
At least that’s the way it looks. It can’t be easy to win the title of “person most often invited to parties,” since that surely must involve actually attending some of them. As for listening to the monomaniacal rants of the inhabitants of “Dom-2,” I can only pity someone who has work up interest in whether Tori loves Ruslan this week.
Last Tuesday, I tuned in to “The Blonde in Chocolate” — which, incidentally, is how local distributors have renamed Hilton’s film — to find out what makes Sobchak tick. I had skipped the show before, partly in a protest against the media objectification of the hollow construct of celebrity, and partly because my television doesn’t get that channel.
The episode I caught was quite pleasant, but not exactly up-to-the-moment: It focused on a photo shoot for Sobchak and Robski’s perfume, To Marry a Millionaire, which came out last year. Still, it’s good to know that Robski had to struggle to fit into her corset.
The show has caused a bit of controversy due to Sobchak’s free use of swear words, which could be beeped out more effectively. She also isn’t shy about changing her clothes in front of the cameras. You don’t need training from Marks & Spencer to be able to guess her bra size by the end of an episode. The show has even included a bubble bath scene that provoked motherly words of warning from Izvestia television critic Irina Petrovskaya.
With her voice work on “Pledge This!,” Sobchak has gone a bit farther along the road to raunch, since the most memorable scene features a tiny dog, the boyfriend of Paris Hilton’s character and some whipped cream applied externally. However, she can probably rely on the fact that most viewers will do their best to forget the film as quickly as possible. 
The next Sobchak project is said to be a book, written jointly with Oksana Robski, called “To Marry a Millionaire.” Yes, it’s a book that’s a spin-off from a perfume. Frankly, I can’t wait.

TITLE: Doing the twist
AUTHOR: By Matt Brown
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Oliver Twist
3 Belinskogo Ulitsa. Tel: 272 3361
Open  11 a.m. through 1 a.m.
Menu in Russian and English
Dinner for four with beer 2,380 rubles ($89)
A charming detail on the beer mats at the Oliver Twist, a Russian-owned-and-operated English pub that has been open since July, is an illustration of Dickens’ famous urchin in a cute Chaplinesque pose. Despite the trend away from traditional English pubs in England — and, for that matter, from beer mats themselves after they were declared “unhygenic” by European Union bureaucrats — the St. Petersburg version is going strong. The Oliver Twist follows a pub named after the 19th century author that created him — the Dickens Pub on the Fontanka — and perhaps the city can expect pubs named Martin Chuzzlewit, Nicholas Nickleby and David Copperfield in the future. 
The Oliver Twist has other comforting pubby knick-knacks embellishing booths upholstered in green-leather, tables made of mahogany and walls covered in red-flock-wallpaper, from horse brasses to pictures of Trafalgar Square. But what at first is intimate when there are few guests, can later become cramped as late drinkers arrive. If you are not a soccer fan, it is also best to avoid match days — the Oliver Twist’s Russian regulars seem to know an awful lot about Wayne Rooney.
With its compact dimensions, the Oliver Twist soon becomes reassuringly smoke-filled — a further clue that English pub traditions are upheld more robustly in Russia than they are in England (in July, smoking in pubs  in the U.K. is to go the way of beer mats).
The choice of food on offer is aptly inspired by pub grub classics from fried onion rings to chicken and chips — some effort has been put into describing the dishes in flowery, accurate English — and there’s lots to choose from. 
For example snacks and starters include deep-fried squid rings (190 rubles, $7.15) expertly prepared in a feather-light, non-greasy beer batter and served with orange slices and olives. Just as light is a well-prepared Greek salad (150 rubles, $5.65) with good-quality feta, drizzled in oil and sprinkled with paprika.  While the existence of waitresses serving both food and drink is not an English pub tradition, it is a welcome departure at the Oliver Twist where they are polite and relaxed. 
The beer choice is limited, although this is probably because the pub is small and cannot store a wide range properly. What is on offer is served to a good standard, including draught Guinness for 190 rubles ($7.15) and Heineken for 100 rubles ($3.80) a pint.
A hit among the main dishes at the Oliver Twist is its fish and chips (220 rubles, $8.30) — five or six pieces of cod in a lightweight batter, and potatoes that have been sliced and fried in a pan rather than chipped and deep-fried. Other creative variations include grilled beef steak (390 rubles, $14.70) served in gravy with grilled vegetables and a red onion relish. Hungry pubbers may want to add a separate order of fries or vegetables. 
The food is thoughtfully presented, and while not slavishly replicating the lost arts and culinary mysteries of traditional English fayre (pickled egg, anyone?), this is a good thing. Simply, the Oliver Twist offers the English pub experience — with a twist.

TITLE: The spying game
AUTHOR: By Manohla Dargis
PUBLISHER: The New York Times
TEXT: “The Good Shepherd,” a chilly film about a spy trapped in the cold of his own heart, seeks to put a tragic human face on the Central Intelligence Agency, namely that of Matt Damon. The story more or less begins and ends at the Bay of Pigs. In between there is a spicy, lively interlude in the 1930s at Yale University, where little boys are made of skull and bones and secret societies. Yale leads to World War II, cloak and dagger and a British spy cut from the same bespoke cloth as Kim Philby. Then it’s over to Washington, where the citadels of power loom against the cheerless sky like tombstones.
Damon, who plays a super-spy warrior in the “Bourne” films, excels at secretive men, and few are as mysterious as Edward Wilson, the spy catcher in “The Good Shepherd.” (The title refers to the Bible passage in which Jesus says: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”) Though a composite, Wilson seems largely based on the fascinating, freakishly paranoid James Jesus Angleton, a Yale graduate and poetry lover who served in the Office of Strategic Services during World War II and ran CIA counterintelligence from 1954 to 1974. Angleton cultivated orchids; Wilson builds the more prosaically symbolic miniature ships in bottles. 
Angleton is now widely thought to have hurt the CIA more than he helped it, and articles on the agency’s web site (www.cia.gov) frame his tenure in generally unfavorable terms (it had “devastating results,” for one). Written by Eric Roth and directed by Robert De Niro, “The Good Shepherd” doesn’t address the full consequences of that devastation, partly because it wants to take on the institution as well as the man, and partly, one imagines, because Angleton’s crippling paranoia would have been too difficult to shape into a neat narrative. “The Good Shepherd” is an origin story about the CIA, and for the filmmakers that story boils down to fathers who fail their sons, a suspect metaphor that here becomes all too ploddingly literal. 
Certainly fathers and sons offer a serviceable alternative to martinis and Aston Martins. Created in 1947, the CIA has been responsible for many deeds, including our abiding fascination with spooks. No matter which way public sentiment shifts about the agency and its handiwork (Chile, Nicaragua), we remain fascinated with spies, or at least an idea of them, an idea in which matchbox cameras and microphones invariably figure more prominently than miles of locked filing cabinets. Secrets make agencies like the CIA sexy, no matter how rumpled the raincoats. The most interesting thing about “The Good Shepherd” is how hard the filmmakers work not only to demystify the agency, but also to strip it of its allure, its heat.
In “Betrayal,” a book about Aldrich Ames, the double agent who for years ferried CIA secrets to the Soviets, the agency is characterized as “a cross between Yale’s secret Skull and Bones society and the post office.” In its basic outline Roth’s overly busy screenplay takes the same approach to the agency as it follows Wilson’s journey through institutions of power. At Yale he joins the Skull and Bones, where the power elite helps reproduce itself by bonding and dressing like the orgiastic partygoers in “Eyes Wide Shut.” The all-male members of this clandestine group don’t have sex with one another, at least on screen, but they do mud-wrestle naked, a ritual that underscores the homosocial nature of Wilson’s world. 
Yale and World War II are the juiciest bits of the story, partly because they involve the charismatic Dr. Fredericks, played by a superb Michael Gambon. A Yale professor with a leer as insinuating as his walking stick, Dr. Fredericks tries to seduce Wilson into some antidemocratic chicanery through their shared love of poetry. (At Yale, Angleton helped found a poetry magazine in which he published Ezra Pound, a family acquaintance.) This attempted seduction parallels a rather more comical one involving Angelina Jolie, who plays Margaret Russell, the sister of another Yale student. With her poppy-red lipstick and raucously aggressive sexuality, Margaret proves a far more successful seducer than Dr. Fredericks, as female pulchritude and power triumph over manly poetry and secrets. 
Ah, but not for long. This is a man’s world, after all, filled with specters skulking through alleys with blood on their hands and the world on their shoulders. Conscripted into the O.S.S., Wilson travels to London, where he apprentices in espionage and intelligence and meets Arch Cummings (Billy Crudup), a fop with a posh accent patterned on Kim Philby. The film shies away from the more provocative aspects of Angleton’s long acquaintance with Philby, and the years they lunched together while Philby worked for the Soviets. Whatever its true nature, the friendship hurt Angleton’s marriage, as he later admitted: “Once I met Philby, the world of intelligence that had once interested me consumed me. The home life that had seemed so important faded in importance.”
That spells trouble for Jolie, alas, who after her spectacular entrance has to spend most of the film as the aggrieved, abandoned wife. It is not a good fit. A force of nature, Jolie reads more believably when she’s running through the jungle in boots and a bikini, as she does in the “Tomb Raider” flicks, than when standing on the sidelines in a domestic nightmare. But stand and screech and gamely slosh the booze she does while Damon’s spy helps win the war and later helps turn the CIA into a shadow empire with some dependable character actors: De Niro as one of the agency’s founders, the dependably great Alec Baldwin as an FBI agent and an equally fine William Hurt as the pipe-smoking head of the CIA. 
De Niro does fine in his avuncular role and, in the main, even better as the film’s director. He imbues “The Good Shepherd” with a funereal vibe that works especially well on the dark, dank streets of London, where Wilson learns his first repellent lesson in spy-catching, and during his early years in Washington. Among the film’s most striking visual tropes is the image of Wilson simply going to work in the capital alongside other similarly dressed men, a spectral army clutching briefcases and silently marching to uncertain victory. In silhouette the men recall the gangsters in a Jean-Pierre Melville film, even as their anonymity evokes the drones in Madeleine L’Engle’s book “A Wrinkle in Time” who are ruled by an evil disembodied brain called IT.
Who rules the drones in “The Good Shepherd”? Who is IT? The president, the people, American mining and banana companies, the ghosts of fathers past, the agency itself? It’s hard to know, though now the CIA answers to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. These are hard questions, but they are also too big, too complex and perhaps too painful for even this ambitious (2 hours, 37 minutes) project, which can only elude and insinuate, not enlighten and inform. Although the film seems true in broad outline and scrupulous detail, and the postwar Berlin rubble looks as real as the documentary footage of Fidel Castro slipped between the lightly fictionalized intrigue, there is something ungraspable and unknowable about this world, even if it is also one we ourselves have helped create.

TITLE: Russian Years — 1995–2005
TEXT: The National Center of Photography on Friday opens its new exhibition, “Russian Years — 1995–2005,” featuring the work of the internationally acclaimed contemporary American fashion photographer Deborah Turbeville. 
A pupil of the legendary Richard Avedon, Turbeville established her reputation in the 1970s and 1980s. The original blurring approach the photographer applies to commercial images shot for fashion magazines and advertising campaigns lends them an enigmatic effect that is quite opposite to the clarity and straightforwardness of regular fashion photography. 
“I say yes to style, yes to mood, yes to ambiguity,” Turbeville has said. Her work appears regularly in such top fashion magazines as Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, and has been exhibited around the world, including at the Pompidou Center in Paris and at Sonnabend Gallery in New-York, among other museums and galleries. 
Turbeville had already made her name by the time an exhibition of her work was mounted by the Russian Museum in 1997, and she has made several visits to St. Petersburg. 
In black-and-white and color, and large and small formats, the images in the new retrospective cover semi-ruined St. Petersburg and its eccentric inhabitants of the past decade. Perhaps the most exciting is Turbeville’s brilliant and picturesque series of young ballet female dancers. It is interesting to compare these ballet images with those in Anastasia Khoroshilova’s “Islanders” show which was recently shown in the Marble Palace and later shown at the State Academy of Choreography in Moscow. 
“Deborah Turbeville: Russian Years — 1995-2005” will be accompanied by a series of lectures and screenings called “Elements of Style” given by the photographer herself. 

— Andrei Vorobei

”Deborah Turbeville: Russian Years — 1995-2005”  through March 13. Details on how to attend the lecture series are at www.ncprf.org

TITLE: Avalanche Roll All Over Flames
AUTHOR: By Pat Graham
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: DENVER — One goal won’t get Colorado Avalanche forward Marek Svatos out of coach Joel Quenneville’s doghouse. But it’s a start. Svatos scored the winning goal 1:24 into the third period and Paul Stastny had two goals and an assist in the Avalanche’s 4-3 win over the Calgary Flames on Tuesday night. 
Quenneville has tried everything to get Svatos on track — putting him on different lines, even benching him for three games. He’s hoping this finally gets Svatos, who scored 32 goals last season, out of his funk. 
“I think he needed to score a goal,” Quenneville said. “When (scoring) is your bread and butter, hopefully you can feed off of this and be confident in all areas.” 
Svatos downplayed the goal or its ramifications. All he had to do was glance at his ice time — he only played 6:30 against Calgary — to know there’s work to be done to get back in good standing. 
“I know I have struggled,” said Svatos, who scored his third goal in his last 27 games. “It has been frustrating for the last two weeks. It is nice to get the goal.” 
Stastny, meanwhile, remains hot. His two power-play tallies in the first period gave him 21 goals this season, and extended his point streak to nine games. 
He also has 53 points this season, breaking the Avalanche record for the most by a rookie. Former Colorado player Alex Tanguay, who now plays for Calgary, set the mark with 51 in the 1999-00 season. 
Stastny’s father, Peter, has the franchise record — scoring 109 with Quebec during the 1980-81 season. 
“I didn’t know about it (the record), but I’ll take it as long as we got the win,” Stastny said. 
Peter Budaj has struggled in net against Calgary this season, giving up 13 goals in his last three starts. But on Tuesday night Budaj — after giving up three goals through two periods — finally settled in, stopping 33 shots, including 16 in the third period. He was at his best early in the third period when Calgary had a 5-on-3 advantage. He even took a point-blank shot square in the mask. 
“There are games when you don’t see enough (shots),” Budaj said. “Tonight, I saw enough.” 
After the game, Flames captain Jarome Iginla placed the blame for the loss on himself. He drew a holding penalty that led to Svatos’ power-play goal. 
“It was a dumb penalty by me,” he said. “I shouldn’t put us in a situation like that. It was just a dumb penalty.” 
Milan Hejduk added a goal and an assist, and Joe Sakic had two assists. 
Calgary and Colorado faced each other for the third time in six days. The teams split two games in Calgary last week. 
Kristian Huselius had a goal and an assist, raising his season total to five goals and five assists against the Avalanche. 
“We always want to win and we didn’t,” Huselius said. 
The Flames and Avalanche have combined for 43 goals in five games this season. 
The Avalanche moved out of last place in the Northwest Division because of having more wins than Edmonton. 
Both have 62 points. 
Colorado trails Calgary by eight points for the final playoff spot in the Western Conference. 
Svatos was just glad to finally contribute. 
“It is my biggest goal in the biggest game right now,” Svatos said. “It’s a good feeling. It is big for me.”

TITLE: Negotiators Deadlocked Over Kosovo
AUTHOR: By William Kole
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: VIENNA, Austria — Serbian and ethnic Albanian negotiators remain deadlocked on the heart of a UN plan that would put the restive Serbian province of Kosovo on the road to eventual independence, a UN special envoy said Wednesday.
Martti Ahtisaari, who drafted the proposal on the future status of Kosovo, said a final round of talks in Vienna between the rival sides had begun in a conciliatory mood, but he cautioned that both remained far apart on their positions.
“The parties have not moved closer together — we are still facing the same realities,” Ahtisaari said.
Serbia wants Kosovo to remain part of its territory, but the province’s ethnic Albanian majority demands independence. Kosovo has been a UN protectorate since 1999, when NATO airstrikes ended a brutal Serbian crackdown on separatists. About 16,000 NATO-led peacekeepers still patrol the province.
Veton Surroi, an ethnic Albanian leader leading Kosovo’s delegation, said earlier that his team would not seek any major changes to Ahtisaari’s plan and was determined to “preserve its spine and the shape.”
“For us, this chapter has ended and this book has been closed,” Surroi said.
But chief Serb negotiator Slobodan Samardzic — underscoring Serbia’s fierce claims to Kosovo as the heart of its historic homeland — said his delegation would present “completely alternative proposals” to the draft.
Ahtisaari’s plan “completely disregards Serbia’s sovereignty and integrity as well as national and international law,” Samardzic said.
The Serbian delegation later issued a statement saying it “rejected all provisions of the Ahtisaari proposal which are inconsistent with the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Serbia.” It said it proposed alternatives granting Kosovo “substantial autonomy” while keeping it part of Serbia, but did not elaborate.
Ahtisaari’s proposal, which would give Kosovo internationally supervised self-rule and the trappings of statehood including a flag, anthem, army and constitution, must be approved by the UN Security Council.
On Tuesday, a group claiming to be the Kosovo Liberation Army — the now-disbanded guerrilla force that battled Serb forces for independence in 1998-99 — claimed responsibility for a bomb attack that damaged three UN vehicles Monday.
The statement said the bombing was in retaliation for the deaths of two ethnic Albanian protesters killed earlier this month while demonstrating against the UN roadmap. Many ethnic Albanians insist the plan grants the province’s minority Serbs too many concessions while not going far enough toward establishing Kosovo as a fully independent state.
Police said they were investigating the statement, the authenticity of which could not be independently verified.
The latest violence has inflamed tensions and raised concerns that Kosovo could see more unrest.
Ahtisaari called on both sides to refrain from violence and put aside wartime animosities to work for “a better future for all in Kosovo.”
“I recognize that it’s not easy to create a multiethnic society in light of what has gone wrong … but human beings need to start responding to each other in a totally different way,” said the former Finnish president.

TITLE: Blair Announces Iraq Withdrawal Plan
AUTHOR: By David Stringer
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON — Britain will withdraw around 1,600 troops from Iraq in the “coming months,” aiming to cut its force to below 5,000 by late summer if Iraqi forces can secure the southern part of the country, Prime Minister Tony Blair said Wednesday.
British troops will stay in Iraq until at least 2008 and work to secure the Iran-Iraq border and maintain supply routes to U.S. and coalition troops in central Iraq, Blair told the House of Commons.
“The actual reduction in forces will be from the present 7,100 — itself down from over 9,000 two years ago and 40,000 at the time of the conflict — to roughly 5,500,” Blair said.
He told lawmakers that “increasingly our role will be support and training, and our numbers will be able to reduce accordingly.”
Blair said Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had agreed to the plan.
Dependent on Iraqi capability Britain would draw down further, “possibly to below 5,000” once a base at Basra Palace is transferred to Iraqi control in late summer, Blair said.
“What all of this means is not that Basra is how we want it to be. But it does mean that the next chapter in Basra’s history can be written by Iraqis,” Blair said.
Denmark also said Wednesday it will withdraw its 460-member contingent from southern Iraq by August. The decision had been made with the Iraqi government and Britain, under whose command the Danish forces are serving near Basra, Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said. 
Rasmussen added that Denmark would replace the troops with surveillance helicopters and civilian advisers.
And a government spokeswoman in Lithuania said the Baltic nation is “seriously considering” withdrawing its 53 troops from Iraq.
Defense Ministry spokeswoman Ruta Apeitkyte told The Associated Press that the Baltic country was considering not replacing the contingent when its mission ends in August.
Blair and President Bush talked by secure video link Tuesday about the proposals, U.S. National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said. Bush views Britain’s troop cutbacks as “a sign of success” in Iraq, he said.
“While the United Kingdom is maintaining a robust force in southern Iraq, we’re pleased that conditions in Basra have improved sufficiently that they are able to transition more control to the Iraqis,” Johndroe said.
Blair said “the situation in Basra is very different from Baghdad — there is no Sunni insurgency, no al-Qaida base, little Sunni on Shia violence,” adding that the southern city is nothing like “the challenge of Baghdad.”
The Iraqi capital had suffered from an “orgy of terrorism unleashed upon it in order to crush any possibility of it functioning,” he said.
“If Baghdad cannot be secured, the future of the country is in peril. The enemies of Iraq understand that. We understand it,” Blair said.
Besides the United States, Britain and Denmark, the major partners in the coalition include South Korea (2,300 troops), Poland (900), Australia and Georgia (both 800) and Romania (600), according to the Brookings Institution.
The U.S., meanwhile, is implementing an increase of 21,000 more troops for Iraq, mostly in and around the capital. Analysts claim there is little point in boosting forces in the largely Shiite south of Iraq, where most non-U.S. coalition troops are concentrated.
Yet as more countries draw down or pull out, it could create a security vacuum if radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr stirs up trouble.
A British withdrawal is not likely to have much effect on the stepped-up U.S. operation in Baghdad or the war against the Sunni-led insurgency focusing on Anbar province west of the Iraqi capital.
“We want to bring our troops homes as well,” Johndroe said. “It’s the model we want to emulate, to turn over more responsibilities to Iraqis and bring our troops home. That’s the goal and always has been.”
Blair, who has said he will step down by September after a decade in power, has seen his foreign-policy record overshadowed by his role as Bush’s leading ally in the unpopular war.
As recently as last month, Blair rejected opposition calls to withdraw British troops by October, calling such a plan irresponsible.
“That would send the most disastrous signal to the people that we are fighting in Iraq. It’s a policy that, whatever its superficial attractions may be, is actually deeply irresponsible,” Blair said on Jan. 24.

TITLE: Masters Cup Moving To Europe in 2009
AUTHOR: By Theo Ruizenaar
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: ROTTERDAM, Netherlands — The Masters Series will be cut from nine to eight tournaments in 2009, with the end-of-year Masters Cup moving from Asia to Europe.
“One of the eight events will be held in China which is a huge market to develop,” ATP president Etienne de Villiers told reporters on Wednesday.
“We will also move the Masters Cup to Europe. It will be called the ATP World Tour Finals and I would like it to be played in London.”
Shanghai hosted the end-of-year event in 2005 and 2006 and will also stage the championship this season and next.
ATP tournaments in 2009 will come under four categories of importance, the four grand slams, the Masters Series, 10 other selected events and the rest.
In the fourth category, the fans will not see the top players but that fits in the strategy of De Villiers.
“Just as in football we have to make clear to the people that tennis also acknowledges a second and third division.”
De Villiers, who worked in the past for the Disney Company, also unveiled plans to oblige top players to play all Master Series and reduce the number of withdrawals.
“Last year we had 383 withdrawals from the tournaments, almost an average of one in five.” he said.
“We can’t force players to play but if they withdraw without good reasons and medical examination reports, sanctions will follow.
“In the Master Series that will mean that they might be suspended for the next Masters tournament where they have to defend points.”
For those who do play, prize money in 2009 will be up by 30 percent with the top eight also receiving a bonus at the end of the year.

TITLE: South Korea Tries to Cut Suicide Rate
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: SEOUL — South Korea may make farm chemicals less toxic and install more fences on the tops of tall buildings in order to cut down on one of the developed world’s highest suicide rates, a health official said on Tuesday.
Having seen its suicide rate double in less than a decade, the country will also set up more counseling centers and try to increase awareness of the risks of depression, which are not widely understood in the country, the official said.
“Also as a part of the campaign, we want to remove harmful Internet sites (that may encourage suicide) as well increase the number of our cyber counseling sites for young people, who favor this type of service,” said ministry official Kim Gwon-chul.
In 2004, 24.2 South Korean per 100,000 citizens killed themselves, making suicide the fourth leading cause of death in the country, ahead of traffic accidents. There were 12,047 deaths by suicide in 2005.

TITLE: Morrison Attempts Comeback
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: CHESTER, West Virginia — Former World Boxing Organization heavyweight champion Tommy Morrison is staging a comeback, saying Tuesday that a positive HIV test that ended his career more than a decade ago was inaccurate.
“I’m negative and I’ve always been negative and that should be the end of it,” Morrison said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.
The 38-year-old will face John Castle in a four-round bout Thursday at Mountaineer Racetrack and Gaming Resort.
“The rug was yanked out from under my feet by a misdiagnosis,” he said. “All I want to do is fight. … It’s unfinished business.”
Steve Allred, athletic commissioner for the state of West Virginia, said Tuesday he approved Morrison’s participation in the bout after reviewing medical records and consulting with the Association of Boxing Commissions’ medical review committee. Allred said confidentiality laws prevent him from discussing Morrison’s medical history.
West Virginia does not have mandatory blood testing for boxers.
“I assure you that West Virginia is doing due diligence to make sure everyone who steps into the ring is healthy,” Allred said.
Morrison (46-3) and Castle (4-2) square off in one of seven bouts scheduled at the horse race track.
Morrison won the WBO title in 1993 by outpointing George Foreman. He lost it later that year. Morrison, who was featured in the movie “Rocky V,” also served a couple of years in an Arkansas prison on drug and weapons charges.
He announced he had human immunodeficiency virus in February 1996 and last fought in Japan that November, knocking out Marcus Rhode in the first round.
Morrison said that he has taken several HIV tests while preparing for his comeback and all have been negative. He has signed a contract with Top Rank promoters for at least eight fights this year. “I have no doubt I’ll be a better fighter than I ever was before,” he said. “I am more relaxed. Something that comes along with age causes you to simmer a bit.”

TITLE: Suicide Blast Kills 13 in al-Sadr’s Territory
AUTHOR: By Sinan Salaheddin
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGHDAD, Iraq — A suicide car bomber struck a police checkpoint Wednesday in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, killing at 13 people in the spiritual heartland of the militia factions led by radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
U.S. forces, meanwhile, investigated the “hard landing” of a Black Hawk helicopter north of Baghdad. Military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said the airmen were picked up by rescuers, but gave no further details.
At least seven U.S. helicopters have crashed or been forced down by hostile fire in the past month, killing 28 troops and civilians.
Meanwhile, Britain outlined its plan to withdraw around 1,600 troops from Iraq in the coming months and Denmark said it will withdraw its 460-member contingent by August (see story above).
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that despite the announced withdrawals, “the coalition remains intact.” In Japan, Vice President Dick Cheney said the U.S. wants to finish its mission in Iraq, then “come home with honor.”
Political tremors grew stronger in Iraq following claims that a Sunni woman was raped while in custody of the Shiite-dominated police — a case that threatens to escalate the sectarian friction that drives many of the bombings and attacks across the country.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki fired the head of the influential Sunni Endowment, who had called for an international investigation into the rape allegations.
The Najaf blast hit while streets were filled with morning shoppers. At least seven of the victims were police and the rest civilians, authorities said. It was the first large-scale bombing in months in the city, which is heavily guarded by police and al-Sadr’s powerful Mahdi Army militia. More than 40 people were injured.
On Aug. 10, a suicide attack near the Imam Ali mosque killed at least 35 people and wounded more than 100.
Najaf is a major Shiite pilgrim destination for its iconic Imam Ali shrine near the city’s huge cemetery — used as a burial place for Shiites throughout the country. It also is headquarters of Shiite spiritual leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and al-Sadr, whose militia engaged in heavy fighting with U.S. forces in the area in 2004.
Government officials marked the first week of a wide-ranging security sweep in Baghdad by U.S. and Iraqi forces seeking to put death squads and insurgents on the run. But a string of bombings in the Baghdad area — which have claimed more than 100 lives since Sunday — have quieted the early fanfare and highlighted the huge challenges of trying to reclaim control of the blood-soaked capital.
A car bomb in the western Baghdad district of Bayya killed at least two and injured 31, police said. Later, a car bomb in the neighborhood killed at least three people. The area, a hotbed of sectarian tensions, is mixed between Sunni and Shiites.
The Iraqi spokesman for the security plan, Brigadier General Qassim Moussawi, said the campaign to reclaim control of the city neighborhood by neighborhood “has achieved very important goals despite the expected criminal reactions.”

TITLE: IRB to Take Hard Line  On Criticism of Referees
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MELBOURNE — The International Rugby Board (IRB) will take a hard line on players and coaches criticising officials during the World Cup later this year, the governing body’s referees chief said on Wednesday.
IRB referees manager Paddy O’Brien said fines and suspensions would be imposed if individuals openly criticised officials without going through the proper channels. “Coaches mouthing off and blaming referees doesn’t do the game, referees or coaches any good,” O’Brien told reporters in Sydney.
The Irishman confirmed written complaints backed by video evidence would be given due consideration by the IRB in France, but public post-match comments would be punished.
“The really good coaches, and the teams that seem to be at the top of the world at the moment, are the ones that are very proactive in submitting reports to me, accompanied by clips where they think they’ve been hard done by.
“Those reports carry a lot of weight with our IRB referee selectors.”
O’Brien cited the example of Jamie Noon’s disallowed try in England’s 41-20 defeat by New Zealand at Twickenham in November as an example of the referees’ body responding to poor decisions.
“We saw a bad call in November when England weren’t awarded a try against the All Blacks.
“We’ve been quite proactive in the media and saying the referee made a huge mistake, and we deal with that in our selection meetings,” he said.
O’Brien added that referees would also be held accountable for bad decisions at the World Cup.
The tournament starts in France on Sept 9.

TITLE: Haedo Claims Sacramento Stage Win
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SACRAMENTO — Juan Jose Haedo of Argentina sprinted to an estimated two-bike length victory and Levi Leipheimer of Santa Rosa retained his slim race lead Tuesday in the second stage of the Amgen Tour of California. 
Haedo, who won two stages of the race last year in its inaugural edition, completed the 115.8-mile Santa Rosa to Sacramento road race in 4 hours, 40 minutes and 39 seconds. 
Luca Paolini (Liquigas) of Italy was second in the stage, and Thor Hushovd (Credit Agricole) of Norway was third ñ both in the same time as the winner. 
Leipheimer (Discovery Channel), who assumed the race lead Sunday with his uphill prologue win in San Francisco, holds a one-second margin over first-year pro Jason Donald (Slipstream) of Brighton, Colo. 
Leipheimer finished the stage in 77th position as 137 of the 141 finishers were credited with the same time. 
Benjamin Jacques-Maynes (Priority Health) of San Jose was third overall, trailing by five seconds. 
I talked with my teammate Stuart (O’Grady) before the start, said Haedo, riding in his first year with the Denmark-based CSC team. He’s been in the Tour de France 10 times. He knows what to do. All I had to do was follow him.
With his win, Haedo became the first rider to win three stages of the race. 
With about 300 meters left, I was in fourth or fifth position, said Haedo. 
With 200 meters left, I got a gap and decided to keep it.
A group of four riders built more than a five-minute lead after 30 miles. But as the stage progressed, the lead group was reduced to three and the main field eventually began the first of three, 2.9-mile circuits around the Capitol intact. 
I think everyone was a little cautious because of the Trinity Grade (climb),  said Leipheimer of the race’s first climb, 12 miles into the stage. It turned out to be quite a tough climb actually, and I just tried to stay in the front. 
But once we got into the flats there was a lot of cross tail winds, which is the worst. It can really ignite the race.
The eight-day, 639.2-mile race continues Wednesday with the 94.6-mile Stockton to San Jose road race. The stage includes the race’s most difficult climb: the Sierra Road ascent about 75 miles into the stage. 
The race concludes with the seventh stage circuit race Sunday in Long Beach. 
The winner earns $15,000, plus various daily stage and bonus money, from a total purse of $165,000.

TITLE: Man U Victory Marred by Crowd Trouble
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON — Manchester United beat Lille 1-0 on Tuesday on a disputed goal in a Champions League game marred by crowd problems. 
Real Madrid, meanwhile, helped ease the pressure on its coach by beating Bayern Munich 3-2. 
Also, PSV Eindhoven beat Arsenal 1-0 and Celtic held AC Milan to a 0-0 tie in the other first leg matches of the second round. 
Ryan Giggs scored the winning goal for United, curling in a free kick in the 83rd minute. That prompted an angry reaction from Lille’s players, who claimed Giggs had not waited for the referee’s whistle and took the free kick too quickly. 
“When the goalkeeper asks to place his wall, you should wait for the referee’s whistle,” Lille captain Gregory Tafforeau said. “There was no whistle at all and the player shot directly and the result is a goal.” 
Lille had a goal by Peter Odemwingie ruled out because the referee said he pushed United defender Nemanja Vidic. 
Soon after the game started, some visiting fans were pushed against a high metal security barrier designed to keep fans off the field. Although several fans were helped over the barrier, there were no reports of any major injuries. 
The match was played at nearby Lens because Lille’s stadium doesn’t meet UEFA’s standards. 
Madrid got two first-half goals from Raul Gonzalez and another from Ruud van Nistelrooy to give the nine-time champions the edge heading into the second leg in two weeks. 
The victory at the Santiago Bernabeu Stadium may have eased the pressure on coach Fabio Capello, who reportedly offered to quit on Monday, seven months into his second spell in charge. 
Raul, the competition’s all-time leading scorer, scored in the 10th and 28th minutes to give him 56 goals. Van Nistelrooy added another in the 34th. 
Defender Lucio scored for Bayern in the 23rd, with midfielder Mark van Bommel adding what could be a decisive away goal in the 88th. 
Edison Mendez scored in the 61st minute for PSV Eindhoven after controlling a pass from Arouna Kone and sending a long range shot into the bottom corner of Jens Lehmann’s goal. 
PSV defender Sun Xiang became the first Chinese player to play in the Champions League when he came on as a 66th-minute substitute for Manuel Da Costa. 
Milan striker Alberto Gilardino, who has recently recovered from a knee injury, had his team’s best chance when he beat the offside trap in the 26th minute, but his shot was deflected wide by Celtic goalkeeper Artur Boruc. 
For Celtic, Shunsuke Nakamura’s free kick was saved by the diving Zeljko Kalac in the 39th. 
AC Milan captain Paolo Maldini became the fifth player to make his 100th Champions League appearance, joining Oliver Kahn, David Beckham, Roberto Carlos and Raul. 
The 38-year-old Maldini also played in the previous version of the competition, making his European Cup debut in 1992. He has two winner’s medals and has reached three other finals.

TITLE: Iverson’s Returns But Spurs Still Win
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: DALLAS — Allen Iverson’s return to the lineup failed to spark the Denver Nuggets who lost 95-80 to the San Antonio Spurs on Tuesday.
The Spurs dominated early, taking a 31-point lead after three quarters, before emptying their bench in the fourth quarter after allowing Denver just 10 third quarter points.
Iverson returned to the Denver lineup after missing nine of the Nuggets last 10 games before the All-Star break with an ankle injury, but scored just nine points on 3-of-11 shooting.
“Usually when I come back from injury, I have my rhythm back,” Iverson told reporters. “I didn’t today.”
Carmelo Anthony, the NBA’s leading scorer, managed just 15 points and eight rebounds in 29 minutes as the Nuggets lost their second straight to drop back to the .500 mark at 26-26.
Since Iverson was acquired from the Philadelphia 76ers on Dec. 19, he and Anthony have played just seven times together due to injuries and suspensions and Denver won only the first two.
Tony Parker had 17 points in just 24 minutes to lead the Spurs, who got at least three points from all 12 players they used in the game.
Manu Ginobili played just 19 minutes but had 14 points and Tim Duncan managed 12 points and six rebounds in 25 minutes for San Antonio (36-18), winners of three straight games.
The Spurs trailed for most of the first quarter but rallied to lead 25-21 after one quarter and 49-38 at the half. They broke open the game by out-scoring Denver 30-10 in the third quarter before the Nuggets rallied against their subs.
It was the first home game for the Spurs after an eight-game road trip before the All-Star break during which they went 4-4.
• The Chicago Bulls beat the Atlanta Hawks for the 10th straight time, crushing the Hawks 106-81.
• Gilbert Arenas broke out of a scoring slump with 38 points to help the Washington Wizards beat the Minnesota Timberwolves 112-100.
• Chauncey Billups scored 19 points as the Detroit Pistons hung on to beat the Milwaukee Bucks 84-83.
• The Charlotte Bobcats defeated the New Orleans Hornets 104-100 in a rugged game that featured five technical fouls and a shoving match involving several players in the third quarter.
• Eddy Curry and Jamal Crawford scored 20 points each to help the New York Knicks beat the Orlando Magic 100-94.

TITLE: Bonds Ready for Home Run Mark, Ignores Investigation
AUTHOR: By Larry DiTore
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: SCOTTSDALE, Arizona — Barry Bonds said he’s looking forward to breaking Hank Aaron’s career home-run record and is paying no attention to a federal steroid investigation that’s followed him for 3 1/2 years. 
Bonds, who needs 22 home runs to break Aaron’s Major League Baseball mark of 755, spoke to reporters Wednesday at the San Francisco Giants’ training camp in Scottsdale, Arizona. 
He took questions in the televised session for less than seven minutes on topics ranging from the team’s new players and manager Bruce Bochy to the health of his knees. 
“It’s still a way’s away,’’ Bonds said when asked if he had imagined what breaking the record would be like. 
When questions turned to the U.S. grand jury investigation of steroid use in professional sports that has focused on him since late 2003, Bonds said he wasn’t following developments. 
“It doesn’t weigh on me at all, not at all,’’ Bonds said. 
“It’s just you guys talking, it’s just the media conversation. Let them investigate, they’ve been doing it this long.’’

TITLE: China’s Virtual Supremacy
AUTHOR: By Chros McDougall
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON — If the Summer Olympics were held today, China would win 11 more gold medals than the United States.
That’s the projection of a “relative” Olympic medals table released Tuesday by the British Olympic Association. The figures are based on results in Olympic sports and disciplines competed at the world level in 2006.
“We’ve looked upon the most appropriate mechanism for gauging the individual sports,” BOA chief executive Simon Clegg said. “European championship results have not been taken into account.”
The U.S. topped the medals list at the 2004 Athens Olympics with 35 golds and 103 total. China won 32 golds and 63 total. Russia had 27 golds and 92 total.
With the next Olympics being held in Beijing in 2008, China is expected to challenge for medal supremacy.
According to the British study of 2006 results, China would top the gold medal table with 48, and total 84 overall. The United States would win 37 gold and 93 total, followed by Russia (32-82), Australia (20-43) and the Netherlands (13-20).
Last month, U.S. Olympic Committee chief executive Jim Scherr said the Beijing Games will be the most competitive in history and American athletes will have to surpass 35 golds to top the list.

TITLE: Runners Thirsty for Attention
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: CAIRO — Three men from Canada, Taiwan and the United States have run 7,500 kilometers across the Sahara Desert to draw attention to the lack of access to water in many countries they crossed, one runner said on Wednesday.
American Charlie Engle said the trio had crossed Africa from St. Louis in Senegal to the Red Sea coast in 111 days, running 98 percent of the way and walking when forced to by illness or the terrain.
Engle said he, Ray Zahab from Canada and Kevin Lin from Taiwan ran into the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Ain Sukhna on Tuesday, before taking a ride to a luxury hotel in Cairo.
They left the Atlantic Coast on Nov. 2 last year and travelled through Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Libya and Egypt, Engle told Reuters in a telephone interview.
The runners, whose aim was to draw attention to the lack of access to clean drinking water in many countries along the way, had backing from ONE, a U.S.-based campaign to combat world poverty and HIV/AIDS, but were not raising money.