SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1264 (30), Friday, April 20, 2007
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TITLE: March Victims Speak Out
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Valery Zhelanov fought back tears as he watched amateur footage of OMON riot police kicking a young man as they dragged him to a police car. The victim is Zhelanov’s son Artyom, a political science student, who went to watch the Dissenters’ March on Sunday because of his academic interest in democratic protest.  
But, says Zhelanov, Artyom was suddenly grabbed and assaulted by officers. Held overnight, he appeared in court on Monday, and was ordered to pay a fine for “shouting obscenities” and then released.
Artyom Zhelanov was among 120 people who are reported to have been detained by police during the protest demonstration organized by The Other Russia coalition last Sunday.
Police violence against the protesters and bystanders during last weekend’s opposition rallies made international headlines and drew criticism from foreign governments. 
Russia’s ombudsman Vladimir Lukin has said he is ready to stand up for the rights of those who were targeted in opposition protests in Moscow and St. Petersburg last weekend.
Lukin said TV reports and pictures left him under the impression that there had been instances of police “seriously exceeding” their powers in dispersing the St. Petersburg rally on Sunday.
“I could see that blood had been shed on the streets,” Lukin said. “Fortunately there were no irreversible incidents.”
The State Russian Duma is creating a special commission to investigate the allegations. The commission is due to start work on April 24 but United Russia leader Boris Gryzlov has already made it clear that march organizers will be looked at more closely than the police.
“We must find out who masterminds these provocations, and who pays for them,” Gryzlov said.
The pictures of the incident involving Artyom Zhelanov were taken with a mobile phone.
“It was horrendous violence. When I first saw the footage, my mind just refused to accept it, so revoltingly brutal was it,” Valery Zhelanov said. “I stared at the timer blinking on the screen and only slowly came to realize that it was all for real.”
Opposition leaders expressed worries about the fate of future civil protests in Russia in the light of what they say is escalating violence by law enforcement officials.  
Andrei Dmitriyev, leader of the National Bolsheviks in St. Petersburg called the police action on Sunday “a well-planned special military operation against a chosen target.”
“The violence is getting worse. This time the police did not hesitate to shed blood and beat defenceless women and feeble elderly people,” he said. “National Bolshevik member Olga Zhukova is now recovering from a huge wound covering her entire forehead after she was smashed in the face with a truncheon by riot police at the rally. A Yabloko member, environmentalist Olga Tsepilova ended up in hospital with a broken nose and a concussion.”
Two more protesters, Maria Sheina and her husband Boris, say they went to the rally on Sunday with a peaceful poster. It called for an end to what is known as in-fill construction in St. Petersburg — the practice of building new developments in small spaces between existing buildings — which is threatening a courtyard near their home at Ulitsa Nakhimova in the Primorsky district.
“We have never really been too much into politics,” says Sheina. “We decided to join the rally just because we feel the city’s precious historical landscape is changing for the worse, and also because construction projects are done carelessly. In our courtyard, an unattended crane is looming over a school.”
When the meeting ended and the crowd started to disperse, Maria and Boris received a phone call from their son Nikolai who was heading to the area to meet them. The next phone call came from a police truck. He had been detained on his way to meet them. 
“We found our son in one of the police buses, and were allowed to get on,” Sheina recalls. “But when we tried to get off, one security guard kicked my husband very hard in the knee. Boris crawled and cried for help but even when we got to the police station they refused to send for an ambulance.”
Boris Shein, who is currently receiving treatment at the Mariinskaya hospital, had apparently suffered a broken artery. An ambulance was called for him after the intervention of a lawyer, provided by Sergei Gulyayev, local coordinator of The Other Russia Coalition. 
Maxim Reznik, head of the St. Petersburg branch of the liberal  Yabloko party, says that those detained at the rally were all charged either with “shouting obscenities” or “obstructing the police.”
“These charges were contrived,” he said. “The protest had been sanctioned by the authorities and went smoothly. The police provoked the violence themselves.” 
“After the meeting ended, they closed the nearby metro station and besieged the area with buses and lines of police. When groups of people tried to find a way out of the circle — to use some form of public transport — the police branded it as a spontaneous demonstration and lashed out at everyone who had the misfortune to be around at that moment.” 
The Other Russia says that more than 300 people were detained during the St. Petersburg rally. 
“The police made out 120 charge sheets but many more people were diverted, beaten up, and then released without being formally charged, “ says Olga Kurnosova, leader of the St. Petersburg branch of Garry Kasparov’s United Civil Front.
“It was on the brink of becoming a massacre,” Kurnosova said. “There is only one thing left for the authorities to do — start shooting the protesters.”
Reznik said some evidence documenting unjustified use of force by the police has already been sent to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
“As soon as we gather new evidence we will send it along without delay,” he added. “Human rights advocates in Moscow promised to urge the court to review these cases as soon as possible.”
Reznik stressed it is the duty of the police to keep the peace and to guarantee the security of those attending rallies and processions. 
“Police law stipulates that they must not take any action that threatens the lives or health of people, both participants in such events and passersby,” he said.
However Russia’s Prosecutor General, Yury Chaika, said on Tuesday he had “no evidence of the police exceeding their duties or breaking any laws” during the opposition rallies in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
The police in both cities issued statements to the media insisting that all their actions had been justified. 
“At the end of the meeting, a group of approximately 150 people tried to hold an illegal meeting and break through police cordons, despite repeated warnings,” reads a statement released by the St. Petersburg police this week. 
The St. Petersburg Prosecutor’s Office on Thursday acknowledged receiving one complaint, which they said will be reviewed in due course.
Governor Valentina Matviyenko has ordered a special investigation to be held into the allegations of physical abuse and violations of people’s rights at the St. Petersburg demonstration. Talking to reporters on Thursday, Matviyenko refrained from giving what she called “an emotional response to the events” and claimed she “has always opposed violence” and considers it “unacceptable.” But protest leaders say they have little confidence in such official responses. 
“The history of our fruitless appeals to the prosecutor’s office in various cases is discouraging,” Kurnosova said. “The prosecutors ignore the Russian Constitution and resort to the most absurd tricks, going to any lengths to help the authorities evade justice.”
Valery Zhelanov, whose son’s violent arrest was caught in cell phone images, says he has made repeated phone calls to City Hall about the incident. 
“They would not listen to me, and said I called the wrong place,” he said. “The clerks there would not even give me any advice whatsoever, and showed absolutely no compassion.”
Opposition activists say that a telephone hotline they have set up has  been extremely busy with calls of support, and that those who suffered in the violence on Sunday are determined to take part in the next rally — and to bring their friends.
“I showed the video at work, and it was enough for my colleagues to make a decision: next time we all will be there,” Zhelanov said. “We need to be out there for our children to protect them.”
Despite fears about the future and a lack of confidence in the authorities, Andrei Zykov, a senior serious crime investigator with the St. Petersburg Prosecutor’s Office said inquiries into the conduct of law enforcement officers and into allegations of ill-treatment of opposition supporters will be launched.
“I already have enough evidence to prove that the detention of Olga Kurnosova herself — in connection with producing and distributing propaganda material for the rally — was illegal,” Zykov said. 
“She was stopped at the door of her apartment building and was taken into police custody without an official written order to that effect. And such an order could only have been issued if there had been two previous requests for her to report to police and she had ignored them.”

TITLE: Russia Slams Kosovo Independence Plan
AUTHOR: By Dusan Stojanovic
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BELGRADE, Serbia — Russia’s foreign minister reiterated his country’s opposition to a U.S.-backed plan granting independence to the breakaway province of Kosovo, and warned Thursday that imposing the solution is “absolutely unacceptable.”
“We are very interested in the stability of the Balkans and Serbia,” Sergei Lavrov said after talks with Serbian President Boris Tadic.
“Any solution for Kosovo must be acceptable to both Belgrade and (Kosovo’s capital) Pristina,” Lavrov said. “Any unilateral imposing of the solution is absolutely unacceptable.”
The stability of the region “can be jeopardized by attempts of unilateral recognition of the independence of Kosovo,” Lavrov said, reacting to suggestions by U.S. officials that they may recognize Kosovo even without consent by the UN Security Council.
Lavrov’s meetings in Belgrade are being held before a crucial session of the Security Council — expected next month — which will consider the independence plan prepared by UN envoy Martti Ahtisaari.
The plan envisages granting internationally supervised independence to Kosovo, which would remain under EU and U.S. supervision.
Russia, which is a permanent member of the Security Council and holds veto power, opposes the UN plan. It says the proposal would set a dangerous precedent for separatists elsewhere by dismembering a sovereign UN member against its government’s will. 
It wants the leaders of Serbia and Kosovo to reach a compromise agreement, something that the U.S. and Ahtisaari say is impossible to achieve.
Russia was prepared to take any action necessary to block a U.S.-drafted resolution that will be offered to the Security Council, Russia’s UN envoy Vitaly Churkin said in Moscow on Wednesday. Churkin stopped short, however, of saying Moscow would veto the proposal.
Washington insists that the Security Council must act quickly in the next weeks to finish the job by helping to lead Kosovo to independence.
U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said earlier this week the U.S. considers independence the only option for Kosovo and has suggested that Washington may recognize Kosovo’s split from Serbia, even if Russia carries out its threat to veto the UN plan when it comes to a vote at the Security Council.
Kosovo, a province of Serbia, has been under UN and NATO administration since a 78-day NATO-led air war that halted a Serb crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists in 1999.
Ethnic Albanians, who make up 90 percent of Kosovo’s 2 million people, are seeking independence from Belgrade. But Serbia and Kosovo’s Serb minority say the province is the heart of Serbia’s ancient homeland and should remain within its borders.

TITLE: U.S., EU Question Russian Police Action
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A group of prominent Russian human rights advocates on Thursday sent an open letter to foreign ministers of the EU countries and the U.S. asking them to close their borders to Russian officials responsible for violations of people’s rights during the recent series of dissenters’ marches.
“The exceptional cruelty in dispersing marchers… vividly proves that Russia’s top officials consciously allow blatant and widespread human rights abuses,” reads the letter. 
“These rights are statutes in the Russian Constitution as well as in international conventions that Russia is part of and abides to. We therefore suggest that EU countries and the U.S. deny entry to officials politically or professionally responsible for the violations.”
Amid mounting criticism from Europe and the United States, the Kremlin has admitted to some “police overreaction” in the way last weekend’s protests in Moscow and St. Petersburg were broken up. But it has defended the general line taken by Russia’s law enforcement authorities. 
Speaking on the state-funded English-language Russia Today TV channel, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov branded the demonstrations “extremely marginal” and stressed the police actions had been taken “to ensure law and order.”
Peskov also accused the media of exaggerating the degree of physical abuse and the violations of people’s rights. However the events have had a big impact abroad. 
The New York based Human Rights Watch said on Sunday that police had used “disproportionate” force to disperse peaceful demonstrations “even if the protesters did violate a permit” to hold rallies instead of demonstrations.
Rene van der Linden, the president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) said on Monday that it was indefensible for a Council of Europe member country to use excessive force in such situations, and added that he condemned such dispersals anywhere.
Germany, holding the rotating presidency of the European Commission, condemned what it called the “excessive use of force” by the Russian police against the protesters. A German government spokesman, Thomas Steg, said the actions of the Russian security officials had been a cause for concern, and he called the detention of journalists “unacceptable.”
A member of a German TV crew was arrested in St. Petersburg on Sunday. Journalists and photographers reported being detained and beaten by police during the rallies in both cities. 
Among those detained was Anton Mukhin, political correspondent with St. Petersburg’s weekly magazine Gorod. Photographer Anatoly Maltsev of the European Press Photo Agency reported being beaten.
The Russian Journalists’ Union issued a statement Wednesday expressing protest over the stance that the country’s law enforcement took to break up opposition rallies in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Nizhny Novgorod. The organization demanded public clarifications from mayors of the three cities in connection with allegations of police violence.
“Using force and exercising restraint against journalists carrying out their professional duties, illegal detentions of reporters and subsequent attempts to justify these incidents by senior law enforcement officials show that Russia’s entire security system is in deep crisis, and there is no efficient control over their activities,” reads the statement.
The Union has collected over 30 statements from journalists, including foreign reporters who suffered when covering the demostrations.
“The Russian Journalists’ Union intends to launch its own investigation into the illegal actions of the police against our colleagues, and widely publicise the results,” the document said.
Andrei Konstantinov, head of the St. Petersburg Union of Journalists said the rights of at least 15 journalists were infringed by the police during the April 15 demonstration in St. Petersburg.
Meanwhile, the German government said it expects a “comprehensive statement and explanations” from Russia.
Sergei Yastrzhembsky, an aide to President Vladimir Putin, said Russia is ready to respond, should the issue emerge during any discussions.
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said the United States is “deeply disturbed by the heavy-handed manner” in which the Moscow and St. Petersburg rallies were suppressed and said Washington saw  “an emerging pattern of use of excessive force” by the Russian authorities and their “intolerable” behavior. 
President Putin responded by saying that Russia welcomes “constructive criticism.” But he warned foreign leaders against “interfering in the country’s internal policies.”

TITLE: Yanukovych Opponents Block Passage to Court
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KIEV — Thousands of opponents of Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych blocked the entrances to the Constitutional Court on Wednesday, forcing riot police to intervene to allow judges in for the second day of hearings into the legality of a presidential decree dissolving the parliament.
The session began more than one hour late after helmeted police linked arms and formed a corridor to usher judges through a scrum of flag-waving demonstrators, which included rival lawmakers pushing and shoving each other outside the court’s black metal gates.
The hearing began with 16 of the 18 judges in place, said chief judge Ivan Dombrovsky.
President Viktor Yushchenko signed the dissolution decree on April 2, accusing Yanukovych of trying to usurp power. Yanukovych and his majority in the parliament said the move was unconstitutional and appealed to the Constitutional Court.
Both Yushchenko and Yanukovych have agreed to abide by whatever the court rules, but the bloc of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and political parties allied with Yushchenko have contended that the court is too corrupt to render a just decision.
Yushchenko claimed in a letter to the court that a relative of one of the judges, Syuzanna Stanik, had received property worth $12 million in an attempt to sway her opinion. Stanik denied the charges, and the Prosecutor General’s Office also called the allegations baseless.
“We are standing here for justice,” said Maryna Yeshchenko, 21, a Kiev student holding a Tymoshenko party flag — a red heart on a white field. She was one of about 6,000 flag-waving demonstrators who support the president’s dissolution order.
Yushchenko called on the judges to make a fair decision.
Yanukovych’s coalition also brought out about 1,000 supporters clad in his party’s blue color. Denys Naunenko, 24, a miner from Yanukovych’s hometown of Donetsk, said he was there to demonstrate his opposition to new elections, which he called “shameful for Ukraine.”
“It will hurt people’s pockets,” he said. “We want to become part of the European Union, but who will take us now?”

TITLE: National Bolsheviks Banned
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Moscow City Court on Thursday declared Eduard Limonov’s National Bolshevik Party an extremist organization and declared it illegal.
Moscow prosecutor Yury Syomin told Interfax News Agency his office — which initiated the case — was satisfied with the outcome.
Last month a Moscow prosecutor banned the party on extremism charges, suspending the radical opposition group for the second time since it was outlawed in June 2006.
Party members now risk being sent to prison for up to four years if they decide to take to the streets. 
National Bolsheviks say the legal moves against them will not stop them from fighting for their cause.
Limonov called the decision illegitimate and branded the whole trial a farce. The NBP said it would lodge an appeal against the verdict in the Supreme Court. 
The National Bolshevik Party has been an active member of The Other Russia coalition of opposition parties that includes Garry Kasparov’s United Civil Front and Mikhail Kasyanov’s People’s Democratic Union among others.
Limonov linked the moves against his party with the success of the recent series of opposition rallies in St. Petersburg and Moscow which drew several thousand protesters.
“We are not extremists, and we are not going to give up,” said Andrei Dmitriyev, National Bolshevik leader in St. Petersburg, adding that if the ban on the party is not lifted, he and his members will continue taking part in protest events as Russian citizens, and not as a party members.

TITLE: Raising Fears, Police Raids NGO Office
AUTHOR: By Svetlana Osadchuk
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — About 20 police officers locked themselves in the Moscow offices of a U.S.-based nongovernmental organization Wednesday, and they were continuing to confiscate papers from filing cabinets and desks late into the evening.
The raid on Internews, which trains journalists and works with many media outlets, sparked fears about a possible crackdown under a restrictive, new NGO law.
Manana Aslamazian, executive director of Internews Moscow, said police were linking the search to her detention at Sheremetyevo Airport in January for failing to declare excess cash. But she believed it was more than that.
“We are not a media outlet; we just train media people. I think all this is related to foreign NGO restrictions in Russia,” she said by cell phone from her offices on Wednesday evening.
A police officer guarding the entrance to Internews’ offices earlier in the day refused to comment on what was going on. A crowd of 20 reporters and camera crews packed the hallway outside the locked steel door leading to the offices, located in the Central House of Journalists.
About 20 officers from the Interior Ministry’s economic crimes department and led by Colonel Sergei Demidov arrived at the offices at noon with orders to search the premises and seize all documents, Aslamazian said. 
A group of regional reporters were in the offices at the time attending a training session, she said. Police were keeping them and all Internews staff in the office Wednesday evening.
Former NTV anchor Svetlana Sorokina said she believed the authorities were trying to cast Aslamazian and Internews in the worst possible light and deprive Internews of the possibility to influence the media community ahead of elections. State Duma elections will be held in December, followed by the presidential vote in March.
“I am not surprised by this, because Internews is an organization that trains regional journalists,” Sorokina said outside Internews’ offices. “We teach them to cover events as they are, not like the Dissenters’ March was presented in the media.”
Opposition activists staged marches in Moscow and St. Petersburg that ended in police violence last weekend.
Sorokina, a member of Internews’ board, said she had come to teach the regional journalists inside, and she rang the doorbell several times before her cell phone rang and she was told that the police officers were holding a meeting to decide whether to let her in. She was allowed in 15 minutes later.
Several staff members stepped out for a moment and said they had been told to stay until the raid ended.
Aslamazian said the raid was taking a long time due to the enormous number of financial documents the NGO had on file.
“We have tried to be really accurate with our funds and have documents for all transactions,” she said.
The new NGO law, which came into force a year ago last Sunday, increased the amount of paperwork that NGOs must keep and required them to reregister under stringent new guidelines. The law was adopted after President Vladimir Putin said he would not tolerate foreign funds being used by NGOs for political activities. Foreign-connected NGOs played key roles in regime changes in Georgia in 2003 and Ukraine in 2004.
Internews is a media development organization based in California. Its Moscow office, which is registered as a Russian NGO, works with a variety of media outlets, including NTV television.
“It is obvious that NGOs are under great suspicion now. There is a paranoia that they are being used for political activities and a fear of an Orange Revolution,” said Allison Gill, the Moscow head of Human Rights Watch, a U.S.-based NGO.

TITLE: Censorship Claims Hit Radio Network
AUTHOR: By Christian Lowe
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Journalists at one of the country’s biggest private radio networks said Wednesday that they had been told to keep Kremlin critics off the air by new managers parachuted in from state-run television.
Managers at Russian News Service — which provides news to Russkoye Radio, the country’s most listened-to radio station, and its sister stations — denied they were imposing censorship.
But staff said their new bosses had blocked live reports from opposition protests over the weekend and blacklisted opposition leader Garry Kasparov from being mentioned on air.
New managers at the service were also urging journalists to give more airtime to representatives of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party, staff said.
“It was clearly stated to us at a staff meeting that Garry Kasparov … and others like him are has-beens and they are not of interest to our listeners, therefore we do not talk about them,” one journalist said.
“People are looking for [other] work,” said the journalist, who did not want to be identified.
New general director Alexander Shkolnik dismissed talk of a blacklist of opposition politicians as “stupidity.”

TITLE: Putin Tells Scientists to Think Small for Economy
AUTHOR: By Anna Smolchenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that the way to wean the economy off oil and gas was to think small.
Putin unveiled a $1 billion initiative to develop nanotechnology and turn the Kurchatov nuclear institute into the country’s research hub for the science.
Nanotechnology cuts across various fields of study to focus on building devices, such as electronic circuits, from single atoms.
At least 28 billion rubles in state funds will be invested into the Presidential Nanotechnology Initiative through 2010, including the purchase of new laboratory equipment, First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov told reporters at the Kurchatov institute.
Ivanov, who is thought to be a presidential hopeful, will head a newly created Nanotechnologies Council and control the purse strings for the new initiative.
“This is a direction where the state won’t begrudge any funds,” Putin said at a meeting with Ivanov, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov, atomic energy agency chief Sergei Kiriyenko and Kurchatov director Mikhail Kovalchuk, among others.
The $1 billion comes on top of 150 billion rubles ($5.8 billion) that has been invested into nanotechnologies, Ivanov said. He pledged strict oversight of the latest financing, adding that it would be flexible and go into the most promising projects.
The initiative is “effectively an invitation for business” to join forces with the state because the results could be used commercially, Ivanov said.
Education and Science Minister Andrei Fursenko said the new technologies would help Russia develop the giant Shtokman gas field by generating new types of metals to build pipes.
Putin said: “No doubt, nanotechnologies will become a key industry for the creation of ultra-modern and ultra-effective offensive and defensive weapons, as well as means of communications.”
Ivanov said nanotechnology would help “change the face of the resources-based economy” and introduce breakthrough technology in metals, medicine and energy. He said 90 percent of nanotechnology would be used for civilian purposes and 10 percent for the military.
The officials gathered in one of the rooms of the Kurchatov institute, which spearheaded the development of the Soviet Union’s nuclear bomb under the watchful eye of Lavrenty Beria, a frequent visitor to the facility.
Wednesday’s visit was Putin’s first to the institute as president. He last stopped in as prime minister in 1999 to oversee the presentation of a synchrotron radiation source device, which will be the heart of the new nanotechnology initiative.
Synchrotron radiation is generated by the acceleration of particles moving near the speed of light through magnetic fields. By using this type of radiation, scientists can conduct all kinds of tests and research into nanotechnology.
Institute directors quickly walked reporters through the synchrotron radiation research center, past experimental labs involved in the research of nanostructures and crystals. Floors in some of the experimental labs are marble, which tends to gather less dust — a prerequisite for high-precision tests.
Kovalchuk, the institute’s director, showed Putin an exhibit showcasing scientists’ achievements in nanotechnology, including biochips to detect tuberculosis and other ailments and equipment to process oil gases. Putin took particular interest in an image of an enlarged mosquito on a flat monitor, Interfax reported. The mosquito’s soft tissues, insides and blood were clearly shown on the screen due to refraction contrast — a more powerful way of imaging than X-rays. “An unshaven mosquito. Shameful. It doesn’t look after itself,” Putin said, Interfax reported.
Institute researchers hope one day to use the imaging to detect cancer in its very early stages in humans. Tests are now being carried out on rats with tumors.
More than $100 million has been invested into the synchrotron radiation source device, which was developed after the Soviet collapse, and much more is needed, said Vladimir Stankevich, a physicist who directed the synchrotron radiation research center from 1993 to 2002.
Located in northwest Moscow, the country’s top nuclear facility boasts a direct telephone line with the Kremlin but looks bleak from the outside, and many of the institute’s scientists are poorly paid. Stankevich said many of his former students and colleagues now work abroad, and others left science altogether to work in banks or other better-paying workplaces.
The United States established a similar program, known as the National Nanotechnology Initiative, in 2001 to coordinate efforts by more than a dozen agencies and to “ensure the U.S. leadership” in that industry, the initiative’s web site said. In 2003, U.S. President George W. Bush authorized the spending of $3.7 billion for nanotechnology research and development at five of the agencies from 2005 to 2008.
Stankevich said he had had many opportunities to leave the Kurchatov institute but never had, out of a sense of loyalty. His current salary at the institute is 10,000 rubles, excluding his pension and other sources of income, he said.
“I spent 10 years building this synchrotron so that those who left could come back,” Stankevich said, “so that we would have a young generation” of scientists.

TITLE: Firm Hopes 2007 is Year of Stem Cell
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: 2007 could be the year when Trans-Technologies finally gets permission for the use of stem cell technologies in medical clinics. The St. Petersburg-based company has spent the last five years researching the field and now hopes to commercialize its discoveries.
“We hope that this year will be the year that sees a real adoption of cellular technologies in Russia. Our main goal is the development of new methods of medical treatment and their use on a commercial basis,” Dmitry Polyntsev, general director of Trans-Technologies, said at a news conference Tuesday.
Potentially, stem cells can be used to cure over 50 deadly diseases including cardiac infarction, bone diseases, cancer, hematological and psycho-neurological diseases.
Cellular technologies have not been adopted in Russian medical clinics on a regular basis. Such methods are used only occasionally in an experimental way, and only if the patient signs an agreement with a clinic that already carries out research into the relevant scientific area.
Cell banks, however, are permitted. 12 companies in Russia are licensed for cell storage. Cell banks operate in Moscow, Tomsk, Novosibirsk and St. Petersburg.
Founded in 2002, Trans-Technologies Ltd. Started clinical research with stem cells two years later. In 2005 the company received a license for cell storage. This year Trans-Technologies received two patents on cell technologies.
“Stem cells are the cells that can change into any cell of the organism,” explained Pyotr Kruglyakov, deputy director of Trans-Technologies.
Stem cells can be extracted from the embryo at the initial phase of its formation and from cord blood. However, Kruglyakov said, it is preferable to use stem cells from an adult patient, which “excludes the risk of cancer and eliminates an ethical dilemma,” he said.
For the most part, red bone marrow and adipose tissue are used to extract stem cells. Trans-Technologies carried out numerous experiments on animals, modeling acute myocardial infarction, stroke and traumatic injuries. In these experiments stem cells injected inside the organism moved towards the zone of injury and adjacent areas replacing improperly functioning cells and tissues, Kruglyakov said.
Cooperating with ten medical institutions in St. Petersburg, Trans-Technologies carried out over 200 experimental transplantations of stem cells to people, with quite satisfactory results, they said.
“We met with people from Trans-Technologies for the first time three years ago. We realized that they had impressive experience and technologies,” said Taras Skoromets, head of neurosurgery department at the V.M. Bekhterev St. Petersburg Psycho-neurological Institute.
“They completed serious laboratory modeling tests on animals, and those experiments proved the efficiency of these methods. It was the main argument for using the same method on patients resistant to regular therapy,” Skoromets said.
He was positive about the results. “We saw that these technologies are safe, that the cells do not mutate,” Skoromets said.
The research was funded by the Fund for the support of scientific entrepreneurship and Alkor-Bio, a company owned by the same people as Trans-Technologies and producing bio-chemicals for blood tests.
The managers of Trans-Technologies gave two examples of real people with difficult-to-treat diseases — a man with a craniocerebral injury and a woman with a cardiac function disorder. Both saw considerable improvement to their condition after using stem sells.
This year Polyntsev hopes to receive approval to start the regular use of stem cells technologies in certain medical institutions. However the company has already introduced a number of profitable services. Extraction of stem cells from cord blood and marrow costs 45,000 rubles and 4,000 euros respectively. Storage of cells costs 3,000 rubles a year.
Polyntsev claims that no side effects were felt as a result of any of the tests and experiments. In the near future the company plans to start research in diabetes treatment and regulation of reproduction.

TITLE: Bayer and Schering Aim For Specialized Solution
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: New pharmaceuticals giant Bayer Schering Pharma, a result of the merger between German companies Bayer and Schering, is to take advantage of the new situation with a strategy focusing on more innovative and specialized products, the managers said at a news conference Thursday.
Reorganization of the two companies that operate in over 120 countries started last year when shareholders gave their approval to the merger. Active reorganization is currently underway in Russia.
“It’s not often that two companies of such size merge. The process is not easy. But both companies are German, their corporate cultures are alike, and that helps a lot,” said Manfred Paul, head of Bayer Schering Pharma in Russia.
The unified company is listed among the top ten pharmaceutical companies in the world, Paul said. Last year global sales exceeded 10 billion euros ($13.5 million). Spending on R&D accounted for 15 percent to 17 percent of that amount.
The new strategy focuses on the development of medicines for use in hospitals and treatments for cancer and hematological diseases. The company will also keep producing products for gynaecology, diagnostic imaging and general disorders.
“Our strategic goal is to increase the share of innovative medications for specialized therapy up to 70 percent of total sales,” Paul said.
In the world market of specialized medications Bayer Schering Pharma holds sixth place after Roche/Genentech, Amgen, Johnson&Johnson, Novo Nordisk and Baxter, Paul said.
Betaferon, Yasmin, Kogenate and Adalat provide most of the sales for Bayer Schering Pharma. Bayer trademarks account for one third of the total sales, Schering trademarks – for two thirds of sales, Paul said.
In Russia, Bayer Schering Pharma sales accounted for 150 million euros last year. This year the company expects sales amounting to 185 million euros. However, many innovative products are only distributed through state programs of health insurance because they are too expensive for patients to buy.
“We face some difficulties with the financing of the state program for the supply of additional medications. So we are not sure if we will reach the target sales figures this year,” Paul admitted.
According to data by RMBC marketing company, Schering held 6.2 percent of the Russian pharmaceutical market last year — the tenth largest company — while Bayer held only 0.9 percent. The combined share of Bayer and Schering was seven percent.
About 400 people are employed at Bayer Schering Pharma in Russia. “Our experience proved that this is not enough. This year we plan to hire at least 100 more people,” Paul said.
The Northwest region provides 12.3 percent of the company’s sales in Russia, said Alla Gubenko, director of the Northwest branch of Bayer Schering Pharma.
This year the company plans to increase sales of special therapy medications in the Northwest region by 335 percent, Gubenko said.
“Bayer is a rather well-known brand both in Russia and abroad,” said Irina Rutskikh, pharmacist at EuroMed Clinic.
“This company owns trademarks for a number of unique preparations that no other company distributes, which is true also in the Russian pharmaceutical market,” she said. 
However, she indicated that after the financial crisis of 1998 Bayer had fewer representatives in Russia, a situation that improved with the acquisition of Schering.

TITLE: Japan Sends Shiseido For Deep Russian Facelift
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: TOKYO — Shiseido Co., Japan’s biggest cosmetics maker, said on Thursday it would set up a unit in Russia, moving deeper into the rapidly growing market and fuelling competition with global rivals such as L’Oreal.
Shiseido aims to sell luxury products targeting the country’s wealthy consumers, a new group in resource-rich Russia. 
Russia’s cosmetics and toiletry market has posted double-digit growth in recent years and reached 858 billion yen ($7.3 billion) in 2006, up more than 10 percent for the year, the company said. 
Shiseido said it would set up a wholly owned subsidiary, Shiseido (RUS) LLC, in Moscow in May and start selling products next January. It has been selling its products in Russia since 1999 through a distributor.

TITLE: Shell, Gazprom Reach Understated Milestone
AUTHOR: By Miriam Elder
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Gazprom and Shell late Wednesday signed a protocol on the state-run gas giant’s entry into Sakhalin-2, closing the final chapter on months of uncertainty surrounding the world’s largest integrated oil and gas project.
“The path to today’s milestone was not easy,” Gazprom deputy CEO Alexander Medvedev said at a news conference at Shell’s Moscow offices.
Medvedev was flanked by the country managers of Sakhalin-2 shareholders Shell, Mitsui and Mitsubishi, as well as Ian Craig, head of project operator Sakhalin Energy.
Craig is due to step down in favor of a Gazprom manager as early as next year.
The understated ceremony stood in marked contrast to the fanfare at the Kremlin meeting in December, when President Vladimir Putin gathered the parties’ CEOs to announce that Gazprom would get a controlling stake in the project. It came after months of pressure from government officials.
Wednesday’s ceremony was held after two days of high-level meetings to wrap up details of the deal.
On Monday, the Industry and Energy Ministry, which oversees Sakhalin-2 as part of a production sharing agreement, approved a $19.4 billion budget for the project’s second phase, which is scheduled to run through 2014. Shell, until Wednesday the project’s majority shareholder, had requested a budget of $22 billion.
Medvedev insisted that the project’s PSA remained “intact.”
The budget had proven a major sticking point in negotiations between Gazprom and Shell.
A preliminary deal in July 2005 foresaw Gazprom taking a 25 percent stake in Sakhalin-2 in exchange for giving Shell equity in a smaller field in western Siberia, but the increased Sakhalin-2 budget, announced just weeks later, derailed those talks.
Gazprom paid $7.45 billion for a stake of 50 percent plus one share in Sakhalin-2, the project’s four shareholders said in a joint statement.
Shell, Mitsui and Mitsubishi each forfeited half of their holdings in the project. Shell now has a 27.5 percent stake, while Mitsui has 12.5 percent and Mitsubishi has 10 percent.
“I’d like to extend a warm welcome to Gazprom,” said Chris Finlayson, the head of Shell’s Russia operations. “This agreement is good news for Shell and all the shareholders in Sakhalin-2.”
The project had been plagued by allegations of environmental problems, which were estimated to have caused $5 billion worth of damage by the Audit Chamber.
Sakhalin-2 is the country’s first liquefied natural gas project, and seen as key to Gazprom’s entry into this lucrative market.
The Natural Resources Ministry, whose environmental agency had doggedly pursued Sakhalin Energy over purported environmental damage for months, approved the project’s environmental action plan Tuesday.
“Claims of damage can be applied only if the environmental action plan is not implemented and only then,” Medvedev said.
Putin said at the Dec. 21 Kremlin meeting that all environmental problems at the site had been resolved.
Craig, who flew in from Sakhalin Island for the ceremony, said the 
deal had ended a “period of uncertainty.”
“On behalf of Sakhalin Energy, I would like to welcome the world’s leading gas company as a majority shareholder,” he said.
Craig will be replaced as head of Sakhalin Energy once the project comes on line, with the first LNG shipments planned for 2008.

TITLE: Abramovich Tops Latest Forbes List Of Richest
AUTHOR: By Simon Shuster
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Roman Abramovich held on to his top spot on Forbes Russia’s rich list, released Thursday, with his fortune edging up 5 percent to $19.2 billion.
But the pack of challengers is closing, with the top 100 Russians increasing their wealth by an average of 36 percent over the last year.
The biggest gainer on the list was banking-to-vodka mogul Rustam Tariko, whose fortune more than doubled to $5.5 billion from last year, Forbes deputy editor Kirill Vishnepolsky said.
Second place went to Russian Aluminum owner Oleg Deripaska with $16.8 billion, a prime example of natural resource wealth flowing back into industries ranging from construction to banking and insurance, Vishnepolsky said. 
Novolipetsk steel baron Vladimir Lisin came in third with $15.1 billion. Vladimir Potanin and Mikhail Prokhorov, who split up their Interros holding, were tied in fourth and fifth place with $15 billion. Alfa Group’s Mikhail Fridman was sixth with $13.5 billion, ahead of Nafta Moskva’s Suleiman Kerimov, with $12.8 billion. LUKoil’s Vagit Alekperov, Severstal’s Alexei Mordashov and TNK-BP’s Viktor Vekselberg also made the top 10.

TITLE: A Nervous Wreck
AUTHOR: By Georgy Bovt
TEXT: Police detained more than 200 participants of Moscow opposition rallies on Saturday, and almost the same number Sunday in St. Petersburg. These were the government’s official totals for the weekend. Both the preparations on the part of the authorities’ ahead of the protests and their conduct during them were unusual and telling.
First, the authorities forewarned opposition organizers that they would be held responsible for anti-governmental activities. On Friday evening, National Bolshevik leader Eduard Limonov was having dessert at a Moscow restaurant when he was presented with a warning from the Prosecutor General’s Office stating that he would be held accountable for any acts of “extremism.” The threat might have worked: The next day he showed up late for the demonstration. Authorities detained him anyway during the Dissenters’ March in St. Petersburg. Other opposition group leaders, including former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, received similar warnings.
Second, the authorities tried to limit the profile of the protests, both in their form and where they could be held. Protesters were forbidden from gathering in the city center, being offered distant Tushino airfield as an alternative, and were prohibited from holding a march.
Third, law enforcement agencies dealt severely with all infractions. Moscow court officials were brought in to work on Saturday to render any necessary decisions regarding protesters who were detained. Riot police from other regions were brought in to bolster the Moscow force, and they were liberal in their use of force against the protesters, beating them with truncheons. The police didn’t use tear gas or water cannons, although both were on hand.
It all seemed pretty excessive given the marginal nature of the threat the protesters represented to the powers that be. Dissenters’ March leaders are relatively unpopular with the general population, the various groups are not well coordinated and they have no distinct platforms other than their opposition to President Vladimir Putin. Nevertheless, they seem very nervous in the face of even this ineffectual form of opposition.
The government reacted just as nervously to a U.S. State Department’s annual report earlier this month on the worldwide state of human rights. It was a standard report, one of many such statements issued since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The report contained no new or particularly pointed criticism, at least not in comparison with what had already been said in other U.S. statements. The document was, nonetheless, the object of angry debate and condemnation in the State Duma and Federation Council, where far too much time and energy were spent on the subject.
Why is all of this happening?
The reason is that Russia’s political elite is growing increasingly nervous in the run-up to the December parliamentary elections and the March 2008 presidential election. Politicians face uncertain futures because they don’t know whether Putin will choose to remain for a third term. If Putin decides to go, they are worried over whom he might chose as his successor. As a result, just about everyone in power seems to have been seized by conspiracy mania.
High-ranking officials openly accuse Russia’s enemies of preparing a revolution akin to the one that occurred in Ukraine, which explains why they devote so much hysterical attention to happenings in Kiev. The political leadership is convinced that the opposition is being financed by the West in the hope of destabilizing the political system, and that high-ranking diplomats, led by the ambassador of one of the Group of Eight countries, are coordinating the distribution of funds to the opposition. According to this theory, demonstrators deliberately bring women, children and the elderly to their protests in hopes of provoking the police into attacking those less able to defend themselves, thereby proving to the world the “bloodthirsty” nature of this regime.
Thus, a statement from the U.S. State Department’s that it would support Russia’s nongovernmental democratic organizations was perceived as a direct confirmation of the existence of an “Orange conspiracy” that was being supported by the West.
This is the mood among Russia’s political elites prior to the elections. As the elections draw nearer, this mood is bound to intensify, and it won’t stop building until the Duma issues a plea from the people for Putin to stay on for a third term and for the Constitution to be amended accordingly. The politicians will present more and more “proof” to Putin that, without him at the helm, nothing in the country will work properly. They’ll tell him that disorder will reign unless he agrees to stay. If and when he does so, the relations between Moscow and the West will fall to such a level that the reactions to what is happening in Russia will finally become absolutely unacceptable from a political standpoint.

Georgy Bovt is editor of Profil magazine

TITLE: Authoritarians Or Populists?
AUTHOR: By Alvaro Vargas Llosa
TEXT: I am fascinated by the similarities between Russia and Latin America. The latest wave of repression against critics of President Vladimir Putin and the victory obtained by Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa in last Sunday’s referendum, which provides a green light toward setting up a constituent assembly that will give him authoritarian powers, remind us that despotic populism is alive and kicking.
Last weekend’s detentions in Moscow and St. Petersburg of members of opposition organization The Other Russia are a reminder that Russia is a ruthless autocracy.
With the exception of Venezuela, the authoritarian institutions in Latin America are not as bad as Russia’s. Power is more decentralized as governments have not been able to wrest back economic influence from the private interests that surfaced during the reforms of the 1990s. Mexico was also dominated by a party-state for much of the 20th century and underwent a process of reform in the 1990s. Despite its many flaws, reform improved the political and economic environment. In Russia, liberal democracy never quite surfaced. Putin reacted against the oligarchy of the 1990s by establishing his own oligarchy. Although there was much crony capitalism, Mexico’s system is freer.
With the return of populism to various parts of Latin America, a number of countries are headed in the same direction as Russia. The formula usually combines democratic beginnings, the dismantling of republican institutions from within and reliance on natural resources that are in high demand on the international market. Last Sunday, Ecuadorians voted in large numbers to essentially rewrite their constitution. In this, Correa, who wants to replace democracy with an authoritarian regime, is following the example of his friend Hugo Chavez and of Bolivia’s Evo Morales. 
Russia and Latin America emerged from histories dominated by the absence of civil and property rights. In Russia, the absence of a liberal tradition doomed the transition to democracy in the 1990s. In Latin America, the republics of the 19th century preserved their oligarchic colonial structures.
The populist republic in Latin America — the combination of democratic appearances and autocratic controls, sustained by the sale of oil and minerals — has much in common with Putin’s Russia.

Alvaro Vargas Llosa is a columnist for The Washington Post. This comment appeared in The Wall Street Journal.

TITLE: Leadership After Tragedy
AUTHOR: By Ronald Brownstein
TEXT: Grief, horror, sorrow and sympathy — after a tragedy like Monday’s shootings at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, these are the appropriate first responses from not only typical Americans but the nation’s political leaders.
But in the face of tragedy the responsibility of political leaders is not just to look back in sorrow. Their job is to look forward toward practical steps that might reduce the risk of repeating this awful experience. It’s too early to say conclusively what lessons public policy should take from Monday’s rampage. But it’s not too soon to say that is the question Washington should be asking once the immediate shock has passed.
That may seem obvious, but it’s not. In these circumstances, the understandable first instinct of many Americans is to focus on the private factors that shaped the shooter’s character — family, friends, religious institutions, and so on. Confronted with such chilling evil, most Americans would probably agree with William Faulkner, who said that you cannot legislate what is in men’s hearts.
That is likely U.S. President George W. Bush’s first instinct as well. In 1999, when he was governor of Texas, I interviewed him eight days after two students slaughtered classmates at Columbine High School in Colorado. Without much enthusiasm, Bush marched through his positions on gun control, school safety and other relevant policies. But he came to life when he spoke about the limits of the law.
“Of course there are going to be reactions — pass a law,” Bush said. “The big law is the universal law: How do mothers and dads do their jobs? The fundamental question is going to be: Can America rededicate itself to parenting as the No. 1 priority for all of us?” He paused and smiled his goofy grin. “That’s called a peroration,” he said.
There is wisdom in that answer, but evasion too. No one doubts that increasing the number of children reared with strong values would reduce the burden of violence in the United States. And no one imagines that laws can always deter someone driven to harm others.
But that doesn’t mean abandoning the search for better ways to reduce the threat of random violence. The issue isn’t whether the Virginia Tech attack might have been prevented if a particular legal loophole had been closed last month. It may be that no combination of plausible policies would have deterred this rampage. And it is almost certain that the next horrific attack will present different facts.
“In the wake of Sept. 11, we didn’t just look at policies to stop planes from flying into buildings. We looked at how vulnerable we were to foreign attack,” said Bruce Reed, who helped coordinate U.S. President Bill Clinton’s response to the Columbine shootings as White House domestic policy adviser. “And we didn’t … say if someone is crazy enough to fly a plane into a building, they will find a way to kill us somehow.”
Approaching the Virginia shootings in the expansive spirit that prevailed after 9/11 would mean serious exploration. There should be an assessment of the availability of counseling for troubled young people. Bush’s decision to de-fund the Clinton program that subsidized the hiring of more local police should be questioned. And, yes, the discussion about access to guns that both the Republicans and the Democrats have silenced should be reopened.
The redeeming grace of tragedy is that, throughout U.S. history, it has sparked reform. The 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Co. fire, which killed almost 150 workers in a New York City sweatshop, inspired workplace safety breakthroughs. The 1989 attack on a Stockton, California elementary school by a drifter armed with an AK-47 provoked outrage that led to the important gun control laws of the 1990s.
The ineradicability of evil ensures that we will never be free from terrible days like Monday. But the United States will compound this tragedy if it fails to learn from it.

Ronald Brownstein is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, where this comment appeared.

TITLE: Alive and kicking
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: SKIF11, or the 11th Sergei Kuryokhin International Festival, the largest and most notorious fringe music and arts event in St. Petersburg, opened on Thursday, with a film and video-art program, but its three nights of concerts and performances start in earnest on Friday.
Among the dozens of bands taking part, NoMeansNo, the Canadian trio that adds the complexity of jazz to a punk onslaught appears to fit perfectly with SKIF’s eclectic concept.
Based in Vancouver, the veteran band was originally a duo formed by brothers John Wright on drums and Rob Wright on bass in Victoria, British Columbia, in 1979. Guitarist Tom Holliston joined in 1994. 
Coming to Russia for the first time for its 28-year, strictly underground, career, Canada’s best-known punks claim the punk ethic is alive and well “but that’s up for interpretation,” wrote John Wright in an email from Hamburg where the band was on tour last week.
“We all defined ourselves differently and that was punk rock to me. Once the credo is defined and the uniforms are donned then it’s all over. Punk was an exciting reaction to crap in the ’70s, politicized in the ’80s, co-opted in the ’90s and put in the production line for the new millennium.”
According to Wright, NoMeansNo is open to all kinds of music. 
“My brother for instance has always been into ’50s and ’60s jazz but is now listening a lot to obscure techno. Heino, Huey Lewis, Miles Davis, Slayer, Stranglers, Red Sovine — all the greats have passed over the heads in the van’s tapedeck.”
Of the band’s 12 albums, including “The Sky is Falling and I Want My Mommy” that they recorded with Biafra in 1991, Wright said he would recommend for a NoMeansNo neophyte the 1993 album “Why Do They Call Me Mr. Happy?,” describing the band’s best-known album “Wrong” and last year’s “All Roads Lead to Ausfahrt” as “the most accessible.” 
“The people’s choice offers a selection of hits. I like ‘Why Do They Call Me Mr. Happy?,’ it has a great flow,” he said.
While the recording industry complains about free downloads and peer-to-peer file sharing, NoMeansNo supports free musical exchange on the web.
“I think downloading is great for musicians as it is always good for people to hear your stuff any way they can,” said Wright.
“Downloading is only bad for the people who hold the copyright which is rarely the artists. We are not really affected by poor CD sales as we rely on live concerts for our coin. If people hear you and like your stuff they will come to your shows. This is a good thing. It’s a whole other alien world for those bands that have a billion-selling hit record before they even have a show. They always suck.”
“From obscurity to oblivion” was the motto that the band put on the sleeve of “Ausfahrt,” its most recent album.
“The oncoming car appears in the hazy distance and leaves your vision as it exits. It came from somewhere unknown and is going somewhere unknown to you: we emerged and we will disappear,” said Wright.
According to Wright, the music scene has not change much since the days when NoMeansNo began.
“Pop music is as bland as pop music was. Punk was always pop music to me though,” he said.
SKIF highlights include the U.S. punk-rockabilly-country band Heavy Trash, a new project from John Spencer, who leads his band John Spencer Blues Explosion, and Speedball Baby Matt Verta-Ray.
The Czech Republic’s electric-acoustic duo DVA, Finnish rapper Amoc, Austrian post-rock trio Radian and the New-York based improv duo of violinist Zeena Parkins and former DNA drummer Ikue Mori are also featured.
The festival honors the late musician Sergei Kuryokhin, who began his career as a member of the free-jazz Anatoly Vapirov Trio in the late 1970s. Kuryokhin moved on to solo concerts and work with the then-leading Soviet underground band Akvarium in the early 1980s before finally setting up his own band Popular Mechanics, a flexible multi-media collective featuring rock musicians, string ensembles and military bands. Kuryokhin died of a heart condition at the age of 42 in St. Petersburg in July 1996.
For the third year, SKIF is being held in Priboi, a former cinema that the city lent to the Sergei Kuryokhin Foundation to be transformed into a Center for Contemporary Arts. The festival will host dozens of acts from all around the world, including the United States, Poland, the Netherlands and Finland, who will mostly perform in the movie theater’s former hall, while the former foyer on the first floor will host mainly Russian bands.
The history of SKIF began in January 1997 when the festival was launched in New York, originally as SKIIF, or Sergei Kuryokhin International Interdisciplinary Festival. 
Its founder, Russian emigre cellist Boris Rayskin, who had played with Kuryokhin in St. Petersburg, came up with the idea of embodying the principles of “total performance” developed by Kuryokhin’s band by bringing bands and artists from diverse fields and letting them perform at the same festival. 
Cecil Taylor, David Moss and Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore took part in the first event.
Rayskin committed suicide in March 1997, which led Kuryokhin’s widow, Anastasia Kuryokhina, to move the festival to St. Petersburg in 1999. Kuryokhina formed the Sergei Kuryokhin Foundation to promote it.
<i>www.kuryokhin.ru</i>
<img src="/archive/img/1264/skif_schedule.gif" width="630">

TITLE: Chernov’s choice
TEXT: Last Sunday’s <b>Dissenters’ March</b>, the anti-Kremlin rally in St. Petersburg organized by the Other Russia, a coalition of opposition groups, demonstrated the authorities’ fast-growing technological sophistication and their absolute ruthlessness.
Although the rally was officially permitted, the number of the metal shield-wielding riot police dubbed “cosmonauts” for their spaceman-like helmets and uniforms brought into the center was overwhelming. 
New toys included a helicopter, which proved to be good not only for surveillance but as a psychological and noise-generating weapon, a magic device to suppress cell phones (none of three mobile operators that were tried at the meeting place could establish connection) and  metal-plated gloves worn by police. 
The “cosmonauts” showed unprecedented cruelty, when the police performed combat techniques on the peaceful crowd near Pushkinskaya Metro station and Vitebsky Station — no matter whether they were returning from the meeting or just passing by. 
Are the authorities so afraid of the citizens that marched —mostly teenagers, intelligentsia and old people — that they needed a huge army of police and extreme violence to deal with them?
The next event is a <b>Meeting Against Police Arbitrariness</b> organized by the rights group Memorial on April 27, which is due to be followed by another protest organized by the Other Russia on May 27.
On a smaller level, the underground bar <b>Tsinik</b>, run by the former drummer of the art-rock band NOM Vladimir Postnichenko, is again in conflict with local officials.
“Bloated bureaucrats are attempting to kill your club Tsinik,” wrote Postnichenko in a email statement this week.
It looks like the Legislative Assembly’s Energy Committee, which occupies the building where Tsinik rents the basement, wants to get rid of its tenant.
“Having violated the promise not to touch us until 2009 that they made last summer, they (the Energy Committee) demand that we should leave the rooms as early as July 30, 2007,” wrote Postnichenko.
Postnichenko wrote a letter to the Legislative Assembly’s Education, Culture and Science Committee asking them not to close Tsinik or give him some time to find another location and move. He also asks the bar’s regulars and sympathizers to co-sign the letter. Check <i>www.cinic.spb.ru</i> for details.
<b>Marc Almond</b> will make an appearance at the gay club Central Station on Friday. According to the club, Almond will perform some of his “Russian” album “Heart on Snow,” at around 1 a.m.
<b>David Clayton-Thomas</b>, the former singer of jazz-rock band Blood, Sweat and Tears, will perform at the Music Hall on Friday and the French band <b>Les Vendeurs d’Enclumes</b>, will perform at Maina on Saturday.

<i>— By Sergey Chernov</i>

TITLE: Floral tribute
AUTHOR: By Kevin Ng
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Once a year, the ballet world turns its attention to St. Petersburg as the Mariinsky Theater hosts its annual International Ballet Festival. This year’s festival, which closes Sunday, opened triumphantly with three premieres that attest to the Mariinsky’s usual praiseworthy creativity.
The major premiere was the reconstruction of a “lost” 19th-century ballet: Marius Petipa’s “Le Reveil de Flore” (The Awakening of Flora), created in 1894 to celebrate the wedding of Princess Ksenia Alexandrovna, the sister of Tsar Nicholas II. This is the latest reconstruction project by Sergei Vikharev, a former Mariinsky soloist who has already recreated two other Petipa classics, “The Sleeping Beauty” and “La Bayadere,” to great acclaim.
“Le Reveil de Flore” celebrates the love of Flora, the goddess of flowers, and Zephyrus, the god of wind. After not having been performed in Russia for over a century, it has come back to life through Vikharev’s meticulous research of the original choreographic notations, together with the faithful reproduction of the ornate original sets and costumes. This result is a gem: Petipa’s felicitous choreography, comprising 45 minutes of joyful pure dance, is a glorious celebration of divine harmony and order.
The ballet opens with a beautiful dream solo for the goddess Diana. There are also solos for the other goddesses and gods and pleasing ensemble dances for the corps de ballet. Flora has a number of demanding solos and a duet with Zephyrus. Toward the end, there is a spectacular procession of mythical figures, including nymphs, satyrs, and fauns, beautifully decorated by garlands and maypoles, as well as the welcome appearance of a real white goat leading a carriage. The ballet climaxes with a dazzling apotheosis.
On the opening night on April 12, Yevgenia Obraztsova (who went on to win the Golden Mask Award for best female dancer just two nights later) and Vladimir Shklyarov were superlative in the main roles. Obraztsova’s dancing was luminous, sweetly gracious and utterly ravishing. She sparkled in her various solos with her sharp and precise legwork. Shklyarov had an easy effortless virtuosity, and shone in his solos with his quicksilver jumps and beaten steps. In the second cast, seen on April 13, Yekaterina Osmolkina’s Flora had a warm glow, while Andrian Fadeyev was a more heroic Zephyrus.
The other two premieres were created by Alexei Miroshnichenko, the Mariinsky’s house choreographer. “Wie der Alte Leiermann” (Like the Old Organ-Grinder), with music by contemporary Russian composer Leonid Desyatnikov, was a dark and gloomy pas de deux impressively danced by Darya Pavlenko and Anton Pimonov; the latter also had a dazzling solo. The choreography was efficient but not particularly memorable.
Pimonov was also superb in the second, more significant, Miroshnichenko premiere: “The Ring,” which broke Mariinsky tradition by featuring loud, electronically enhanced hip-hop music, specially composed by the St. Petersburg band 2H Company. 
“The Ring” revolves around a contest between two forces — represented by two couples clad in black and white, and their respective entourages — with Pimonov as a central referee-like figure. It is a somber ballet set in near darkness on a bare stage. Viktoria Tereshkina and Mikhail Lobukhin, as the black couple, were absorbing in a knotty and intricate duet. The massed finale for the ensemble was quite striking and drew loud ovations. In all, it is a powerful work, although slightly long in places.
Other highlights of the festival included Sunday’s impeccable performance of “Giselle,” splendidly danced by the Mariinsky’s Olesya Novikova and the noble Paris Opera Ballet star Mathieu Ganio. As usual, the festival was a real treat with a different program every night, featuring guest stars from the Royal Ballet of London, the New York City Ballet and the Bolshoi Ballet, as well as the Mariinsky’s own stars.

TITLE: Despairing looks
TEXT: St. Petersburg designers offer a gloomy view on upcoming ready-to-wear fashions.
Fashion, being a form of art, reflects reality. But according to the St. Petersburg fashion event “Defile na Neve,” the future is less than optimistic. Russia is heading into a state of depression. 
The aura of dying beauty, despair and anxiety rolled onto the catwalk at this, the 15th such pret-a-porter show that ran from April 11-14 at the Manezh Kadetskogo Korpusa, mixed with faint hopes for the better. 
St. Petersburg designers searched for inspiration in Russia’s troubled past, and even referred to the afterlife, it seemed.
“I am sowing into the black earth a seed of the past and await a fabulous seedling,” Tatyana Parfyonova wrote in the notes to her new collection. 
How fabulous the seedlings on show are will be for consumers to evaluate. 
In time for summer, some designers opted for floaty dresses and pattern in full bloom. 
But these blosoms may soon wilt and display the thorns of a gloomy and dark winter. 

— By Evgenia Ivanova

TITLE: Gotta dance!
AUTHOR: By Evgenia Ivanova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: If the surname Marshall rings a bell when one thinks of music and movement, it might be because of Rob Marshall, the director of the sweeping 2005 Hollywood hit “Memoirs of a Geisha,” and the Oscar-winning screen adaptation of the musical “Chicago” (2002), which Marshall also choreographed.
But his younger sister, Kathleen, also a choreographer and director, who is currently in St. Petersburg to give a masterclass, is not left in her brother’s shadow.
A Tony award winner in 2004 and 2006 for New York productions of “Wonderful Town” and “The Pyjama Game,” Kathleen Marshall spoke to the St. Petersburg Times about the instability and compromises of her profession and reveals what the Broadway musical is really all about. 
“There are so many people who love dance and who love theater and who would love to be a part of it but I’m lucky enough that I got to do what I love and I love what I do,” Marshall said, adding that she started her career assisting her choreographer brother. “Through him I’ve started to meet people and sort of created a network of people that you know. Then when another director needed a choreographer, I was recommended and that’s how I got my first Broadway show.” 
But knowing people in the industry and landing jobs in one of the most prestigious and lucrative theatrical hotspots in the world is not a cast-iron guarantee of a successful career in musicals. 
“It’s a very unstable profession, you’re always looking for the next job, especially on Broadway. I know what my next job is, I know what I am doing a year from now, but I don’t know what I am doing two years from now,” Marshall said.
Another challenge is compromises with the producers and even dancers as Marshall’s coaching style is a two-way street. 
“On Broadway, if your show isn’t selling tickets, it will stop. Of course you have to be true to your creative spirit, but you also have to have a sense of responsibility to say to the producers that ‘I’m not gonna do a show that’s gonna cost a ridiculous amount of money. We’ll stay on budget, we’ll do the show that will hopefully make sense to people and that people would want to come and see’,” she said.
But Marshall said she is happy so long as she gets to do what she loves — “to dance, to teach and to create.”
According to Marshall, in choreography the first and the most important thing to create is trust.
“When you are a choreographer, it’s really a blank page; you walk into the room, like I did this morning. The dancers don’t know what steps I’m going to give them, but they have to know they are in good hands,” Marshall said after a workshop at Kannon Dance Center, a studio for modern dance located in central St. Petersburg. 
“The dancers are the ones that come up on stage and do it at night. I don’t. I stay in the back of the theater watching. So they are the ones that are exposed in that way,” Marshall said. “They need to trust that I will make them look good, that I won’t make them do something they don’t understand or don’t believe in,” Marshall explained her technique with dancers.
“Listen to what they are saying, see how they react to what you are giving them. And if it doesn’t work, you have to be able to adapt and change it,” she said. 
But are the people of St. Petersburg, known for their conservative taste and treating anything other than the classicism of 19th-century ballets such as “Sleeping Beauty” with mistrust and even contempt, ready for jazzy Broadway moves? Marshall, whose visit is supported by the U.S. Consulate General, is positive.
“The people that I spoke with today  are curious about it. It seems that in St. Petersburg, there’s a desire for it. And there’s certainly a talent for it, I’ve seen it today,” she said. 
Many Russians have only seen musicals in the movies and never on stage — the difference between the two is huge, Marshall said. 
“A musical onstage is so immediate and has a wonderful direct relationship with the audience. I think once you’ve seen a musical with such energy, it’s addictive.”

TITLE: City of the future?
AUTHOR: By Katya Madrid
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: For four days until last Sunday, the Museum of Anthropology hosted “Architecture in St. Petersburg 2007,” a special exhibit put on by the Union of Architectural Firms  or OAM (a self-described “symbol of enterprise, quality of services and security of success”), and the Pro Arte Institute, an organization founded in 1999 to promote contemporary culture in the fields of visual art, music and dance in St Petersburg.
On its web site, OAM calls Pro Arte a “potentially very useful ally” — apparently because its “activity within St. Petersburg’s cultural life has risen in profile.”
Certainly, holding this show in a museum — by definition a place of culture — and presenting it together with a well-known arts organization, lent it credibility in the eyes of the public. This, however, did little to transform the show from a piece of shameless self-promotion into an art exhibit. The show was a typical professional expo with uniform glossy panels showing colorful pictures of products. But in this case, they happened to be buildings. The marble pillars of the hall were in perfect concert with the many ritzy designs for the nouveaux riche presented at the show.
To its credit, OAM invited several noted architects to give lectures as part of the event (none of them from St. Petersburg). These included Manfred Ortner from Austria, Sergey Choban from Germany, Alexander Skokan, Sergei Skuratov and Irina Korobyina from Moscow, Jose Acebillo from Spain, and Ulef Reinhagen from Sweden.  
In an interview Acebillo surprisingly admitted that the projects, some already built, some that will never be built, were quite ordinary. 
“The exhibit is generic,” said Acebillo. “One should recognize a city by its buildings, like the Empire State building in New York. [The designs at this exhibit have] no identifiable character. These buildings could be built anywhere in Europe. [There is] no relationship to the native environment. No relationship to the soul of St. Petersburg.” 
Alexander, a young architect living and working in St. Petersburg was visiting the exhibit, had a more generous outlook. When asked whether the client dictates style, he shifted focus to say architects shouldn’t “copy the old style. If it’s a copy, it shows, and in a poor light. It must be in ‘modern’ style, but in concert with its environment… An architect must have culture and will. An architect must be a dictator.”
The exhibition featured a well put together display about the now-demolished Kirov stadium, a large photo of the architect, hand made schematic drawings, and an historic photograph of the stadium, all artfully printed in sepia tone. The “historic” portion of the exhibit, included to lend credibility to the “new” architecture by way of positioning it as the legitimate heir of the work of the old masters, did not seem to impress the up and coming architect. Alexander thought that the old stadium was presented simply out of courtesy and respect.
The few genuinely interesting design ideas at the exhibit were difficult to spot in a sea of standard-issue glass constructions of fashionable office buildings and residential complexes. A lack of clear boundaries between one display and the next meant they flowed together like a bad dream, forming a new city that might even work in a place that does not have St. Petersburg’s historical context to contend with, such as Australia. 
Had any attempt been made to present the work in 3-D, it would have made it easier for the average person not working in the field to get a taste for how these buildings would function in reality and, in turn, in its surrounding environment. Since the buildings do not exist in isolation from the city, this is a key point in understanding the development trend in St. Petersburg, which the name of the exhibit suggests as a goal.
“The exhibit is necessary,” said Acebillo. “Citizens must know the architectural projects in the works so that they can participate [in the development of the city].” But while the show might have sparked some reflection from the city’s inhabitants there was not even a guest book available for public comment.
In answer to the question of legitimacy, Acebillo said: “The story of relationships between clients and architects is the story of architecture.” 
Perhaps he is right.

TITLE: In the spotlight
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: It was last December that socialite novelist Oksana Robski and her friend, It Girl Ksenia Sobchak, launched their perfume, To Marry a Millionaire, posing on the packaging in vampy wedding dresses. It was a very reasonably priced dream at 500 rubles. But they promised more: a book of the same title that would initiate readers into the mysterious art of big-wallet hunting.
Last week, I went to the book’s launch at a central Moscow bookstore. Posters outside said that both authors would sign autographs and answer questions from readers, but when I got there, only Robski had arrived, wearing pearls and a black T-shirt with the slogan “Freedom to Oligarchs.” She was quickly surrounded by a crowd of young women with flowing locks, all clutching the red-and-black book. It was a bit like the Beatles touring the United States, only with less screaming.
Robski signed autographs with one hand while answering questions from the audience, which mainly centered around her love life. Apparently, she has been proposed to by a footballer but hasn’t yet decided whether to accept. She also shared some secrets from her glamorous life, such as the fact that she has installed her treadmill outdoors — useful advice for anyone who lives in a tower block in Yuzhnoye Butovo.
But where was Ksenia? Oksana came and went, and a crowd built up, standing patiently with their books. It was hot and stuffy, and we were being shouted at by a PR woman. There’s only so long I will wait for a blonde television presenter to tell me about her book, so sadly I can’t report what Sobchak said when she finally made her appearance more than 1 1/2 hours later than the advertised time. Maybe she said that Rule No. 1 is little people don’t matter.
Compared with waiting for Ksenia, the book itself was a breeze. It has a lot of drawings and not a lot of text. But it’s also disappointingly light on the kind of nitty gritty you 
would hope to get from two insiders on the social scene. I mean, I wasn’t expecting Marcel Proust, but I did want to know what goes on behind the closed gates of Rublyovka. And I already know that Roman Abramovich’s now ex-wife (keep up, girls) was an airline stewardess.
The book begins by saying that millionaires always divorce their wives, and this tone continues through the whole book, which portrays oligarchs as compulsive skirt-chasers. It divides up millionaires into different personality types, which are given the names of animals, such as raccoon or bear. Then it gives some strategies to win each one. For example, the deer is shy of showing off his money and being photographed. So you have to pretend you don’t like shopping and attempt to pay the bill in restaurants.
So far, so Cosmo magazine, but there are some grains of what sound like good advice, such as the authors’ tips on hunting grounds. The elite clubs and restaurants are useless, they write, since the men will already be attached or else on the lookout for tarts from Mitino. Instead, you should go for business lunches at the top hotels where men are alone and definitely have money. And don’t wear leopard print.
Since most people marry young in Russia, it might seem sensible to catch your future financier while he’s still in business school, but the book warns against this strategy. It quotes a joke from the 1990s in which a husband comes home and tells his wife, “Darling, I’ve made my first million. Pack your things.” His wife gets all excited and asks: What for, skiing or the beach? “Neither,” he says. “Pack your things and get out.”

TITLE: Good presse
AUTHOR: By William Whitehead
TEXT: La Presse
69 Nevsky Prospekt
Open from 7 a.m to 11 p.m.
Menu in English and Russian
Credit cards accepted
Dinner for two with alcohol: 2,110 rubles ($82)

It comes as something of a relief to leave Nevsky Prospekt’s hippoish hordes for the empty second-floor calm of La Presse. One feels exclusively above it all, above the noise and dirt and congestion, which becomes a more rewarding, remote spectacle behind several airtight panes of glass. 
Guests of the attached Nevksy Forum hotel might occasionally flitter around the edges but when we visited the restaurant was ultimately empty and the service — the waiter was cheery and camp — accordingly attentive.
One sort of highlight came immediately in the warm wedding of forms coaxing each other upwards toward the confines of a breadbasket, possibly the largest ever seen anywhere near Nevsky Prospekt.  
A more conventional treat came a little later in a main course of smoked bass with almond and lemon sauce, served whole and a bargain at 350 rubles ($13.50). If the fish stared back with some reserve, its skin broke easily, letting an influx of oil cling over its fat with rich simplicity. 
Another main course, the satisfactorily pink and tender duck a l'orange for 480 rubles ($18.50), came strewn around a bemusing central ball of bland broccoli that added absolutely nothing to the dish and felt like a cheap, unnecessary nod in the direction of aesthetic formalism.  
For those not wont to mulling over the limited uses of this particular vegetable, the restaurant affords a veritable panorama of life and how to live it — through the window Nevsky Prospekt bustles on at a safe distance below, while inside the Euronews channel, with its constipated alternation of stories, claims most of a wall otherwise decorated with a scattering of aptly foreign newspaper cuttings, and somewhere in between a motley selection of fat, sweaty businessmen shuffle about the table with seriously round postures. 
Of course when the starters arrive one will still be too attentive to the companion sitting opposite to really grasp any inadequacies in the food. Nevertheless, only disappointment awaits the gourmand who orders the vegetables with aioli (garlic mayonnaise) and chicken livers expecting anything more than 240 rubles’ ($9.20) worth of chicken liver salad. And, compared to what’s traditionally served up in the French Southwest, it felt unashamedly urban.  
On the other hand — the one not clutching a warm cheese-baked roll — the seaweed salad with nut sauce (250 rubles, $9.60) surpassed its life-affirming assortment of vitamins and minerals with a sharp, multifaceted taste, which any connoisseur might claim came fresh from the mud plains of Indochina.
Quite inadequate alongside, but unavoidable as a long-thawing remnant of our aperitif, sat two very well proportioned Mojitos, Cuban cocktails of spearmint, rum, sugar, lime, and carbonated water (200 rubles, $7.70) and arriving hot on their heels a couple of glasses of house wine, both expensive at 195 rubles ($7.50). If the Merlot was predictably round and solid, then the white Torres came so bursting full of fruit that it might well have resurrected the (now somewhat battered and bruised) broccoli if the latter had done the honorable thing and lent its habitat to the fish.
Worth a mention is a special business lunch between 12 p.m. and 3 p.m., which involves putting together your own dishes, and at 240 rubles looks a bit of a bargain.

TITLE: Double bill
AUTHOR: By Leo Mourzenko
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: There is a Marxist axiom that quantity will sooner or later turn into quality. We all know how well those statements reflect reality and what is happening in Russian cinemas right now is yet more proof. Two of the most widely playing movies, “One Love in a Million” (“Odna Lyubov Na Million”) and “Brave Days” (“Derzkiye Dni”) are both crime themed, both star  totally unknown actors and both are complete trash. Only the first is “trash” by genre — the second is simply trash. 
A couple of months ago when “Seven Stalls” (“7 Kabinok”) was released, the Russian director’s inability to shake off the influence of Quentin Tarantino was widely discussed. The creators of “One Love in a Million” could not shake it off either, but the movie is a step up from “Seven Stalls.” 
A guy with three rings and his ear and without a clear profession (Ruslan Kurik) and a hooker from St. Petersburg’s Astoria Hotel (Lina Mirimskaya) are brought together by chance. After a few minutes of ridiculous dialogue and a couple of showdowns they flee to Moscow with a bag containing a million fake dollars. In Moscow they seek an opportunity to trade the forged banknotes for real ones. 
Idiotic criminals, a heartless hitman, a mafia-connected crooner, a  permanently drunk former KGB colonel, junkies and reformed prostitutes — if the movie wasn’t humorous it would be just one more pathetic effort to make an action film inspired by gems from the early ’90s starring Jean Claude Van Damme or Michael Dudikoff.  
By placing the action in those same years, “One Love in a Million” becomes almost nostalgic and satirical at the same time. It was a significant epoch in Russia for German porn, the then-popular band Tekhnologia and Moskvich cars, as driven by the main character. The soundtrack almost entirely consists of glam rock and songs by Vadim Stepantsov. 
The biggest problem is the flat and uninteresting acting. However compared to the performances in “Brave Days,” the entire cast should get the Palm D’Or at Cannes for ensemble work. 
“Brave Days” is a movie produced by vicious scientists to amuse the children of Frankenstein and Nadezhda Krupskaya. Anyone else should run away from the theater stuffing their ears with popcorn and pouring soda into their eyes so they can’t see and hear what’s going on onscreen. 
The premise is banal and harmless: a group of kids called the Urban Monkeys go Robin-Hooding around Yalta, helping the poor and unprotected. They are led by a very athletic young man, Ignat (Andrei Dementiyev), who falls for a club singer who joins the gang. Then everything goes south when she decides to sing on a floating casino that belongs to a local mafia boss named Marseilles and torn by inner controversy, the group dissipates. Then the the fun begins. 
The mafia boss, played by the ubiquitous Gosha Kutsenko — who is such an easy target nowadays it’s actually boring to laugh at him — thinks he’s a pirate, quotes some pirate code and has a bust of Jack Sparrow in his room. He takes the girl hostage and in order to have her released Marseilles demands that Ignat steals Captain Morgan’s sword which has been brought to Yalta from the British Museum to be exhibited in the lobby of a hotel lobby as a part of a campaign by the town’s mayor, played by Viktor Sukhorukov. 
Ignat obviously can’t pull off the hiest by himself so he reunites the group. The first attempt to do this is to fight with his best friend at an improvised fight club. One would think that none of these idiocies would have mattered if the movie had been properly executed. 
But imagine a storyline like this played by people who are not only strangers to emotion but are not even that good looking. Kuzenko’s character should have blackmailed everybody that he would release the girl if they didn’t pay him to hide her from the world. Kids bounce off the walls and pretend to belong to some kind of street culture but unless you are a child yourself you are very unlikely to believe anything in this movie.

TITLE: America’s Cup All Too Calm
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: VALENCIA, Spain — The sailors are trained, the yachts honed, the excitement palpable and yet the America’s Cup is already three days late because one ingredient is conspicuous by its absence — the wind.
By its very nature, sailing is one of the hardest sports to plan given its dependence on the gods.
At the last America’s Cup in Auckland, races were postponed time and again as the wind flickered back and forth between too light and gale force.
When Swiss syndicate Alinghi won the Auld Mug in 2003, one of their top criteria in choosing where to host their defence was precisely the weather.
Stable winds not only make for regular racing but also help ensure television channels block out time to show regattas and are not just left with pictures of sailors sunbathing on deck.
Valencia is known for its stable summer sea breeze as temperatures well above 30 degrees on land pull the wind in off the sea. But after a cold and wet spring, the temperature is not yet high and strong enough to dry the land and whip up the wind.
“We have been sailing here for years … I think it unfair to criticise it because we have had three days without wind,” said Juan Carlos Oliva, meteorologist for Italian team +39.
All the teams have weathermen watching barometric pressure, temperature, wind speed and direction, all of which goes into every step of performance from designing the boat to giving final advice as to which line the crew should take each race.
Most of the meteorologists have been in Valencia for the last three years studying historical records and gathering data to help them predict the vagaries of the wind.
“There are some things about this year that remind me of 2004 when in April it was quite cool and wet and we had very variable breezes,” Chris Bedford at BMW Oracle said. “Later that year the summer winds were probably slightly heavier than average.”
The challengers racing in the Louis Vuitton Cup were supposed to start the first round robins on Monday and will try their luck again on Thursday.
Despite the frustrations, most of the 11 challengers racing for the right to challenge Alinghi for the America’s Cup say they would rather sit out at sea waiting for the wind than try to race in bad conditions.
In the last warm-up regatta earlier this month, sudden shifts of wind stopped some of the best teams dead in their tracks, sucking the wind out of spinnakers and forcing teams to tack back up what should have been a downwind leg.

TITLE: Killer Cho Enraged, Menacing in Video Sent to TV
AUTHOR: By Matt Puzzo
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BLACKSBURG, Virginia — Restaurant patrons cringed and mothers turned their children away from the television as the video came up of an armed Cho Seung-Hui delivering a snarling, venomous tirade about rich “brats” and their “hedonistic needs.”
The self-made video and photos of Cho pointing guns as if he were imitating a movie poster were mailed to NBC on the morning of the Virginia Tech massacre. A Postal Service time stamp reads 9:01 a.m. — between the two attacks that left 33 people dead.
“This is it. This is where it all ends,” Cho says in one videotape, in which he appears to be more melancholy than angry. “What a life it was. Some life.”
Cho, 23, speaks in a harsh monotone in other videotaped rants, but it isn’t clear to whom he is speaking.
“You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today,” he says in one, with a snarl on his lips. “But you decided to spill my blood. You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option. The decision was yours. Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off.”
NBC said the package contained a rambling and often incoherent 23-page written statement, 28 video clips and 43 photos.
On NBC’s “Today” show Thursday, host Meredith Vieira said the decision to air the information “was not taken lightly.” Some victims’ relatives canceled their plans to speak with NBC because they were upset over the airing of the images, she said.
“I saw his picture on TV, and when I did I just got chills,” said Kristy Venning, a junior from Franklin County, Va. “There’s really no words. It shows he put so much thought into this and I think it’s sick.”
The package helped explain one of the biggest mysteries about the massacre: where the gunman was and what he did during that two-hour window between the first burst of gunfire, at a high-rise dorm, and the second attack, at a classroom building.
“Your Mercedes wasn’t enough, you brats,” says Cho, a South Korean immigrant whose parents work at a dry cleaners in suburban Washington. “Your golden necklaces weren’t enough, you snobs. Your trust funds wasn’t enough. Your vodka and cognac wasn’t enough. All your debaucheries weren’t enough. Those weren’t enough to fulfill your hedonistic needs. You had everything.”
A dormitory neighbor of the first two victims, Ryan Clark, 22, and Emily Hilscher, 19, described on ABC’s “Good Morning America” what she saw that morning in Ambler Johnson Hall.
“I heard a really loud female voice scream. I opened my door and that’s when I saw the blood and the footprints, the sneaker-prints, leading in a trail from her room,” Molly Donahue said.
That’s when she saw Clark, a resident assistant in the dorm, on the floor against a door, she said. A friend later told her he was dead. Donahue she said has since tried to return to the dorm but felt physically ill and is still terrified.
“I got to the point where I can’t be alone,” she said.
Authorities on Thursday disclosed that more than a year before the massacre, Cho had been accused of sending unwanted messages to two women and was taken to a psychiatric hospital on a magistrate’s orders and was pronounced a danger to himself. But he was released with orders to undergo outpatient treatment.
The disclosure added to the rapidly growing list of warning signs that appeared well before the student opened fire. Among other things, Cho’s twisted, violence-filled writings and sullen, vacant-eyed demeanor had disturbed professors and students so much that he was removed from one English class and was repeatedly urged to get counseling.
Some of the pictures in the video package show him smiling; others show him frowning and snarling. Some depict him brandishing two weapons at a time, one in each hand. He wears a khaki-colored military-style vest, fingerless gloves, a black T-shirt, a backpack and a black baseball cap on backwards. Another photo shows him using two hands to swing a hammer. Another shows Cho holding a gun to his temple.
He refers to “martyrs like Eric and Dylan” — a reference to the teenage killers in the Columbine High School massacre.
NBC News President Steve Capus said the package was sent by overnight delivery but apparently had the wrong ZIP code and wasn’t opened until Wednesday, NBC said.
A postal employee brought the package to NBC’s attention after noticing the Blacksburg return address and a name similar to the words reportedly found scrawled in red ink on Cho’s arm after the bloodbath, “Ismail Ax,” NBC said.

TITLE: Soccer’s Euro 2012 Heads East
PUBLISHER: AGENCE FRANCE PRESS
TEXT: CARDIFF — Poland and Ukraine were chosen in a shock vote by European football’s governing body UEFA on Wednesday to jointly host the Euro 2012 championships.
They won the fight to host the quadrennial tournament involving the continent’s top nations ahead of Italy and another joint bid from Hungary/Croatia.
It will be the first time that either Poland or Ukraine have hosted a major football championship and will be seen as a major boost to the sport in eastern Europe in the face of decades of domination from wealthy western countries.
Next year’s Euro 2008 finals will be jointly held by Austria and Switzerland.
The decision, announced by new UEFA president Michel Platini, was a huge shock as world champions Italy had been hot favorites, while the Polish/Ukraine bid was seen as the rank outsider.
The Italians had been calling for a fresh start following concerns over the match-fixing scandal that rocked their domestic football last year and the crowd violence that halted all play earlier this year.
They boasted the best existing infrastructure and the experience of hosting two previous European championships in 1968 and 1980, the 1990 World Cup finals and last year’s Winter Olympics in Turin.
The quadrennial tournament was jointly hosted by Belgium and the Netherlands in 2000 and will be shared between Austria and Switzerland next year, but organizational problems were raised in the cases of Poland/Ukraine and Hungary/Croatia.
But UEFA officials pushed these concerns aside and instead grabbed the chance to award the finals to former Eastern Bloc countries for the first time since Yugoslavia hosted the 1976 finals.
Much had been made about the long distances involved for teams if UEFA awarded the finals to Poland and Ukraine and the poor state of the roads linking the two countries and the lack of proper stadiums.
But the joint bid had enthusiastic backing from the Polish government and  former leader Lech Walesa who called on UEFA to grab the opportunity to spread its boundaries and recognize the changes that have swept across eastern Europe in the last 15 years.
The winning bid featured eight venues for the finals in seven years time, four in Poland and four in Ukraine.
The UEFA decision brought immediate praise from Ukraine’s top football official Grigory Surkis.
“We are grateful to all of the UEFA executive council members for their decision to accord us the right to host the European championship,” Surkis told Ukrainian television.
“I promise that we will do our best to hold the championship at the highest possible level.” he added.
The 2012 finals will once again feature 16 teams despite UEFA examining a proposal to extend it to 24 countries.
Greece are the current European champions having won the title in Lisbon in 2004. Neither Poland nor Ukraine have won the European title.

TITLE: At Least 127 Dead in Iraqi Market Blast
AUTHOR: By Lauren Frayer
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGHDAD — Grieving relatives retrieved bodies from hospital morgues Thursday, and passers-by gawked at the giant crater left by a market bomb in one of four attacks that killed 183 people on the bloodiest day since the U.S. troop increase began nine weeks ago.
But violence did not abate Thursday, as a suicide bomber exploded in another mostly Shiite district, killing at least 11 people and wounding 28, police said. The car bomb exploded next to a fuel tanker in Karradah, setting fire to the truck. The death toll was expected to rise.
Many of the more than 230 Iraqis killed or found dead nationwide a day earlier were buried in quiet ceremonies before Thursday’s noon prayer, according to Muslim tradition. Other bodies lay in refrigeration containers, still unidentified, at morgues across Baghdad.
In Sadr City, relatives flocked to Imam Ali Hospital to claim the bodies of loved ones. A man held his shirt over his mouth and nose as he moved past decaying bodies. Nearby, four men loaded a casket onto a minibus.
The most devastating blast struck the Sadriyah market as workers were leaving for the day, charring a lineup of minibuses that came to pick them up. At least 127 people were killed and 148 wounded, including men who were rebuilding the market after a Feb. 3 bombing left 137 dead.
On Thursday, collective wakes were being held for multiple victims in huge tents erected in narrow alleys and at nearby mosques within view of the blast site. Onlookers gathered around a crater about three yards wide and one yard deep, left by the force of the explosion.
One of them, 38-year-old Akram Abdullah, who owns a clothing shop about 200 yards away, fell to his knees in tears.
“It’s a tragedy — devastation covers the whole area. It’s as if a volcano erupted here,” said Abdullah, the father of three boys.
“Charred dead bodies are still inside the twisted cars, some cars are still covered with ashes,” he said, describing the scene before him in a phone interview.
Abdullah, whose shop was damaged by flying shrapnel, said he took part in 18 funerals Thursday morning. “I cried a lot,” he said.
The car bombing appeared meticulously planned. It took place at a pedestrian entrance where tall concrete barriers had been erected after the earlier attack. It was the only way out of the compound, and the construction workers were widely known to leave at about 4 p.m. — the time of the bombing.
One builder, 28-year-old Salih Mustafa, said he was waiting for a bus home when the bomb exploded.
“I rushed with others to give a hand and help the victims,” he said. “I saw three bodies in a wooden cart, and civilian cars were helping to take away the victims. It was really a horrible scene.”
U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell told The Associated Press that al-Qaida in Iraq was suspected in the bombing. “Initial indications based on intelligence sources show that it was linked to al-Qaida,” Caldwell said in a late-night telephone interview.
Echoing those remarks, Defense Secretary Robert Gates called the bombings “horrifying” and accused al-Qaida of being behind them.
The attacks appeared to be yet another attempt by Sunni insurgents and al-Qaida to force Shiite militiamen back onto the streets. Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr had ordered his Mahdi Army fighters to put away their weapons and go underground before the security crackdown began, leaving regions like those bombed on Wednesday highly vulnerable.
An outburst of violence from the Shiite militia would also ease pressure on the Sunni insurgents, creating a second front for U.S. and Iraqi soldiers struggling to diminish violence in the capital and provide time for the Iraqi government to gather momentum for sectarian reconciliation.
U.S. officials have reported a decrease in sectarian killings in Baghdad since the U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown was launched Feb. 14. But the past week has seen several spectacular attacks in the capital, including a suicide bombing inside parliament and a powerful blast that collapsed a landmark bridge across the Tigris River. The number of bodies dumped in the streets of Baghdad also has risen significantly.
Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, the Iraqi military spokesman, said, “We have not seen such a wave of attacks since the security plan began. These are terrorist challenges. Ninety-five percent of those killed today were civilians.”
Late Wednesday, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered the arrest of the Iraqi army colonel who was in charge of security in the region around the Sadriyah market. The colonel’s name was not given.
“Our Iraqi people are being subjected to a brutal attack that does not differentiate between an old man, a child or a woman. This targeting of civilian populations brings back to our minds the mass crimes and genocide committed by the Saddamist dictatorial regime,” said a statement from al-Maliki’s office.
Scattered violence continued on Thursday. A policeman and a civilian woman were killed when gunmen opened fire on a police patrol in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, police said. Five more policemen were wounded in the shooting.
An Iraqi soldier was gunned down near Kut, 100 miles southeast of Baghdad, according to officials at a nearby hospital where his body was brought.
In the northern oil-rich city of Kirkuk, seven employees of the North Oil Company, a state-run enterprise, were seriously wounded in another drive-by shooting, police said. Kirkuk lies 180 miles north of Baghdad.
The 127 deaths in Wednesday’s market bombing were recorded by Raad Muhsin, an official at the al-Kindi Hospital morgue where the victims were taken. A police official confirmed the toll, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.

TITLE: Gates In Iraq to Spur Stability
AUTHOR: By Lolita Baldor
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGHDAD, Iraq — Defense Secretary Robert Gates slipped into Iraq Thursday to warn Iraqi leaders that the U.S. commitment to a military buildup there is not open-ended.
Gates said the political tumult in Washington over financing the military presence in Iraq shows that both the American public and the Bush administration are running out of patience with the war. He was speaking to reporters in Israel just before his quick flight to Baghdad.
“I would like to see faster progress,” he said, adding that momentum by the Iraqi government on political reconciliation as well as legislation on sharing oil revenue would “begin the process to send a message that the leaders are beginning to work together.”
He said that, in turn, would create an environment in which violence could be reduced.
Underscoring a sense of urgency, police said a suicide car bomber rammed into a fuel truck in central Baghdad only hours before Gates’ arrival, killing at least 11 people. The attack came a day after one of the bloodiest days in Baghdad since a U.S. troop increase began nine weeks ago, with four strikes killing more than 180 people.
“It is very important they make every effort to get this done as soon as possible,” he said, noting that an attack last week by a suicide bomber on a cafeteria at the Iraqi parliament inside the U.S.-guarded Green Zone made people particularly nervous.
Gates flew by helicopter to Fallujah for a briefing by Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, and Gen. Peter Pace, the Joint Chiefs chairman. Fallujah is a stronghold for Sunni insurgents.
He also planned to meet with Iraqi political leaders.
His visit, the third to Iraq since taking over as defense secretary in December, came a day after President Bush met congressional leaders to discuss the impasse over legislation to provide funds for the war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Gates said he has had no discussions with the White House about an absolute deadline by which the Pentagon must get additional funding to be able to maintain the mission.
During an hour-long meeting Wednesday at the White House, the president told lawmakers directly he will not sign any bill that includes a timetable for a troop withdrawal, and they made it clear Congress will send him one anyway.
“We believe he must search his soul, his conscience and find out what is the right thing for the American people,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, told reporters after the session. “I believe signing this bill will do that.”
But White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said, “It appears that they are determined to send a bill to the president that he won’t accept. They fundamentally disagree.”
Democrats hope to complete work on a House-Senate compromise in time to send it to the White House by the end of next week, with Bush’s veto a certainty.
Given the narrow Democratic majority in the Senate, it appears unlikely the compromise will include a mandatory date for a complete withdrawal.
In any event, after an expected presidential veto attention would turn quickly to a new bill and how quickly it could be passed with provisions acceptable to the president.

TITLE: Chelsea Rout Hammers To  Keep Man U Within Sight
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Two spectacular goals from England winger Shaun Wright-Phillips kept Chelsea firmly on Manchester United’s heels after a 4-1 win over West Ham United at Upton Park on Wednesday. 
Victory lifted Jose Mourinho’s side, winners of the last two Premier League titles, back to within three points of leaders Manchester United with five matches remaining.
Wright-Phillips struck twice in a hectic five-minute spell in the first half during which Argentine Carlos Tevez also netted for the home side. Goals after the break from Salomon Kalou and compatriot Didier Drogba confirmed the vast gulf in class between the sides.
United, who defeated Sheffield United 2-0 at home on Tuesday, have 81 points with Chelsea, who welcome the leaders to Stamford Bridge on May 9, on 78.
Wright-Phillips finally opened his league account for Chelsea with two quality finishes.
His opener on 31 minutes came after a deft shrug of his shoulder took him into the penalty area before unleashing a low left foot shot which arrowed across goal and into the right-hand corner.
West Ham quickly levelled when Tevez let fly from 25 metres out with a swerving shot that Petr Cech could only help into the net but their joy was shortlived as a minute later Wright-Phillips met Wayne Bridge’s cross with a crisp right-foot volley that flew in.
Chelsea took full control after the break. Kalou prodded home from virtually on the line on 52 minutes after Robert Green had parried from Didier Drogba and his fellow Ivorian added a fourth just after the hour.
“We felt confident even at 2-1… the manager said if we carried on playing well we could win this 4-1 or 5-1, he was bang-on,” midfielder Frank Lampard told Sky Sports.
Relegation is now looming large for West Ham who with four games left are five points adrift of Sheffield United who sit one place above the drop zone.
Manager Alan Curbishley said: “We had our chances but they were not taken and we paid the price. I think 4-1 was a bit harsh.”
He added: “The problem is we have not done enough in other games. It’s not tonight why we are in the bottom three, it is games against teams that are close to us.”
Elsewhere, England midfielder Steven Gerrard scored twice, including one penalty, as Liverpool regained third place from Arsenal with a 2-0 win over Middlesbrough at Anfield while Blackburn Rovers overcame Watford 3-1 at Ewood Park to move the bottom side closer to the drop.
Blackburn, beaten by Chelsea in the FA Cup semi-finals on Sunday, raced into a two-goal lead with a header from Congolese Christopher Samba and a cool finish from Jason Roberts in the opening 10 minutes.
Brazilian midfielder Rinaldi got one back midway through the first half only for South African Benni McCarthy to net a third for Blackburn.

TITLE: Three Killed in Turkish Bible Attack
AUTHOR: By Benjamin Harvey
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MALATYA, Turkey — Police detained five more suspects Thursday in the deaths of three men who were found with their throats slit in a publishing house that prints Bibles, the latest in a string of attacks targeting Christians in the mostly Muslim country.
The arrests brought to 10 the number of suspects in custody, all people in their late teens or early 20s, said Halil Ibrahim Dasoz, governor of Malatya, the city in central Turkey where the killings took place.
Malatya is known as a hotbed of Turkish nationalism and as the hometown of Mehmet Ali Agca, the gunman who tried to assassinate Pope John Paul II in 1981.
Local media said five suspects detained Wednesday were college students who were living at a residence that belongs to an Islamic foundation. Some of those suspects told investigators they carried out the killings to protect Islam, a Turkish newspaper reported.
“We didn’t do this for ourselves, but for our religion,” Hurriyet newspaper quoted one suspect as saying. “Our religion is being destroyed. Let this be a lesson to enemies of our religion.”
Turkey, a predominantly Muslim country bidding for EU membership, has been criticized for not doing enough to protect its religious minorities and to check rising Turkish nationalism and hostility toward non-Muslims.
The three victims — a German and two Turkish citizens — were found with their hands and legs bound and their throats slit at the Zirve publishing house.
All were employees of the publishing house, which printed Bibles and Christian literature and had been targeted previously in protests by nationalists who accused it of proselytizing in this officially secular country.
The German man had been living in Malatya since 2003, the mayor said. Anatolia identified him as 46-year-old Tilman Ekkehart Geske.
“Nothing can excuse such an attack that comes at a time of great need for peace, brotherhood and tolerance,” President Ahmet Necdet Sezer said.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan described the attack as “savagery.”
The five suspects detained Wednesday had each been carrying copies of a letter that read: “We five are brothers. We are going to our deaths. We may not return,” according to the state-run Anatolia news agency.
Police said one suspect underwent surgery for head injuries after he apparently tried to escape by jumping from a window.
Making up less than 1 percent of Turkey’s 70 million people, Christians have increasingly become targets amid what some fear is a rising tide of hostility toward non-Muslims.
In February 2006, a teenager fatally shot a Catholic priest as he prayed in his church, and two more Catholic priests were attacked later in the year. 
A November visit by Pope Benedict XVI was greeted by nonviolent protests, and early this year a gunman killed Armenian Christian editor Hrant Dink.
Authorities had vowed to deal with extremist attacks after Dink’s murder, but Wednesday’s assault showed the violence was not slowing down.
“The killing is a result of provocations in Turkey against minorities,” said Orhan Kemal Cengiz, a lawyer for one of the victims, Necati Aydin. “Intolerance in general has been rising sharply in Turkey.”

TITLE: White Sox Pitcher Throws No-Hitter
AUTHOR: By Dan Bollerman
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: NEW YORK — Mark Buehrle of the Chicago White Sox pitched a no-hitter in a 6-0 win over the Texas Rangers, the first hitless game of the Major League Baseball season. 
Buehrle, a 28-year-old left-hander, walked one and struck out eight in facing the minimum 27 batters before 25,390 fans yesterday at U.S. Cellular Field in Chicago. He becomes the first White Sox pitcher to throw a no-hitter since 1991 and the only one to do so at home in almost 40 years. 
“Going through a big-league lineup three times and trying to get everybody out is pretty impossible,’’ Buehrle said after the first no-hitter of his career in an interview with Comcast SportsNet. “I can’t believe I did it.’’ 
The last no-hitter in the major leagues was pitched by Anibal Sanchez of the Florida Marlins in a 2-0 win over Arizona on Sept. 6. 
“It’s a great feeling,’’ said White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen, who led Chicago to the World Series title two years ago. “I heard a couple of guys say ‘I wasn’t as nervous in the World Series as I was (last night).’’’ 
Buehrle came into the game with no decisions and a 4.32 earned run average in two starts this season. He retired the first 13 Texas batters before Sammy Sosa walked with one out in the fifth inning. He picked Sosa off for the second out, then retired 13 straight to complete the game. 
“You don’t want to make that one mistake and give up a hit,’’ Buehrle said in a televised news conference. “I could feel my knees a little bit, a little shaking. I had a little extra adrenalin going in the ninth inning.’’ 
In that inning, Buehrle got Matt Kata out on a called third strike, and Nelson Cruz was thrown out at first base after striking out swinging. Gerald Laird then grounded softly to third baseman Joe Crede, who threw to first baseman Paul Konerko for the final out. 
Buehrle hugged catcher A.J. Pierzynski before being mobbed by his jubilant teammates near the pitchers mound. 
“I didn’t know what to do,’’ Pierzynski said in a televised news conference. “I didn’t want to jump on him and hurt him because the season’s not over and we have a long way to go.’’ 
Jim Thome hit solo home runs in the third and seventh innings and Jermaine Dye had a grand slam in the fifth for the White Sox’s runs. Kevin Millwood (2-2) took the loss for the Rangers after giving up five hits and five runs in five innings. 
In San Francisco, Barry Bonds hit a home run in a 6-5, 12- inning win over St. Louis to move within 18 of breaking Hank Aaron’s career major-league record of 755. 
In other AL games, it was Kansas City 4, Detroit 3 in 10 innings; Baltimore 6, Tampa Bay 4; Oakland 3, the Los Angeles Angels 0; the New York Yankees 9, Cleveland 2; Boston 4, Toronto 1; and Minnesota 5, Seattle 4.

TITLE: Polls: Cliffhanger French Elections
AUTHOR: By Jamey Keaten
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PARIS — France’s presidential candidates made their final pushes for votes as polls Thursday pointed to a cliffhanger among the top four hopefuls, led by conservative Nicolas Sarkozy and Socialist Segolene Royal.
Royal took heart from polls showing that millions of voters have not firmly decided whom they will back in Sunday’s first-round vote that will whittle down the field from 12 total candidates to two for a decisive May 6 runoff.
“Everything is open,” Royal told RTL radio. Polls “indicate that there are still 17 million voters who haven’t decided yet.”
A poll for Le Figaro newspaper showed Sarkozy, the nominee for the governing party, drawing 28.5 percent of votes for the first round. Royal tallied 25 percent. The margin of error in surveys of its size is plus or minus three percentage points, meaning that statistically, they are in a dead heat.