SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1292 (58), Friday, July 27, 2007
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TITLE: Opposition Party Denied Registration
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova, David Nowak and Alexander Osipovich
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Federal Registration Service on Tuesday denied registration to Great Russia, the party co-founded earlier this year by former Rodina head Dmitry Rogozin.
The decision removes one option for nationalist voters ahead of December’s State Duma elections in a move analysts said was calculated to help parties closer to the Kremlin keep these votes for themselves.
The party’s chairman, State Duma Deputy Andrei Savelyev, labeled the decision a “direct order from the Kremlin.”
The Kremlin dismissed the allegations as groundless.
An employee at the Federal Registration Service, who did not give her name, said the party’s application had been rejected for a variety of reasons. She said she was unable to provide details, however, referring further questions to party officials.
In rejecting the application, the service ruled that the party’s charter violated the law on political parties, Savelyev said.
He pointed out, however, that Great Russia’s charter was absolutely identical to that of A Just Russia, a pro-Kremlin party that was successfully registered earlier this year.
Great Russia adopted the charter specifically because it had been tested with the registration service, said Sergei Pykhtin, secretary of the party’s Central Council.
“If they studied the charter of A Just Russia as closely,” Pykhtin said, “why is it that they did not find violations in the charter the first time, but did find them the second?”
Pykhtin listed a number of technical problems the registration service identified in the application. In one case, he said, the agency claimed that regional party members had not confirmed their membership, even though the party has written applications from them.
Another purported violation involved a spelling mistake on a financial document, he said.
Opposition parties have complained that the authorities often use technicalities to sideline them from the political process. Yabloko, the Union of Right Forces and the Communist Party were all removed from the ballot on technical grounds in various regional elections in March, while the Federation Registration Service has found 16 smaller parties in violation of the law requiring parties to have a minimum membership of 50,000.
Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday that the Kremlin played no role in these decisions.
“There is the law of the Russian Federation on which the registration of political parties is founded. This is the only criterion,” Peskov said. “There can, therefore, be no talk of influence from the Kremlin. Such allegations are groundless.”
Great Russia was founded in May by Rogozin, Savelyev and Alexander Belov, head of the Movement Against Illegal Immigration, which stages rallies denouncing the presence of dark-skinned foreigners in Russia.
At the time, Great Russia claimed that it had 35,000 members, and party leaders predicted the number would reach 50,000 — the total required for a party to be registered — by the time it filed its application in July.
Rogozin had led Rodina, the party he helped found just months before the 2003 State Duma elections and which was widely seen as a Kremlin-directed project designed to steal votes from the Communists.
But Rogozin left the party last year after a falli-out with the Kremlin, and Rodina was later folded into A Just Russia.
At the founding congress of Great Russia, the three men behind its creation promised that the new party would be independent of the Kremlin, and Rogozin said it would garner 25 percent of the vote in December.
Analysts said at the time that the party stood a good chance of making it over the 7 percent barrier in order to win seats — if it could get registered, which they said was unlikely.
“I would have been surprised if the party was registered,” Boris Makarenko, an analyst with the Center for Political Technologies, said Tuesday. “They would not have gathered a lot of votes, only 5 to 8 percent, but they would have changed the discourse in the country: More radical ultranationalist forces would have appeared. And this would be unacceptable for the authorities, as there would have been new Kondopogas.”
Ethnic riots in the northwestern town of Kondopoga last August raised the specter of nationalist violence, spearheaded by groups like Belov’s Movement Against Illegal Immigration, elsewhere in Russia.

TITLE: Explosion on Gas Line Rocks North of City
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A gas pipeline exploded north of St. Petersburg in the early hours of Thursday morning, shaking buildings up to five kilometers away and causing a huge fire that lit the night sky. 
Residents of the northern districts of the city last night were astonished and frightened by the fire, which occurred in the Vsevolozhsky district of the Leningrad Oblast. No injuries were reported.
According to a report by Regnum news agency, the fire began at five minutes past midnight but an hour later, 30 fire teams had managed to bring it under control. 
When contacted Thursday, the press service of the Leningrad Oblast government refrained from any precise estimations of the damage caused to the region as well as from commenting on probable effects on power supply to local villages.
“[Leningrad Oblast governor] Valery Pavlovich [Serdyukov] visited the scene of the accident to estimate the damage. However we do not have any official information yet. At the moment the main question now is how soon the consequences of the fire can be eliminated and when the pipeline will start operating as normal,” a press spokesman for the Leningrad Oblast government said.
The explosion damaged 50 meters of the pipeline and blew a hole 102 centimeters in diameter. Swampy soil prevented the fire from expanding to neighboring areas and to a power plant located nearby. However the fire manage dto spread across two hectares of land.
St. Petersburg will not face power supply difficulties as a result of the accident.
“The gas pipeline which was damaged by the fire was not part of the system of fuel supply to the power plant,” Alexander Lashitsky, director of the North Power Plant, said Thursday in a statement distributed by TGK-1 power generation company.
Since June 19, the North Power Plant had not been fully operational due to annual summer repairs.
“Just after the explosion, emergency groups from the North Power Plant were enabled. Special attention was focused on ensuring uninterrupted operation of the power substation located at the plant,” Lashitsky said. “When we realized that the fire did not threaten  the power plant, the emergency group returned to their regular work.” 
Lentransgas distribution company reported Thursday that the fire had been put out entirely and emergency teams had been sent to replace the damaged part of the pipeline. Lentransgas expects this to take one day.
“We did not stop supply of natural gas to our consumers. All clients are fully provided with gas. We are fulfilling all obligations in relation to export contracts,” Lentransgas said in a statement.
However Finnish consumers have reported some difficulties.
“The explosion and fire of a gas pipeline in Russia near St. Petersburg cut gas supplies to Finland late Wednesday evening for about six hours,” the Finnish gas company Gasum said Thursday in a statement.
“Gazprom informed Gasum immediately after the explosion happened. There is no extra gas storage in Finland besides the gas in the pipeline. There was about 11 million cubic meters of gas in Gasum’s pipeline network at the time the accident happened. The parallel pipeline to Finland was temporarily out of use due to repair work, but was quickly fixed by Gazprom,” Gasum’s statement said.

TITLE: Putin Orders Boost in Military, Spying
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Isachenkov
PUBLISHER: Associated Press Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin vowed Wednesday to strengthen Russia’s military capability and step up spying abroad in response to U.S. plans to build missile defense sites and deploy troops in Eastern Europe.
“The situation in the world and internal political interests require the Foreign Intelligence Service to permanently increase its capabilities, primarily in the field of information and analytical support for the country’s leadership,” Putin said at a meeting with senior military and security officers in remarks that were posted on the Kremlin’s web site.
The Foreign Intelligence Service is a successor agency to the KGB.
Putin did not identify specific nations as targets, but officials in the United States and Britain have said recently that Moscow has intensified its spying in those countries. Putin said U.S. plans to station troops in Eastern Europe and Washington’s intention to base missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic pose security challenges for Russia. Washington says the facilities are necessary to protect the U.S. and Europe from missiles launched by Iran or other rogue states.
Putin has proposed that the U.S. use a Soviet-built radar base in Azerbaijan for missile defense. U.S. officials have questioned whether the facility is technically compatible with American systems.
On Wednesday, Putin said Washington was stonewalling. “Alternative ways of protection from hypothetical missile threats which we proposed have been left unanswered,” he said.
“All-round strengthening of our military forces is one of our indisputable priorities,” Putin said, promising to continue equipping the military with new weapons.
Putin also criticized the United States and other NATO members for failing to ratify an amended version of the 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty, which limits the deployment of tanks, aircraft and other heavy non-nuclear weapons around the continent.
Earlier this month, Putin suspended Russia’s participation in the treaty and threatened to withdraw from it completely if NATO nations do not ratify its amended version, which was signed in 1999, to reflect changes since the 1991 Soviet collapse.
NATO members have refused to do that until Russia withdraws its troops from the former Soviet republics of Moldova and Georgia.
Putin said the old version of the CFE treaty counted arsenals of former Soviet satellites and republics which are now NATO members as part of the Soviet bloc. In particular, it counted weapons in the ex-Soviet Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as part of what was the Soviet Baltic Military District.
“Maybe I should appoint one of you as its commander?” Putin said wryly.
Russia’s relations with the United States and other Western nations have grown increasingly acrimonious amid Western concerns that Russia is edging away from democracy and Kremlin suspicions about the West’s intentions.

TITLE: Putin Lashes Out at Nashi Gathering
AUTHOR: By David Nowak
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin lashed out at Britain during a meeting with members of pro-Kremlin youth groups Tuesday, calling its demands that Russia extradite murder suspect Andrei Lugovoi a relic of “colonial thinking.”
At a meeting with activists at his Zavidovo residence, the casually dressed Putin spoke in a reserved tone about the extradition demand of Russia’s “British partners” before shifting suddenly to an aggressive tone.
“They are making proposals to change our Constitution, which are insulting for our nation and our people,” Putin said in remarks broadcast on Channel One television. “It’s their brains, not our Constitution, which need to be changed. What they are offering to us is a clear remnant of colonial thinking.”
The activists, from youth groups Nashi, Young Guard and Young Russia, among others, applauded dutifully.
Russia has insisted that extraditing Lugovoi, accused in Britain of murdering Alexander Litvinenko in London last year, would be a violation of the Constitution.
The meeting with around two-dozen activists was the latest in a series of perks for pro-Kremlin youth groups.
The meeting with Putin came on the heels of a Sunday visit by First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov to Nashi’s summer camp at Lake Seliger, 350 kilometers northwest of Moscow, where some 10,000 activists have gathered.
Analysts called Putin’s meeting a rallying cry ahead of the election season.

TITLE: Bushehr Reactor Not To Open Until 2008
AUTHOR: By Guy Faulconbridge
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia has no chance of finishing Iran’s first nuclear power station before fall 2008, a year behind schedule, a Russian subcontractor helping to build the plant said Wednesday.
Moscow has used the Bushehr nuclear plant as a lever in relations with Tehran that have chilled this year after a dispute over missed payments for the plant’s construction in southwest Iran.
Completion of Bushehr is likely to trigger a sharp reaction from the United States, which fears Iran’s nuclear program would be strengthened by the delivery of Russian nuclear fuel.
State contractor Atomstroiexport, which is building the plant, said a shortage of payments from Iran was undermining confidence in the Bushehr project.
“Today we can say for sure that to launch the Bushehr nuclear plant this autumn is unrealistic,” said Ivan Istomin, the head of a subcontractor called Energoprogress, which is working for Atomstroiexport, told RIA-Novosti. “A realistic time frame for starting the reactor ... is moving to autumn 2008.”
Russian arms sales and nuclear cooperation with Iran have strained relations with Washington, which suspects Tehran of seeking to develop atomic weapons under the cover of its civilian nuclear program.
Moscow says Tehran does not have the capability to make nuclear weapons. But some senior officials are wary of relations with Iran and say Russia’s interests are not served by Iran gaining nuclear weapons.
Iran says it has a right to develop its civilian nuclear sector and that its nuclear program is not aimed at developing nuclear arms.
Mohammad Saeedi, deputy head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, and Javad Vaeedi, Iran’s deputy nuclear negotiator, were in Moscow on Wednesday for talks, an Iranian nuclear official said.
A Russian nuclear official said the talks would focus on “efforts to stabilize the situation around Bushehr.”
Russia has said it will stick to the project, worth about $1 billion. But Atomstroiexport said Iran was still paying just a fraction of the $25 million a month needed to finish the plant.
“Confidence in the project has been undermined,” Atomstroiexport spokeswoman Irina Yesipova said. “It is an unstable situation where there are lots of announcements but no money.”
Iranian officials insist they have made payments on time and say Moscow is delaying because of Western pressure.
“There is just not sufficient financing and that has influenced confidence, the confidence of the Russian side and Russian subcontractors toward the Bushehr project and toward Iran,” Yesipova said.
Russia in February delayed the launch of the plant — planned for September — citing payment problems. Russia also delayed sending nuclear fuel to Bushehr as it had earlier planned for March.
Russia has traditionally been seen as Tehran’s closest big-power ally, but senior Russian officials have expressed exasperation with Tehran’s negotiating tactics.
They cite the sometimes-extreme pronouncements of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has called for wiping Israel from the world’s map.

TITLE: Belarus Footballers Charged With Fixing National Matches
AUTHOR: By David Nowak
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Police in Belarus have charged a Novosibirsk football coach, the former goalkeeper for the Belarussian national football team, with bribing teammates to throw games during the Euro 2004 qualifying tournament, Belarus’ Interior Ministry said Wednesday.
Former Belarus goalkeeper Valery Shantalosov, currently a coach for the second division Novosibirsk club FK Sibir, is suspected of offering cash to his Belarus teammates to throw at least two games in the qualifying tournament, a spokesman for the Belarussian Interior Ministry said by telephone.
The evidence consists of audio tapes of telephone conversations between Shantalosov and an unidentified Russian gambler before and after two games at the tail end of the tournament, said a spokesman, who declined to be identified.
The gambler gave Shantalosov money to offer players to underperform in those games, the spokesman said.
Shantalosov was traveling and unavailable for comment Wednesday, a Sibir spokesman said.
“The coach continues to live in town, is not hiding from anybody, and continues work with the club,” the spokesman said of Shantalosov.
The two games in question were against Czech Republic and Moldova in September 2003. Belarus had lost five of its first six games and was already out of the running for qualification when it lost to Czech Republic 3-1 and to Moldova 2-1.
The players were easier to persuade to accept the bribe because, having been eliminated, they had nothing to play for, the Interior Ministry spokesman said.
Shantalosov has been charged with match-fixing and could face up to three years in prison if convicted, he said.
Belarus has submitted no formal extradition request to Russia, as a Belarussian judge must first rule that there is sufficient evidence for such a request, the spokesman said.
All case materials would then have to be examined by the Russian General Prosecutor’s Office, he said.
Shantalosov was the first ever goalkeeper for an independent Belarus, making his debut in 1992 following the break-up of the Soviet Union. As such, he is a highly respected figure in Belarussian football, even if he was seeing little playing time by the time Euro 2004 came around.
He played one game in the qualifying rounds, against the Netherlands, and did not play in any of the others, including the two games in question.
Eduard Malofeev, who was the coach of the Belarus national team during the qualifying round, said by telephone from Scotland that Shantalosov was “too honest” to throw games.
“I never heard anything about any bribes,” said Malofeev, now a coach at Scottish Premier League club Heart of Midlothian. “I have always held the wonderful people of Belarus in the highest regard.”
A spokesman for UEFA, European football’s governing body, said match-fixing claims would be investigated.

TITLE: Summa to Invest $1Bln into WiMax
AUTHOR: By Tai Adelaja
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Closely-held telecommunications firm Summa Telecom said Wednesday that it would invest $1 billion out of the personal funds of its primary shareholder to create broadband wireless Internet networks across the country.
The company plans to extend wireless Internet, or WiMax, coverage to 330 cities by 2010, CEO Sergei Koshkin told journalists Wednesday. Summa Telecom also intends to invest $600 million into building a GSM network, Koshkin said.
Company spokesman Igor Ryabov said Wednesday that the company has what it takes to build WiMax networks capable of providing services such as telephony and Internet Protocol Television, as well as Internet access. 
“Funds for the construction of the networks ... will be provided by our main shareholder, Ziyavudin Magomedov,” Ryabov said. “The money will be drawn from his oil and metal interests.”
The St. Petersburg-based company was founded in 2005 by Summa Capital, the investment vehicle of Magomedov, whose principal businesses include oil transportation logistics and metals.
In November, Summa Telecom became the only company in the country to receive a nationwide WiMax license.
Industry watchers were surprised when the relatively small firm was awarded the license, a decision that fueled speculation that a well-connected individual gained the permits simply for the purpose of selling them on.
Koshkin dismissed the rumors Wednesday, blaming it on telecom monopolists “who wanted to maintain dominance over the telecom market.”
Ryabov also dismissed media reports that Gazprom Media was in talks to acquire Summa Telecom.
“This is rubbish,” Ryabov said. “The first ever approach by Gazprom Media took place Tuesday.” 
“They called us yesterday and suggested we should try to get acquainted with each other further,” he said. “We, of course, refused even to meet them and there can be no talks about selling.”
Industry analysts said it was difficult to speculate on the company’s operations, as little is known about it.
“This is a company whose operations are wrapped in a mystery,” Aton Capital analyst Anna Kurbatova said. “Its operations are quite limited, but it does provide services for powerful state-controlled organizations such as Gazprom and Rosneft.”

TITLE: Housing Fee Hike Still ‘Not Enough’
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: With fees for housing and communal services in St. Petersburg set to rise almost 14 percent, city officials have warned that sharper rises are needed to accomplish the necessary renovation of the city’s housing stock.
From Aug. 1, the average monthly fee for housing services will increase from its current level of 10.98 rubles ($0.44) to 12.49 rubles ($0.5) per square meter – a rise of 13.75 percent.
The final fee will depend on the exact type of building, but wealthier residents will pay more than poorer — a result of possessing bigger flats, Yunis Lukmanov, chairman of the Committee for Housing and Communal services, claimed Wednesday at a press conference at Interfax news agency.
“We considered the increase in tariffs necessary because of the amount of repairs that are required. The legislative limit for any rise this year is 15 percent. We decided to increase the charge by 13.75 percent,” Lukmanov said.
City Hall has reconsidered its way of calculating fees for rubbish collection and elevator maintenance. 
“We examined the charges and compared them with the actual spending on technical servicing, repairs and maintenance and as a result suggested a rise,” said Vadim Chekalin, head of the municipal services management department at the INJECON institute.
“The fees approved by City Hall do not exactly match our calculations. We suggested an increase of 30 percent on the fee for rubbish collection, but City Hall considered this unreasonable,” Chekalin said.
From Aug. 1, the fee for rubbish collection will depend on apartment size instead of on the number of people living in it, while for the maintenance of elevators, which lacks 230 million rubles ($9 million) a year in adequate funding, the fee will depend on the type of the house, its total area and total number of elevators. Ground floor residents will also be obliged to pay for the maintenance of elevators.
Service companies, however, considered the rise in fees insufficient, with St. Petersburg still favorably placed compared to many other regions.
“Tariffs are relative figures. Unions of property owners could change tariffs regardless of these calculations,” said Alexei Stepanenko, executive director of the association “Northwest Housing and Construction Complex.”
It is mainly the owners of new properties who take this opportunity, while most citizens as well as tenants respect the figures given by City Hall. Stepanenko said association members would expect higher fees. Debt for housing and communal services in St. Petersburg is about one percent to two percent, Lukmanov said. However housing maintenance is still a problem — about half of the city’s residential buildings require more or less serious repair work. A shortfall in financing over the last few years has resulted in a large number of dilapidated buildings that are expensive to service.
This year 13.9 billion rubles ($545 million) will be spent on restoration compared to the 6.9 billion rubles ($270.7 million) spent last year. In 2005 just 4.8 billion rubles were spent for this purpose and only 2.1 billion rubles in 2004.

TITLE: Power Machines Looks Ahead To August Issue After Losses
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Despite recording net losses for the second year in a row, industrial holding Power Machines could raise over $270 million from its additional share issue this August. The company closed its order book on Wednesday. 
Power Machines will issue 1.492 billion new shares, increasing its authorized capital stock by 20.67 percent. The decision to distribute the shares through open subscription was made by Power Machines on June 4 this year.
“Most of the new shares will be bought by Unified Energy Systems (UES), Interros and Siemens. If minority shareholders do not exercise their right to buy out the new shares, investors will be offered about 292.4 million shares — 3.36 percent of the enlarged authorized capital stock,” said Sevastian Kozitsyn, analyst at Brokercreditservice brokerage.
At the moment UES owns 25 percent plus one of the company’s 7.217 billion shares, Siemens owns 25 percent plus one share and Interros 30.4 percent.
Current shareholders have a priority right to buy out the shares with a discount of up to 10 percent. The remaining shares will be offered to investors.
The new shares would be priced between $0.16 and $0.185 per share, Business daily Vedomosti cited a source from Power Machines as saying.
“If the shares are acquired at the high end price bracket, Power Machines will attract $276 million instead of the $250 million that was announced earlier,” Kozitsyn said.
According to the Russian Trading System, current capitalization of Power Machines stands at about $1.308 billion. At the end of trade on Wednesday, shares were sold at $0.188 and bought at $0.183.
Brokercreditservice was positive about Power Machines’ prospects despite suffering financial losses.
“We still assess these shares positively. We think the shares could keep growing at 20 percent to 25 percent a year,” Kozitsyn said.
According to its latest report, Power Machines revenue accounted for $579 million in 2006, a 13.2 percent decrease on 2005 figures. Production costs amounted to $583 million. Net loss accounted for $132 million compared to $40.5 million in 2005
“The decrease in revenue resulted from the company’s specific way of accounting and changes in the portfolio of its orders,” the company said in a statement commenting on the report. The share of long-term contracts increased at the expense of short-term contracts and short-term revenue.
The net loss was explained by the completion of contracts in India and Vietnam, which were signed on strict terms in 2003-2004, the company said.
According to the development program approved in March this year, Power Machines will invest a total of $145 million in 2007. By 2010 Power Machines plans to double its volume of production in relation to total power capacity.
Investment over the next five years will amount to $1 billion.

TITLE: Brief
TEXT: <b>Carried Away</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Vagonmash, a St. Petersburg-based industrial enterprise, will supply 23 railway carriages worth a total of 510 million rubles ($20 million) to state transport giant Russian Railways, Interfax reported Tuesday. Vagonmash will deliver 15 standard carriages and 15 restaurant-carriages. According to a previous agreement signed earlier this year, Vagonmash has already supplied Russian Railways with 28 carriages.

<b>Okay Profits</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Net profits at Okay retail chain fell by 5.4 percent last year, Interfax reported Tuesday. 
Okay, which was one of the first ‘European-type’ supermarkets launched in Russia, earned 438 million rubles ($17 million) in 2006. Revenue increased by 50 percent up to 16.8 billion rubles ($662 million). Operational costs increased by 49 percent up to 13.7 billion rubles ($540 million).

TITLE: Echoes of the Kirov Murder
AUTHOR: By Ira Straus
TEXT: It is often very difficult to watch Russia Today, the government-owned English-language global satellite television channel that was tasked with creating a positive image of Russia abroad. It has consistently presented the Kremlin version of Alexander Litvinenko’s murder: that he was poisoned by Boris Berezovsky or the British secret services. In classic KGB style, someone is found to claim that the British tried to recruit him into the Litvinenko-Berezovsky circle of agents.
It is the sort of thing that has an almost comic effect when presented in the West.
Inside Russia, perhaps this kind of broadcast sounds normal. After all, the state controls all the major television media, and Russians have a natural patriotic wish to believe the message — particularly when the media insist that the government had no role whatsoever in the murder.
But in the West, this sort of stuff would not pass the smell test. It reeks of trying to shift the blame — projection of blame, to use the psychiatric term.
It also reeks of what could be called “the Syrian defense.” Each time a leading anti-Syrian figure is killed in Lebanon, Syrian leaders say the opposition forces in Lebanon did it in order to embarrass Syria and harm its international standing. It is as if they are copying from President Vladimir Putin’s book, or vice versa. These lines become standard fare in the controlled media at home. In reality, the anti-Putin forces in Russia and London are afraid of getting knocked off by Putin, not by Berezovsky.
Is Russia sinking to the Syrian level?
Russia’s political culture leaves a lot to be desired. It should be setting its standards much higher. Moscow portrays itself as a Christ-like victim with a God-like omnipotence that the opposition aggressively tries to besmirch by convoluted and demonic scheming.
It is possible to sink even lower. The whole episode reflects a culture buried deeply in the KGB tradition. In the Soviet era, anyone remotely tied to the opposition was forced to confess to the crime of undermining the country’s progress.
This became a systemic practice beginning in 1929. After the prominent early Bolshevik leader, Sergei Kirov, was murdered in 1934 at Stalin’s behest, Stalin claimed that the opposition was guilty of the crime. Stalin used the killing as a pretext for a mass purge and murder of literally millions of Soviets.
The Litvinenko killing has certain echoes of the Kirov murder. In both cases, the real evidence is ignored or covered up, while the state becomes preoccupied with finding a scapegoat.
Most of the moderate and liberal forces — from Kremlin spin doctor Gleb Pavlovsky to former Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar — wanted to stay on good terms with Putin. They supported the official Kremlin line: It was Putin’s enemies who killed Litvinenko. The only difference was that they said it was Putin’s hard-line political enemies from the conservative wing who did it, not liberals like Berezovsky. Did they hope to prove their loyalty and escape Putin’s wrath?
Russia’s response had its own bizarre logic. For months, the authorities were ambiguous as to who should be labeled as the killer. But when Britain demanded former security services officer Andrei Lugovoi’s extradition, Russia went on the counterattack, organizing a standing-room-only Lugovoi press conference that was broadcast in detail on the government-owned television stations.
Some Russian commentators have already risen to an even higher level of conspiracy theory, seeing in this whole episode a British plot to rally Europe and the United States against Russia. At the same time, they urge Russia to use the old Soviet geopolitical strategy of trying to drive a wedge between Europe and the United States.
While Russia relies on the “Syrian defense,” China in turn has started using the “Russian defense.” Faced with multiple product-contamination scandals, China has executed the head of its food and drug regulatory agency. More important, it has gone on a public relations campaign, attacking U.S. exports for their health defects and citing misleading statistics to argue that the U.S. record is equally bad. China complains that it is a victim of unfair treatment and “double standards.” It’s the exact same complaint the Foreign Ministry has made about the British for demanding Lugovoi’s extradition while refusing to extradite Berezovsky back to Russia for a trial. “Double standard” is what we hear from the Russian elite any time there is any criticism of Russia about anything.
In these ways, the authoritarians of the world have found a common defense that close themselves off, airtight, from facts and criticism. They can kill their enemies and blame it on those same enemies. They can claim that their enemies must have committed the murder, since the resulting international scandal led to bad publicity for the regime. They can complain of the “double standards” of the Western media and of anyone who makes the rather logical assumption that the regime itself is a prima facie suspect.
For the authoritarian regimes to make themselves seem like big-time victims, however, they have to insert a further premise: that the Western media wield enormous global power, one far more terrible than regimes that might kill an odd opponent here or there. It is an argument that could warm the heart of U.S. conservatives and neo-conservatives, who, faced with incessant disagreement from the media and intelligentsia, have also created a high level of criticism of the power and prejudices of the intellectual class.
This media criticism, however, is a poor substitute for open thinking and debate about the issues raised in the media. Governments that let themselves be guided by it have a disturbing tendency to insulate themselves from facts, lose the benefits of media checks and balances, and go off the deep end.
Conservatives in the modern West tend to be more sober. They know when they are exaggerating for the sake of politics and cherish the same free media that they love to criticize. Cruder regimes, however, such as the counterrevolutionary, fascist and Nazi movements of the last century, don’t want to merely complain and vent their paranoia about the media and intellectuals. They want to act on the paranoia.
The Putin regime has been prone to act on its paranoia and on its seemingly unquenchable hatred of individuals and institutions that have crossed it. The damage to Russian institutions has been slowly accumulating over the years since 1999. Unfortunately, it could go much further.

Ira Straus is U.S. coordinator of the Committee on Eastern Europe and Russia in NATO, an independent NGO.

TITLE: Geopolitical Lessons from the Bambuti Tribe
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: In the mid-20th century, British-American anthropologist Colin Turnbull observed the Bambuti pygmies living in the Congo. As a result of the unusually thick African jungle, the Bambuti never saw anything from a great distance.
Turnbull didn’t suspect anything unusual in that until he took one of the tribesmen, the courageous young Kenzha, on a long journey. The first thing that astounded the pygmy upon seeing an open plain were buffaloes grazing in the distance. He asked Turnbull, “What sort of insects are those?” But when he got closer to the buffalo to show him the animal’s actual size, Kenzha was totally confused. How had the buffalo managed to grow so quickly? Or was this some sort of witchcraft?
Last week’s spat between Britain and Russia illustrates that the Kremlin’s view of the world fundamentally differs from the West’s — just as Kenzha’s perception differed from the anthropologist’s.
The British were deeply shaken by the use of radioactive materials in the murder of Alexander Litvinenko. Scotland Yard implicated Andrei Lugovoi in the murder and demanded his extradition. Moscow refused. Britain expelled four Russian embassy staff members and made it more difficult for Russian officials to enter the country.
Moscow’s response to London is very similar to poor Kenzha’s reaction when he was told that the buffalo in the distance were not insects. He laughed loudly and started going on about the foolish white people who tried to force him to believe such nonsense. “I am not blind, after all!” Kenzha exclaimed.
What buffalo?! In fact, the situation is much more complex. It’s clear that the British don’t like Russia and fear the growing authority of Comrade Putin. And let’s not forget what kind of people we are dealing with in the West — after all, they are the ones who killed Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and poisoned Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic. And now they are harping on Russia and trying to pin the Litvinenko killing on Moscow.
It’s absolutely clear that the problem is not about Litvinenko. His murder was a private matter. Regardless of who rubbed out Litvinenko, it was self-exiled billionaire Boris Berezovsky, former Yukos co-owner Leonid Nevzlin and other various enemies of Russia who have created such a frenzy around this matter.
Of course, I am exaggerating, but it would appear that the fundamental problem in our relationship with the West is not that the Kremlin pretends that it doesn’t understand why London is demanding Lugovoi’s extradition. The problem is that the Kremlin is not pretending at all — it is completely sincere in its total lack of understanding of the situation.
Thus, the Kremlin and the West have completely different maps and perceptions of the world.
If the Kremlin truly understood that the distant buffalo were actually large, it would have settled down and softened its rhetoric. But what if the Kremlin sincerely believes that the entire problem with the Litvinenko affair is that the whole world is out to get Russia? Then it would be necessary to liquidate its enemies, in particular Berezovsky, who started all of these problems in the first place. And that is exactly what the Kremlin tried to do.
It should be noted that it took Kenzha only a few hours to understand that the buffaloes were the same size, whether viewed from a distance or close up. And what is most remarkable is that Kenzha didn’t even have at his command such resources as the FSB, state-run mass media or an army of friends who grew up with him in the jungle and later became high-ranking government officials. Kenzha did not have friends at his disposal to help him see through the deceit of the Western anthropologist who tried to pass off insects as buffalo.
These are friends whose current perceptions of the world have been formed since early childhood, and who now make all tribal policy regarding buffalo, open plains and the West.

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

TITLE: Mariinsky at the Met
AUTHOR: By Mike Silverman
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK — Richard Wagner dreamed of doing it this way: The four operas of his “Ring” cycle performed over four consecutive nights, totaling more than 18 hours of musical theater.
When the final curtain came down on “Goetterdaemmerung” late last Thursday at the Metropolitan Opera House, 75 1/2 hours after the first notes sounded, the capacity crowd of 4,000 “Ring” devotees cheered for the hardworking singers of the Kirov Opera and conductor Valery Gergiev. Perhaps they were applauding themselves a bit as well for sticking with this towering, demanding epic.
To be sure, the production by designer George Tsypin — dubbed the “Russian Ring” because it’s inspired by the obscure Nart Myths of the Caucasus mountain region — demands more fortitude than most. Throughout the four nights, the staging careens unpredictably from tacky to terrific and back again.
Looming over every scene are four grotesque, 30-foot-high, paper-mache-like statues, suspended by cables that allow them to shift from vertical to horizontal. Sometimes their heads are human, sometimes animal. Occasionally the statues are headless. They also light up from inside and cast an eerie glow of varying colors.
As the gods, dwarfs, and human characters play out their primeval saga of ambition, love and betrayal, these figures serve as a kind of moral compass, silently observing the action. At times they become part of it, too, as when all four light up in blood red to represent the dragon in Act 2 of “Siegfried.”
Tsypin told Opera News earlier this year that these forms were inspired by the image of a giant sleeping under the ice at the dawn of creation. “Then, slowly, he starts waking up and breaks through the ice,” Tsypin said, “and the world begins.”
Why introduce an alien mythology to a work that itself is derived from Norse and Teutonic tales? “Der Ring des Nibelungen,” as the work is formally known, has always invited a variety of interpretations because its themes are so timeless and hold such universal fascination. There have been modern-dress “Rings,” 19th-century capitalist “Rings,” even an “American Ring” with images of the 49ers’ Gold Rush and the Manhattan skyline.
The Tsypin production, seen here as part of the Lincoln Center Festival, has been performed around the world during the last three years (Tokyo; Baden-Baden, Germany; Costa Mesa, California) in addition to the company’s home in St. Petersburg.
It was obviously built to travel and at times looks sparse on the vast Met stage (though the lighting by Gleb Filshtinsky, with ever-shifting colors reflecting off the statues, is spectacular). It also takes no advantage of the Met’s stage machinery; Erda the earth goddess, for example, has to walk awkwardly on and off stage instead of rising mysteriously through a trap door. Inconsistencies crop up, too: The magic Tarnhelm headgear that allows its wearer to change form looks different in “Goetterdaemmerung” from its appearance in “Rheingold.”
But for every clunky effect, there’s a magical one: the spherical, spinning golden cage in “Das Rheingold,” which holds the goddess Freia captive. The forest bird in the shape of a woman wearing a fringed white dress, who plays a flute and then trades it for Siegfried’s sword. And the indelible split-level tableau that closes Act 2 of “Goetterdaemmerung”: While Siegfried celebrates his wedding to Gutrune below, Bruennhilde and two others plot his murder, glowering from above on a raised stone platform.
For audiences, the reward for watching the cycle unfold over four consecutive nights is an added level of intensity and concentration. Wagner originally hoped to stage it that way, but from the very first “Ring” at Bayreuth in 1876, he found he had to give the singers a night off in the middle to rest. In recent years, it’s become the norm to spread the cycle over six evenings.
There’s a trade-off to performing it without a break: Dramatic credibility is undercut by the necessity of casting multiple singers in leading roles. To ask a soprano to sing Bruennhilde three nights running would be like expecting a baseball pitcher to start three consecutive games.
So, when Wotan put Bruennhilde to sleep at the end of “Die Walkuere” on Tuesday, we watched Olga Savova lie down on her rock. But when she awakened on Wednesday, it was a different Olga — Sergeyeva — who opened her eyes and launched into “Heil dir, Sonne” (“Hail to you, sun”). Still a third Bruennhilde, Larisa Gogolevskaya, took the stage on Thursday.
All three performed respectably, with Savova the most consistently satisfying. She returned on Thursday as Bruennhilde’s sister, Waltraute (a role usually sung by a mezzo-soprano) and made a tremendous impact in her single scene.
The first of the two Siegfrieds, tenor Leonid Zakhozhayev, looked dashingly youthful and displayed a pleasant lyric voice that was occasionally overmatched by one of the toughest roles in all of opera. He was followed Thursday by Victor Lutsuk, whose voice is bigger but less appealing.
Bass-baritones Yevgeny Nikitin and Mikhail Kit shared the duty as Wotan. Nikitin proved the more interesting singer, bringing warmth and surprising power to the grueling third act of “Siegfried.” And he reappeared Thursday as luxury casting in the role of the cowardly Gunther.
As in many “Ring” productions, the standout singer was the soprano taking the role of Sieglinde, the unhappy wife who falls in love with her brother, Siegmund, in “Die Walkuere.” Mlada Khudoley was announced as suffering from a cold, but once she warmed up she produced rich, ringing high notes and created a vivid characterization.
Overall, the level of singing was surprisingly good, showing that Russian performers have seized the Wagnerian tradition and made it their own.
In the orchestra, the string section did outstanding work. The horns were less consistent, but came through commendably for the most part. Gergiev’s conducting was inspired at every turn. Choosing daringly slow tempos at times, he kept the momentum building when it counted. Rarely have the Forest Murmurs sounded so delicate — one could almost hear the sound of birds flapping their wings. And the visceral impact of Siegfried’s Funeral March was tremendous.

TITLE: Word’s worth
TEXT: One of the interesting effects of dacha life is that you begin to lose track of the days of the week. You stop marking the days as Monday or Saturday, and instead think in terms of “the day it rained” or “the scorcher.”
Lost in the haze of days out at my dacha, I started wondering about Russian calendars, and I discovered that I’ve simply reverted to the old Russian way of experiencing days and months.
From recorded time, ancient Russians had 12 months, but until the 12th century — and until much later in many places — the names of the months were very different from what we know now. They also varied by region and described either the weather, what was happening in nature or the work that was traditionally done.
January: <i>ïåðåçèìüå</i> (mid-winter) or <i>ïðîñèíåö</i> (from <i>ñèíèé</i> — blue — when everything is colored with the bluish tint of rime).
February: <i>áîêîãðåé</i> (from <i>ãðåòü</i> — when things begin warming up) or <i>ñå÷íÿ</i> (from <i>ñå÷ü</i> — when the undergrowth is culled).
March: <i>ïðîòàëüíèê</i> (from <i>ïðîòàëèíà</i>, thawed patches of snow) or <i>ñóõûé</i> (“dry”; when peasants check to see how the earth is drying out).
April: <i>ñíåãîãîí</i> (from <i>ãîíÿòü ñíåã</i> — when the snow is chased away); <i>öâåòåíü</i> (from <i>öâåcòè</i>, when plants begin to bloom); or <i>áåðåçîçîë</i> (from <i>áåð¸çà</i> — birch — and <i>çîëà</i> — ashes; when birch tree ashes are used to fertilize the land).
May: <i>òðàâíèê</i> (from <i>òðàâà</i>, when grass appears).
June: <i>õëåáîðîñò</i> (when the grain — <i>õëåá</i> — grows high), or <i>èçîê</i> (a term for grasshoppers or cicadas that begin their serenade).
July: <i>ìàêóøêà ëåòà</i> (the “top of the head of the year”); <i>êîñåíü</i> (from <i>êîñèòü</i>, when crops are cut); <i>÷åðâåíü</i> (“red” — when berries ripen); or <i>ëèïåö</i> (when the <i>ëèïà</i> — linden tree — blooms).
August: <i>ðàçîñîë</i> (from <i>ñîëèòü</i>, to salt, when vegetables are put up) or <i>ñåðïåíü</i> (from ñåðï, the sickle used to harvest).
September: <i>õìóðåíü</i> (from <i>õìóðûé</i>, downcast) or <i>ðóèí</i> (“windy”).
October: <i>ëèñòîïàä</i> (“when leaves fall”) or <i>ñâàäåáíèê</i> (“the time of weddings”).
November: <i>ïîëóçèìíèê</i> (middle of the winter months) or <i>ãðóäåíü</i> (from <i>ãðóäà</i> — pile — when the frozen earth is “piled up”).
December: <i>ñòóäåíü</i> (the time of cold).
What lyrical and descriptive words for plain old months! What a shame Russian didn’t retain them as many other Slavic languages did. We English speakers would have had an easier time right after Russia accepted the Western names of the months: <i>ÿíóàðèé</i>, <i>ôåáóàð</i>, <i>ìàðîò</i>, <i>àïðèëü</i>, <i>ìàè</i>, <i>èóíü</i>, <i>èóëü</i>, <i>àóãóñò</i>, <i>ñåíòåìâðèé</i>, <i>îêòåìâðèé</i>, <i>íîâåìáàð</i>, <i>äåêåìáàð</i>. Russians seem to have suffered with these unpronounceable and incomprehensible names, and over the centuries the names were Russified to their present form.
— <i>Michele A. Berdy</i> 

Sergey Chernov is on vacation

TITLE: Dmitry Prigov 1940-2007
AUTHOR: By Sophia Kishkovsky
PUBLISHER: The New York Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Dmitry Prigov, a prolific and influential Russian poet and artist who at one point was incarcerated in a Soviet psychiatric hospital as punishment for his work, died on July 16. He was 66.
His death was reported by the Russian news agency RIA Novosti, which said he had collapsed in the Moscow subway earlier this month after a severe heart attack.
Prigov’s creative expression took many forms. He said in 2005 that he had written nearly 36,000 poems. He also wrote plays and essays, created drawings, installations and video art, acted in films, staged performance art and performed music.
For years his verse circulated in the Soviet Union as samizdat, officially banned literature that was passed furtively hand to hand. Only in 1990, during the last stages of the Communist era, was a collection of his verse officially published in his country. His work had been published extensively abroad in ImigrI publications and Slavic studies journals.
Trained as a sculptor at the Stroganov Art Institute in Moscow, he began writing poetry in the 1950s, then worked as a municipal architect and created sculptures for parks. In the 1970s he grew close to artists in the Soviet underground and became a leader in Moscow’s conceptual art movement, combining his poetry with performance. He was also known for writing verse on cans.
“In America there was Pop Art,” said Vitaly Patsyukov, a Russian art historian and friend of Prigov’s. “Here it was ideology as a manifestation of mass consciousness.”  Patsyukov added, “He turned words into objects.”
At the time he was producing work considered subversive by the authorities, Prigov was stopped while walking down a street in 1986, he recalled, and was whisked away by the KGB and then to a Soviet psychiatric hospital. His stay was brief, however, after prominent poets like Bella Akhmadulina lodged protests.
In the West he was probably best known for his performance art. Rita Lipson, a senior lecturer in Russian literature and culture at Yale University, recalled Prigov’s performance there. His work, she said, was “a form of social protest.” One of his most widely known cycles of verse is about a Soviet policeman.
Prigov, who was born in Moscow, is survived by his wife, Nadezhda, a son, Andrei, and a grandson, Georgy.
Patsyukov said Prigov had been looking forward to participating in a conference on religion and art. Contemporary artists and the Russian Orthodox Church have been increasingly at odds in Russia, and Prigov had hoped to reconcile them, Patsyukov said.
Viktor Yerofeyev, a novelist and essayist with whom Prigov worked closely, said Prigov had been “a brilliant poet and created his own distinct poetic world.”
“In the 20th century,” he said, “the poetic word was torn away from life, but Dmitry Alexandrovich brought poetry closer to life, as another great poet, Pushkin, did in his day.”

TITLE: Emerald isles
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: TEHUMARDI, Estonia — While many think of capital city Tallinn when they think of Estonia, the country also has a less well-known asset in its hundreds of coastal islands. Often escaping the effects of Soviet military and industrial intervention, the islands have preserved much of their natural environment and are now gearing up to responsibly exploit their potential for tourism. 
With good transport links and modern facilities, Estonia’s islands stand poised to attract travelers from Russia and Europe looking for an undiscovered gem. Two of them are among Estonia’s most important island destinations.

<b>SAAREMAA</b>
Described by enthusiasts as a paradise on earth, Saaremaa is the largest of Estonia’s 1,500-plus islands, to the west of the mainland. It can be reached on a ferry from several points in Estonia and Latvia.
Located between the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Riga, the island was a restricted area under the Soviets, who installed radars and weapons there. Soviet citizens could go there only with special permission, which, some reckon, had a positive effect on the island, helping to keep most of its natural environment intact. Foreigners were banned altogether, of course. 
Saaremaa’s native people, who have lived there for at least 5,000 years, have been described as cultivating their difference from mainlanders in their lifestyle, traditional clothes, temperament and dialect. The inhabitants of Muhu, a smaller island that lies between Saaremaa and the mainland, are also thought to differ in these respects.
In the south of the island, the Tehumardi Recreation Center is a new facility with a five-room wooden main building and a number of small holiday houses, located in the woods near a fishpond. Owned and managed by Ago Liblik, it has been open to the public since spring 2004, providing plenty of room for sports and for kids’ entertainment, as well as a sauna and bicycles to rent. Sights nearby include the Sorve peninsula, the Viieristi coast and the Jarve dunes. It is also the site of the close-range and bloody Battle of Tehumardi between the Soviets and Nazis in 1944. The nearest shop is in Salme, 2.3 kilometers away.
Abundant with fish and birds, Saaremaa attracts fishermen and huntsmen and offers excellent opportunities for trekking and canoeing. At Vastriku, a nearby hotel with canoes to rent, sailor shirt-clad owner Hillar Lipp will instruct you on the various routes through the island’s narrow rivers and lakes (www.saaremaa.ee/vastriku/index.htm).
Seventeen kilometers from Tehumardi is Kuressaare, Saaremaa’s capital and basically the only town, with a 16,000-strong population (40,000 people live on the island). Kuressaare (www.kuressaare.ee), which used to be a well-known resort before World War II, is once again a major tourist attraction. Officially declared a town in 1563 by Duke Magnus, brother of the Danish king, Frederik II, Kuressaare’s main sight is the bishop’s castle, which is considered to be the best-preserved castle in the Baltics, now an exciting and informative museum.
The island’s most famous sights include Kaali Meteorite Crater lake, the largest of a number of meteorite craters presumably formed by an iron-nickel meteorite that split in the atmosphere and fell to earth in pieces in around 700 B.C. The crater lake, once known as the Holy Lake, was worshipped by the island’s ancient inhabitants.
Close to the 110-meter hole filled with greenish water, there is a private museum-cum-hotel celebrating it. 
Angla Windmills is a set of five old mills on the Angla Hill, the only remaining windmill hill on Saaremaa. Preserved for their historical value, the structures do not function but create a breathtaking sight against Saaremaa’s blue skies. 
The island is also famous for its medieval churches such as Valjala (the island’s oldest stone church) and Karja, whose interiors are decorated with sculptures and carvings. 

<b>MUHU</b>
Now joined to Saaremaa by a land bridge, Muhu is a much smaller island, yet it clings to its identity. It is home of Koguva, Estonia’s best-preserved fishing village, with all its buildings (dating to the 18th or 19th century) under historical protection. The stone walls that surround the houses are more than 200 years old, but the beginnings of the village reportedly date from the 16th century. It is still populated.
Padaste Manor, a restored 19th century manor (though its earlier history goes back to the 16th century, according to the guides), is a major point on the map for Europe’s upscale tourists. The luxury hotel, with gourmet restaurants and spa facilities, is located in a bay, surrounded by Muhu’s splendid forests. Modern-day spa facilities are complement by traditional procedures such as the barrel bath. A massive water-filled barrel is set up on a bay and heated by an adjusted firewood heater and up to four to six people sit inside enjoying the sea breeze. 
Horseback rides are available in Muhu as well as at many points on Saaremaa. The island breed is short and gentle. 
Padaste Manor is cozy and sophisticated, yet there is still some work to be done, according to the management. Thus, the manor’s central building is still in scaffolding. “It’s a labor of love that will never end,” said Martin Breuer, Padaste Manor’s Dutch-born owner and general manager. 

The St. Petersburg Times was a guest of the Estonian Tourist Board, Enterprise Estonia (Liivalaia 13/15, 10118 Tallinn, Estonia. Tel: +372 6279 770). www.eas.ee, www.visitestonia.com.

<b>INFORMATION</b>
HOW TO GET THERE
Buses depart from Tallinn at least seven times a day (www.bussireisid.ee, www.sarbuss) and take four hours to get to Saaremaa's main town Kuressaare (including a 30-minute ferry ride). But it is only 45 minutes by plane from Tallinn to Kuressaare (www.avies.ee). Many points in Saaremaa and Muhu can be reached by local buses (www.neomobile.ee). There are also several car rental services on Saaremaa.
St. Petersburg's travel agencies can help; check for the list of agencies dealing with Estonia at the consulate’s web site (www.peterburg.estemb.ru/turfirm”).

WHERE TO STAY
Tehumardi Recreation Center, whose main purpose is to provide lodging and services for people traveling in caravans, offers five double rooms in the main building with showers and 18 tiny four-bed holiday homes with bunk beds. Bicycle and sauna rental available. (www.tehumardi.ee)
Saaremaa Spa Hotels group includes the new or fully renovated hotels Ruutli, Meri and Saaremaa Valss in Kuressaare. Based around the Kuressaare mud resort, in operation since 1964, the hotels provide therapy procedures, medical services, leisure activities, a water center, swimming pools and saunas. (www.sanatoorium.ee)
Padaste Manor is an upscale luxury hotel located in a restored 19th century manor, with two-floor suites, and a number of smaller buildings set on a bay. Spa and resort facilities are available. (Tel: +372 454 8800. www.padaste.ee)
WHERE TO EAT
Nautica, on the first floor of the Spa Hotel Ruutli in Kuressaare and designed in the style of a ship's galley, comes complete with antique furniture and offers some delectable food with the addition of a great view of the coast. (Pargi 12, Tel: +372 454 8125. www.sanatoorium.ee)
The Seahouse Restaurant at Padaste Manor is one of Estonia's finest gourmet restaurants which uses mostly local countryside ingredients, including game, but, inventively, raises it to a high art. Dishes include creamy mushroom soup made from mushrooms picked in local forests, hare fillet and steamed turbot. (Muhu Island, Tel: +372 454 8800. www.padaste.ee)
For more information on hotels and restaurants, check out www.visitestonia.com and www.saaremaa.ee.

TITLE: Harry Potter’s final act
AUTHOR: By Michiko Kakutani
PUBLISHER: The New York Times
TEXT: So, here it is at last: The final confrontation between Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, the Chosen One, the “symbol of hope” for both the Wizard and Muggle worlds, and Lord Voldemort, He Who Must Not Be Named, the nefarious leader of the Death Eaters and would-be ruler of all. Good versus Evil. Love versus Hate. The Seeker versus the Dark Lord.
J. K. Rowling’s monumental, spellbinding epic, 10 years in the making, is deeply rooted in traditional literature and Hollywood sagas — from the Greek myths to Dickens and Tolkien to “Star Wars.” And true to its roots, it ends not with modernist, “Soprano”-esque equivocation, but with good old-fashioned closure: a big-screen, heart-racing, bone-chilling confrontation and an epilogue that clearly lays out people’s fates. 
Getting to the finish line is not seamless — the last part of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” the seventh and final book in the series, has some lumpy passages of exposition and a couple of clunky detours — but the overall conclusion and its determination of the main characters’ story lines possess a convincing inevitability that make some of the prepublication speculation seem curiously blinkered in retrospect.
With each installment, the “Potter” series has grown increasingly dark, and this volume is no exception. While Rowling’s astonishingly limber voice still moves effortlessly between Ron’s adolescent sarcasm and Harry’s growing solemnity, from youthful exuberance to more philosophical gravity, “Deathly Hallows” is, for the most part, a somber book that marks Harry’s final initiation into the complexities and sadnesses of adulthood.
From his first days at Hogwarts, the young, green-eyed boy bore the burden of his destiny as a leader, coping with the expectations and duties of his role, and in this volume he is clearly more Henry V than Prince Hal, more King Arthur than young Wart: high-spirited war games of Quidditch have given way to real war, and Harry often wishes he were not the de facto leader of the Resistance movement, shouldering terrifying responsibilities, but an ordinary teenage boy — free to romance Ginny Weasley and hang out with his friends.
Harry has already lost his parents, his godfather Sirius and his teacher Professor Dumbledore (all mentors he might have once received instruction from) and in this volume, the losses mount with unnerving speed: at least a half-dozen characters we have come to know die in these pages, and many others are wounded or tortured. Voldemort and his followers have infiltrated Hogwarts and the Ministry of Magic, creating havoc and terror in the Wizard and Muggle worlds alike, and the members of various populations — including elves, goblins and centaurs — are choosing sides.
No wonder then that Harry often seems overwhelmed with disillusionment and doubt in the final installment of this seven-volume bildungsroman (“novel of personal development”). He continues to struggle to control his temper, and as he and Ron and Hermione search for the missing Horcruxes (secret magical objects in which Voldemort has stashed parts of his soul, objects that Harry must destroy if he hopes to kill the evil lord), he literally enters a dark wood, in which he must do battle not only with the Death Eaters, but also with the temptations of hubris and despair.
Harry’s weird psychic connection with Voldemort (symbolized by the lightning-bolt forehead scar he bears as a result of the Dark Lord’s attack on him as a baby) seems to have grown stronger too, giving him clues to Voldemort’s actions and whereabouts, even as it lures him ever closer to the dark side. 
One of the plot’s significant turning points concerns Harry’s decision on whether to continue looking for the Horcruxes — the mission assigned to him by the late Dumbledore — or to pursue the Hallows, three magical objects said to make their possessor the master of Death.
Harry’s journey will propel him forward to a final showdown with his arch enemy, and also send him backward into the past, to the house in Godric’s Hollow where his parents died, to learn about his family history and the equally mysterious history of Dumbledore’s family. 
At the same time, he will be forced to ponder the equation between fraternity and independence, free will and fate, and to come to terms with his own frailties and those of others. Indeed, ambiguities proliferate throughout “The Deathly Hallows”: we are made to see that kindly Dumbledore, sinister Severus Snape and perhaps even the awful Muggle cousin Dudley Dursley may be more complicated than they initially seem, that all of them, like Harry, have hidden aspects to their personalities, and that choice — more than talent or predisposition — matters most of all.
It is Rowling’s achievement in this series that she manages to make Harry both a familiar adolescent — coping with the banal frustrations of school and dating — and an epic hero, kin to everyone from the young King Arthur to Spider-Man and Luke Skywalker. This same magpie talent has enabled her to create a narrative that effortlessly mixes up allusions to Homer, Milton, Shakespeare and Kafka, with silly kid jokes about vomit-flavored candies, a narrative that fuses a plethora of genres (from the boarding-school novel to the detective story to the epic quest) into a story that could be Exhibit A in a Joseph Campbell survey of mythic archetypes.
In doing so, J. K. Rowling has created a world as fully detailed as L. Frank Baum’s Oz or J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth, a world so minutely imagined in terms of its history and rituals and rules that it qualifies as an alternate universe, which may be one reason the “Potter” books have spawned such a passionate following and such fervent exegesis. With this volume, the reader realizes that small incidents and asides in earlier installments (hidden among a huge number of red herrings) create a breadcrumb trail of clues to the plot, that Rowling has fitted together the jigsaw-puzzle pieces of this long undertaking with Dickensian ingenuity and ardor. Objects and spells from earlier books — like the invisibility cloak, Polyjuice Potion, Dumbledore’s Pensieve and Sirius’s flying motorcycle — play important roles in this volume, and characters encountered before, like the house-elf Dobby and Mr. Ollivander the wandmaker, resurface, too.
The world of Harry Potter is a place where the mundane and the marvelous, the ordinary and the surreal coexist. It’s a place where cars can fly and owls can deliver the mail, a place where paintings talk and a mirror reflects people’s innermost desires. 
It’s also a place utterly recognizable to readers, a place where death and the catastrophes of daily life are inevitable, and people’s lives are defined by love and loss and hope — the same way they are in our own mortal world.
<hr>
Spoilers and a pre-dawn release did not deter Harry Potter fans in Moscow from making the late night trek Friday to local bookstores to purchase “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” the seventh and final book in the series.

The long awaited release of the bestselling phenomenon was honored by bookstores, including Respublika, which is open 24 hours, and Moskva, which stayed open for the 3 a.m. release.
Fans lined up worldwide as stores tweaked their opening hours for the event, and the J.K. Rowling book broke pre-release records with Amazon.com, selling over 2 million copies before Friday.
Only a handful of copies remained at Moskva by Saturday morning, while at Respublika it was out of stock by around 10 a.m.
The novel was posted on the Internet five days before the release. Russian fans already had managed to translate parts of it and post excerpts on the http://freez.hpworld.ru forum.
The new release is much darker than the first six, and Rowling had warned readers to expect the death of several key characters. In order to help children deal with this loss, extra staff members were working at Childline, a British hotline to help children cope with trauma, The Guardian reported.
The late-night release, the dark content of the book and the fact that the official Russian translation was not expected until November might explain, in part, why the vast majority of enthusiasts waiting in line were adults.
The pointed-hat-wearing staff at Respublika, on Tverskaya Ulitsa, tried to inspire crowds with competitions for best dressed, but one hour prior to the release it looked like they had made much more effort than their customers, who were watching Harry Potter films in the store’s mini movie theater.
Denis, a spokesman for Respublika who refused to give his last name, said the shop had expected at least 50 people and that pre-orders for the novel had reached 600.
“I am dressed as someone from Slytherin, from Draco Malfoy’s family,” said Natalya Muradiyeva, 21, who was wearing a witch hat and a green-and-white striped scarf. With their midnight arrival, she and her sister were the first in line.
The atmosphere at the Moskva bookstore, also on Tverskaya Ulitsa, was much more chaotic. Few were in costume, but it was almost impossible to move among the estimated 300 fans.
Some residents living above the bookstore did not share in the revelers’ celebration and began splashing buckets of water on noisy fans outside at around 3:30 a.m.
Though Moskva did not take pre-orders, it wanted to reward the enthusiasts who had made the effort to come out, so they ordered 1,000 books, priced at 1,001 rubles (about $40) each.
When the clock struck three, the promised live telecast of J.K Rowling reading the first chapters fell victim to a technical glitch and the first countdown failed to make the books materialize. After several anti-climactic countdowns, they started to chant “book, book, book” until the staff arrived with boxes in hand.
The first person to hold a book flipped straight to the epilogue at the back and announced the death of one central character; the fans behind him cheered.
Tatyana Braktina, 33, was waiting in line to pay when she peeked at the last few pages. “I couldn’t help myself, I read the spoilers and wanted to confirm them,” she said. “They are all true.”
Many did not want to deal with the line to the register and nestled themselves into corners of the bookstore to discover the fate of Harry and his friends.
At Moskva, Oleg Sheremetov, 19, dressed as Harry Potter, said he had been at the store since 11 p.m. “You could say I grew up with Harry Potter,” he said. He was wearing a yellow-and-maroon tie with blazer, with Gryffindor (Harry’s house) badges sewn onto the outfit. He said he wore the same costume to the premier of the film “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” the night before.
Although he said his English was a little lacking, Sheremetov plans to read the book with a dictionary until the Russian version comes out.
“I started reading the spoilers yesterday, but I stopped because I didn’t like what I read,” he said. “I’ve waited two years for this book, I can wait an extra day to read the real ending.”

<i>— Marina Kamenev</i>

Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows
By J. K. Rowling. 
Illustrations by Mary GrandPrI
Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic
759 pages

TITLE: Out of Africa
AUTHOR: By Chris Jones
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Congo // 57 Ulitsa Zhukovskogo. Tel: 275-9954 // Open daily, noon until midnight; Friday and Saturday, noon until 2 a.m. Menu in Russian and English.  // Monday through Friday, 20 percent discount from 12 p.m.-4 p.m.  // No credit cards. Dinner for two, with alcohol and dessert: 
1,750 rubles ($68.60).
Nestled in a quiet storefront behind Ploshchad Vosstaniya metro, Congo’s combination of excellent food, pleasant service, and relaxed atmosphere make it a consistent favorite in St. Petersburg’s otherwise chaotic restaurant scene.
When you enter Congo, you are whisked away from the bustle of the street outside, into a soothing world of dark woods, faintly thumping jazz music, and comfortable benches strewn with African-styled throw cushions. The space is spotlessly clean and filled with little details – such as the gentle light emerging from hemp-bound, mahogany lamps – that invite you to take off your watch and enjoy a long conversation.  
If you are only stopping in for lunch, or grabbing a snack on your way to the nearby Oktyabrsky Concert Hall, enjoy the airy, wicker-chaired tables at the front of the restaurant (3 tables, 12 guests). If you plan to stay for a while, or are looking for more romance, retreat to the back, where large benches form secluded booths for groups of 2-6 (9 tables, 38 guests). As you descend to your table, enjoy the African sculptures reclining on the shelves, and run your hands along the soft-hued flagstones that give the walls the feeling of a well groomed, luxuriously appointed African hut.
While Congo’s food is best described as “exotic European” rather than African, purists should not despair – there are enough authentic touches, such as solid South African red and white wines (130 rubles, $5 per glass), sensual-smelling rooibos tea (170 rubles, $6.50 for one liter), and Kenyan coffee (112 rubles, $4.50 per cup), to make you forget that you are in Russia. Entrees range from 180 rubles ($7) for a simple fish pie to 560 rubles ($21) for the much more exotic “Odnugozonanangana” lamb ribs, translated charmingly as “the place where young lamb went and never returned.” While there are no vegetarian entrees, non-meat lovers can survive by ordering one of the generously portioned side dishes, such as “couscous moroccan” (180 rubles, $7) — a subtle blend of couscous, eggplant, zucchini, and onion, offset by chilled red currants (chilled currants are apparently a theme at Congo, as they accompanied three of our four dishes).
Regardless of what you choose, you will be delighted by both the taste and presentation — over which Congo’s Russian chef has clearly spent great time and effort. For example, the beef with peri-peri sauce (360 rubles, $14) arrived drizzled with white, creamy sauce across one side, and a sharper, dark vinaigrette on the other. The meat — itself cooked to the perfect tenderness —rested against a bed of grilled broccoli, eggplant and zucchini, balanced with the ubiquitous chilled red currants. The well-chosen mix of flavors allows you to combine the various parts of the meal into any number of varieties, keeping things interesting until the last bite. Similarly, a salmon fillet (320 rubles, $12.50) came carefully painted with acebogen sauce, tucked amongst a nest of golden-hued potatoes. As with the steak, the true delight of the salmon was the studiously crafted mix of flavors. 
The appetizers were similarly pleasing, though the weakest point in an otherwise stellar meal. The eggplant marakesh (170 rubles, $6.50), a mix of eggplant, tomatoes, and slabs of mozzarella arranged in a radiant sunburst, proved somewhat bland for our tastes. Additionally, the above-mentioned couscous was delivered at the same time as our main meal, rather than with my companion’s salad. This cluttered the table and made it difficult to finish everything before it became cold. 
Apart from the mistake with the couscous, Congo’s waitstaff provided a pleasing combination of friendly service and relaxed attitude. Befitting the style of the restaurant, they are happy to help, but smart enough to let you enjoy your visit without being pestered.
Indeed, the only major complaint about Congo comes not from the food or the service, but from the menu itself. Congo’s English-language menu is a poorly translated, often baffling mix of misspellings and bland descriptions. For example, a stunningly rich tiramisu-style cake (150 rubles, $5.75), with thick, fluffy white cream layered on velvety chocolate cake, coated in a whisper-thin chocolate shell was listed as “tender coffee biscuit with cheese cream.” Additionally, there are several dishes on the Russian menu — primarily stews and entrees — that are not listed in the English version. While poorly written menus are not a surprise in St. Petersburg, the degree to which Congo’s menu understates its delicious selection is tragic.

TITLE: Discovering Slowness
TEXT: Discovering Slowness, an exhibition of Dutch video art on show at the National Center of Photography at 35 Bolshaya Morskaya Ulitsa , offers a compendium of new discoveries. 

The Russian version of the name of the exhibition (“Obretennaya Nespeshnost”) has something in common with “Remembrance of Things Past” by Marcel Proust and an attentive visitor could probably find several parallels to draw between the century-old masterpiece and contemporary video art. 
“Discovering Slowness focuses on the border area between photography and film,” reads the National Center of Photography’s web site. “Because of the digital revolution, photography and film are increasingly interwoven. This has its effects on both disciplines. Delineation is the defining characteristic of the border area: delineation in time, delineation in movement, delineation of space and delineation in story development. The camera is often fixed and projection focuses on one single event or space.” 
The exhibition gathers eighteen Dutch artists, led by Marjan Teeuwen, who express their own attitude to the world surrounding them as well as looking inward. Among them are Anouk De Clercq, Phillipine Hoegen, Persijn Broersen, Margit Lukacs, and Paul Kooiker, who has been leading a seminar in video art during his stay in St. Petersburg. “I like to teach my students to react,” Kooiker said.
The works are designed to provoke emotions by, for example, showing piles of different stuff in a luggage compartment or a woman mowing a lawn. Anouk De Clercq’s “Conductor” uses sound for effect. 
“I was just angry at the time and wanted the anger out of me and to go away” De Clercq said. “That was kind of escape. And I used the sound to underline the moment of it.”
 Barbara Visser, presenting “Philippa,” shot in 1998, uses a method of continuous repetition while her heroine Philippa Van Loon, the youngest descendant of the Van Loon family, moves from one room of a seventeenth-century museum to another, acting strange and charming at the same moment. Viewers’ eyes become glued to the work. 
“There are social and psychological narratives, but no stories; rather the visualisation of time and its relation to movement,” the web site reads. “Stretched moments, sometimes with a highly cinematic feel, at other times best characterized as moving photographs.”
Discovering Slowness runs until August 19. 
www.ncprf.org
<i>— Maria Zinchenko</i>

TITLE: Horoscope horror
AUTHOR: By Manohla Dargis
PUBLISHER: The New York Times
TEXT: David Fincher’s magnificently obsessive new film, “Zodiac,” tracks the story of the serial killer who left dead bodies up and down California in the 1960s and possibly the ’70s, and that of the men who tried to stop him. Set when the Age of Aquarius disappeared into the black hole of the Manson family murders, the film is at once sprawling and tightly constructed, opaque and meticulously detailed. It’s part police procedural, part monster movie, a funereal entertainment that is an unexpected repudiation of Fincher’s most famous movie, the serial-killer fiction “Seven,” as well as a testament to this cinematic savant’s gifts.
Informed by history and steeped in pulp fiction, “Zodiac” stars a trio of beauties — Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr. and Mark Ruffalo — all at the top of their performance game and captured in out-of-sight high-definition digital by the cinematographer Harris Savides. Gyllenhaal is the sneaky star of the show as the real-life cartoonist turned writer Robert Graysmith, though he doesn’t emerge from the wings until fairly late, after the bodies and the investigations have cooled. A silky, seductive Downey plays Paul Avery, a showboating newspaper reporter who chased the killer in print, while Ruffalo struts his estimable stuff as Dave Toschi, the San Francisco police detective who taught Steve McQueen how to wear a gun in “Bullitt” and pursued Zodiac close to the ground.
The relative unknown James Vanderbilt wrote the jigsaw-puzzle screenplay, working from Graysmith’s exhaustive, exhausting true-crime accounts of the murders and their investigations, “Zodiac” and “Zodiac Unmasked.” Graysmith, coyly played by Gyllenhaal as something of an overgrown Hardy Boy, his great big eyes matched by his great big ambition, was a political cartoonist doodling Nixon noses at The San Francisco Chronicle when Zodiac started sending letters and ciphers to the paper, divulging intimate knowledge of the crimes. The first messages arrived in 1969, the year Zodiac shot one young couple and knifed another in separate Northern California counties before moving on to San Francisco, where he put a bullet in the head of a cabbie.
The first cipher stumped an alphabet soup of law enforcement agencies, including the C.I.A. and F.B.I., but was cracked by a California schoolteacher and his wife. The decoded cipher opened with an ominous and crudely effective flourish: “I like killing people because it is so much fun it is more fun than killing wild game in the forrest because man is the most dangeroue anamal.” The letters, the misspellings and the lax punctuation kept coming, and perhaps so did the murders, though only five were substantively linked to him. A publicity hound, Zodiac claimed responsibility for murders he might not have committed, a habit that added to a boogeyman mystery and myth that chroniclers of his crimes, including Graysmith, have exploited.
Fincher made his name with “Seven,” a thriller in which the grotesquely mutilated bodies of murder victims are nothing more than lovingly designed props. Although more than capable of adding to the exploitation annals, he is up to something profoundly different in this film, which opens with the shooting of two people parked on a lovers’ lane at night, an attack that is soon followed by a squirmingly visceral knife assault on a couple during a daytime idyll. By front-loading the violence, Fincher instantly makes it clear just what kind of murderer this was — one who liked to get his hands wet — and ensures that the murders don’t become the story’s payoff, our reward for all the time stamps, geographic shifts, narrative complication and frustrated action.
The story structure is as intricate as the storytelling is seamless, with multiple time-and-place interludes neatly slotted into two distinct sections. The first largely concerns the murders and the investigations; the second, far shorter one involves Graysmith’s transformation of the murders and the investigations into a narrative. With its nicotine browns, the first section, which opens in 1969 and continues through the mid-’70s, looks as if it had been art-directed by a roomful of chain smokers. Dark and moody, like all of Fincher’s work, this part has been drained of almost all bright colors, save for splashes of yellow, the color of safety and caution, and an alarming-looking blue elixir called an Aqua Velva that is Graysmith’s bar drink of choice.
The second, more vibrantly hued section begins with Graysmith sitting in the Chronicle newsroom, its yellow pillars now painted blue. He looks as bright and bushy-tailed as the day he read Zodiac’s first letter, though now he comes equipped with three kids and a wife (an unfortunately familiar scold whom ChloN Sevigny imbues with some welcome wit). But there are demons still loose, inside and out, which is why Graysmith takes on Zodiac alone, warming up the stone-cold case. Domestic tranquillity, it seems, can’t hold a candle to work, to the fanatical pursuit of meaning and self-discovery, to finding out what makes you and the world tick — which is why, while “Zodiac” contains multitudes (genres, jokes, nods at 1970s New Hollywood), it feels like Fincher’s most personal film to date.
Maybe that’s why it doesn’t have the usual movie-made shrink-wrapping and beard-stroking, as in Mommy was a castrating shrew and Daddy used a two-by-four as a paddle. Throughout the film Fincher and company keep focus on Zodiac’s crimes, on the nuts and bolts of his deeds, rather than on the nurture and nature behind them. There is no normalizing psychology here, and no deep-dish symbolism either, maybe because the title crazy is so peculiarly fond of symbols, which he sprinkles in his missives and, for one murder, wears superhero style on a black-hooded costume that makes him look like a portly ninja in a Z-movie quickie. It’s no wonder the victims don’t see the threat behind the masquerade until it’s too late.
Psychology isn’t Fincher’s bag; he isn’t interested in what lies and writhes beneath, but what is right there: the visible evidence. And what beautiful evidence it is. His polished technique can leave you slack-jawed, as can his scrupulous attention to detail: the peeling walls of a derelict building in “Fight Club,” the rows of ant-size letters marching across the pages of a composition notebook in “Seven,” the bruises splashed across a woman’s arm in “Zodiac.” There is mystery in this minutiae, not just virtuosity, and maybe, to judge from reports of his painstaking process, a touch of madness. Like his detectives and journalists, Fincher seems possessed by the need to recreate reality — to revisit the scene of the crime — piece by piece.
There’s a moment early in the film when Downey stands in the Chronicle newsroom, back arched and rear gently hoisted, affecting a posture that calls to mind Gene Kelly done up as a Toulouse-Lautrec jockey in “An American in Paris.” Avery has already started his long slip-slide into boozy oblivion, abetted by toots of coke, but as he strides around the newsroom, motored by talent and self-regard, he is the guy everybody else wants to be or wants to have. Like Ruffalo’s detective, who leaves everything bobbing in his rapid wake, Downey fills the screen with life that, by its very nature, is a rebuke to the death drive embodied by the Zodiac killer. Rarely has a film with so much blood on its hands seemed so insistently alive.

TITLE: Police Bust  Engine Peddlers
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW — Federal police announced Wednesday that they have broken up a gang peddling stolen parts from one of the country’s biggest jet engine makers to companies here and abroad.
The gang — which included current and former workers at the Saturn engine plant — stole components from the factory’s stocks and used them to assemble engine parts for the Tu-154 passenger jet and Il-76 cargo plane, the police organized crime unit said in a statement.
“Identification numbers were affixed and false documents were provided,” the statement said. “Via a chain of middlemen the parts were sold to airlines and repair companies in Russia and abroad.”
The Tu-154 is the standard medium-range airliner on domestic flights in Russia and former Soviet republics. It is also used in Eastern Europe, Africa and Middle East. Approximately 900 Tu-154s of all models were built.
Six members of the ring, which had been operating since 2004, were arrested in a recent sting operation while trying to sell parts worth $141,000, police said.
Saturn said in a statement that the gang could be the “remnants of a criminal group,” without giving any further details.
Police spokesman Yevgeny Artyomov would not comment on which companies had purchased the parts.

AP, SPT

TITLE: Rasmussen Fired, Tour de France in Crisis
AUTHOR: By Julien Pretot
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: PAU, France — Reeling, but not yet sunk, the Tour de France was due to resume on Thursday without its leader and two teams for the 17th stage to Castelsarasin.
Dane Michael Rasmussen was dramatically sacked by Rabobank on Wednesday after the Dutch team said he had lied about his training whereabouts in June. 
Rabobank, however, decided that the rest of the team were continuing in the world’s greatest stage race.
“All our riders (minus Rasmussen) will be on the start of the stage,” sporting director Erik Breukink told Reuters in a telephone call. Rasmussen had received two warnings from the UCI for failing to provide the sport’s governing body with his training whereabouts.
Rabobank said he told them he was training in Mexico in June while he was actually in Italy and therefore decided to kick him out.
The Dutch team added: “Rabobank is shocked and enormously disappointed that Rasmussen has lied about his whereabouts.”
It described the episode as “a dark page” in the history of the team.
“This (Rasmussen being sacked) is the best piece of news we’ve had in the last eight days,” Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme told a news conference on Thursday.
LATEST BLOW
Rasmussen’s sacking was the latest blow to the Tour’s credibility, coming soon after the announcement of positive dope tests on pre-race favorite Alexander Vinokourov and Italy’s Cristian Moreni.
Vinokourov’s Astana team and Moreni’s Cofidis have both pulled out of the race.
Rasmussen was already under a cloud after being dropped from the Danish national team over failing to report his whereabouts in training.
On Wednesday, he was jeered by the crowd at the start but won the stage and extended his overall lead to three minutes 10 seconds.
Now that counts for nothing as the yellow jersey has passed, with four days to go, to Spain’s Alberto Contador. Prudhomme, however, remained optimistic about the future of the race.
“There are improvements. Ten years ago, the riders were sitting before the start to protest against dope tests, today, they sit because they want to protest against doping,” he said in an obvious reference to the Festina scandal which broke in 1998.
At the time, the riders went on strike during the stage from Albertville to Aix-Les-Bains because the TVM team had been searched by police.
The riders from the six French teams and two German teams competing in the Tour protested on Wednesday against doping in the sport.
The start of the stage was delayed by 10 minutes.

TITLE: Ferguson Will Wait For Tevez
AUTHOR: By Martyn Herman
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson said he would wait for as long as it takes to sign Argentine forward Carlos Tevez.
The player’s proposed move from West Ham United has been held up by a dispute between West Ham and Tevez’s agent Kia Joorabchian over who owns him.
The matter will be resolved in the High Court after Joorabchian issued a writ against West Ham who he says must release Tevez’s registration.
“I imagine it will be done before the [August 31] deadline, but we would wait for him anyway if we had to,” Ferguson was quoted as saying in British newspapers. “We’ve gone so far, there’s no point in stepping back.
“There are few strikers of that quality in the world market.”
British newspaper reports suggest Tevez will cost 30 million pounds and Ferguson believes the fact that Joorabchian has gone to the High Court rather than wait for a Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) is significant.
“I feel more confident now because his agent is confident enough to take it to the High Court,” Ferguson said. “You can be embarrassed there if it’s not right and you can lose everything.
“So [Joorabchian] must be confident regarding the situation with West Ham.”
Ferguson also said Argentine full back Gabriel Heinze would be welcomed back to Old Trafford for next season despite the furore over his reported wish to join arch-rivals Liverpool.
“He’s our player, that’s the important thing,” he said. “People want to see players who are committed, that’s what Gaby is. He’s a bit of a warrior. He will not change once he comes back into the fold and plays a game.”

TITLE: Gazprom Neft Aims for Hike in Output
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MSOCOW — Gazprom Neft has sharply increased its investment outlay this year — to $2.5 billion — in an attempt to reverse declining production figures, the company said in a statement Wednesday.
But the potential increase in output will be modest, about 1 percent by 2010, which is well below the current national production growth average.
Gazprom Neft, the oil arm of state-run natural gas giant Gazprom, plans to produce 33 million tons this year and increase output to 35 million tons by 2010, it said.
It produced 32.7 million tons last year, which was down a second straight year from its peak production of 34 million tons in 2004.
“We want to develop,” Gazprom Neft spokeswoman Natalya Vyalkina said. “We have bought many new fields and want to buy more.”
The firm’s board of directors approved the new investment program in March but did not release any details until Wednesday.
Most of the new investment, about $1.9 billion, will go to buying the rights to develop new fields and for the exploration of current fields, including Priobskoye in western Siberia, Vyalkina said.
The company has already said Priobskoye would become one of the mainstays of its future production.
The increase in investment this year will allow Gazprom Neft to “reverse the trend of dwindling oil production and position itself for a gradual growth of output,” the statement said.
All the same, the increase of 1 percent over three years will barely be visible — if it materializes — compared even with the slow growth of the rest of the oil sector, said Dmitry Lukashov, an oil analyst at Alfa Bank.
Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref said in March that Russia had produced just 1.6 percent more oil last year than in 2005.
The depletion of current fields is forcing oil companies to spend more just to maintain production levels, let alone raise them, Alfa Bank warned repeatedly earlier this year. Gazprom Neft’s significant outlays in pursuit of a small change only confirm the bank’s stance, Lukashov said.
Konstantin Cherepanov, an oil analyst at investment bank CIT Finance, said Gazprom Neft would most likely be able only to stabilize production, and not increase it. He called Gazprom Neft’s investment “impressive,” saying Russia’s biggest oil producer, Rosneft, invested $5.6 billion in new licenses and development last year.
Another portion of Gazprom Neft’s new investment will go toward the construction of a number of power stations to supply electricity to production units, Vyalkina said.
Money will also go towards upgrading refineries and filling stations, as well as to finance projects to use the gas that is produced in the process of pumping oil, the statement said.
Gazprom Neft’s total investment last year was $1.5 billion, a growth of 43 percent over 2005, and this year’s increase is another 66 percent. 
The firm signed a memorandum of understanding with Norway’s Statoil last month to study opportunities for joint projects. The Russian company and U.S. oil major Chevron also announced a joint venture in January to develop western Siberian oil fields.
Gazprom bought Gazprom Neft, formerly called Sibneft, from Roman Abramovich in 2005, the same year in which its production first slumped.

TITLE: Against All Odds, Courageous Iraq Contests Asian Cup Final
AUTHOR: By Martin Petty
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BANGKOK — Iraq’s beleaguered soccer team are pinning their hopes on a fairytale ending to their Asian Cup story after logistical blunders and slapdash preparations plunged their campaign into disarray even before a ball had been kicked.
Against all odds, the unfancied Iraqis beat twice-champions South Korea 4-3 in a dramatic penalty shootout on Wednesday to reach their first Asian Cup final, bringing some rare cheer to the war-scarred Iraqi people.
The team’s Brazilian coach Jorvan Vieira, who has worked with 26 clubs and five national teams, says his short-term job with Iraq has been the toughest of his career.
“Everything has gone wrong — hotels, food, equipment, players, training, logistics. You cannot imagine what we have been through,” Vieira told Reuters in a telephone interview on Thursday.
“Because of this, no one expected us to be where we are. What we have done has totally shocked people.”
Vieira had only two months to prepare the squad in the safety of neighboring Jordan, but when stubborn Baghdad clubs refused to release players, his first training sessions were attended by only six people.

FOREIGN INTRUDER
On the eve of national team games, players would pull out of the squad to return to their club sides, Vieira said, and he was far from popular with local coaches, who saw him as a foreign intruder on their turf.
Some of his players have been exposed to the grim reality of life in Iraq and are tormented by death threats and kidnappings and the loss of loved ones to car bombings and brutal murders.
The 54-year-old also inherited a squad split by sectarian infighting between Shiites and minority Sunni Arabs.
“I had problems with the group, there was no kind of unity, the relationship between the players was bad,” he said. “I had to find a solution to this, and got them to like each other and not bring their personal or political differences here.
“We could not have them at war with each other,” he added.
Iraq’s 1-1 draw with hosts Thailand in the opening match of the Asian Cup came somewhat as a miracle given their haphazard run-up to the competition.
They arrived in Bangkok with old kit and without training equipment, and were joined on the eve of their first match by two jetlagged, match-weary players, who were detained for eight hours by Thai immigration officials after more than a day of traveling.

MIDDLE-EASTERN TAKEAWAYS
Bangkok’s notorious traffic snarl-ups disrupted training sessions, which often took place late at night in the pouring rain, and their unfamiliarity with the fiery Thai cuisine saw them order Middle-Eastern takeaways every night or dine in the city’s predominantly Arab districts.
After beating Vietnam in the quarter-finals, Iraq arrived in Kuala Lumpur to find only seven rooms were available for their 30 players, who spent much of the day waiting in the hotel lobby.
To make matters worse, they discovered their rooms were being occupied by the Iranian national team, who had already been knocked out of the tournament.
Vieira is hoping Iraq’s nightmare story will have a happy ending, though, when they meet thee-times winners Saudi Arabia in Sunday’s all-Middle East final in Jakarta.
“This has all made us closer as a team and stronger as players and as men,” Vieira said. 
“The players have problems in their lives, they are not normal footballers.
“We are all chasing this victory, it would be something very very special for the players and the people.”

TITLE: Pipeline Design Violated Plan
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Gazprom’s natural gas venture Sakhalin Energy has been ordered to stop work on a pipeline because the link violates approved design plans, a spokeswoman for a Russian state supervisory agency said.
Sakhalin Energy has submitted documents to the agency, known as Rostekhnadzor, that if approved would allow construction of the 800-meter pipeline section to proceed according to the current design, the spokeswoman, who asked not to be identified, said by telephone in Moscow on Thursday.
Approval of the new documentation may take weeks, the spokeswoman said, adding that the pipeline section under review crosses a seismic fault line. 
State-run Gazprom bought a majority shareholding in the Sakhalin Energy joint venture in April.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>Norilsk Field </b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — GMK Norilsk Nickel may boost its nickel reserves by 22 percent should the company win exploration and mining rights for a Siberian field, Kommersant reported Thursday.
Norilsk is interested in buying rights for the Irkutsk region’s Iisko-Tagulskaya field, with a potential 7.5 million metric tons of nickel, 3 million tons of copper and 900 tons of platinum group metals, Kommersant said, citing Nikolai Suslov, deputy head of Irkutsk’s natural resources agency. 
The agency plans to auction the deposit in September, Kommersant said.

<b>Golden Rights</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia may auction the rights to develop Sukhoi Log, Eurasia’s largest gold field, in the next few months, Interfax reported Thursday.
An assessment of the deposit in Siberia’s Irkutsk region will be completed in October, and Russia may proceed with an auction or a tender to develop Sukhoi Log in late 2007 or early 2008, the Moscow-based news service said, citing Nikolai Suslov, deputy head of Irkutsk’s natural resources agency.
The new assessment may raise Sukhoi Log’s reserves 33 percent to 2,000 metric tons of gold, Interfax cited Suslov as saying.

<b>Reserves Rise </b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia’s foreign currency and gold reserves rose to a record $413.1 billion in the week ended July 20, the central bank said.
Russia, the world’s biggest energy exporter, increased its reserves by $1.9 billion from $411.2 billion the previous week, the Moscow-based central bank said in an e-mailed statement Thursday.
The reserves, the world’s third biggest, gained $2.4 billion the previous week, the bank said.

<b>Komi Coal </b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia’s Komi region produced 7.08 million metric tons of coal in the first half, 5 percent more than a year earlier, Interfax reported Thursday, citing a person at the regional industry and energy ministry it didn’t name.

<b>Fund Earnings </b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia earned 85.3 billion rubles ($3.34 billion), or an annual return of 9.5 percent in dollar terms, from investing its oil fund, Vedomosti reported.
The Finance Ministry and the central bank began investing Russia’s so-called Stabilization Fund, which totaled 3.14 trillion rubles by the start of July, on July 24 of last year, the Moscow-based newspaper said Thursday.

<b>Inprom Investment</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Inprom plans to spend at least 4.2 billion rubles ($160 million) within five years to expand its metals-trading business in Russia after an initial public offering planned for October.
The company, based in Taganrog, southern Russia, wants to attract foreign investors, selling a 30 percent stake for between $70 million and $90 million as the country’s construction boom boosts metals prices, said Inprom’s owner and Chief Executive Officer Igor Konovalov. 
A listing of depositary receipts in London is likely as soon as 2008, he said Wednesday in an interview in Moscow.

<b>Comstar Value</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Comstar United Telesystems, a Russian telecommunications company controlled by billionaire Vladimir Yevtushenkov, plans to reach a market value of $10 billion next year, the chief executive officer said.
The company also plans to prepare a restructuring plan by September, Sergei Pridantsev told reporters Thursday in Moscow, where the company is based.

<b>TOV Barred </b>
KIEV (Bloomberg) — TOV Ukrainian Mediterranean Airlines, the country’s third-largest carrier, was grounded by Ukraine’s aviation agency, which cited safety violations and failure to meet technical requirements.
“The company’s airplanes are very old, some of them have been in use for more than 30 years, thus they do not correspond to international and national technical standards,’’ the Transport Ministry said Thursday in a statement on its web site.
Crews worked more and rested less than required, the agency also said.

<b>Scania Profit</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Scania AB, Sweden’s second-largest truckmaker, had a seventh straight profit gain in the second quarter as customers expanded in eastern Europe and Russia.
Net income rose to 2.01 billion kronor ($299 million), or 2.51 kronor a share, from 1.39 billion kronor, or 1.73 kronor, a year earlier, the Soedertaelje, Sweden-based truckmaker said Thursday in a statement. Sales gained 16 percent to 20.91 billion kronor. Analysts in a Bloomberg News survey had estimated net income of 2.05 billion kronor. Chief Executive Officer Leif Oestling is considering building a Russian factory to meet surging orders.