SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1298 (64), Friday, August 17, 2007
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TITLE: Investigators Focus On Extremists
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Investigators said Wednesday that they were focusing on the possibility that ultranationalists bombed a St. Petersburg-bound train earlier this week, injuring 27 people.
“Detectives and investigators are working on several angles. The top lead, however, is that representatives of extremist nationalist organizations were involved in this terrorist act,” a source close to the investigation told Interfax.
The source said it was also possible that Islamist militants from the North Caucasus organized the attack, which derailed the Moscow-St. Petersburg train and paralyzed railway traffic for hours.
Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe said a man identifying himself as the deputy commander of Riad Salikhin, a previously unknown group of Islamist militants, had called its North Caucasus desk on Wednesday afternoon to claim responsibility for the attack. The late Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev led a group of suicide bombers called Riadus Salakhin.
The caller’s claim could not be independently confirmed.
Investigators on Wednesday questioned members of the ultranationalist Movement Against Illegal Immigration. The group’s head, Alexander Belov, said federal prosecutors had interrogated him and members of the group’s branch in the Novgorod region, where the train was bombed.
A composite sketch of a possible culprit has been drawn that depicts a man with distinct Slav features, the Interfax source said. The source also said investigators have uncovered “a lot of useful information” on the bombing on the Internet, including postings at forums and other sites.
The bomb’s design and the tactics used closely resembled two earlier attacks blamed on ultranationalists. Two ultranationalists were convicted in April of bombing a Grozny-Moscow train in 2005. A group of ultranationalists are now on trial for an attempt to kill Unified Energy System chief Anatoly Chubais with a roadside bomb in 2005.
St. Petersburg doctors said 19 passengers remained hospitalized Wednesday afternoon and were in satisfactory condition, Interfax reported. Twenty-five people were initially hospitalized.
The train’s engineer, Alexei Fedotov, prevented a higher casualty toll by keeping the train moving after the explosion, Russian Railways chief Vladimir Yakunin said at a news conference. 
If he had immediately applied the brakes, the train might have plunged off the bridge.
“Fedotov automatically and within seconds did everything to prevent a catastrophe,” Yakunin said.
Fedotov told Moskovsky Komsomolets in comments published Wednesday that his “only thought” was to stop the train from derailing.

TITLE: Bomb Derails Train Bound for Petersburg
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova and Alexander Osipovich
PUBLISHER: Staff Writers
TEXT: MOSCOW — A blast from a bomb planted under the tracks derailed an express train heading from Moscow to St. Petersburg Monday night, injuring more than two dozen people in an attack prosecutors are investigating as a terrorist act.
The Nevsky Express jumped the tracks after an explosion at 9:38 p.m. near the city of Novgorod, about 500 kilometers north of Moscow, the Prosecutor General’s Office said in a statement released Tuesday. Most of the injuries occurred when the train’s restaurant car rolled over on its side.
“A homemade explosive device was placed under the right rail,” Yekaterina Mirishova, a spokeswoman for regional transport prosecutors, said by telephone Tuesday.
The blast left a crater 1.5 meters wide and had a force equivalent to 4.5 kilograms of TNT, said Adolf Mishuyev, head of the Explosion Stability Technical Center at Moscow State Civil Engineering University.
Seventeen people had been hospitalized at the St. Petersburg Railroad Hospital as of Tuesday afternoon, out of a total of 27 people injured, Mirishova said.
Some victims were initially hospitalized in Novgorod and the nearby town of Malaya Vishera, but all were later transferred to St. Petersburg, said Valentin Yushkevich, a spokesman for the regional division of the Federal Security Service.
No deaths were reported.
Russian Railways said 231 tickets had been sold for the train and that there were 20 crew members aboard.
The Tuesday night “Vesti” news broadcast on Rossia television showed injured passengers providing accounts of the blast.
“We crawled out ourselves, then started helping others,” said Pavel Tereshkov, one of the passengers.
Rossia also showed President Vladimir Putin speaking by mobile phone from the Siberian region of Tuva with Transportation Minister Igor Levitin, who interrupted a working trip to Sochi to visit the scene of the explosion. Putin, who was playing host to Prince Albert II of Monaco, ordered Levitin to make sure all the passengers were being cared for properly. If the blast is proved to have been a terrorist attack, it will be the first outside the volatile North Caucasus in more than two years. 
The last took place in June 2005, when a Grozny-Moscow train was derailed by an explosive device in the Moscow region. Two Russian ultranationalists were convicted of that bombing in April.
Rossia reported that investigators found several meters of electrical wire near the site of Monday’s explosion, suggesting that the perpetrators waited near the tracks and triggered the device as the train passed. 
The case was the same in the June 2005 blast.
“This was a very well-planned terrorist explosion,” said Mishuyev, whose center conducted its own investigation into the blast in cooperation with investigators at the scene.
Mishuyev said the effects of the blast could have been much worse if it had hit the head of the train. The explosion occurred under the train’s ninth car, Komsomolskaya Pravda reported, citing a source in the Emergency Situations Ministry.
“If they had pressed the button two seconds earlier, then the damage would have been a lot more serious because it would have slowed the first car,” he said.
Local residents saw three strangers near the site of the explosion over the past few days, and investigators are developing composite pictures of them, St. Petersburg web site Fontanka.ru reported Tuesday, citing an official in the Interior Ministry.
Mirishova, the spokeswoman for the regional transport prosecutors, declined to speculate on who might have carried out the bombing.
“We believe the aim of this explosion was to scare people and attempt to injure them,” she said.
An unidentified source close to the investigation, however, said ultranationalists might have been involved, Interfax reported.
“It is entirely possible that the terrorist attack was specifically directed at one of the passengers on the train,” the source was quoted as saying by Interfax. “At the same time, we are considering the theory that right-wing radical organizations were involved in the blast.”
The source added that investigators were also following the “Caucasus trail” — an apparent reference to Chechen terrorists — but that was not considered the most likely variant, the news agency reported.
Some top officials linked the bombing to upcoming State Duma elections in December and the presidential election in March.
“Without a doubt, the terrorist attack on the Moscow-St. Petersburg train is connected to the upcoming election campaigns,” Federation Council Senator Valery Fyodorov was quoted as saying by Interfax. Fyodorov also said he believed the most likely perpetrators were nationalist extremists.
Nikolai Patrushev, director of the FSB, said Tuesday that anti-terrorism measures would be strengthened in the run-up to the elections, Interfax reported.
Russian Railways said 800 meters of track were affected by the incident and that repair crews were working to fix the damage. Trains running between Moscow and St. Petersburg have been rerouted around the damaged stretch of tracks and changes in schedules will be announced at train stations, the railroad operator said.

TITLE: Local Holiday Aims to Up Birth Rate
AUTHOR: By Liza Kuznetsova
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — A region best known as the birthplace of Vladimir Lenin has found a novel way to fight the nation’s birthrate crisis: It has declared Sept. 12 the Day of Conception and for the third year running is giving couples time off from work to procreate.
The hope is for a brood of babies exactly nine months later on Russia’s national day. Couples who “give birth to a patriot” during the June 12 festivities win money, cars, refrigerators and other prizes.
Ulyanovsk, a region on the Volga River about 550 miles east of Moscow, has held similar contests since 2005. Since then, the number of competitors, and the number of babies born to them, has been on the rise.
Alexei Bezrukov and his wife, Yulia, won a 250,000 ruble prize — equivalent to $10,000 — in June after she gave birth to a baby boy, Andrei. Bezrukov said patriotism wasn’t their motive for having a child, their third, although the money was welcome.
“It was a patriotic atmosphere, you know when everyone around is celebrating, but I wasn’t thinking of anything but my son,” he said. “The whole thing is great, it’s great to get 250,000 rubles when you have a new baby to take care of.”
Russia, with one-seventh of the Earth’s land surface, has just 141.4 million citizens, making it one of the most sparsely settled countries in the world. With a low birthrate and very high death rate, the population has been shrinking since the early 1990s.
It is now falling by almost half a percent each year. Demographic experts expect the decline to accelerate, estimating that Russia’s population could fall below 100 million by 2050.
In his state of the nation address last year, President Vladimir Putin called the demographic crisis the most acute problem facing Russia and announced a broad effort to boost Russia’s birthrate, including cash incentives to families to have more than one child.
Ulyanovsk Governor Sergei Morozov has added an element of fun to the national campaign.
When he held the first competition in 2005, 311 women signed up to take part — and qualify for a half-day off from work. In June 2006, 46 more babies were born in Ulyanovsk’s 25 hospitals than in June of the previous year, including 28 born on June 12, officials in the governor’s office said.
More than 500 women signed up for the second contest on Sept. 12, 2006. Exactly nine months later, 78 babies, triple the region’s daily average, were born. They were welcomed into the world as Russia’s national anthem was played, the officials said.
Since the campaign began, the birthrate in the region has risen steadily and is up 4.5 percent so far this year over the same period in 2006, according to the regional administration’s Web site.
Everyone who has a baby in an Ulyanovsk hospital on Russia Day gets some kind of prize. But the grand prize winners are couples judged to be the fittest parents by a committee that deliberates for two weeks over the selection.
The 2007 grand prize went to Irina and Andrei Kartuzov, who received a UAZ-Patriot, an SUV made in Ulyanovsk. They told reporters they were planning to have another child anyway when they heard about the contest.
Irina Kartuzova had to have a Caesarian section to deliver the baby and it was scheduled for June 12.
The selection committee chose the Kartuzovs from among the 78 couples because of their “respectability” and “commendable parenting” of their two older children, a spokesman for the governor said.
Other contestants won video cameras, TVs, refrigerators and washing machines.
Under the federal program, women who give birth to a second or subsequent child are to receive certificates worth $10,000, which can be used to pay for education or to improve the family’s living conditions.
Monthly support payments were raised this year to $60 from $28.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>Drowning Dog Saved</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Emergency services carried out a rescue operation on Thursday morning to recover a drowning dog from the Griboedova Canal, Fontanka.ru reported.
Staff on duty received a call informing them that there was an animal drowning under the Kharlamovy Bridge. The dog was rescued from the water, but the rescue services failed to trace its owner, and deduced that the animal was a stray.

<b>Mao Remembered</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A commemorative plaque to Mao Zedong, founder and leader of the People’s Republic of China from 1949 to his death in 1976, was unveiled on Tsvetochnaya Ulitsa on Thursday, Fontanka.ru reported.
The inauguration coincides with the celebration of the Year of the People’s Republic of China in Russia this year.

<b>Canal Clean-Up</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Homeless people in St. Petersburg will soon be set to work clearing the city’s waterways of rubbish, Fontanka.ru reported. 
The first area to be weeded of litter will be the Kronverksky Canal. On Aug. 22, a mini-flotilla of inflatable boats will meander through the water, sifting out and sorting through all floating debris.

<b>Improved Train Safety</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A number of measures are being taken to increase security at metro and railway stations in the city, following the recent derailment of the Nevsky Express train, which authorities suspect was the result of an act of terrorism.
The government will be spending 15,336,000 rubles ($595,000) on introducing video surveillance systems into public spaces in metro stations around the city, Fontanka.ru reported.

<b>Reimbursement Plan</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Governor Valentina Matviyenko made a proposal at a meeting on Tuesday to pay premiums to people who have not sought medical attention during the course of the year, Fontanka.ru reported.   
From the taxes paid by St. Petersburg residents each year, approximately 5000 rubles ($194) each goes toward medical services, and it is proposed that this sum will be returned to those who have not made use of these services.

TITLE: Local Climbers Set Out To Conquer Kyzyl Asker
AUTHOR: By Ali Nassor
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A team of mountaineers left St. Petersburg on Thursday for a daring one-week mission to reach the top of the Kyzyl Asker Peak on the southeastern border between Kirghizstan and China.
The explorers intend to climb the notoriously steep 5,842-meter ridge amid the impenetrable Kokshaal-Too mountain range and waterlogged terrain by a highly dangerous route that no-one has attempted before. 
“The challenge is to recapture Russia's international reputation in mountain climbing as one of the world’s leading and strongest schools,” said Alexander Odintsov, a climbing guru, who is leading a five-man team that includes a physician and a film producer.  
Odintsov and companions Alexander Ruchkin and Mikhail Mikhailov were awarded the prestigious international Piolet d'Or Prize for a triumphal ascent to the summit of a 7,710-meter Himalayan peak Jannu in Nepal in 2004. They were the first to reach the summit of one of the world’s hardest peaks via the once supposedly impenetrable route on the mountain's steep North Face — known as the “Wall of Shadows.” Although a Japanese team climbed the Wall in 1976, it lacked convincing evidence to prove it had crossed the 700-meter steep cliff leading to the summit, the Russian mountaineers said. 
Meanwhile, Odintsov's team has set out to make another breakthrough by risking a new route in the southeastern side of Kyzyl Asker ridge.
Expecting to take a week to accomplish the journey on the mountain, given stable weather, the mountaineers have vowed to cross the half-way barrier of 1,800-meter cliff, carrying with them the minimal load of climbing gear and other necessities. 
“But we don’t know what to expect out of a place we almost know nothing about,” said Odintsov who plans to use topographical information gathered by his colleague Ruchkin when he climbed a neighboring ridge in 2002.
“At least we know that unstable weather, sometimes running to as low as minus 30 Degrees Celsius, strong winds, waterlogged hollows and other surprise impediments are typical of this side of the ridge,” he said, adding “we have been planning to take this route since 1992, but we have been held back by, among other things, inadequate knowledge of the area.” 
“After all there’s no climbing without risk, and we can’t do away with the ongoing threats caused by the global warming,” he said. 
Odintsov narrowly escaped death during the initial stages of climbing the Masherbroom peak in Pakistan last year. The mission was called off due to weather-related risks and Odintsov was rescued by a helicopter. 
His colleague Igor Barikhin died in 2001 while climbing Latok III peak in Pakistan, a year after Odintsov's team was hit by an avalanche on the same mountain. Despite the dangers, Kyzyl Asker will be the eighth in a series of 10 mountain climbing missions as a part of the BASK company sponsored “Russian Way: Walls of the World” program unveiled in 1995. The next stop is a peak in Venezuela.
Meanwhile, the Russian Federation of Alpinism (Mountaineering) has authored a plan for the first World Alpinists Championship to be presented in November to the International Federation of Alpinists in Tokyo, Japan. If approved, the championship will be held in Russia's Krasnoyarsk region.

TITLE: Suspect Held for Murder Video
AUTHOR: By Carl Schreck
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Police in the southern republic of Adygeya have detained a university student who admitted to posting a video on the Internet appearing to show the brutal execution of two men from Tajikistan and Dagestan, the Interior Ministry said Wednesday.
Police in the Adygeya capital of Maikop detained the student, in his early 20s, Tuesday on suspicion of distributing the video, though the suspect said he was not involved in its creation, ministry spokesman Oleg Yelnikov said.
“He is adamant that he had nothing to do with the making of the video,” Yelnikov said.
The student’s name has not been released.
The student told authorities he received the video clip by e-mail from a different region, Maikop’s acting city prosecutor, Alexander Belousov, told reporters Wednesday.
“This person voluntarily said he distributed the video over the Internet, where it became available for other users,” Belousov said, Interfax reported.
The student said he had been an adherent to national-socialist ideas for the past two years, and regional police and prosecutors had confiscated literature of a “presumably extremist nature,” Belousov said.
Vasily Guk, spokesman for the Adygeya Prosecutor’s Office said Wednesday that a criminal case for the incitement of hatred had been opened against the student. He has not been formally charged with any crime, Guk said, Interfax reported.
The video appeared on ultranationalist web sites Sunday under the title “The Execution of a Tajik and a Dagestani” and shows two men kneeling, bound and gagged in front of a Nazi flag.
The two men say, “Russian national-socialists have arrested us,” before masked men cut one’s head off and shoot the other at point-blank range.
A hitherto unknown organization calling itself the National Socialist Party of Rus has taken credit for the video and had posted a statement on at least one ultranationalist LiveJournal.com blog as of Wednesday.
The statement describes the organization as the “paramilitary wing” of the Nationalist-Socialist Society and announces “the beginning of an armed battle” against “dark colonists and those who support them,” including government officials.
The organization also demanded in the statement that President Vladimir Putin step down and hand power to the head of the National-Socialist Society, Dmitry Rumyantsev, who has penned admiring essays about Adolf Hitler on his organization’s web site.
Rumyantsev did not respond to an e-mailed request for comment, but his organization issued a statement Wednesday saying it had no connection to any organization called the National Socialist Party of Rus.
The statement did not expressly condone or condemn the video, the authenticity of which has so far been impossible to verify.
Adygeya prosecutors and officers from the Interior Ministry are handling the investigation, said Yelnikov, the Ministry spokesman.
He declined to comment on whether the ministry’s high-tech crimes department had been able to establish the authenticity of the video’s content. It had been determined that the video was originally posted on foreign servers, and the ministry was in contact with authorities in those countries, Irina Zubaryova, a spokeswoman for the department, said Tuesday, Interfax reported.
Anna Pozdnyakova, a spokeswoman for the Prosecutor General’s Office, said the Interior Ministry’s conclusions as to the video’s authenticity had been passed on the Adygeya prosecutors.
Officials at the Adygeya Prosecutor’s Office could not be reached for comment.
Denis Levkovich, a cameraman with Fox News who has worked in Iraq and Chechnya and seen videos of executions, said it would be easy to fabricate a gunshot execution by using pyrotechnics.
Staff Writer David Nowak and Ross Kenneth Urken contributed to this report.

TITLE: Police Take Issue With TV Host Astakhov’s First Novel
AUTHOR: By Ross Kenneth Urken
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — City prosecutors Tuesday morning questioned prominent lawyer and media personality Pavel Astakhov over claims by a senior city police official that Astakhov slandered law enforcement officers in a novel he penned recently.
Astakhov was questioned by investigators at the Koptevsky District Prosecutor’s Office over claims by Ivan Glukhov, head of city police’s main investigative directorate, that the lawyer’s novel, “Raider,” slandered the country’s law enforcement authorities.
“I do not consider myself guilty of anything,” Astakhov said outside the district prosecutor’s office after the one-hour questioning. “But I nevertheless treat this issue very professionally.”
In addition to being a high-profile lawyer, Astakhov is the host of a television program called “Chas Suda,” or “Court Hour,” on Ren-TV similar to well-known U.S. court shows such as “Judge Judy” and “The People’s Court.”
Astakhov’s questioning came after Glukhov asked city prosecutors to open a criminal investigation into Astakhov’s portrayal of law enforcement officers in the novel, leading to the peculiar prospect of an author facing libel charges over a work of fiction.
“I explained that the novel was definitely fiction, because everybody has the right to undertake an artistic endeavor,” Astakhov said. “It is a constitutional right and cannot be restricted.”
Astakhov’s novel is a political and legal thriller that follows mergers and acquisitions involving several large companies. The main character is a man who bribes officers from the main investigative directorate to raid companies and open criminal investigations.
“It’s a work of art and there are fictional characters and a fictional plot,” said Sergei Rubis, head of Eksmo, which published the novel in March. “I can’t think of any similar case.”
City Prosecutor’s Office spokeswoman Valentina Titova declined to comment Tuesday on the complaint against Astakhov, saying that a formal criminal investigation had not been opened.
Astakhov’s lawyer, Mikhail Burmistrov, said prosecutors would likely decide within 10 days whether to open a criminal investigation.
Slandering a judge, juror, prosecutor, investigator or officer of the court is punishable by up to two years in prison.
Glukhov could not be reached for comment. But in an interview published Tuesday in Kommersant, he said Astakhov’s novel created “widespread negative resonance” for officers in the city police’s main investigative directorate.
“This book contains numerous insulting and slanderous fabrications about the work of the main investigative directorate and false statements that besmirch the honor and dignity of ... the entire law enforcement system of the Russian Federation,” Glukhov told the newspaper.
City police spokesman Alexander Yudin said he could not immediately comment on the case and asked for a written inquiry. A faxed request for comment went unanswered as of Tuesday evening.

TITLE: Denmark Calls Pole Flag ‘Joke’
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: Denmark on Wednesday called Russia’s flag planting on the Arctic seabed a “joke.”
“I see the Russian stunt as a summer joke,’’ Danish Science and Technology Minister Helge Sander said Wednesday in e-mailed comments. “It isn’t connected with the otherwise serious work they do in collecting data from the North Pole.”
The area of the Arctic shelf may hold 10 billion tons of oil equivalent, as well as gold, nickel and diamonds, Russia has said.
Russia, Canada, the United States, Norway, and Denmark have territory in the Arctic Circle.
Russia contends that the underwater Lomonosov Ridge links Siberia to the Arctic seabed, which may allow the country to extend its territory. Denmark sent a team of scientists to the North Pole on Aug. 12 to investigate whether the ridge is linked to Greenland, a semiautonomous Danish territory.
“The data will be presented to the UN’s ridge commission,’’ Sander said.

TITLE: Ploughing the Fields of Hope
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: AGRORUS ’07, the International Agro-industrial Fair, will open at Lenexpo exhibition complex Aug. 24, with organizers hoping a number of innovations and special events will make the event more attractive to producers and buyers of agricultural equipment.
“The program will be very eventful this year, especially the first two days,” said Alexander Shapkin, director of AGRORUS.
Shapkin forecast that the number of participants would increase by 15 percent from previous events up to 1,200 companies. “We expect considerably more fruit and vegetable  producers this year,” he said.
The exhibition will focus on agricultural equipment, refrigerating equipment, mini-plants, mills and bakeries, transportation vehicles, food and food supplements, fodder, chemicals, seeds and consumer goods for farmers.
This year AGRORUS will offer three new special exhibitions focused, respectively, on autonomous power systems, woods and biotechnologies.
Producers and official delegates from Belarus and Ukraine are to be widely represented, Shapkin said.
Organizers hope some of the drawbacks associated with previous exhibitions will be averted by exhibiting equipment in the fields of Detskoselsky enterprise in the Leningrad Oblast.
“Unfortunately, previous exhibitions did not quite meet the expectations of equipment producers. And demonstrating machines at Lenexpo has never been particularly successful,” said Andrei Yefimov, executive director of Agrotechmash production and distribution company.
“Lenexpo exhibition complex lacks the space necessary to display modern power-consuming machines and mechanisms in operation. Seeing them standing there motionless is not really interesting,” said Pavel Repnikov, general director of Urozhai distribution company.
Agrotechmash and Urozhai has invested 15 million rubles ($600,000) into organizing a special exhibition of equipment in Detskoselskoye. The two companies expect to get their money back through fees from exhibition participants and contracts signed as a result of the show.
Besides the show of loaders and test-drives, visitors will see a machine contest judged by an independent jury. Special buses will travel between Lenxpo and Detskoselskoye. All events will be broadcast on  TV screens at Lenexpo.
According to Yefimov, Russia plays host to only two exhibitions showing equipment in operation. One of them is “The Russian Day of the Field” which was held for the fourth time this year and the second is the Golden Autumn exhibition traditionally held in Moscow’s Russian Exhibition Complex (VVTs).
Despite the recent positive trend, the agricultural industry still needs to be stimulated if it is to regain its former glory. According to official statistics, the volume of agricultural equipment produced in Russia dropped by 79 percent between 2000 and 2003.
At the moment over 80 percent of equipment in operation is outdated and requires constant repair, which decreases the efficiency of the agricultural business in general. New equipment accounts for only two to three percent of the total volume.
About 10 percent of agricultural enterprises deliver 50 percent of industry revenue — these are the large agro-industrial holdings possessing modern equipment, Repnikov indicated.
“We expect to see a considerable increase in the volume of production and equipment sales in Russia and the CIS,” Yefimov said.
AGRORUS’ total budget is about 30 million rubles ($1.17 million), Shapkin said, which also includes the exhibition of cattle and a number of special events. Last year the exhibition cost 22 million rubles to organize.
In 2006, over 1,000 companies from 15 countries and 38 Russia regions took part in the exhibition. About 500 farmers from Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova presented their products.
About 2,000 people attended an agricultural forum, conferences, seminars and round tables. The exhibition resulted in 921 prior agreements on equipment supply and innovative agricultural technologies.
This exhibition will be the 16th agricultural fair held at Lenexpo. The exhibition will run from Aug. 24 till Aug. 27. The fair lasts until September 2.

TITLE: Steady Growth Figures Among City Hall’s Stats
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The city economy experienced steady growth in the first half of 2007, driven mainly by the processing industry, construction and investment, City Hall’s Committee for Economic Development, Industrial Policy and Trade said Tuesday in a statement.
Processing enterprises produced $8.49 billion worth of goods — a 25 percent increase compared to the first half of 2006. Most products comprised food, drinks and tobacco (38 percent), machinery, equipment and transport vehicles (over 25 percent) and metals (12 percent).
Construction companies completed projects amounting to over one million square meters of residential areas (168 buildings).
The consolidated turnover of city enterprises increased by 35.8 percent up to $51.9 billion. Transport services accounted for $2.8 billion. Stevedore companies in the St. Petersburg Sea Port processed 28.3 million tons of freight. Investment into fixed capital was reported at $2.4 billion, increasing by 14.6 percent compared to the same period last year.
The average salary in the city increased up to 15,153 rubles ($587). Per capita income increased by 7.8 percent and contributed to the growing purchasing power of local residents. Retail turnover increased by 19.3 percent up to $7.9 billion. Services to local residents accounted for $3.4 billion (a seven percent increase).
Inflation was 6.8 percent. Officially registered unemployment is 33,500 people (0.5 percent of the workforce).
City Hall’s budget was in profit by $4.42 billion — a 31.8 percent increase compared to the same period last year. Budget expenses accounted for about $3.47 billion, which is about 37 percent of spending planned for this year.
Most of the funds went towards housing (24.7 percent), education (20.6 percent), healthcare and sport (19.9 percent) and social projects (12.2 percent).

TITLE: Yukos Forced Auction Has American Winner
AUTHOR: By Miriam Elder
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — A company that Rosneft recently sold to a U.S. entrepreneur bought Yukos’ international unit at a forced auction Wednesday, as former Yukos managers vowed to pursue a legal challenge to salvage part of what was once the country’s largest oil firm.
Promneftstroi, recently acquired by businessman Steven Lynch, won the unit, Yukos Finance, for 7.8 billion rubles ($305 million) after five minutes of bidding.
The winning bid fell well below the $2.7 billion value that former Yukos managers place on the unit, and was just 240 million rubles ($9 million) above the starting price. 
Rosneft has acquired nearly all the main assets that once belonged to Yukos and as a result is now the country’s largest oil producer. Yukos was declared bankrupt last year, felled by over $30 billion in back tax claims and the jailing of its former CEO, Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
The former London-based managers of Yukos called the auction “an elaborate farce.”
“The ‘winner’ has won absolutely nothing,” Claire Davidson, a spokes-woman for the former managers, said in a statement. 
“An illegal sale as a part of a sham bankruptcy is not a valid transaction.”
Yukos Finance, registered in the Netherlands, holds Yukos’ foreign assets — a 49 percent stake in Slovak pipeline monopoly Transpetrol, revenue from the sale of the Mazeikiu Nafta refinery in Lithuania, and Intelligent Energy, a London-based fuel cell technology firm.
Rosneft said it had nothing to do with Wednesday’s auction, which pitted Promneftstroi against Versar, an unknown firm that had participated unsuccessfully in two previous auctions.
“We did not take part in today’s auction. We no longer have any relationship with the company,” Rosneft spokesman Nikolai Manvelov said, referring to Promneftstroi. Rosneft “used to be affiliated” with the firm, he said, declining to provide details into how or when the relationship was severed.
Lynch, a U.S. citizen who founded and heads Monte Valle, a Moscow real estate firm, said Wednesday that he had recently bought Promneftstroi with a group of investors.
“I saw an opportunity here. We told the owners ‘you don’t want to be in this’ ... and said we’d happily take it,” Lynch said in a telephone interview.
Yukos Finance could still end up in Rosneft’s hands, as Lynch said he might sell it, adding, “We have multiple plans for multiple scenarios.”
Monte Valle has sold most of the assets it won in one of the first in a series of auctions that have taken place over the past five months as the state sells off the remains of Yukos.
On April 17, the firm won a lot comprising 10 electricity assets in western Russia, beating out Rosneft, Versar and another unknown firm with a 35.6 billion ruble ($138 million) bid.
Analysts speculated at the time that Monte Valle could be fronting for state-run gas monopoly Gazprom, which did not participate openly in any of the auctions amid legal concerns. Lynch declined to name the buyers of the power assets.
Nikolai Lashkevich, a spokesman for Yukos’ bankruptcy receiver, declined to comment on who stood behind Promneftstroi’s bid. “It’s a case of ‘the less you know the better you sleep,’” he said.
Yukos’ former managers have mounted a series of legal challenges in Amsterdam and at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg to declare the Yukos bankruptcy illegal.
“Of course we have plans for that,” Lynch said, when asked whether Promneftstroi’s new owners feared a legal challenge. “We evaluated the risk and made judgments,” he said.
Lawyers for Yukos’ former managers have asked a Dutch court to refuse to recognize the Yukos bankruptcy, which would invalidate the sale of Yukos Finance. Barring a bilateral treaty, the Netherlands does not recognize foreign bankruptcies. Russia has no such treaty with the Netherlands. Three lawyers representing Yukos’ court-appointed bankruptcy receiver, Eduard Rebgun, attended Wednesday’s auction. “We recommended the participants conduct independent research to assess the legal risks,” said Julia Romanova, a lawyer with the Moscow office of U.S. law firm Chadbourne & Parke. “The bidders know everything.”
The other two lawyers, from Dutch law firm Simmons & Simmons, represent Rebgun in Dutch cases. An Amsterdam court is due to rule on Oct. 31 whether Yukos’ former chief financial officer Bruce Misamore and former legal counsel David Godfrey were properly dismissed. That ruling would also affect whether the Dutch courts recognized Rebgun’s leadership, Yukos spokeswoman Claire Davidson said.
“Whether anyone likes it or not, there is now a new owner,” said Tim Osborne, the head of Yukos majority shareholder GML, formerly known as Group Menatep.

TITLE: UAC to Make 4,500  Airplanes by 2025
TEXT: By Nabi Abdullaev 
Staff Writer  	
The head of the Unified Aircraft Corporation, a government-controlled holding company that unites all the country’s aviation firms, said Wednesday that the industry planned to produce about 4,500 aircraft worth approximately $250 billion by 2025.
“By 2025, we plan to boost output of military aircraft by 4 1/2 times, and production of civilian aircraft by 27 times,” Alexei Fyodorov said at a news conference.
The heads of all the country’s major aviation plants making up the UAC also attended Wednesday’s meeting, including Ilysuhin president Viktor Livanov and the general director of Ilyushin’s leasing company, Alexander Rubtsov.
The meeting was a curtain raiser for the Ninth Moscow Aviation and Space Show, MAKS 2007, which will open at the Zhukovsky airfield outside Moscow on Aug. 21.
The current ratio of military to civilian aircraft produced in Russia, which currently stands at 7-to-1, will change to 2-to-1 in favor of civilian production by 2025, Fyodorov said.
“This year we plan to produce 300 civilian planes, 100 cargo aircraft and 100 military planes,” he said.
Production of cargo planes, which declined strongly in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union, will increase 40-fold, though the turnover in this sector will reach a modest $2 billion by 2025, Fyodorov said.
Such ambitious growth will require annual government investment of about 6 billion rubles ($240 million) into the country’s aviation industry, he added.
While Sukhoi’s much vaunted Superjet-100 will remain the UAC’s pet project in the medium-haul civilian aircraft sector for next several years, it is the bigger MS-21 civilian aircraft, the production of which is slated to begin in 2015, that will put the country’s aviation industry on a par with international giants like Boeing and Airbus, top aviation makers said at Wednesday’s meeting.
Oleg Demchenko, head of jet-fighter maker Irkut, which took the lead in the development of the MS-21, said a UAC expert commission approved the project Tuesday.
Mikhail Pogosyan, head of the Sukhoi aviation company, said the contract portfolio for Superjet-100 now counted 71 firm orders and an option for 15 more planes.
 Pogosyan added that more orders would be signed at MAKS 2007.
Fyodorov said UAC signed contracts worth $1 billion at Le Bourget air show in France in June, adding that he expected no less than that to be ordered from the Russian aviation firm at MAKS 2007.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>VTB Assets</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Bank VTB Northwest increased assets by 18.7 percent up to 175.68 billion rubles ($6.8 billion) in the first half of 2007, Interfax reported Tuesday.
The bank’s pre-tax profits increased by 46.5 percent up to 4.27 billion rubles ($165.4 million) and its net profits by 38.2 percent up to 3 billion rubles ($116.2 million). Borrowers’ net debt to the bank is 125.6 billion rubles ($4.9 billion). Deposits account for 122.6 billion rubles ($4.75 billion).

<b>Shipping Loan</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Unified Industrial Corporation has applied to VTB bank for a loan of $550 million to finance a shipbuilding complex in St. Petersburg, Interfax reported Tuesday.
The loan will be used to modernize production facilities at Severnaya Verf and construct new production lines and warehouses. As a result of the investment, the company expects to produce ships of up to 300,000 tons deadweight. The project will take six years to complete.

<b>Unfazed Finns</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The EBRD will grant a 3.5 billion rubles ($135.6 million) loan to Finnish company Fazer Group to finance its development in Russia, Interfax reported Tuesday.
The EBRD will syndicate 2.1 billion rubles ($81.36 million) of the total in commercial banks. The decision is to be approved on September 18, 2007 at a directors’ board meeting.
Fazer owns five enterprises in Russia including three plants in St. Petersburg. At the moment the company is expanding production facilities in Moscow.

<b>Rolling it Out</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Severstal has invested $300 million into production of rolled metal in St. Petersburg, the Committee for Economic Development, Industrial Policy and Trade said Tuesday in a statement.
The investment program started in 2000 at a plant in Kolpino, a suburb of St. Petersburg. The project will be completed in 2008. As a result, production volume will increase to 850,000 tons a year. Severstal has overall invested a total of $600 million into St. Petersburg.

<b>Brewing Profit</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Baltika brewery increased net profit by 68 percent up to 7 billion rubles ($271 million) in the first half of 2007, Interfax reported Tuesday.
Revenue doubled compared to the first half of 2006 and was reported at 37.13 billion rubles ($1.4 billion). Production costs more than doubled up to 15.9 billion rubles ($616 million).

<b>Shtokman Order</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — The Vyborg Shipbuilding Plant has won a 59 billion ruble ($2.3 billion) contract from Russian gas company Gazprom to build drilling platforms for the Shtokman natural gas field, Vedomosti reported.
Under the contract, the St. Petersburg-based plant will deliver two offshore drilling rigs within three years, the newspaper said, citing Gazprom Deputy Chief Executive Officer Valery Golubyov. Gazprom may order four more platforms for the Shtokman project from the factory, Vedomosti said.

<b>Magnit Sales </b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Magnit, Russia’s second-largest supermarket chain, said sales jumped 45 percent in July from a year earlier as it opened new stores.
Net retail sales in dollar terms increased to $306.1 million from $214.8 million in July last year, the Krasnodar, Russia-based company said in an e-mailed statement Thursday. Magnit opened 20 stores in the month, boosting the total to 2,029.
Magnit is adding stores in Russian towns with fewer than 500,000 inhabitants as personal incomes rise outside the country’s largest cities. Russia’s $146 billion food-retailing market may increase by almost a quarter this year, according to Renaissance Capital investment bank in Moscow.

<b>H&M in Russia</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Hennes & Mauritz AB, Europe’s second-largest clothing retailer, plans to open its first Russian stores next year, Kommersant reported Thursday.
The first outlet will open in the second half of 2008 in Moscow’s Okhotny Ryad mall, within the walking distance of the Kremlin, the newspaper said, citing an unidentified person close to the mall’s shareholders. Stockholm-based H&M is holding discussions about renting space at Okhotny Ryad, Olga Arkhipova, head of rentals at the mall, told Kommersant.

<b>Gazprom Exports </b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Gazprom’s gas deliveries to Germany, the Russian company’s biggest customer, declined 30 percent in the first half, mainly because of warmer weather, Kommersant reported Thursday.
Shipments to Germany decreased to 14.7 billion cubic meters from 20.9 billion cubic meters in the same period last year, the Moscow-based newspaper reported, citing company documents. Deliveries to France declined 21 percent in the period, while shipments to Italy fell 17 percent, the newspaper said.

<b>Comstar Business</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Comstar United Telesystems, a Russian telecommunications company, may buy a fixed-line operator based in Kostroma, Russia, Kommersant reported Thursday, citing unidentified persons in both companies.
Comstar is in talks to buy 70 percent in Kostroma City Telephone Network to strengthen its position in the regions, the Russian newspaper reported. The stake may cost $43 million, Kommersant said. Kostroma City Telephone has 95,000 subscribers.

<b>Sistema Stake</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — AFK Sistema of Russia may sell a stake in mobile-phone company Sky Link to its suppliers to repay debt for delivered equipment, Vedomosti said Thursday, citing Sistema’s Chief Executive Officer Alexander Goncharuk.
The company, which controls 50 percent of Sky Link, has held talks with Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., ZTE Corp. and Alcatel-Lucent, the Russian daily reported. Sistema and Sky Link’s other shareholder, Danish businessman Jeffrey Galmond, may sell up to a 25 percent stake, Vedomosti reported. Sky Link owes more than $500 million for equipment, the newspaper said.

<b>Reserves Rise </b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia’s foreign currency and gold reserves rose to $420.2 billion in the week ended Aug. 10, the central bank said.
The reserves, the world’s third biggest, gained $3.4 billion after declining by $500 million in the previous week, the Moscow- based central bank said in an e-mailed statement Thursday. Russia, the world’s biggest energy exporter, increased its reserves from $416.8 billion.

TITLE: A Formula for Improving Competitiveness
AUTHOR: By Mikhail Delyagin
TEXT: It is true that Russia lacks global competitiveness and suffers low labor productivity. This subject is often presented, however, from a one-sided perspective, and little attention is paid to the contributing factors behind the problem.
The problem is that official statistics rely exclusively on output that is officially declared. For obvious reasons, unofficial output from the underground economy is not considered. Some sectors of the shadow economy, such as alcoholic beverages production, represent a significant percentage of all output. This means that the real level of labor productivity is much higher than the official published rate.
That said, there is still a huge gap in labor productivity between Russia and many developed countries, especially China, but the disparity is not as great as what is commonly believed. Much of this is due to the inaccurate data used in compiling the figures, which are calculated by simply dividing the gross national product by the number of the nation’s workers.
That might be standard practice for any economist who has mastered basic arithmetic, but this method of deriving labor productivity does not account for the fact that Russia’s gross national product and the volume of industrial production is largely tied to world prices on raw material exports, especially hydrocarbons.
A wide range of factors determine world oil prices — from a change in climate to the actions of international and regional terrorists. None of these factors has anything to do with labor productivity in Russia. Therefore, we should not delude ourselves when the labor productivity figure rises along with world oil prices, nor be upset by its decrease when prices fall on “the life blood of Russia’s economy.” Real labor productivity has no relationship to either.
Macroeconomists typically bemoan the fact that growth in salaries is rising faster than the growth in labor productivity. What is lost in this argument is the large role that corruption plays in weakening Russia’s global competitiveness. Corruption has considerably worsened over the past seven years; it has truly become the foundation of the entire state system. Before money was extorted under the pretext of providing some kind of assistance to business, such as security. Now, businesses are victims of extortion for the simple reason that they exist as businesses. Corruption, which exceeds even the rampant levels of the 1990s, does more to limit the development of business than perhaps any other factor. As a result, business cannot significantly expand production despite the enormous inflow of oil income to the country.
What makes matters worse is that there is an extreme shortage of even minimally qualified professionals in all fields. This is due largely to the fact that reforms destroyed Russia’s educational system — including trade schools and universities. Another important factor is that, although officially reported salaries have, on paper, sharply increased, real salaries have increased at a much slower rate. More companies are starting to legalize salaries by paying workers officially on the books instead of evading payroll taxes by paying under the table. As a result, this creates the false impression that official salaries are growing by leaps and bounds; in reality, however, take-home pay has increased at a much lower rate.
It should not be forgotten that salaries still remain woefully low. According to the Levada Center, which corresponds closely to official statistics, 12 percent of the population has difficulty paying for food, another 31 percent cannot afford adequate clothing, and 41 percent more has trouble purchasing items for long-term use. Thus, 12 percent of the population live in poverty, while a combined total of 85 percent are considered poor. Although the “middle class” has, by most accounts, doubled in size during the past five years, it accounts for only 15 percent of the population.
Alexander Baranov, the head pediatric specialist for the Health and Social Development Ministry, highlighted other social consequences of the so-called reforms carried out in the 1990s. Baranov declared that the average Russian’s height has decreased by 1.5 centimeters since the Soviet collapse. In addition, 80 percent of children are underweight, with one in five children having excessively low weight. Physical strength is also down 21 percent in girls and 18 percent in boys. Social factors have also given rise to a demographic crisis. Families desire to have 2.5 children on average but can afford to have only 1.5.
Unlike in most other parts of the world, where the poor consists of mostly the unemployed and uneducated, in Russia the poor is largely made of up of educated, working people.
Only significantly higher real salaries can put an end to this crisis, described by many as genocidal. And only higher real salaries can restore the motivation to work, which is now at a lower level than during the worst Soviet periods of stagnation.
Salaries should not be raised by dipping into government reserves. A real increase in salaries and standard of living can be accomplished only through the creation of new jobs and an increase in the amount of goods produced domestically. And for this to happen, Russia must increase its global competitiveness. It must either begin producing goods that are currently made by foreign companies or come up with qualitatively new goods that nobody else is making.
Clearly, this requires resolving an enormous number of systemic, fundamental economic problems such as restoring property rights, curbing abuses of power by monopolies, modernizing infrastructure, setting rational limits to protectionism, re-establishing the technological progress halted in 1989, renovating the educational system and so on.
Restoring Russia’s competitiveness means diversifying its industrial base and producing more goods domestically to replace the large quantity of imports. This would mean that more capital and profit stay in Russia and less flow to multinational corporations abroad.
This would obviously cause objections from foreign companies that would lose income if they were replaced in large numbers by Russian manufacturers. Their discontent could take on an even more destructive character than during the late 1980s and the mid-1990s, and could lead to the worsening of Russia’s relations with the West.
This does not mean, of course, that either Russia or the international community should forego its goal of seeing this country diversify, modernize and raise the competitiveness of its domestic manufacturers. It means only that, in putting forward these requirements, we should understand their potential implications.
Only in this way can we endure the inevitable worsening of relations with the West with minimal negative consequences.

Mikhail Delyagin is director of the Institute for the Study of Globalization.

TITLE: Defending the Defenseless
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: The Dembsky family of Russia was living illegally in Amiens, France, when police came knocking at their door. The father climbed out a window and escaped unharmed to the street below. His 12-year-old son, Ivan, however, fell six stories and ended up in a coma. The French people took to the streets in a show of compassion for the immigrants. The police, who issued statements expressing their regret at the incident, are conducting an investigation under French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s personal supervision. Meanwhile, Russian television channels are trying to outdo each other with news reports about the way Russians are harassed by the malicious police regime of France.
I will now attempt to compare the story of young Ivan with a few other incidents.
During a traffic jam in downtown St. Petersburg, a police car raced along the wrong side of the road. Pyotr Grigorovsky, who was driving his car in his own lane in the opposite direction, swerved his car to avoid the oncoming police vehicle, struck a pole and died. The police officer never even stopped. Hundreds of witnesses took note of the officer’s license plate number. St. Petersburg drivers later demonstrated their condolences by placing black flags on their cars.
What is the probability that President Vladimir Putin will demand a full report of the investigation and that the police officer responsible for Grigorovsky’s death will be punished? Zero.
The police department has already responded by saying that the vehicle in question never left the station’s garage that day. Moreover, the police said they would later settle scores with the “black flag” demonstrators.
Another story: A Moscow driver and immigrant from Tajikistan, Ashur Inoyatov, picked up a drunk FSB officer who had just left a casino. When Inoyatov asked the officer where he wanted to go, the officer for some reason took offense, pulled out his gun and started shooting. He emptied his entire clip but was so intoxicated that he ended up only wounding Inoyatov.
What is the likelihood that Putin will demand a full investigation of this incident, and more importantly, that Muscovites will stage demonstrations in support of the unfortunate Tajik? Zero. On the contrary, Inoyatov was deported.
What has happened in Russia lately? A St. Petersburg police officer caused the wrongful death of an innocent driver and left the scene of the crime; an innocent Tajik was deported for having the bad luck of being the victim of a crime committed by an FSB officer; a Moscow court seized 100 percent of Russneft’s shares after owner Mikhail Gutseriyev publicly stated that the government had been pressuring him; and Russia sent military forces into Ingushetia.
And what have we seen on the news? We have seen that Russian strategic bombers flew over NATO bases, that those nasty Georgians have again slandered us by claiming that a Russian jet fired a rocket on their territory, and that the persecution of Russians in the police state of France has reached such a scale that a 12-year-old Russian boy was forced to leap from his sixth-floor apartment.
Now let’s perform a different experiment. How would it sound if we were to switch the Russian and French news reports around?
“A French police officer caused a fatal accident on the Champs Elysees and then fled the scene. After local drivers staged a protest, police arrested the organizers of the demonstration.”
Is this possible? Of course not.
“In the republic of Bashkortostan a police squad attempted to enter the home of a family of Tajik nationals to check their residency registration. The father escaped through a window; his son attempted a similar escape but was seriously injured when he fell. Local residents waged a demonstration against police brutality. President Putin demanded a full investigation of the incident.”
Possible? No way. Terrible? Yes.

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

TITLE: Open days
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Open Cinema festival that takes place this week earns its name. The event is open to ideas, open to interpretation — and at least half of it takes place out in the open. 
Although something of a mixed bag, the organizers have put together a program of short films that divides along genre lines and includes fiction films, video-art/experimental films, non-fiction films and animation. On Friday, Saturday and Sunday these will be screened on the beach of the Peter and Paul Fortress while throughout the rest of the week until Aug. 25 the film programs will be shown at the Rodina and Dom Kino art house cinemas. But Open Cinema, a restless endeavor during the deadest week during St. Petersburg’s deadest month, when many city residents are relaxing outside of the city, doesn’t stop there. Its WhiteSky strand that takes place before the 10 p.m. beach screenings features street theater, clowning, puppetry and buto performances.
Journalists were given a taste of what these performances entail on Tuesday at Bridge Lounge, the tented restaurant near the Peter and Paul beach that will also serve as Open Cinema’s so-called VIP Zone, when Royal Giraffe gave a small show. Lead by clown Stanislav Barkki, this Estonian outfit offers a creepy morality tale about a Pierrot, his female counterpart, a devil and angel. The four move to New Age music, relating to each other and the audience in a manner that suggests both menace and sexuality. It also involves a set of paper fans.
The WhiteSky performances start at 8.30 p.m. on Friday, Saturday and Sunday and also include acts by Tagin, two dancers from Israel, the Fifth Wheel puppet ensemble from Germany and Japanese buto performer Ken Mai. 
In a feat of logic, the organizers have called the film screenings on the beach, the BlackSky component of the festival. On Friday, the theme of the night is “Him and Her” and the 20 short films that will be shown originate from Russia, Europe and the U.S. A highlight, as recommended by Lyudmila Lipeiko, the general director of Art Bereg, the arts organization behind Open Cinema, is “Target” (2005), a six-minute film by Czech director Milos Tomic. The poignant film depicts the sad farewell from a man drafted into the army to his lover. 
Saturday’s program has been put together under the theme “Actions.” Among the 17 films set to be screened is Peter Freund’s “Karl Marx Platz 1999.” The U.S. film maker, who visited St. Petersburg earlier this year, is known for his artful meditations on the human body and his 1 minute 30 second video film focuses on an immobile statue of Marx as history passes it by.
Neatly, Sunday’s program is organized around the idea of “Time.” Polish animator Marek Skrobecki’s “Ichthys (Fish)” is among the 19 films showing and presents a Godotesque parable about waiting, hope and fulfillment. 
From Tuesday, Open Cinema moves indoors for a week of nightly screenings that includes all manner of programs selected from short film festivals previously shown at other such events from around the world, plus retrospectives of the work of two St. Petersburg directors, Irina Yevteyeva and Sergei Debizhev.  
Open Cinema is supported by the French Institute, the Goethe Institute and St. Petersburg’s Spanish Club, and the number of international films to be included is impressive. The Spanish Club has sponsored an eye-catching program of Latin American cinema that includes a selection of recent Argentine short movies.
On Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday screenings begin at 7 p.m. at Rodina cinema center while on Friday, Saturday and Sunday the festival decamps again and goes up three floors to the Dom Kino screen in the same building at 12 Karavannaya Ulitsa. The Dom Kino screenings on Friday and Saturday are for dedicated cinephiles who don’t mind missing out on a couple of night’s sleep: the programs begin at 11.50 pm with the last batch of films starting at 4.20 a.m. on both nights. On Saturday night, the very last films to be shown will be soothing and fascinating underwater films.
Now in its third year, the Open Cinema festival has introduced an element of competition, although the prizes that an expert panel will award are described as “symbolic.” 
With a witty title that will appeal to Russian jurors and general filmgoers, John Cannizzaro’s “50 Feet that Shook the World” is one of the festival’s little gems. Described as a “stop-motion homage to silent Russian classics” the film takes “a twisted look at the ongoing war between film and video.” The film can be seen on the beach on Sunday.

Open Cinema Festival August 17-19 and August 21-25. Tel 600 1502. www.artbereg.ru, www.opencinema.afisha.ru

TITLE: Chernov’s choice
TEXT: Despite the rumors, <b>Iggy Pop and the Stooges</b> will not perform in St. Petersburg, but are due to appear in Moscow at B1 Maximum Club on Sept. 11. The concert is part of a tour in support of “Weirdness,” the album that Pop and the Stooges released in March to rave reviews. The band’s previous studio album of new material was “Raw Power” in 1973.
Widely known as the godfather of punk, Pop was writing and performing punk songs with his band The Stooges a decade before the Sex Pistols or the Clash emerged on the scene in the 1970s. 
With driving guitar riffs and a frontman (Pop) known for cutting his chest with broken glass and smearing his body with peanut butter during performances, The Stooges soon made a name for themselves on the Detroit rock scene for bringing something entirely new to contemporary music.
“I wanted music to reach out and strangle people,” Pop once said about these early days.
Pop was born in Muskegon, Michigan, on April 21, 1947, as James Newell Osterberg. Although his friends to this day call him Jimmy, Pop publicly became Iggy when he formed his first band, The Iguanas, while still in high school. Later, in 1967, Pop formed The Stooges after attending a Doors concert in Chicago. 
Meanwhile, there have been references to Iggy Pop in the Russian media with Izvestiya writing that the Rolling Stones were supported by none other but Pop in its review of the band’s open-air concert at the Palace Square last month.
Another paper pointed out that support in reality came from Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel, but then described the British band whose heyday was during the glam rock craze of the 1970s as “young rockers,” leaving readers in some doubt.
The Pop hallucination obviously stemmed from the local promoter PMI’s early news release, where it suggested that Pop will probably open for the Stones. No retraction was ever issued.
Pop has performed in Russia only once, at the weird setting of Krylya (Wings), a beer-sponsored open-air festival of Russian rock at Tushino Airfield in Moscow in July 2002. 
Meanwhile, the worst days for local concert-goers and clubbers have finally arrived. With most of music fans out of the city on vacation, the club programs looks even more boring than usual.
Nevertheless, this week will see <b>Madball</b>, a staple fixture of New York’s hardcore scene since they formed as an Agnostic Front side-project in 1988 (ROKS, Monday), and ex-Captain Beefheart guitarist <b>Gary Lukas</b>, who is reported to perform songs by Captain Beefheart, Frank Zappa, Syd Barrett and Can with a pair of local musicians (Zoccolo, Tuesday).

<i>— By Sergey Chernov</i>

TITLE: Homer’s odyssey
AUTHOR: By Kevin O’Flynn
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Despite being widely dismissed as zholtiye urody, or yellow freaks, and corrupters of children since their arrival in Russia, “The Simpsons” has a strong fan base and the premiere of the movie Thursday is out to Simpsonize the country.
The film version of the television series opens in Russia more than two weeks after its record-breaking world premiere. A total of 550 copies of the film have been distributed nationwide, accompanied by a huge advertising campaign. By comparison, “Die Hard 4” only had 16 more copies.
“We expect it to do well,” said Alexander Kovalenko, a spokesman for 20th Century Fox CIS, the studio that produced the film.
Nevertheless, “The Simpsons” has yet to conquer Russia as they have other countries, remaining an acquired taste for most.
“Unlike the United States, the animated family does not number among our national heroes. It’s a shame,” wrote journalist Oleg Zintsov in Vedomosti on Tuesday, previewing the movie. “It is a sign of a healthy pop culture, a golden mean that we do not have.”
If there were a Russian version of “The Simpsons,” it would be a continuation of “Ironiya Sudby,” one of the favorite films shown every New Year’s, as if the heroes Nadya and Zhenya had married and had children, and it would touch on the main problems of the nation, Zintsov wrote.
“The Simpsons” only officially arrived in 1997, 10 years after it started in the United States, although pirated copies could be found before then, as well as Simpson matryoshka dolls.
The series has been shown on Ren-TV television since then and on 2x2 since April. Ren-TV has nearly aired the entire series and will air the 18th season in December.
“‘The Simpsons’ did not become popular in Russia as in the West because of the banal fact that the population was busy with other problems,” wrote one fan called Silent who answered questions posted on “The Simpsons” forum. He said the show stood out among low-quality Western programs. “Such a diamond among a pile of you know what,” Silent wrote.
Even before “The Simpsons” appeared on television here, it had touched on Russian and Soviet life a number of times.
Springfield, the Simpson family hometown, has a Russian district where, as in the old days in Moscow, you could make calls from telephone booths for free and the shops have simple names like Myaso.
There have been more than a dozen mentions of Russia in the series from a wrestler called Rasputin, who became the friendly Russian because of the change in the geopolitical situation with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Krusty the Clown once said Mikhail Gorbachev’s birthmark was because of herpes.
Most fans noted that the jokes were all very stereotypical, perhaps referring to the time Mo’s Breathalyzer showed “Boris Yeltsin Drunkenness” as one of the categories. One forum user noted, however, that they had got off easy compared with countries like Australia or Canada.
The series did not attract any real outrage before 2003, when lawyer Igor Smykov tried to claim compensation after he said it had a bad effect on his son, who called his mother a toad and asked his grandmother what cocaine was after watching the program.
The court case was thrown out in 2005, but the series then faced criticism from nationalist politicians who said the series was anti-family. The criticism was reminiscent of U.S. President George Bush’s comments in 1989 when he asked why families could not be “less like the Simpsons and more like the Waltons.”
Like many other Western television imports, “The Simpsons” is dubbed over into Russian with the audio of the English version loitering underneath. Homer Simpson says “D’oh,” but the Russian actor does not. Fan forums are often full of complaints about the translation of the series.
In the Ukrainian version, which many fans say is better than the Russian, Quimby, the corrupt Springfield mayor who sounds suspiciously like U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy in the original version, shares vocal familiarities with Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych.
The film has been dubbed completely, but the pay for the Russian actors who do the Simpsons’ voices does not compare with that of the originals.
Homer will still be voiced by the same actor as in the series, Boris Bystrov.
Some new voices were chosen —Marge is Olga Zubkova, who normally dubs people like Angelina Jolie and Charlize Theron. Zubkova said it took her five hours to voice Marge’s role. As she spoke, there was just a hint of the purr in the original voice.
Oleg Forestenko, 65, who has acted in the Vakhtangov Theater on the Arbat for 40 years, plays Homer’s God-fearing neighbor, Ned Flanders. He got around $200. “I’ll get paid soon, ring me up to check [how much I actually get],” he said. “I may be out by $50 or so.”

TITLE: Tikhon Khrennikov 1913-2007
AUTHOR: By Allan Kozinn
PUBLISHER: The New York Times
TEXT: Tikhon Khrennikov, a prolific Russian composer and pianist best known in the West as an official Soviet antagonist of Shostakovich and Prokofiev, died Wednesday in Moscow. He was 94.
Khrennikov, regarded as a promising young composer in the 1930s, was able to survive in the perilous currents of Soviet politics from the Stalin era on. In 1948 Josef Stalin personally selected him to be the secretary of the composers’ union. He was the only head of a creative union to retain his post until the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Khrennikov saw the value of ingratiating himself with Soviet leaders early in his career, when he adopted the optimistic, dramatic and unabashedly lyrical style favored by Soviet leaders. 
He based his first opera, “Into the Storm” (1939), on “Loneliness,” a novel by Nikolai Virta that Stalin was known to have liked.
By the mid-1940s, his star was rising on the strength of works like his broad-shouldered, blustery Symphony No. 2, as well as his First Piano Concerto (1933), his incidental music for Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing” (1936) and many wartime patriotic songs.
In the late 1940s he endeared himself to both Stalin and the cultural ideologue Andrei Zhdanov by endorsing Zhdanov’s decree that music must embody nationalistic Soviet values and by criticizing composers who seemed to be abandoning those values in favor of modernist experiments.
Whether or not he was behind Zhdanov’s public denunciation of Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Khachaturian and others for “formalism” in 1948 (he insisted, in his 1994 memoir, “That’s How It Was,” that he was buffeted by the same winds as everyone else), he threw his weight behind it. 
At the first Congress of Composers, two months after Zhdanov’s attack, he took up the cudgel himself, declaring: “Enough of these symphonic diaries, these pseudo-philosophic symphonies hiding behind their allegedly profound thoughts and tedious self-analysis. Armed with clear party directives, we will stop all manifestations of formalism and popular decadence.”
In “Testimony,” the supposed and still hotly disputed posthumous memoirs of Shostakovich, published by Solomon Volkov in 1979, Shostakovich is quoted as saying that his problems with Khrennikov began when he sent him a long, friendly letter discussing what he saw as problems with “Into the Storm.” Until then, Shostakovich said, Khrennikov kept a portrait of Shostakovich on his desk. 
But he took the criticism amiss and became Shostakovich’s mortal enemy.
In a 1979 speech, Khrennikov denounced “Testimony” as a “vile falsification concocted by one of the renegades who left our country.” But Shostakovich did leave an unassailably authentic comment about Khrennikov, a lampoon in the form of a cantata, “Rayok,” which remained hidden until after his death in, 1975, but was performed privately in his home (and has been performed publicly since 1989).
Khrennikov was able to play both sides of the political fence, however, particularly when prodded by other musicians. After the 1948 denunciation of Prokoviev, the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich persuaded Khrennikov to provide money quietly to buy Prokofiev food. 
Harlow Robinson, the Prokofiev biographer and expert on Russian music, has said that Prokofiev’s widow, Lina, told him that Khrennikov had been kind and supportive to her in the late 1950s, after her husband’s death. Khrennikov did occasionally support composers who were in danger of official attack, even supporting the Sinfonietta by Moshe Vaynberg during the anti-Semitic purges of 1948-49.
Mostly, though, he is known for the composers he opposed. Although he reportedly helped Alfred Schnittke get his First Symphony performed, in 1974, he denounced him soon thereafter, and never relented. 
In 1979 he criticized seven Russian composers — Elena Firsova, Dmitry Smirnov, Alexander Knayfel, Viktor Suslin, Vyacheslav Artyomov, Sofia Gubaidulina and Edison Denisov — for allowing their works to be performed outside the Soviet Union. He declared an official ban on their works.
Tikhon Nikolayevich Khrennikov was born in Yelets, in central Russia, on June 10, 1913. He began his musical studies as a pianist but was composing as well by the time he was 13. He enrolled at the Gnessin School in Moscow in 1929 and at the Moscow Conservatory in 1932. 
He completed his First Symphony (1935) as his graduation work and began to win attention with his music for a production of “Much Ado About Nothing” at the Vakhtangov Theater in Moscow.
In the 1960s he returned to the concert stage to perform his three piano concertos. 
He also wrote a cello concerto, which was given its premiere by Rostropovich in 1964, and two violin concertos, both given their premieres by Leonid Kogan, in 1959 and 1975. 
His catalog also includes 10 operas, 3 symphonies, 6 ballets, 2 musical theater works (“Wonders, Oh Wonders,” for children, from 2001, and “At 6 P.M. After the War,” from 2003) and many chamber works and songs.

TITLE: Fields of sorrow
AUTHOR: By Chris Jones
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: “We work all over the city, so this is just one of many jobs,” says the worker, leaning on his shovel and taking a long drag from his cigarette. “Of course, this one is special.”
The workers, who declined to give their names, are part of a crew hired by the city to repair a decaying portion of Piskaryovskoye Memorial Cemetery, the mass grave for some 500,000 victims of the Nazi Siege of Leningrad in World War II. The cemetery now serves as a memorial for this dark hour in the city’s history, in which almost 1 million residents were killed or starved to death.
“We all know somebody — a relative or a friend’s relative — who knew someone here,” says another worker. This common to many St. Petersburg residents who can often recite from memory how their family members survived, or died, during the blockade. 
The cemetery itself was a practical response to the carnage of the siege, which lasted from September 1941 to January 1944. As bodies accumulated throughout the city, they were moved to several mass graves on the outskirts, of which Piskaryovskoye was the largest, in order to prevent the spread of disease (to see another burial site go to Park Pobedy, a recreational spot built on top of several graves). The cemetery remained an unmarked collection of bodies until 1960, when the Soviets constructed a large memorial, featuring a statue of a grieving Mother Russia, as well as a small museum at the entrance. 
The most moving part of Piskaryovskoye is not the memorial, the museum (though its example of a daily ration of food — one thin slice of bread, made partially from sawdust — is astounding), or the stately classical music emanating from speakers throughout the grounds. It is the graves themselves: 186 waist-high stacks, each packed with thousands of bodies, now covered by a somewhat disheveled blanket of grass and flowers. 
The mounds are organized by year of death, which is marked in stone in front of each mound, allowing mourners a rough calculation of where their loved ones are buried. Early mounds from 1941, when the death tolls were low, are almost flush with the earth. The 1942-1943 mounds are considerably larger. 
Piskaryovskoye is surprisingly small — you can see almost every mound while standing at the entrance — a testimony to how efficiently half a million people can be buried when the need arises.
Today, as the handful of visitors, mostly Russian, mill about the cemetery, the workers move with care. The men are quiet as they work, chipping away at the cement between the mounds while never touching the grass itself. 
They leave the thousands of bodies inside at peace, resting together like so many carefully stacked pieces of cordwood.
How to Get There
Getting to Piskaryovskoye is not easy, and you should plan at least one hour in each direction if you are using public transport.
To get there, go to Lesnaya metro station. When you exit, go to the bus stop directly in front of the station. Take Bus 33 to Piskaryovka station (the last stop on the line). Walk across the parking lot and cross the train tracks via the footbridge. Once on the other side, take Bus 138, exiting when you reach the cemetery. Alternatively, take Bus 100 from Ploshchad Iskusstv. The bus will go straight to the cemetery.
To return, catch Bus 138 outside of the cemetery. The bus will drop you off at Ploshchad Muzhestva metro station. You can also catch bus 100 back to Ploshchad Iskusstv.

TITLE: Committed to memory
AUTHOR: By Natasha Randall
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The master short-story writer Isaac Babel was arrested by the NKVD in May 1939 and executed in January 1940. For a long time, it wasn’t clear when he died: His wife eventually learned of his demise 15 years after the fact. When he was arrested, all his papers were confiscated. His unpublished manuscripts were never found.
Travis Holland’s gripping debut novel, “The Archivist’s Story,” summons up this moment in time — the months during which Babel was incarcerated in the Lubyanka security-police headquarters — through the eyes of one of the Lubyanka’s archivists, Pavel Dubrov. 
Pavel is a former literature teacher who is now in the employ of the NKVD, responsible for organizing the archives of seized literary manuscripts in the basement of the notorious building on what was then known as Dzerzhinsky Square. His department is in the process of cataloging and then incinerating the manuscripts, file by file.
As the novel opens, Pavel is interviewing the newly imprisoned Babel about a discrepancy in the latter’s file. The scene is a quiet one: Pavel offers Babel some tea and feels pity for the author, who has had his glasses confiscated. 
“It is a small matter that brings them together. A story, untitled, unsigned, and by all appearances incomplete, which the officers in their haste have neglected to record in the evidence manifest.” Babel asks Pavel if he can be permitted to write a letter to his wife. “I’m sorry comrade,” is Pavel’s reply. “Understand, it’s not a matter of whether or not I’d like to help you.” Pavel is moved to tears by the author’s request but turns to the matter at hand. He shows the manuscript to Babel. “It’s mine,” the author concedes.
Indeed, Pavel cannot help Babel, for he has little or no power over the archives and the inmates of the Lubyanka. He takes his orders from a bureaucrat called Kutyrev who says: “I’m not really much of a reader.” As Pavel grows increasingly uncomfortable with the destruction of so much literary work, Kutyrev becomes suspicious. Pavel knows full well that Kutyrev may pass on his suspicion to his superiors. Outside of work, Pavel leads a lonely life; his wife was killed in a train accident some years previously. 
He lives alone in an apartment block near the Donskoi Monastery, which overlooks the chimney stacks of a nearby cemetery’s crematorium. This is the crematorium that serves the Butyrka and Lefortovo prisons and the Lubyanka — disposing of the remains of their executed and starved. The repeated journeys to the archive’s incinerator, and Kutyrev’s obnoxious philistine dogma, eventually take their toll. 
“Pavel is suddenly, powerfully sick to his core: of Kutyrev and his grinding, mindless ambition, of these deadening metal stacks and their dust, which Pavel can all but feel sticking in his lungs. Mostly, though, he is sick of himself.” Later that evening, as he is carting yet more manuscripts from stack to stack, Pavel is seized by an impulse. He takes the newly discovered Babel story, folds it and stuffs it down the back of his pants. Then he walks out of the Lubyanka and heads for home.
Holland’s measured narrative maintains a swift pace — it’s a suspenseful story, full of brushes with peril. Pavel’s act of sabotage could cost him his position, if not his life. But with the pressures of Stalinist life in 1939, something has to give. Adolf Hitler is beginning his offensive on Soviet territory, and Pavel’s friends and mentors are being threatened with arrest. 
After the meeting with Babel, Pavel’s work at the archive gains a new purpose — or, rather, it regains the original purpose of archival work: preservation.
So Pavel hides the short story, and then a second short story, behind some bricks in the wall of his apartment block’s basement. His neighbor, Natalya, a building attendant with whom he is having an intermittent love affair, notices something and says: “I could hear you the other night. Down in the basement.” He tells her he was looking for clothes among his boxes. “‘I don’t know,’ she says, ‘It doesn’t matter, Pavel. Whatever you were doing.’”
Meanwhile, a major called Radlov summons Pavel to his office — being noticed is a big sign of trouble to come. But it’s not clear what Radlov wants, other than to make Pavel nervous. The major says: “He killed himself. Gogol. Do you know how?” Pavel knows that Gogol starved himself. 
“‘Do you think,’ Radlov asks, ‘that because you’ve read his stories, you understand Gogol any better than those who knew him personally?’” Pavel isn’t sure what he is being asked. It seems that Radlov is trying to make Pavel articulate the distinction between an author’s work and life — to put a value on each. But Pavel can’t say a word: “To even speak of the disgraced dead is to risk joining them.”
Holland holds the reader in suspense as Kutyrev mysteriously intimates that Pavel’s career will end when he has finished incinerating all the manuscripts in the archive. But Pavel the archivist continues doing what he needs to do: He needs to preserve, and to build memorials. That’s why he steals manuscripts, hoards the letters of an arrested friend and even hides a handkerchief that Babel gave him. 
As his 58-year-old mother begins losing her memory due to a brain tumor, Pavel’s greatest fear becomes forgetting itself: “A day, one day, when his mother will no longer recognize him, will no longer remember their lives together. Two deaths then: her past, his.”
As trouble looms perceptibly for Pavel, Holland creates scene after ominous scene in a rather straightforward delivery. The writing is barely noticeable, in part because Holland’s descriptions are on the bland side. But the smoothness of the flow and the mounting tension soon engross the reader in Pavel’s fate. With Pavel, Holland competently explores a voice of conscience within one of the most brutal institutions in history. And it is a worthy and interesting voice, though Holland may have erred toward the melodramatic in his treatment.

Natasha Randall’s translation of “We,” by Yevgeny Zamyatin, was published last year by The Modern Library.

TITLE: In the spotlight
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: This month, Forbes magazine published its list of the 50 richest Russians in showbusiness and sport, which was a good excuse to put a photo of socialite and reality show presenter Ksenia Sobchak in a slinky dress on the cover. Even if she is only No. 49. ??
At first glance, the rating looked pretty revolutionary, putting such newcomers as the stars of TNT's Comedy Club standup show and 2006 Eurovision runner-up Dima Bilan at second and third place respectively, just below tennis mogul Maria Sharapova. But, as with other financial products, you had to read the small print.?
In fact, the rating was compiled using a combination of estimated earnings, the stars' popularity in tabloids and magazines and the number of times people typed their names into a Russian search engine. Hence the country's principal blonde, Sobchak, reached seventh place in the rating, even though she was only 49th in the list of top-earning celebrities — which was actually headed by Sharapova, whose earnings evidently match her popularity, and a host of hockey players.??
All the same, the list made interesting reading for its figures on stars' latest annual incomes — some of which were surprisingly modest — and the bald information about how they earn their money. Alla Pugachyova, the queen of Russian pop, made $3.5 million, putting her at 14th place, but she made it the hard way, performing in provincial cities all over the country. She even sang in Vorkuta, a coal-mining town beyond the Arctic Circle best known for its Gulag camp — in February. However much she earned for that, I doubt she thought it was enough.??
This year has certainly been good to Bilan, who is at 12th place among the top earners with an income of $4.1 million. That might put Pugachyova's nose out of joint, not to mention Filipp Kirkorov's. Like Dima, he was a Eurovision contestant and has kept himself in the public eye pretty solidly since marrying and then divorcing Pugachyova, but his earnings only put him at 17th place. Sic transit gloria mundi, but on the bright side, the magazine writes that he's buying up apartments in Bulgaria, so he'll probably make a mint by selling them off to retired couples from Essex.??
The success of Comedy Club, coming in at 11th place among the top earners — even if there are a lot of mouths to feed in the troupe of stand-up comedians — will also be a blow to Pugachyova, who is definitely not a fan of their brand of laddish humor. At last month's New Wave competition, a bizarre get-together for Russian pop singers that for some reason takes place in Latvia, the presenter was Comedy Club star Pavel Volya, who specializes in putting down celebrities with insulting barbs. He's used to causing offense, but he wasn't ready for some heckling from Pugachyova herself.?
Pugachyova, a tough old bird, who recently said she will only retire when she can't wear a mini-skirt anymore (she's 58), didn't like Pasha Volya's tone when, announcing Kirkorov, he pretended never to have heard of the singer, Tvoi Den reported. Apparently, she caught Volya offstage and said, "And who are you, Pasha? You are just a gondon," the unpleasant word used for the probably equally unpleasant Soviet-era condom. 
If Volya were a real stand-up comedian, he would probably have snapped back with a similarly foul-mouthed putdown, but he's used to polite audiences for the TNT show (they've paid $100 per ticket, so they'd better enjoy it) and tame celebrities in the front rows who know they'll look stupid if they answer back. So, Tvoi Den wrote, he collapsed into a pathetic heap, rather like the item Pugachyova mentioned. Still, I bet he thought of something brilliant in the shower next morning.

TITLE: Travel the Silk Road
AUTHOR: By Chris Jones
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Caravan Restaurant // 46 Voznesensky Prospekt. Tel: 812-310-5678 // Open daily, 12 p.m. – 1 a.m. // Menu in Russian and English.  // Major credit cards accepted. // Dinner for two, no alcohol: 1,670 rubles ($65.50).

The defining trait of Caravan is presentation. From the dIcor to the service to the dishes themselves, everything in this Uzbek/ Azeri restaurant is meticulously crafted to make diners feel as if they are eating in the palace of an ancient Central Asian khanate. However, like a pretty girl who lacks intelligence, something is missing. The place is safe and toned down – a non-threatening, Russified version of the exotic.
Caravan’s prices reflect its somewhat out of the way location. With main courses costing between 200 and 500 rubles ($8-20), it is a steal compared to other restaurants in its class. Additionally, its clearly translated, extensive menu surpasses normal expectations, even including a children’s section and a “fitness” menu for those on a diet.
The same praise applies to the dIcor. Caravan is huge — two main rooms containing a mix of tables and booths (19 tables for 88 guests, 3 booths for 18 guests), as well as a private dining area (one large booths, 10 guests). 
However, despite this size, the decorator has been meticulous. For example, the booths are upholstered with embroidered, blue and gold Central Asian-styled cushions, completed with roughly hewn wooden roofs to provide intimacy. In the main rooms, the plaster ceiling is textured to resemble a cave, with scenes of Central Asian life painted on the walls. 
The rooms are divided by a rustic stone wall, and in the back room a small stream flows through the floor, emanating from behind, believe it or not, a life-size stuffed camel. The front room centers around a massive metal and stone grill, at which the Russian and Uzbek chefs occasionally prepare dishes in view of diners.  
The size of both rooms means that they can accommodate all types of groups, from a romance-seeking couple to a party of 20. However, this flexibility comes at a cost. While the atmosphere is always pleasant, complemented by soft Arab pop music in the background, the rooms are too big to be cozy. To find privacy, the only option is the private dining area in the back, a room exquisitely gilded from floor to ceiling, in which your group can relax in an ornately upholstered dark blue booth divided by a huge slab of a wooden table. The only downside is the view: the booth sits next to Caravan’s toilets.
Regardless of where you sit you will be pleased by the service, which is some of the best this reviewer has experienced so far. The hostess and waitress were prompt, discreet, and helpful with all our questions. 
Some of Caravan’s dishes are true standouts. For example, the avocado salad with shrimp and chicken (190 rubles/ $7.50), is a mix of orange and red peppers resting on thinly sliced, deep green avocado, topped with soft, perfectly spiced slices of chicken. Tumbling throughout the dish are small, sweet shrimp and a sweet pepper vinaigrette. 
The mix of the sweet vinaigrette with the spiced chicken gives a pleasurable combination that lingers until the next bite. For dessert, the “Eastern Sweets” plate (170 rubles/ $6.50), gives a combination of Arab-style sweets — various balls of sweet grains held together with honey and delicate frosting, portioned to be enough for two people. 
For a great drink, sample any of the tea from Caravan’s page-long selection, which is served in the traditional Muslim style — in small crystal classes with a copious supply of sugar. 
Our favorite was the “Matinz” rose tea (100 rubles/ $4 for 0.7 liters), an almost clear, subtly flavored blend that goes well with any dish.
Other dishes fall into the “pretty but bland” category.  For example, the Uzbek Pilaf (290 rubles/ $11.50) came out promising to be the highlight of the evening. 
The rice was dark and steaming, mixed with peppers, chickpeas, and whole cloves of garlic. Resting on all four corners of the plate were meatballs mixed with onion, wrapped in deep green grape leaves, and on the side was a tiny saucer of a deep brown, mysterious looking sauce. 
However, despite its appearance, the dish was surprisingly bland —devoid of the spices one expects from Central Asian food. The same can be said of the “Adjab Sandal,” (290 rubles/ $11.50) a mix of beef, red and orange peppers, and eggplant, presented on a crisp, fried pastry shaped into an 8-point star. The dish was gorgeous, but never lived up to the promise made by its faultless presentation. Similarly, the Kofta Bozbash soup (210 rubles/ $8) was a hearty, filling, and generally boring mix of potatoes, tomatoes, and meatballs in a watery broth.
Perhaps Caravan’s food is influenced by the restaurant’s size. The restaurant is laid out perfectly for large groups, and the food is similarly toned down to the point that it can please anyone. The extensive menu will satisfy both the curious and the timid, and no one can claim that the food is not well made and presented. 
However, those seeking something truly exotic will walk away full, happy, and a little bit bored.

TITLE: Bruno Liberatore Exhibition
TEXT: Last Friday, an exhibition by the Italian sculptor Bruno Liberatore opened in the General Staff Building of the State Hermitage Museum on the Palace Square. Some of the showpieces of this exposition are also on display in the Grand Courtyard of the Winter Palace. 

Liberatore studied at the Rome University of Fine Arts — where he is now a professor — and started with small sculptures. 
But, as the Hermitage site says, “later works typically demonstrate a more complicated character." Such works include "Cavity"(2005), "Space and Cavity"(1999-2002), the "Set Square and Arc-bondant"(1999-2001), "Arch and Wall"(1999) and numerous "Gates."
Along with bronze Liberatore uses terracota, for example in the work "Aerial Root"(1989). 
Liberatore also designs jewellery. Various rings, necklaces and bracelets in gold and silver, — sometimes functioning as miniature versons of the large sculptures, are on show. 
Francesca Liberatore, the sculptor’s daughter — a designer in her own right who graduated from London’s St. Martins School of Art and Design, came to the opening of the exhibition in St. Petersburg with her father. She said: “My father is rather disappointed by the state of today’s students and their lack of desire to become artists. 
“Things have changed since he studied himself. It seems that there is much less passion in youth for art than there should be. 
“And his desire is, if not to inspire all of them, which is unfortunately nearly impossible, then to develop those who have inspration.”

<i>— Maria Zinchenko</i>

TITLE: Movie musical
AUTHOR: By A.O. Scott
PUBLISHER: The New York Times
TEXT: That “Hairspray” is good-hearted is no surprise. Adam Shankman’s film, lovingly adapted from the Broadway musical, preserves the inclusive, celebratory spirit of John Waters’s 1988 movie, in which bigger-boned, darker-skinned and otherwise different folk take exuberant revenge on the bigots and the squares who conspire to keep them down. The surprise may be that this “Hairspray,” stuffed with shiny showstoppers, Kennedy-era Baltimore beehives and a heavily padded John Travolta in drag, is actually good.
Appropriately enough for a movie with such a democratic sensibility, there is plenty of credit to go around. Shankman, drawing on long experience as a choreographer, avoids the kind of vulgar overstatement that so often turns the joy of live musical theater into torment at the multiplex. The songs, by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, are usually adequate, occasionally inspired and only rarely inane. And they are sung with impeccable diction and unimpeachable conviction by a lively young cast that includes Nikki Blonsky, Amanda Bynes, Zac Efron and the phenomenally talented Elijah Kelley.
Of course there are better-known, more-seasoned performers on hand as well, notably Queen Latifah, Michelle Pfeiffer, Christopher Walken and Travolta. But “Hairspray” is fundamentally a story about being young — about the triumph of youth culture, about the optimistic, possibly dated belief that the future will improve on the present — and its heart is very much with its teenage heroes and the fresh-faced actors who play them.
Blonsky, a ball of happy, mischievous energy, is Tracy Turnblad, a hefty Baltimore high school student whose dream is to dance with the city’s most telegenic teeny-boppers on “The Corny Collins Show.” 
Bynes plays Penny Pingleton, Tracy’s timid best friend, whose prim mother (Allison Janney) won’t even let Penny watch the show, much less appear on it. Mrs. Pingleton can scarcely imagine that her daughter will eventually fall for Seaweed (Kelley), part of a group of black kids whom Tracy befriends in the detention hall after school.
As Penny and Seaweed test the taboo against interracial romance, Tracy and Link Larkin (Efron), a “Corny Collins” dreamboat, take on the tyranny of slenderness. That “Hairspray” cheerfully conflates racial prejudice with fat-phobia is the measure of its guileless, deliberately simplified politics. Upholding both forms of discrimination is Velma Von Tussle (Pfeiffer), a television station executive who uses “The Corny Collins Show” — against the wishes of Corny (James Marsden) himself — as a way of maintaining the color line and promoting the celebrity of her blond, smiley daughter, Amber (Brittany Snow).
“Hairspray” does not seriously propose that Tracy and her new African-American friends face equivalent forms of injustice. But it does make the solidarity between them feel like an utterly natural, intuitive response to the meanness and arrogance of their common enemies. “Welcome to the ’60s,” Tracy sings to her mother, conjuring up the New Frontier hopefulness of that decade’s early years rather than the violence and paranoia of its denouement.
In freezing history at a moment of high possibility — a moment whose glorious popular culture encompasses “West Side Story” and the Twist, early Motown and Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound — “Hairspray” is at once knowingly corny and unabashedly utopian. On “The Corny Collins Show” Seaweed and his friends are relegated to a once-a-month Negro Day, presided over by Motormouth Maybelle (Queen Latifah). Tracy envisions a future when, as she puts it, “every day is Negro Day.”
What is missing from “Hairspray” is anything beyond the faintest whisper of camp. The original “Hairspray” may have been Waters’s most wholesome, least naughty film, but there was no containing the volcanic audacity of Divine, who created the role of Edna Turnblad. Divine, who was born Harris Glen Milstead and who died shortly after the first “Hairspray” was released, belonged to an era when drag performance still carried more than a touch of the louche and the dangerous, and was one of the artists who helped push it into the cultural mainstream.
Perhaps wisely Travolta does not try to duplicate the outsize, deliberately grotesque theatricality of Divine’s performance or to mimic the Mermanesque extravagance of Harvey Fierstein’s Broadway turn, choosing instead to tackle the role of Edna as an acting challenge. The odd result is that she becomes the most realistic, least stereotypical character in the film, and the only one who speaks in a recognizable (if not always convincing) Baltimore accent. (“Ahm tryna orn,” she complains when she’s trying to iron.)
A shy, unsophisticated, working-class woman, Edna is ashamed of her physical size even as she seems to hide inside it, as if seeking protection from the noise and indignity of the world outside. It is Tracy who pulls her out of her shell, and without entirely letting go of Edna’s timidity, Travolta explores the exhibitionistic and sensual sides of her personality.
Walken’s gallantry in the role of Edna’s devoted husband, Wilbur, is unforced and disarmingly sincere, and their duet, “(You’re) Timeless to Me,” is one of the film’s musical high points. Another is “Without Love,” in which the two young couples express their yearning with the help of some ingenious and amusing special effects.
There are, to be sure, less thrilling moments, and stretches in which the pacing falters. But the overall mood of “Hairspray” is so joyful, so full of unforced enthusiasm, that only the most ferocious cynic could resist it. It imagines a world where no one is an outsider and no one is a square, and invites everyone in. How can you refuse?

TITLE: Donaghy Pleads Guilty
AUTHOR: By Robin Shulman and William Branigin
PUBLISHER: The Washington Post
TEXT: NEW YORK — Tim Donaghy, the former NBA referee at the center of a betting scandal that has rocked professional basketball, pleaded guilty Wednesday to two federal conspiracy charges, acknowledging that he used inside information to predict the winners of NBA games and passed on his picks to a professional gambler in return for cash.
Donaghy, 40, who refereed NBA games for 13 years before resigning last month, faces up to 25 years in prison and a $500,000 fine when he is sentenced Nov. 9. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud as part of a scheme to defraud the NBA and conspiracy to transmit wagering information across state lines. The first charge carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison and the second could bring up to five years. Donaghy, who grew up in Pennsylvania and now lives in Florida, was released on $250,000 bond. He has surrendered his passport, his attorney said. In addition to the fine, Donaghy is liable for at least $30,000 in restitution.
“I was in a unique position to predict the outcome of NBA games,” Donaghy told U.S. District Judge Carol Bagley Amon. “Some of my picks included games I had been assigned to referee.” He said he had “received cash payments for successful picks,” but he did not mention specific amounts in court.
Speaking softly as he addressed the court, Donaghy said he has a “gambling addiction.” He said he is seeing a psychiatrist and is taking medication for depression and anxiety.
Donaghy told the court that between December 2006 and April 2007, he used “nonpublic information” to pick the winners of particular NBA games and to “cover the point spreads set by professional bookmakers.” Others would then use his picks to place bets, he said.
He admitted making phone calls around the country to communicate his picks, often using “a coded language.” If a pick did not pan out, he would not be paid and “would not lose any money,” he said.
Although prosecutors said Donaghy admitted betting on games himself, the plea agreement did not include that particular charge.
Reading the charges against Donaghy, Amon said the referee had “unique access” and possessed inside information, such as which crews would officiate games, the physical condition of certain players and the interactions of certain referees, players and team personnel. 
The judge said Donaghy concealed the scheme from the NBA and other referees.
Also charged in the case are two alleged co-conspirators: James Battista, 42, and Thomas Martino, 41. They were arraigned in federal court Wednesday afternoon and released on $250,000 bond each. If convicted, both face up to 20 years in prison, officials said.
According to a criminal complaint unsealed Wednesday morning, Battista, also known as “Baba” and “Sheep,” is a professional gambler, and Martino is a high school friend whose house Battista used to conduct his gambling business.
Battista appeared in court Wednesday wearing shorts, a polo shirt and running shoes. Neither he nor Martino immediately entered a plea.
Donaghy’s attorney, John Lauro, told reporters after his client’s guilty plea: “He’s had a severe gambling problem for a while. It went untreated.” He said Donaghy’s gambling problem now “is getting addressed.” Donaghy has “a great deal of remorse” about the pain he has caused his family, friends and co-workers, Lauro said.
Asked if his client’s actions were the result of his gambling addiction, Lauro said, “In my mind, absolutely.”
In a brief statement posted on the NBA’s Web site Wednesday, Commissioner David Stern said, “We will continue with our ongoing and thorough review of the league’s officiating program to ensure that the best possible policies and procedures are in place to protect the integrity of our game.”
Washington Wizards guard Gilbert Arenas said Wednesday he studies referees’ tendencies “the way some people study the players.” He said nothing stood out about Donaghy, who called seven Wizards games last season, all during the regular season.
Arenas did, however, express concern about the league’s image. “At the end of the day, I hope fans understand that this is one person,” Arenas said. “I don’t want people thinking that all of the refs are cheating, just like I don’t want them thinking that because one player gets in trouble, all players are getting into trouble.”
After Donaghy resigned July 9 while under FBI investigation, Stern called him a “rogue, isolated criminal” and said he believed no other players or officials were involved. Stern said he felt “betrayed” by Donaghy.
The FBI first contacted the NBA June 20 to discuss allegations that a referee was gambling on games — charges that reportedly surfaced in a separate investigation of organized crime activities. Stern said he would have fired Donaghy before his July 9 resignation but that he was told not to because it might affect the investigation.
According to U.S. Attorney Roslynn R. Mauskopf, Donaghy began placing bets on NBA games four years ago, including games he officiated.
Among the “overt acts” cited in a federal charging document was a meeting between Donaghy and a co-conspirator in Toronto on or about March 11, 2007, at which the referee “received a cash payment.”
The document did not specify any amounts that Donaghy received, but a separate FBI affidavit in support of arrest warrants for Battista and Martino said Donaghy — identified only as a “confidential source of information” — initially received $2,000 for each correct pick and several weeks later began getting $5,000 for each game picked correctly.

TITLE: Reds Close in On Group Stage
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON — Andriy Voronin scored two minutes before halftime and five-time winner Liverpool won 1-0 at Toulouse on Wednesday to move a step closer to the lucrative group stage of the Champions League.
Voronin fired a rising shot from 20 meters after collecting a headed pass from Peter Crouch in the 43rd minute at the Municipal Stadium. The victory gives last season’s runner-up an edge when it hosts Toulouse in the second leg at Anfield in two weeks for a place among the last 32.
“Andriy scored a wonderful goal. It summed up his qualities as a very fine striker,” said manager Rafa Benitez, who led Liverpool to a Champions League triumph in 2005 and last season’s final where it lost to AC Milan.
“But we must not think this tie is over. We did a very professional job in a match played in difficult conditions. It was so hot for the players and we were having to give them water continually.”
On a good night for English clubs, goals in the last 18 minutes by Cesc Fabregas (72nd) and Alexander Hleb (90th) gave 2006 finalist Arsenal a 2-0 victory at Sparta Prague.
 David Kalivoda’s 76th-minute penalty gave Slavia Prague a 1-0 victory at four-time European champion Ajax. Sevilla, which has won the last two UEFA Cups, cruised to a 2-0 victory over AEK Athens with second-half goals by Luis Fabiano (48) and Frederic Kanoute (68).
Werder Bremen overcame a first-half deficit to beat Dinamo Zagreb 2-1 at home. Bosko Balaban gave Zagreb the lead two minutes before halftime but second-half substitutes Hugo Almeida and Daniel Jensen rallied the German side.
“We had to change something in the second half and the early goal did us a load of good. We played much better after the break,” said Werder coach Thomas Schaaf, whose team has been hit by a series of injuries to key players.
Gennady Bliznuk scored a last-minute equalizer for Belarussian club BATE for a 2-2 draw at home against 1986 European Cup winner Steaua Bucharest.
Paul Hartley’s 21st-minute strike gave Scottish champion Celtic the lead at Spartak Moscow but Roman Pavluchenko equalized in the 42nd.
In Wednesday’s other games, it was Fenerbahce 1, Anderlecht 0; Salzburg 1, Shakhtar Donetsk 0; Sarajevo 0, Dynamo Kiev 1; FC Zurich 1, Besiktas 1; and Tampere United 0, Rosenberg 3.
In Tuesday’s games, Valencia outplayed Sweden’s Elfsborg 3-0, Rangers edged Red Star Belgrade 1-0, two-time champion Benfica beat FC Copenhagen 2-1 and Lazio drew 1-1 with Dinamo Bucharest in Rome despite having two men sent off.

TITLE: Orioles Stave Off Rallying Yankees
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: NEW YORK — The Baltimore Orioles scored three runs in the top of the 10th inning, after blowing a 3-0 lead in the ninth, to overcome a stubborn New York Yankees 6-3 on Wednesday.
Miguel Tejada’s run-scoring double drove in the go-ahead run in the first extra inning and Aubrey Huff followed with a two-run homer off Mariano Rivera to give the Orioles their second straight win over the Yankees following Tuesday’s 12-0 rout.
In the top of the ninth, Baltimore was one out away from handing the Yankees their second straight shutout loss at home, which would have been the first time New York was held scoreless in consecutive home games since 2000.
However, Shelley Duncan’s three-run homer in the bottom of the ninth tied the game, setting the stage for extra innings.
Rivera (3-4) allowed back-to-back doubles by Nick Markakis and Tejada to open the 10th and one out later, surrendered Huff’s shot to right-center field.
Huff also had a grand slam in Baltimore’s 12-0 win on Tuesday.
“It hurts,” Rivera told reporters. “The team is giving me the opportunity to pitch. They need me to be able to hold them and come back and score.
“I wasn’t able to do that. It’s bad.”
Despite the loss, the Yankees remained within five games of first place Boston in the AL East, as the Red Sox lost 6-5 at home to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.
Duncan’s sixth home run of the season delighted the 53,363 fans on hand, as the rookie was called back onto the field to take a bow. The homer also spoiled a tremendous performance from Baltimore starter Erik Bedard.
Bedard went seven shutout innings, allowing just four hits with eight strikeouts and two walks but he did not get the win after the third reliever to replace him, Jamie Walker, allowed the homer to Duncan.
“Hey, that’s life,” Bedard said. “You can’t win them all.
“The basic thing is we came back and won the game. That’s all that counts.”
Chad Bradford (2-5) then came on to get the last four outs and record the victory, allowing just one hit with two strikeouts.
Alex Rodriguez went 4-for-4 with a walk in a losing cause for New York.

n The Tampa Bay Devil Rays took a 6-0 lead off Daisuke Matsuzaka after six innings and then had to hang on for a 6-5 win over the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park.
Carlos Pena drove in three runs for Tampa Bay.

n The Cleveland Indians moved back into a tie for first place in the AL Central with the Detroit Tigers by beating their rivals for top spot 5-2, splitting their two-game series.

n Torii Hunter drove in five runs and hit a grand slam in the ninth inning, lifting the Minnesota Twins past the Seattle Mariners 6-1.

TITLE: Beckham Scores, Sends LA Galaxy into Final
AUTHOR: By Grant Clark and Dan Bollerman
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: CARSON, California — David Beckham scored his first goal for the Los Angeles Galaxy in his opening start to help the Major League Soccer team reach the SuperLiga final. 
Beckham, curbed by an ankle injury since joining last month, hit a trademark free kick to put the Galaxy on course for a 2-0 semifinal victory over D.C. United last night at the Home Depot Center in Carson, California. He followed up with his first assist as Landon Donovan scored to seal a place in the Aug. 29 final against Mexico’s CF Pachuca. 
32-year-old Beckham received a standing ovation from the crowd of 17,223 when he left the field in the 63rd minute, with the Galaxy on course for a third win in eight games. Beckham is the highest-profile U.S. soccer signing since Pele joined the New York Cosmos in 1975 and has said his aim is to lift the sport to a “different level.’’ 
“It was nice to get the early goal,’’ Beckham said in an interview with match broadcaster Telefutura. “But tonight was not just about my goal and Landon’s goal. It was a team performance that was exceptional, we worked hard as a team and played hard as a team and we won as a team.’’ 
Beckham was mobbed by teammates after beating goalkeeper Troy Perkins with his curling 27-yard free kick into the top left corner of the net. It was the team’s first goal in four games. His pass from the center circle two minutes after halftime rolled into the path of Donovan and the U.S. forward ran on to shoot low past Perkins. 
Beckham, captaining the team, received a yellow card in the 18th minute for a foul on Jaime Moreno. He forced a diving save from Perkins with another free kick in the second half before being replaced by Peter Vagenas. 
Before yesterday, Beckham had been limited by the injury to about 35 minutes of action in two games, sparking impatience from some supporters. Banners including “Bench it Like Beckham’’ and “David, welcome to America, where people like you get paid to do nothing,’’ were displayed at Galaxy games.  “I’ve always said that everybody has to be patient,’’ added Beckham. “I had to let nature take its course with my ankle. It’s an injury and there wasn’t much I could do about that.’’ 
The former England national team captain signed with the Galaxy in January before officially joining in July. He injured his left ankle playing for England on June 6 and aggravated it in his final game with Real Madrid almost two weeks later. 
Beckham made his Galaxy debut July 21 by playing 15 minutes of an exhibition game against English team Chelsea. After missing four more games, he made his first MLS appearance as a second- half substitute against D.C. United in front of 46,686 fans on Aug. 9. The Galaxy is second-to-last in the MLS Western Conference standings with just three wins in 15 games. 
The SuperLiga is an eight-team club competition between Mexican and MLS teams. The Galaxy beat Pachuca 2-1 in an earlier round and will host the SuperLiga final. 
Beckham signed a five-year contract that will pay him an MLS-record base salary of $5.5 million annually and may be worth as much as $250 million with endorsements and profit-sharing clauses.

TITLE: Mixed Fortunes for United, City
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON — Sven-Goran Eriksson won his second in as many games at Manchester City on Wednesday while neighbor United had Cristiano Ronaldo sent off for an apparent headbutt in a 1-1 draw at Portsmouth.
Chelsea rallied to win 2-1 at Reading to also move into a tie at the top of the English Premier League. Former England coach Eriksson guided Man City to a 1-0 victory over promoted Derby, four days after opening with a 2-0 victory at West Ham.
Michael Johnson, a 19-year product of the youth team, scored with a curling shot for the only goal of the game two minutes before halftime for City’s first Premier League goal at home in 780 minutes of play.
“It’s a long way to go yet. We have to keep out feet on the ground,” Eriksson said. “Six points after two games, two clean sheets, it’s very good. It couldn’t be better and I’m quite sure that in the future we’ll play better football as well.”
The two victories give City six points and tied it atop the table with Chelsea and Everton. Everton won 3-1 at Tottenham on Tuesday and — although tied on goal difference — leads by having scored more goals. Chelsea trails the lead pair on goal difference.
Chelsea fell behind against Reading when goalkeeper Petr Cech missed an attempted punch, and Andre Bikey capitalized for the Royals in the 30th minute.
But Frank Lampard and Didier Drogba rallied the Blues with two goals in three minutes early in the second half. Reading finished with 10 men after Kalifa Cisse was ejected midway through the second half with his second yellow card.
Manchester United looked in control at Fratton Park when Paul Scholes scored his first goal in 13 games in the 15th minute after a layoff by Carlos Tevez, who was making his debut.
But Benjani Mwaruwari’s 53rd-minute header equalized for Pompey and the game flared up near the end. After Sulley Muntari was sent off for his second yellow card, he was soon followed by Ronaldo for what appeared to be a headbutt on Pompey’s Richard Hughes.
“My take is that he was provoked. He’s fallen into the trap and he’s paid the penalty for it,” United manager Alex Ferguson said.
“He was surprised at the decision. But (referee) Steve Bennett has sent him off before, and I think he took great delight in sending him off too. So it was a missed opportunity of staying on the pitch and winning the game against 10 men.”
In Wednesday’s other games, Birmingham and Sunderland drew 2-2, Fulham edged Bolton 2-1 and Wigan won 1-0 over Middlesbrough.

TITLE: Montgomery Record In Springboks’ Win
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: CAPE TOWN — Fullback Percy Montgomery scored a South African test record of 35 points as the Springboks romped to a 105-13 win over Namibia in a World Cup warm-up match at Newlands on Wednesday.
A suspected rib injury to Jean de Villiers which forced him off the field five minutes from time was the only thing to mar the game for South Africa, however coach Jake White was confident the center would be fit for next month’s World Cup.
“He got a bit of a bump, and best case scenario it’s a bruise and worst case scenario I think he’ll still be all right to play at the World Cup,” White told reporters.
“It could have been a lot worse like losing a player to torn ligaments in the knee. But I think we got through this test without any serious injuries.”
Montgomery, playing his last test in South Africa, surpassed the previous points record of 34, scored by Jannie de Beer against England in the 1999 World Cup quarter-final in Paris.
He scored a try, kicked 12 conversions and added two penalties to take his career test tally to 756.
Flanks Juan Smith and Schalk Burger both scored a hat-trick of tries as the home team ran in 15. Eleven different players scored tries for the Springboks as they surpassed a 100 points in a test for the third time in their 101-year history.
South Africa lost skipper John Smit to a strained hamstring a few hours before kickoff so Gary Botha came in as hooker and lock Victor Matfield was given the captain’s armband.
The Springboks simply overpowered their southern African rivals after Namibia scored the opening try of the match from a 65-metre intercept by wing Bradley Langenhoven.
The try of the match came when Montgomery called for a mark under pressure. He took a quick tap and freed center Jean de Villiers, who swapped passes with Pietersen, before putting in a well-weighted cross kick for fellow center Jaque Fourie to run on to.

TITLE: Thorpe Hopes to Banish Doubters
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MELBOURNE — Five-time Olympic swimming champion Ian Thorpe has provided Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority (ASADA) with evidence this week in a bid to clear his name after an alleged doping offence in 2006.
The 24-year-old hopes the evidence and medical records will explain the abnormal levels of testosterone and epitestosterone found in a urine sample given in May last year.
Thorpe, who retired from competitive swimming last November, returned to the headlines during the world championships in Melbourne in March when a French newspaper leaked details of the positive urine test.
The test showed traces of banned substances but when ASADA did not press ahead with the case, reportedly because it believed the substances to be naturally occurring, the sport’s governing body FINA appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport to reopen the matter.
“ASADA can confirm... it received the full and final submissions from Ian Thorpe into the matter of his unusual testosterone, epitestosterone and luteinizing hormone levels,” the agency said in a statement on Thursday.
“This material will now be examined by ASADA and a determination made as to the way forward. For operating reasons ASADA cannot go into any more detail.”

TITLE: Blades to Sue West Ham
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Sheffield United will sue West Ham United for the cost of relegation from the Premier League last season, a club spokesman said on Thursday.
“We are seeking substantial compensation,” he added, with the Yorkshire club estimating the cost of relegation to be more than 30 million pounds.
The spokesman said their legal representative Toby Craig had confirmed the action in a statement made public on Thursday.
Sheffield United claim West Ham gained an unfair advantage because Argentina forward Carlos Tevez, whose form in the second half of last season was inspirational and helped save the East London team from going down, was not eligible to play for them.
The Yorkshire club said West Ham should have had points deducted for breaking the league’s transfer regulations, but their legal moves to force this to happen have not succeeded.

TITLE: Russia Tops Gold Count at University Games
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BANGKOK, Thailand — With five days of competition left at the World University Games, the 151 golds presented so far were won by 51 countries of the 150 competing in Bangkok. Nearly a quarter of those were won by leading Russia and second-place China, while the top seven countries, down as far as the United States in seventh, had won more than 100 golds.
With those countries responsible for such a high number of the wins, many are looking for their first gold of the games. Those without a gold so far include France, Spain, Brazil, Croatia, Ireland, Israel, Mexico, Greece and the Netherlands. It’s also tough work trying to win a medal of any type — the 471 medals presented through early Wednesday were won by 62 countries, leaving athletes from nearly another 90 without anything to hang around their necks.
Britain’s sole gold was harder to come by than most. Simeon Williamson won the 100-meter sprint and the gold — or so he thought — on Saturday night at the National Stadium track. 
But after China and the Ukraine complained that Williamson’s time out of the blocks was quicker than technically allowed, officials ordered the race re-run. Williamson won the 100 a second time nearly 24 hours later, and got his gold back. Thailand’s Janejira Srisongkram used her favorite competition — the double trap — to win a gold medal for the host country in World University Games shooting, but she did it with sleepy eyes.
“I did not feel under pressure although I woke up at 4:30 a.m.,” said Janejira, a 22-year-old senior at Assumption University in Abac.
Janejira won’t splurge with the 1 million baht (US$32,000) she receives from the Thai government for winning a gold at these games.
“I have never got such huge prize money,” she said. “I will save the money to be used for my shooting career.”