SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1302 (68), Friday, August 31, 2007
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TITLE: Tycoon’s Lawyers Battling Warrant
AUTHOR: By Evgenia Ivanova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: As many Russian TV channels compete by dumbing down St. Petersburg-based Channel 5 says it plans to differentiate itself by going upmarket.
“In Petersburg we have always preferred rock ‘n’ roll to bubblegum music and football to a mud fight,” Alexandra Matveyeva, the Channel’s chief producer said explaining the principle behind the format of Channel 5’s new season, which begins Monday.
Although Russian TV market is saturated, there’s still a large unmet demand for programs “about real people,” Channel 5’s director, Marina Fokina, said at a new conference this week to promote the new schedule.
“We [in Russia have] already learnt to create TV content as good as anything produced abroad, but there’s a large demand for programs showing what is happening in our own country and that has not yet been satisfied at all,” Fokina said. 
“Today, channels that have built their content around the so-called pseudo-life of people from Rublyovka [a Moscow district for Russia’s nouveau riche] and criminal showdowns, now understand that this has to be changed,” she said. 
“They have now realized that chasing the ratings and working to satisfy the needs of such an audience will lead to depreciation of general human values and re-enforcement of criminal mentality, but they cannot risk their huge advertising budgets to allow themselves to experiment.”
She said Channel 5, which has been broadcast nationwide since October last year, continues to experiment. 
The anchor discussion program “Bolshaya Strana” (“Big Country”), and  “Energichnye Ludi” (“Energetic People”) will remain part of the schedule but films for “thinking viewers,” as the channel’s head of development Igor Syrtsov put it, a drama series adapted from “Tears of Life,” a Romanian soap opera and regional news are all part of the new line-up. 
“The appearance of regional news will create healthy competition,” Anton Gubankov, the head of the St. Petersburg-based news service of Rossiya channel told Delovoi Peterburg. 
As a result, his channel plans to increase the number of its “Vesti-Peterburg” news programs, Gubankov said.
Viktor Mashendzhinov, a former head of the St. Petersburg office for STS Television, was quoted by Delovoi Peterburg on Wednesday as saying that although “the Fiver has recently become interesting and attractive, it misses a sort of ‘prime-time core’ that makes people to turn the TV on at this particular time.”
Although some experts think that the channel lacks well-defined programming, Channel 5 says it has successfully earned money and attracted a younger audience while remaining intellectual. 
“The result of our first year of being on air [throughout Russia] has confirmed that we are on the right track. The number of our viewers… has been rapidly increasing,” she said.

TITLE: Tycoon’s Lawyers Battling Warrant
AUTHOR: By Miriam Elder
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Lawyers for wanted billionaire Mikhail Gutseriyev on Wednesday challenged a warrant for his arrest, as the fate of the country’s seventh-largest oil company and its former chief remained unclear.
Gutseriyev’s lawyers appealed the arrest warrant, issued Tuesday by Moscow’s Tverskoi District Court, and a hearing was set for Sept. 5, a court spokeswoman said, declining to give her name in line with policy.
Russian newspapers speculated that Gutseriyev, who founded and led oil firm Russneft until late July, was hiding in Baku or London to avoid facing charges of illegal entrepreneurship and tax evasion.
In a letter to Russneft employees last month, Gutseriyev accused tax and law enforcement authorities of pressuring him to step down as CEO of the company. Gutseriyev was believed to have reached a deal to sell to Kremlin-friendly oligarch Oleg Deripaska, but analysts said the renewed legal campaign threw the pact into doubt.
British officials declined to comment on Gutseriyev’s whereabouts. “We don’t give details on individual visa applications,” said James Barbour, spokesman for the British Embassy in Moscow.
Spokespeople for Scotland Yard in London said their extradition unit had “no knowledge” of the case.
Repeated calls to the Azeri Interior Ministry went unanswered Wednesday.
Gutseriyev’s flight prompted comparisons with the legal onslaught against Yukos and its former managers, many of whom fled abroad as tax authorities piled on billions of dollars of back tax charges against the firm.
“This is reminiscent of the attack on Yukos, though that was harsher. It had a more personal and political character,” Alexander Temerko, a former Yukos vice president, said Wednesday by telephone from London. “But the result will be the same.”
Former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky is currently serving an eight-year prison sentence on charges of fraud and tax evasion. He was arrested in October 2003, as he was reported to be on the verge of selling a stake in Yukos to a U.S. oil firm and funding opposition parties ahead of the December 2003 State Duma elections.
Khodorkovsky repeatedly turned down suggestions that he flee Russia, many who know him say.
Two sources close to Gutseriyev told Vedomosti that the former Russneft president, an ethnic Ingush whose family home is in North Ossetia, had fled to Baku.
Yet Kommersant said the former oil chief had already left the Azeri capital for London.
Azerbaijan maintains an extradition treaty with Russia, and spokespeople for the Azeri Interior Ministry said the country would be ready to hand over Gutseriyev if he were found in the country, Interfax reported.
Ingush President Murat Zyazikov indicated to reporters in Moscow on Wednesday that Gutseriyev failed to attend the funeral of his son, Chingiskhan Gutseriyev, last week in North Ossetia.
“I went to the funeral and I saw his brother there — the first, the second — presenting their condolences, and I have no further details,” Zyazikov said, Interfax reported. Gutseriyev has two brothers — Khamzat, who ran for president of the republic in 2002, and Said-Salam, who is a Duma deputy.
Chingiskhan Gutseriyev, 21, was buried in the family plot in North Ossetia last week after reportedly dying from injuries sustained in a car crash in Moscow on Aug. 22.
Mikhail Gutseriyev stands accused of evading taxes and exceeding production quotas at Russneft, which produces about 300,000 barrels of oil per day.
A Moscow arbitration court on Wednesday postponed until Oct. 3 a hearing on two lawsuits brought by the Federal Tax Service over invalid share transactions. The service has brought a total of eight lawsuits against 11 companies that are or have been shareholders in the company.
A court froze Russneft’s shares on July 31, blocking Gutseriyev’s ability to sell or transfer his stake of about 70 percent and throwing a wrench into Deripaska’s plans to buy the firm.
Deripaska’s holding company, Basic Element, insists it is still interested in acquiring Russneft, but analysts said confusion over whether he had already bought it pointed to Kremlin infighting over who would scoop up the asset.
“At the big-picture level, we can see that the state is extending control over an important asset, either directly or with friendly hands,” said Chris Weafer, chief strategist at UralSib. “But which mechanisms it is using and what to expect next is where we have no idea,” he said. “People are lobbying for their interests around the Cabinet table.”
Vedomosti and Kommersant reported Wednesday that the deal with Deripaska, a $9 billion transaction that would leave Gutseriyev with a personal payout of $3 billion to $3.5 billion, had been sealed.
Gutseriyev is already worth some $2.9 billion, according to Forbes.
Vedomosti also reported that the deal would leave Glencore, a Swiss-based commodity trader, with a 25 percent stake in Russneft. Glencore declined to comment Wednesday.
Glencore was owed $2.8 billion by Russneft and already has links to Deripaska, having merged its alumina assets with Deripaska’s Russian Aluminum to help create United Company RusAl, the world’s largest primary aluminum producer.
The Federal Anti-Monopoly Service insists it has yet to receive a request from Basic Element to approve the bid for Russneft.
“It seems as if there is a disagreement at the most senior levels as to how this should play out,” Weafer said.

TITLE: Suspect In Train Bomb Points To  ‘Solid Alibi’
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Despite a hunger strike that lasted for two weeks and ended Wednesday, St. Petersburg anarchist Andrei Kalenov, who has been held in custody in connection with the bombing of a St. Petersburg-bound passenger train, has not been able to convince the Novgorod region court to replace detention with a written undertaking not to leave the region, according to Kalenov’s lawyer Renat Gusmanov.
“We might consider an appeal on the verdict, but we also hope that the investigation will speed up the checks,” Gusmanov told reporters Thursday. “Kalenov is innocent and has a water-tight alibi.”
The train, the Nevsky Express, crashed near Burga village in the Novgorod region on August 13. The investigators believe a bomb had been planted under the tracks. The accident left sixty passengers injured.
The blast left a crater 1.5 meters wide and had a force equivalent to 4.5 kilograms of TNT, Adolf Mishuyev, head of the Explosion Stability Technical Center at Moscow State Civil Engineering University, said shortly after the incident.
Andrei Kalenov, 29,  and Denis Zelenyuk, 22, both activists of the St. Petersburg League of Anarchists, were detained around 7 a.m. on Aug. 15 while walking through the wooded area close to the scene of the crash. 
Andrei Kalenov began a hunger strike on Aug. 16 while in custody in Malaya Vishera, in protest against his detention. After the acute deterioration of his health, he ended the protest. 
Kalenov is a member of the human rights center Memorial. One of the organization’s leaders, prominent human rights advocate Yuly Rybakov, defended the activist and testified that during the entire week prior to the arrest Kalenov had spent all his time in the Memorial offices in St. Petersburg.
“We do not understand the grounds for keeping Kalenov behind bars,” Rybakov said. “He was so busy — and our staff is ready to provide evidence [of this] — that it would have been physically impossible for him to plot and prepare a train crash. Memorial sent an appeal to the General Prosecutor’s office clarifying these details.”
Rybakov described Kalenov as a “quiet, timid and agreeable person, who had health problems and never demonstrated an inclination toward or interest in violence.” 
Kalenov was recently hospitalized and treated for tick-borne encephalitis.
At the time of their detention, the men were wearing Arab scarves and military-style outfits, which the police found suspicious, Fontanka.ru reported.
According to the Fontanka.ru report, during interrogation, the men said they were traveling to the town of Yaroslavl to attend an anarchist conference and had planned to change trains in Malaya Vishera, but then decided to head for the St. Petersburg-Moscow highway.
Kalenov’s plight inspired State Duma Deputy Viktor Tyulkin to send a parliamentary request to the General Prosecutor’s Office, asking that Kalenov and fellow anarchist Denis Zelenyuk be released from custody.
“Considering the serious dangers to the health of the detainees, I am submitting an urgent request for the release of Kalenov and Zelenyuk as soon as possible and an investigation into any alleged illegitimate actions carried out by the police against the young men,” reads Tyulkin’s parliamentary inquiry.
In the meantime, the Novgorod branch of the Federal Security Bureau (FSB) issued an appeal to any residents of the Burga, Krasnenka, Syuiska, Krasnoye, Dora and Ustinsky Most villages who may have seen a silver VAS-2115 car in the area surrounding the site of the derailing on Aug. 13, to help in the collection of evidence for the investigation. The FSB also requested that passengers who took the 5.15 a.m. train from Malaya Vishera to St. Petersburg on Aug. 14 and traveled in carriage No. 4 should get in contact.
The incident cost Russian Railways more than 215 million rubles ($8.37 million), including 16 million rubles  to restore the tracks, 82 million rubles to repair seven carriages, with five carriages being replaced entirely, and 5 million rubles to cover expenses related to train delays and the re-issuing of tickets, Interfax reported.

TITLE: France Next for Berezovsky Trail
AUTHOR: By David Nowak
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Investigators will travel to France in the coming days to give evidence to French prosecutors in a money-laundering case against London-based tycoon Boris Berezovsky, the Prosecutor General’s Office said Wednesday.
Berezovsky, who was the focus of a new attack Wednesday from Andrei Lugovoi, Britain’s chief suspect in the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, once again denied the charges.
“An investigative brigade will fly to Paris in the near future,” said Dmitry Dovgy, an assistant to Alexander Bastyrkin, head of the newly formed Investigative Committee, which conducts the Prosecutor General’s Office detective work.
The trip is unlikely to happen before Sept. 7, the day the Investigative Committee officially starts work Dovgy said.
A message left with the French Justice Ministry was not answered Wednesday.
In the case, Berezovsky is accused of using stolen money to acquire a villa in southern France in 1997. French authorities have seized the property at Russian prosecutors’ request.
Last week, a Dutch tax delegation met members of the Investigative Committee in Moscow in connection with criminal proceedings recently opened against Berezovsky in the Netherlands, Dovgy said.
The Dutch Finance Ministry did not immediately respond to e-mailed requests for confirmation of the visit by tax authorities and for more information.
Last month, prosecutors moved to charge Berezovsky with stealing $13 million from SBS-Agro, a banking giant that went bankrupt in the 1998 crisis.
Berezovsky said Wednesday that he had never dealt with the bank and that his lawyers had not been contacted about the issue. He also said he had no business dealings in the Netherlands.
Moscow’s Savyolovsky District Court is currently trying Berezovsky in absentia on charges of embezzling millions of dollars from Aeroflot.
He is also wanted in Brazil, where he is accused of laundering money through the Corinthians football team.
He lives in London, where he has received political asylum. Prosecutors have unsuccessfully sought his extradition.
Britain, in turn, has asked the prosecutors to hand over Lugovoi, who it believes killed Litvinenko in November. Lugovoi and Litvinenko, a former FSB officer and Kremlin critic, met at the Millennium Hotel bar in London on Nov. 1. Three weeks later, Litvinenko died of radiation poisoning.
In a video linkup with British journalists in London on Wednesday, Lugovoi said he would agree to be tried, but only in Russia. “Why has Britain failed to send proof of my guilt?” Lugovoi said in Ekho Moskvy radio’s offices.
“The criminals and fraudsters hiding behind the so-called wall of British justice were able to use this whole provocation to discredit everything that is happening in Russia,” Lugovoi said, referring to Berezovsky.
Also at the news conference was Lugovoi’s associate Dmitry Kovtun, a businessman who also met Litvinenko several times before he died.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>Toy Gun Bandit<b\>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A 27-year-old schoolteacher brandishing a toy pistol robbed a stationery store in St. Petersburg, Gazeta.ru reported Tuesday, citing the city’s police.
The teacher, whose name was not released, took 2,000 rubles ($80) from a salesman and another 600 rubles ($23) from the store’s administrator while threatening them with the toy. 
Police, alerted by store personnel, apprehended the man not far from the store.

<b>New Ice Rink<b\>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) – A new ice rink is due to open on Saturday at the Varshavsky Express Shopping Mall on the Obvodny Canal.
Olympic figure skater Alexei Yagudin will lead the opening ceremony with performances of some of his most popular routines, and leading St. Petersburg DJs including Oleg Pak will be play at the event. 
Yagudin was born in St. Petersburg in 1980, and began skating aged four; he won a gold medal at the 2002 Olympic Games, and is a four-time world champion. Yagudin, who retired in 2003 due to a congenital hip disorder, underwent surgery in July this year to have a titanium hip joint implanted. He intends to begin competing again soon, providing he recovers well from the operation. 
Skating competitions, professional figure-skating performances and DJ sets begin at 2 p.m with Yagudin appearing at 7 p.m.

<b>Composing Contest<b\>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The Andrei Petrov Composers' Competition is due to be held in the Grand Philharmonic Hall next week, Interfax.ru reported.
Petrov, who was born in St. Petersburg, then known as Leningrad, in 1930 and who died in February 2006, was a popular composer of symphonies and romantic music. 
The symphony final is due to be held on the anniversary of Petrov's birth, Sept. 2, with the Popular Music and Romantic Music finals held on Sept. 9. There are six symphonies and 16 other pieces in contention for medals and cash prizes.

TITLE: 2 Suspects in Killing Of Journalist Case Release
AUTHOR: By Bagila Bukharbayeva
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Prosecutors released two suspects in the contract-style killing of investigative journalist and Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya, Russian news agencies reported Thursday, and a third is no longer linked to the case.
The chief prosecutor’s announcement Monday of the arrests of 10 suspects was met with skepticism from media watchdogs and editors at Politkovskaya’s newspaper. The decline in the pool of suspects since then is likely to reinforce doubts about the prosecutors’ case.
Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika said the Oct. 7 shooting was organized by a Chechen criminal group in Moscow that specialized in contract killings, and that among the suspects were five law enforcement officers, accused of tracking Politkovskaya and providing her killers with information.
Their arrests were a rare confirmation of long-standing allegations of collusion between police officers and members of organized crime groups in Moscow.
But two police officers have since been released, news agencies reported Thursday, citing sources close to the investigation. The Prosecutor General’s Office refused to comment on the reports.
A Federal Security Service officer who had been named as among the suspects was still being held, but his arrest was “in no way” connected to Politkovskaya’s killing, Moscow military court spokesman Alexander Minchanovsky said Thursday. The court had approved the arrest of Lt. Col. Pavel Ryaguzov on Friday.
A fourth suspect, a former police major, could not have been involved in the killing because he had been in prison from 2004 until December 2006, the Kommersant newspaper reported Thursday. Politkovskaya’s persistent reporting of atrocities against civilians in war-scarred Chechnya had angered the Kremlin and the Kremlin-backed Chechen leadership, but won her admiration in her homeland and international acclaim.
A rally in her memory was to be held in the center of Moscow later Thursday, which would have been Politkovskaya’s 49th birthday.
Chaika said Monday that the journalist’s killing had been ordered by someone living outside the country with the aim of discrediting President Vladimir Putin and destabilizing Russia. His remarks were interpreted as a reference to Boris Berezovsky, a former Kremlin insider who lives in London and is one of Putin’s fiercest critics.
But much speculation on who ordered the contract-style killing has focused on Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, who was prime minister of the southern Russian republic when she was killed and became its president in March. He has denied involvement. Politkovskaya had been a consistent critic of Kadyrov, accusing his security forces of kidnapping and torturing civilians.

TITLE: TV Crew Detained for Planting Fake Bomb
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Guards at a railway in the Sverdlovsk region detained a television crew Wednesday after the journalists planted a fake bomb on the tracks while filming an episode on terrorism for a news program.
The three-person crew planted several pieces of soap wired to a pager on the tracks at the bridge over the Iset River in central Russia. A passerby spotted this and alerted the guards, Interfax reported. The guards contacted the Sverdlovsk Railways traffic controllers to stop one cargo and two passenger trains before deploying the guards to the bridge to detain what they thought was a terrorist group.
The crew was released after producing their press identification cards.

TITLE: Mitrofanov Quits LDPR
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The No. 2 man in the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party, flamboyant State Duma Deputy Alexei Mitrofanov, announced Wednesday that he was switching to the No. 2 pro-Kremlin party, A Just Russia.
“The leaders of the Communists, the LDPR, the Union of Right Forces and Yabloko should all shift to A Just Russia now. Then this conglomeration of disparate people would be able to oppose United Russia,” Mitrofanov told Ekho Moskvy radio, referring to the main pro-presidential party.
Saying that not a single budget amendment or piece of legislation offered by opposition parties had been adopted by the United Russia dominated Duma in the last four years, Mitrofanov called for the rapid creation of a two-party system.
Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov, the leader of A Just Russia, welcomed the move, telling journalists that Mitrofanov would be on his party’s list for December’s Duma elections.

TITLE: SEAT Motors Back Towards Boom
AUTHOR: By Anna Smolchenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Spanish carmaker SEAT on Wednesday announced that it was returning to Russia to cash in on growing car sales, two years after pulling out of the country’s booming automotive market.
SEAT, which had previously declined an offer from its parent company Volkswagen Group to open a network of dealerships in the country, is returning on the back of Poland’s Iberia Motor Company, which has also been selling the Spanish-made cars in Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic states.
“Russia is the most interesting market in Europe and I would even say that for European producers it is the most interesting in the world,” said Arkadiusz Mietkiewicz, vice chairman for Eastern European markets at Iberia Motor.
The Polish company’s Russian subsidiary, Iberia Motor Rus, began operations in April and has signed agreements to sell cars in some 11 towns with a population of 1 million, Mietkiewicz told a news conference during the InterAvto motor show.
“Dealers believe that the cars will sell very well,” he said.
The company plans to open around ten to twelve dealerships by year-end and to grow to 30 dealerships in 2008 and 40 dealerships the year after, he said. It plans to sell at least 2,500 units next year, Mietkiewicz said. Plans for 2009 envision the sale of at least 5,000 units.
SEAT’s decision to pull out of Russia in 2005 raised some eyebrows in the country, where sales of new foreign cars outsold domestic models for the first time last year. In 2006, Russians bought 1 million new foreign cars, both imported and assembled locally, up from 560,000 in 2005, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Analysts said poor brand awareness could have contributed to sluggish sales and the company’s departure. SEAT sold 157 cars in 2003 and only 87 vehicles in 2004, Vremya Novostei newspaper reported.
Internal problems like poor communication within the group were also to blame, said Mietkiewicz, adding that the carmaker was now “prepared to come to Russia.”
The company plans to spend 6 million euros ($8.2 million) on marketing next year, Iberia Motor Rus general director Thomas Dorenwendt said.
“I hope the SEAT brand will gain recognition in the Russian market in two to three years,” Spanish Ambassador Francisco Javier Elorza Cavengt told reporters, noting the importance of the automotive industry for his country’s economy, which generates 5 percent of Spain’s gross domestic product.
SEAT would consider assembling its cars in Russia after it sells 20,000 units in the country, Dorenwendt said.

TITLE: New Rules Limit Foreign Role in Fields
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia’s government completed guidelines for limiting foreign ownership of the country’s biggest oil and natural-gas deposits amid a debate over pending legislation that may not pass until next year.
Fields larger than 70 million metric tons of oil (513 million barrels) or 50 billion cubic meters of gas will be labeled “strategic,’’ meaning they can only be controlled by majority Russian-owned companies, Rinat Gizatulin, a spokesman for the Ministry of Natural Resources, said Thursday by telephone from Moscow.
Gizatulin confirmed comments by Minister Yuri Trutnev in an interview with Russia’s Kommersant newspaper, in which Trutnev said the government had decided which fields to designate as strategic and was still discussing rules for defining Russian ownership. Offshore-registered and publicly traded companies present obstacles to classifying their nationality, he said.      
Trutnev also said the rules probably won’t be passed by the Russian parliament until next year.

TITLE: Shaping New Markets for Bijouterie
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: CIT Finance investment bank will acquire a blocking stake in Pur Pur, a company that retails bijouterie, accessories and cosmetics. The bank hopes this acquisition will help it diversify its portfolio in the booming retail industry.
According to the agreement, CIT Finance will pay $10 million to the owner and manager of Pur Pur, the MARTA Holding, the bank said Tuesday in a statement. The investment will be used to finance the expansion of Pur Pur in the Russian regions.
“We are interested in this project for several reasons. First of all, we expect the Russian market for bijouterie and accessories to grow at approximately 40 percent a year over the next five years. This growth will be sustained thanks to the increasing purchasing power of the population and replacement of unorganized street markets by retail chains,” said Sergei Grechishkin, deputy director of CIT Finance.
“Secondly, the MARTA Holding is experienced in developing and organizing retail on a national level. We are confident that they will be able to realize the aggressive business plan that we have approved,” Grechishkin said.
The Pur Pur retail chain started operating at the end of 2006. The chain sells mid-price bijouterie, accessories and cosmetics.
All the products are distributed under the Pur Pur brand. The company’s products are made by plants in Malaysia, the Philippines, Korea, China, France, Italy and Spain.
Pur Pur currently has 50 stores in 18 Russian regions. By 2009 the company expects to increase this number to over 300 stores.
According to the new strategy approved by CIT Finance, Pur Pur will open single-brand stores of about 50 square meters both in large shopping centers and in separate buildings (street retail).
Yelena Yegorova, general director of Pur Pur retail chain, said that with investment from CIT Finance Pur Pur could occupy 11.5 percent of the Russian market for bijouterie and accessories and enter the markets of Kazakhstan and Ukraine sometime over the next two to three years.
“The aim of the first stage of the project is to occupy over 25 percent of the market in cities with a population of over one million. The second stage will involve opening stores in cities with a population of about 450,000 people,” Yegorova said.
In July this year the State Statistics Service reported average per capita income in Russia of 12,378 rubles ($481.5) a month — a 22.8 percent increase compared to July 2006. Real per capita income increased by 15.5 percent.
Higher incomes are stimulating spending on non-food products. According to a report issued by Express-Obzor, the bijouterie and accessories market is growing at 30 percent to 40 percent a year.
“The bijouterie market is not yet saturated and the barriers to entering that market are low. Experts forecast that as the bijouterie market develops small companies will merge, and the market will be divided up between several large retail chains,” the report said.
Low price bijouterie is the largest market segment in quantitative terms while middle price bijouterie is the leader in monetary terms (49 percent of the market value), according to Express-Obzor estimations.
MARTA Holding is one of the largest diversified holdings in Russia. The company is owned by Georgy Trefilov (75 percent) and Boris Vasiliev (25 percent).
Besides Pur Pur, the holding owns and operates the Grossmart and Billa retail chains. The company owns online shops 003.ru, m3x.ru, byttehnika.ru and tehnopolis.ru.
The holding includes a subsidiary for development, a packaging subsidiary and a company that distributes interior equipment and designs for commercial areas.
The Consolidated turnover of MARTA Holding accounted for $536.1 million last year. CIT Finance specializes in investment and banking services, direct investment, brokerage, asset management, private banking, mortgages and bank retail services.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>Gazprom Regulation<b\>
BRUSSELS (Bloomberg) — European Union regulators are studying how plans to split up energy companies would be applied to foreign firms such as Russia’s natural-gas exporter Gazprom, an EU official said.
The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, will propose legislation on Sept. 19 calling for energy companies to separate the units that produce energy from those that distribute it, in an effort to improve competition. European Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said in June that Gazprom would be subject to so-called ownership unbundling rules.
“The commission is studying how the measure on ownership unbundling would apply to everyone, no matter where the company is based,’’ Ferran Tarradellas, a spokesman for the Brussels- based commission, said by telephone Thursday.

<b>Lukoil License<b\>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia’s environmental inspectorate will seek the withdrawal of licenses belonging to five oil companies including subsidiaries of Lukoil, Lundin Petroleum AB and Arawak Energy Corporation. Inspections identified “substantial violations of the license agreements,’’ the Moscow-based Natural Resources Ministry said in an e-mailed statement Thursday. The inspectorate also said it had cleared two subsidiaries of London-listed oil producer Timan Oil & Gas Plc, Neftegazpromtex and Geotermneftegaz, of any licensing infractions.

<b>Cramo Venture<b\>
HELSINKI (Bloomberg) — Cramo Oyj, the Finnish equipment rental company, has entered a joint venture with Rentakran to supply construction gear in Russia.
Cramo will own 75 percent of the new rental venture, which will start operating immediately, the Vantaa, Finland based- company said in a stock exchange release Thursday. The companies did not disclose the amount of their investment.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>Baltika Buy Out<b\>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Baltika brewery plans to buy out a part of its shares to decrease authorized capital stock, Interfax reported Tuesday.
The company could buy out about 9.89 million ordinary shares and about 1.2 million privilege shares. At the moment authorized capital stock of Baltika brewery is 172.71 million rubles, of which 159.17 million is ordinary shares and 13.54 million privilege shares.
<b>Adamant Issues<b\>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Adamant holding, which operates 15 shopping and entertainment centers in St. Petersburg, could issue bonds amounting to two billion to three billion rubles next spring, Interfax reported Tuesday.
The company’s credit portfolio currently amounts to $300 million. Adamant has already issued bonds for 2.5 billion rubles. Next year it will increase investment by 36.4 percent up to $300 million.

TITLE: Midsized Lender’s
Mortgage Poser
AUTHOR: By Catrina Stewart
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Midsized lender Moskommertsbank has stopped issuing new mortgages until October in the wake of the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis that has led to a global liquidity squeeze, Vedomosti reported Wednesday, citing sources close to the lender.
Alexei Godovanets, CEO of Moskommertsbank, sought to downplay the reports. “We haven’t stopped issuing mortgages,” he said. He added, however, that the bank was monitoring the situation.
The bank earlier said some large transactions had been suspended while they reexamined solutions.
Moskommertsbank, which is 52 percent owned by Kazakhstan’s Kazkommertsbank, has a high exposure to the Russian mortgage market, with mortgages accounting for more than 90 percent of its retail portfolio. As of July, it had more than 29 billion rubles ($1.1 billion) in mortgage loans. “Moskommertsbank is not very big and has huge exposure to one particular area,” said Natalya Orlova, a banking analyst at Alfa Bank. “This does not mean that the largest Russian banks will have the same problems. They have much more diversified lending structures.”
Global liquidity problems have triggered a local liquidity crunch, said Mikhail Galkin, an analyst with MDM Bank. “The most efficient tool in preparing for a liquidity stress is to stop issuing new loans and to find financing against the existing loan book.”
Like its Kazakh parent bank, Moskommertsbank is heavily reliant on funding on capital markets. The U.S. subprime crisis has meant that local banks are facing tougher conditions for tapping into international markets. Mortgages account for just 1 percent of gross domestic product in Russia, compared with 5 percent in Kazakhstan, and about 40 to 50 percent in the West. Austria’s Raiffeisen, which offers mortgages in Russia alongside a more diversified range of lending services, said it was not overly concerned by the U.S. events. “I don’t see any showstoppers at the moment,” said Roman Vorobyov, head of consumer banking at Raiffeisen. He added that the bank had no plans to raise interest rates on its mortgages in the short term.
Vladimir Gasyak, head of mortgages at Home Credit and Finance Bank, said it also did not expect to see any effect on its operations. “But it would be logical to see the reduction of high-risk programs in some banks,” he said.
U.S. housing market concerns had an impact on Russian stocks this week, with shares opening lower on the MICEX and RTS exchanges for a second day running. 
“The markets are very jittery, but we feel that Russian financial stocks are fairly well protected,” said Tom Mundy, a strategist at Renaissance Capital. “Kazakh banks have in general been much harder hit by this subprime sellout.”

TITLE: Svyazinvest Doubles Profits, Hits Out at State Interference
AUTHOR: By Tai Adelaja
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Svyazinvest reported Wednesday that its net profit nearly doubled last year but said it could have performed even better with less state interference.
Svyazinvest’s net profit surged 48.5 percent to 12.3 billion rubles ($473 million) in 2006, compared with 8.4 billion rubles the previous year, while revenues increased 13 percent to 210 billion rubles, the state-controlled fixed-line monopoly said in an unaudited report posted on its web site.
CEO Alexander Kiselyov credited the increase in profitability largely to a growth in popular new services such as broadband Internet. The number of Internet subscribers almost tripled to 690,000 last year, he said. “Introducing the most advanced and most needed services will be our main priority from now on,’’ Kiselyov said in a statement.
Government interference, however, is hampering the firm’s development, spokesman Oleg Mikhailov said. “If Svyazinvest had been allowed to focus on its businesses, it would have become a world leader in providing communications services,” he said. “No other company or corporation puts 46 percent of its capital expenditures into state-related social expenditures as we do.”
Svyazinvest would be able to earn more by expanding “in unregulated sectors, such as broadband Internet and mobile phones for the regions,” he said, saying the company’s mobile phone subsidiaries Sibir Telecom, Ural Svyazinform and Volga Telecom had accounted for 30 percent of the company’s profit last year.
The only way to make the company more efficient is to privatize it, said Vitaly Kupeyev, a telecoms analyst for Alfa Bank. “To make it productive, it must be decentralized and all its seven regional subsidiaries put under efficient private management,” he said.
The company’s larger 2006 profits are not indicative of efficient performance, said Nadezhda Golubeva, analyst at Aton Capital. “If it posts good results as a state holding, it will post better results as privatized company,” she said. 
An adviser to IT and Communications Minister Leonid Reiman reiterated the ministry’s view that Svyazinvest should be privatized. “Our ministry has done the spadework on Svyazinvest, and we believe privatization is the right thing to do,” she said, asking that her name be withheld because she was not authorized to speak with the media.
The IT ministry adviser said the Economic Development and Trade Ministry was responsible for approving privatizations. Calls to the economic ministry’s press service went unanswered. 
Privatizing Svyazinvest has been the declared goal of the government since 1997, when it sold a blocking stake to U.S. financier George Soros. Soros called the deal the worst investment decision of his life and later sold the stake. It now is in the hands of Sistema.
At a meeting Tuesday, Svyazinvest’s shareholders rejected changes to the company charter that could have allowed Sistema to have a decisive role in running its affiliates. Sistema spokesman Kirill Semyonov said Wednesday that the changes had been rejected for technical reasons and the company was waiting for a revised version.

TITLE: Magnitogorsky Plays Part With $117Mln Auto Plant
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Magnitogorsky Metal Plant will invest three billion rubles ($116.8 million) into a new production complex in St. Petersburg, the Committee for Economic Development, Industrial Policy and Trade said Thursday in a statement. The company will invest into a service center and a plant for the production of standard metal details.
“Realization of this project is in accordance with the company’s strategy. About three billion rubles will be invested into construction of the plant. Due to begin operations in 2010, the site will have an initial processing capacity of 125,000 tons of metal a year. In the long term production volume could increase to 300,000 tons a year,” Rafkat Takhautdinov, vice president for strategic development at Magnitogorsky Metal Plant, was cited in the statement as saying.
Magnitogorsky Metal Plant is one of the largest ferrous metallurgy enterprises in Russia occupying 20 percent of the national market. 
Last year the company produced 12.5 million tons of steel and 11.3 million tons of metal.
Magnitogorsky Metal Plant sales last year amounted to $6.4 billion according to a US GAAP report. About 50 percent of products were exported. Net profit was reported at $1.4 billion.
Recently Magnitogorsky Metal Plant acquired 75 percent of a St. Petersburg-based company, Interkos-IV, which produces large-size metal details, press molds of up to 70 tons and standard metal details for automotive companies and producers of household appliances.
The company was acquired to maintain Magnitogorsky Metal Plant’s position as supplier for automotive companies in St. Petersburg as well as provide it with a share in the Northwest market.
The latest move will increase Magnitogorsky Metal Plant’s production capacity in the Northwest.
“To base this project in St. Petersburg is logical given the investment projects planned by world automotive giants like Toyota, Nissan, General Motors and Suzuki. It will help to create a cluster of car components and details producers in the city,” said Sergei Fiveisky, deputy chairman of the Committee for Economic Development, Industrial Policy and Trade.
Construction of the plant will be a step towards the concentration of car production companies in the city.
“Besides being a modern production complex, this plant will create additional jobs and provide additional revenue for the local budget,” Fiveisky said.

TITLE: Rising Incomes, Rising Optimism
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Rising incomes mean Russians have become more optimistic about their future and about the prospects of the national and regional economies, research by the Rosgosstrakh insurance company released Tuesday has shown.
“People base their expectations about the economy on experience. Five years of steady economic growth have resulted in an optimistic mindset for the mid-term. We expect this economic optimism to contribute to the growth of the national economy,” said Alexei Zubets, head of Center for strategic research at Rosgosstrakh.
As part of more general macroeconomic research, this summer Rosgosstrakh calculated indexes related to the economic expectations of people living in large and medium-sized cities. The research covered 44 Russian cities with populations of over 100,000 people. About 14,000 people took part in the poll.
The indexes show the share of people expressing positive opinions minus the share of people with negative opinions.
“The index of long-term consumer expectations was highest (37.2 percent). It shows a generally optimistic mindset and positive expectations about long-term well being in Russia,” Zubets said.
By comparison to 2005 and 2006, Russians have become more positive about their future and economic growth across the country and in particular regions. The consumer expectations index increased by 11 points up to 32.4 percent. Other indexes also increased compared to 2005 and 2006. According to the Rosgosstrakh report, the index of current welfare is 18.5 percent this year, the index of short-term consumer expectations 32.3 percent, the index of individual expectations 34.6 percent and the index of public expectations 34.8 percent.
“The growth in all the indexes and their leveling out across all groups of cities shows that a general improvement in standards of living is a regional trend. Up until now it was mainly people living in Moscow and several other large cities who had positive expectations,” Zubets said.
During earlier periods of Russian economic reform it was mainly higher-income groups with a higher professional status and levels of education, who expressed their optimism about the economy.
“Those people benefited most of all from economic reform. However the situation has changed a lot over the last year. Greater optimism was reported by all social groups this year including the most underprivileged,” Zubets said.
According to him, consumers in Russia expect incomes to increase across both the short- and long-term and are positive about the prospects of the Russian economy in general. The indexes of individual and general expectations are similar, which shows that Russians see a connection between economic growth at a regional and national level and their own personal wellbeing.

TITLE: More Women and Fewer Hotshots
AUTHOR: By Ivan Novitsky
TEXT: Many Russians consider Europe to be the epitome of correct behavior on the roads. This is true, but it is largely due to the fact that fines for road violations in Europe are extremely high. Up until now, the fines in Russia were symbolic at best. Three hundred rubles is nothing for an owner of an expensive imported car. The purpose of levying fines is not to simply take money from drivers. There is a much more important function: They should be a mechanism to ensure that obeying the rules of the road becomes more advantageous than breaking the law.
But today it is much more advantageous to break the law because you can save a lot of time in doing so. Moreover, the chances that you have to pay a fine are not that high.
The other aspect of the problem is that fines are levied rather selectively. Every driver thinks that he will be able to slip by the traffic police officer and only the other driver will get caught. This is especially true if several cars in a row are breaking the law because the traffic police usually stop only the first few cars.
In Europe, virtually all road violations are caught by special cameras. Russia is a long way from adopting this kind of technology. And this kind of change would take time.
For now, the first step that authorities have taken is to increase the amount of fines for road violations. They were increased on Aug. 10, and further increases will take effect on Jan. 1. Many critics claim that these measures will only lead to an increase in the amount of money that traffic officers extort from drivers. Even if this were the case, if an increase in fines is large enough, it can force drivers to weigh the advantages against the disadvantages of breaking the law.
Fines have now grown fivefold for many violations. Drivers caught driving in the opposite lane will lose their driver’s license for up to six months. It is a common occurrence when law-abiding drivers, returning from their dachas on Sunday, curse the insolent hotshots on the road who are racing along the opposite lane to bypass drivers who are obeying the law, waiting in the slow-moving traffic.
It would seem that the violators gain an advantage on the roads, while those who obey the law lose out. Even more irritating is when these hotshots try to squeeze back into line at a stoplight or at an upcoming traffic police control point. This only slows traffic flow even more. If there weren’t these daredevils creating so many jams (and accidents), traffic would move at least 15 percent faster.
The worst traffic accidents, of course, are tied to speeding, but minor accidents are caused largely by drivers’ lack of attention — which is most often caused by talking on mobile phones while driving. Not only is the drivers’ attention diverted but their hands are as well. Now, with the increased fines, if a driver is caught talking on the phone without a hands-free device, he will have to pay a 300-ruble fine. This is a good reason not to talk.
Another problem is that seat belts are not seen as a safety means but as a nuisance. One often hears about terrible car accidents where drivers came out alive only because they were not wearing seat belts. When this argument is used, however, no one bothers to mention that these types of cases are extremely rare. I am confident that the increase in fines from 100 rubles to 500 rubles for failing to fasten seat belts will help to change drivers’ attitudes.
There is an old joke about the person who went to driving school: “I don’t know how to drive, but I have a head start because I already hate pedestrians!” In discussing the problems on the roads, you must speak not only about the drivers’ bad habits, but also about those of pedestrians. Everyone knows that drivers often do not stop for people crossing along the pedestrian walkway. We also know very well the problem of cars that are parked on the sidewalk and of drivers who actually drive on the sidewalk.
But this does not take away from the responsibility of pedestrians to cross the street only at designated areas and at stoplights. Under the new law, pedestrians who get in the way of traffic are now subject to a fine of 300 rubles (it was 100 rubles before), and this fine jumps from 1,000 to 1,500 rubles if someone suffers a light or medium injury as a result of a violation.
An analysis of the accident rate in Moscow shows that in 50 percent of all car accidents, pedestrians suffer some form of bodily injury. Of these cases, quite often pedestrians were at fault because they crossed the street at an unauthorized crossing or violated the rules of the road in some other way. According to data from the traffic authorities, 265,301 pedestrians were fined for various violations on streets in 2006.
You cannot seriously discuss the issue of traffic fines without touching on the issue of corruption. If you are a driver, you are probably familiar with the situation when a traffic officer stops you and offers to settle the issue by paying the official fine (that is, according to the law), or by paying a somewhat lower amount, which is unofficial — meaning, of course, that it ends up in the officer’s pocket. Many drivers agree to the unofficial fine not so much to save money but to save time. To resolve an ordinary traffic violation officially, a driver has to spend at the very least half a workday at the traffic police station.
About every six months we see on television how another “werewolf in epaulets” — a term used to describe mainly police and traffic officers who abuse their authority for material gain — has been detained for taking bribes. This, of course is nothing but a show, and most Russians watch these scenes on television with a grin — albeit a bitter one because they know that these public relations charades do very little to solve the systemic problem of corruption. I don’t want to unjustifiably accuse all traffic police officers of corruption, but there are a lot more dishonest than honest traffic police officers. This is a difficult problem to solve, but we must start by drastically increasing the level of punishment for officers who take bribes.
There is another interesting idea that has been tried in regions outside of Moscow: recruiting more women to become officers. Women, in general, possess a special character trait: They don’t take bribes. Perhaps it is because they have a higher degree of responsibility, or perhaps they are simply more afraid of getting caught. Whatever the reason, the government needs to more widely exploit this gender advantage and attract more women to the ranks.
I support increasing fines for traffic violations, but we need to avoid the intrinsically Russian trap of thinking that the severity of the laws is compensated by the fact that it is not necessary to abide by the laws. The law has to be strictly applied everywhere and for everyone.

Ivan Novitsky is a deputy in the Moscow City Duma and head of the Union of Right Forces Moscow branch.

TITLE: How to Define Strategic in the Broadest Sense
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: Last week, sources at Rosoboronexport announced a possible partnership between the Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works, also known as Magnitka, and RusSpetsStal, a special steelmaker formed last year by Rosoboronexport. When news of this started to spread, RusSpetsStal’s general director, Sergei Nosov, publicly denied such a deal was in the works.
The general director of Rosoboronexport, Sergei Chemezov, is a close ally of President Vladimir Putin. Chemezov has already gained control over a number of businesses, including VSMPO-Avisma, the world’s largest titanium manufacturer, and AvtoVAZ, the Tolyatti-based carmaker. In fact, Chemezov’s director at AvtoVAZ, Vladimir Artyakov, was appointed Monday as the governor of the entire Samara region.
The official reason given for Rosoboronexport’s interest in Magnitka is that it manufactures specialized steel necessary to the defense industry. On that basis, any company in Russia producing anything related to defense could be swallowed up by Rosoboronexport — except, perhaps, McDonald’s.
There might be another reason, however, for the interest in Magnitka apart from the fact that it produces specialized steel. Nosov, in addition to being the director of RusSpetsStal, is also the grandson of the legendary general director of Magnitka and former director of the Nizhnetagilsk Metallurgical Plant. As one of Russia’s top managers, Nosov was recruited by Evraz for the Nizhnetagilsk position as part of Evraz’s plan to gain control of Magnitka.
What Nosov was unable to accomplish at Evraz, he might pull off at Rosoboronexport. The chronology of events certainly catches one’s attention. Evraz co-owners laid claim to 30 percent of Magnitka’s shares. Evraz, as part of its industrial turf battle with Magnitka, was successful for a long time in preventing the company’s initial public offering. In January, Putin flew to Magnitogorsk to enjoy some skiing and to meet with Magnitka’s chairman, Viktor Rashnikov. In February, it was announced that Nosov would be appointed head of RusSpetsStal. Magnitka raised almost $1 billion in its IPO two months later, after which rumors began circulating of the company’s planned partnership with RusSpetsStal. This creates the impression that the $1 billion from the IPO constitutes Rashnikov’s severance pay. It also seems that Evraz, which for many years tried to gain control over Magnitka, relinquished its role as the hunter and has become instead the game warden, chasing the prey right into the government’s gun sights.
The Kremlin is currently creating two types of corporations: oil and gas enterprises and state-owned holding companies that have been created to develop the high-tech sector. The true financial potential of such holding companies differs drastically from their hyped-up image created by the Kremlin PR machine. For example, according to the Economic Development and Trade Ministry’s official white paper on long-term social and economic development, Russia’s shipbuilding industry will control 20 percent of the world market by 2020. In reality, however, the construction on the aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov that India ordered from Russia is still unfinished, while the money paid for it has, well, disappeared somewhere.
If you compare all of these aviation, shipbuilding and other defense-industry holding companies with state-owned giants such as Gazprom and Rosneft, the difference is striking. There is no limit as to how much money can be earned from oil and gas, whereas only a limited amount of funding can be squeezed from the state budget for high-technology, aviation and similar projects. Still, there is one way for the high-tech elite to earn unlimited money — if they explain to the president that nanotechnology research and development can be successfully developed only if high-tech firms gained control of related industries, such as coal. You didn’t know that nanotechnology requires nanocarbon tubes? Of course it does! No less than the defense industry relies on specialized steel.

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

TITLE: All that glitters
AUTHOR: By Alastair Gee
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A heaving mass of celebrities and their admirers gathered on the steps of the Pushkin Cinema in Moscow on Sunday, Aug. 19. There was a muscle-bound man dressed as a gladiator, complete with fur leg warmers. Nearby was squeaky-clean pop star Dima Bilan. All were awaiting the premiere of Andrei Konchalovsky’s fashion-focused film, “Glyanets” or “Gloss.”
But they discovered in the cinema that the joke is on them. “Gloss,” which recounts the attempts of a provincial seamstress to become a cover girl, is the respected director’s attempt to show how the worlds of celebrity and fashion are ultimately hollow.
“People who live a fashionable life as a rule aren’t happy, because they’re not satisfied with their personal life,” Konchalovsky, 70, said earlier this month, riding in a jeep to Vnukovo Airport, where a private jet was waiting to whisk him away to Budapest and his next film project. Behind him sat his wife and the star of “Gloss,” Yulia Vysotskaya, 34. “I think that when a person is absolutely satisfied, genuinely happy, there’s a desire to be at home,” he added.
Despite a budget of only $2.5 million and a quick two-month shoot, “Gloss” has garnered considerable attention for its unusual subject matter, although some reviewers have criticized it as outdated.
And while it might draw comparisons with that other recent film set at a glamorous style rag, “The Devil Wears Prada,” the makers of “Gloss” maintain that their movie is a very different animal. Konchalovsky’s work “is art. ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ is McDonald’s,” Yevgeny Stepanov, one of the producers of “Gloss,” said in an interview last week. 
“Gloss” is the latest turn in Konchalovsky’s eclectic career, which has alternated between Moscow and Hollywood, taking in topics ranging from mental patients to 12th-century royalty.
The elder brother of director and actor Nikita Mikhalkov, famous for tackling the time of Stalin’s purges in “Burnt By the Sun,” Konchalovsky took his maternal grandfather’s surname. He gained prominence thanks to his 1965 debut film, “The First Teacher,” though his second, “The Story of Asya Klyachina, Who Loved But Didn’t Marry,” did not pass Soviet-era censorship due to its insufficiently rosy portrayal of village life and was not shown until 1988. 
He went on to make film versions of Anton Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya” and Ivan Turgenev’s “A Nest of Gentry,” while his 1974 “A Romance for Lovers,” a tragic tale of young love, stood out for its unusually free-wheeling style and sun-drenched opening scenes. 
Konchalovsky moved to the United States in 1980, directing a string of English-language movies. In 1989, he made “Tango and Cash” with Sylvester Stallone and Kurt Russell as Los Angeles cops, and since then has been living off and on in Moscow. “House of Fools,” set in an asylum on the border of Chechnya and Russia and incorporating a cameo by Canadian rock star Bryan Adams, won the Golden Lion award at the 2002 Venice film festival.
In 2003, Konchalovsky hired actors Glenn Close and Patrick Stewart for a TV-film remake of “The Lion in Winter,” about King Henry II of England, in which the director’s wife played a princess. 
Konchalovsky has two children with Vysotskaya; they met in an elevator at the Kinotavr national film festival in Sochi 11 years ago. This was before she became famous, and she credits her success in the Russian film industry to his influence. “If you’re somebody’s wife, they relate to you in an entirely different way than if you’re nobody,” she said.
Co-written by Konchalovsky, “Gloss” both revels in and laments the stereotyped desires of New Russia: the thirst for luxury, to marry an oligarch, to make it big amid the neon lights of Moscow. It begins with Galya (Vysotskaya) in humble Rostov-on-Don, thumbing through a fashion magazine on the toilet and singing television slogans.
Such slogans, incidentally, feature heavily — Konchalovsky thinks that original thought is being supplanted by advertising catchphrases. Also frequent are shots of products by the film’s sponsors, which include vodka and juice companies.
Daubed in fuschia lipstick and raccoon-like rings of blue eye-liner, Galya makes her way by subterfuge into the office of Moscow’s top fashion editor. Galya presents her with live Rostov crayfish and asks about modelling. The editor tells Galya that she couldn’t be more hideous-looking. “I have to deal with this every day,” the editor later sighs.
Galya winds up sewing for a lookalike of designer Karl Lagerfeld, who doesn’t break the gay fashion stylist mould: He’s queeny, prone to hissy fits, and wears women’s high-heeled shoes. Soon Galya becomes a chaperone at an agency that finds beautiful wives for oligarchs — based on a real-life operation headed by notorious society figure Pyotr Listerman, who has a cameo in the film.
Galya’s fate is determined by the chance fact that, from certain angles, she looks somewhat like Grace Kelly, the late U.S. actress and princess of Monaco. Audience members at the premiere gasped and whispered, “What a beauty!” as the camera lingered on Vysotskaya’s three-quarter profile.
But a reviewer in Time Out, for one, wrote that “Gloss” is based on hysterical stereotypes about Moscow. “One by one, it confirms every one of the most secret fears of the backwoods about the capital: the power of money, the depravity, the gay mafia and the inner emptiness of oligarchs.”
A generally favorable review in Moskovsky Komsomolets noted: “People in the know maintain that the world shown in ‘Gloss’ was that way 10 years ago.”
The film is a criticism of the fashion and magazine industries, which entrance readers and shoppers into wanting “things that aren’t needed at all,” Konchalovsky said. “It isn’t necessary to advertise what a person really needs.”
In Russia, there’s a particular disparity, since readers of Vogue or Cosmopolitan often aren’t able to buy what they see, he said.
As for Galya, “she gets what she wants, she achieves what she thinks is happiness, but it isn’t happiness,” he said. “It’s like buying new shoes — you dream about the shoes, and then buy them and you wear them, and the happiness stops.”
Vysotskaya, for her part, shares in his suspicion of all things glitzy. She hosts a television cooking show and said she dislikes going out to fashionable parties, but “if you don’t want the cinemas to be empty, you have to appear in stupid magazines.”
That doesn’t mean that the actress, who has appeared on front covers many times, is unconcerned about how she looks on them. She “didn’t sleep for a few nights” after seeing a particularly unflattering photo, she said. “It’s part of your profession to look good and be at 150 percent.” Like the film’s heroine, Vysotskaya was born in Rostov-on-Don and returned to the city to research her role. 
Back at the premiere, no one except Konchalovsky appeared to be reflecting on the problematic nature of gloss and razzmatazz. Crowds of people swilled champagne in what instead seemed a celebration of celebrity. Three men with microphones pulled stars in front of a camera and asked, “Are you a glossy person?”
“Gloss — it’s this paper and the names of the people printed on it,” Bilan proclaimed proudly, pointing to a glittery invitation to the premiere.

“Gloss” is reviewed on page xii. www.glyanec.ru

TITLE: Chernov’s choice
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: With hot days on their way out, the open-air music cafe Verandah More on Krestovsky Ostrov said it would fold on Sept. 8 with an all-night free farewell party. 
This weekend, however, will see the place in a full swing, with two concerts — by electronica musician Yonderboi and local ska-jazz band the St. Petersburg Ska Jazz Review.
The Hungarian Yonderboi, whose real name is Laszlo Fogarasi,  owes his moniker to William Gibson’s 1984 cyberpunk novel “Neuromancer” character Lupus Yonderboy, the “leader of the Panther Moderns, a technofetishistic Sprawl youth gang,” who “has pink hair, a chameleon suit, and many ear ports,” according to Wikipedia. Yonderboi will perform on Friday.
Just the opposite, Dunes, the beach-style summer bar in a derelict courtyard in the center, with a fantastic view of the Church on the Spilled Blood, is set to go on waiting for Indian summer and urges its visitors to donate sweaters and blankets.
According to its recently launched web site www.summerkiosk.spb.ru, Dunes’ program in September includes Cinema Beach, a program of features and shorts shown on a large screen on Mondays in cooperation with the German-Russian Exchange’s film project “Film Horizons,” and dance program with DJ Chak, Trojan Sound System and others on Fridays and Saturdays.
Dunes plans to close the season at the end of September with a music festival, according to the bar’s management.
The St. Petersburg Ska Jazz Review’s show is an invitation-only event, according to promoter Light Music responsible for Verandah More’s music program. The band formed by members of Spitfire and Markscheider Kunst, plus locally-based U.S. vocalist Jennifer Davis, will perform on Saturday. Additional music will be provided by Trojan Sound System.
A pair of Portland, Oregon-based bands are set to confirm the punk reputation of Belgrad, the recently-opened bar that orientates toward live gigs. Not much is known about pop-punk band The Wanters and skate-punk/hardcore band PRF but the two appear to share some members. PRF’s full name, Punk Rock Faggots, caused a stir among U.S. gay rights activists who thought that using the name for a band of straight musicians was homophobic. The Wanters and PRF will perform on Friday.
The Place has returned after a brief vacation and will host soul-funk band J.D. and The Blenders on Friday. That same night, ex-Markscheider Kunst vocalist Seraphin Selenge Makangila will perform with his current band Simba Vibration to celebrate his birthday at Zoccolo. 
The Democratic Republic of Congo-born Makangila who sings in Lingala, Swahili, French, English and Russian, holds responsibility for bringing African beat to the local underground scene, first with the bands M’Bond Art and Motema Pembe in the early and mid-1990s.

TITLE: London calling
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Sergei Prokofiev’s Seventh Symphony was performed for only the fourth time since it was written in 1951-2 in London on Tuesday, courtesy of the London Symphony Orchestra and its new principal conductor Valery Gergiev, as part of the annual BBC Proms series of concerts at the Royal Albert Hall.
The symphony was composed for children under the strictures of the Zhdanov decree — named for Joseph Stalin’s culture boss Andrei Zhdanov, which mandated, on pain of persecution, that all art glorify Communism and conform to Socialist Realist aesthetics. Prokofiev faced severe pressure from the state and illness at the time of the composition of the Seventh Symphony. It was to be his last work before he died in 1953 — on the same day as Stalin. Although Prokofiev was forced to add an “optimistic” coda, which he apparently later disowned, the work was said to be admired by Dmitry Shostakovich for its nostalgia and melancholy.
Tuesday’s performance garnered rave reviews from the London press, which usually approaches anything that Gergiev does with both caution and awe. The effect of is appointment to the LSO seven months ago, a commitment he adds to his directorship of St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theater, is only now being felt by the concert-going public in London. 
“Gergiev has unsurprisingly Russified [the orchestra’s] repertoire,” wrote Matthew Rye in The Daily Telegraph on Wednesday. “There is a sense that the orchestra is a different beast from when it was under [former principal conductor] Colin Davis.”
Gergiev’s intense conducting style and choice of works seems to have startled London critics.
“Will Valery Gergiev ever come on stage looking neat and cool, with a florid baton, ready to conduct a wide-ranging program of Rameau, Brahms, and Dame Ethyl Smyth,” teased Geoff Brown in The Times, referring to a trio of genteel composers unlikely to be favored by the fiery maestro. “Maybe when pigs fly.”
Before a packed crowd, Brown wrote, “wild man Gergiev… gave them just what they came for: Russian music, nervous fury, crackling tension, fluttering fingers.”
The concert began with a series of Tchaikovsky’s tone poems set to Shakespearean themes, which Brown called “perfect Gergiev material” for their “electric charge.”
Prokofiev’s piano concerto was also on the bill with soloist and Gergiev collaborator Alexander Toradze at the keyboard. 
“Although his compulsive, stabbing style means he’s often by no means note-perfect,” wrote Rye in The Telegraph, Toradze “found himself in his element in the thunderous chords that lead out of the first movement’s monumental cadenza and into the elephantine orchestral climax. His scherzo, with its incessant run of notes, left the audience equally opened-mouthed.”
But it was the Prokofiev finale that impressed most. In the London Evening Standard, under the headline “Gergiev wins approval,” Fiona Maddocks wrote that the conductor “febrile and coaxing as ever” revealed the Seventh Symphony’s “quiet tragic potential” which was “a hair’s breadth from mawkishness.” 
Brown in The Times said: “A great performance of this elusive work must walk a tightrope between simplicity and mockery, brightness and worry” which George Hall in The Guardian concluded Gergiev managed to negotiate. 
“There was elegance both in the playing and its overall delivery, with the Russian conductor on his deftest form.”



The St. Petersburg Times
Sergei Prokofiev’s Seventh Symphony was performed for only the fourth time since it was written in 1951-2 in London on Tuesday, courtesy of the London Symphony Orchestra and its new principal conductor Valery Gergiev, as part of the annual BBC Proms series of concerts at the Royal Albert Hall.
The symphony was composed for children under the strictures of the Zhdanov decree — named for Joseph Stalin’s culture boss Andrei Zhdanov, which mandated, on pain of persecution, that all art glorify Communism and conform to Socialist Realist aesthetics. Prokofiev faced severe pressure from the state and illness at the time of the composition of the Seventh Symphony. It was to be his last work before he died in 1953 — on the same day as Stalin. Although Prokofiev was forced to add an “optimistic” coda, which he apparently later disowned, the work was said to be admired by Dmitry Shostakovich for its nostalgia and melancholy.
Tuesday’s performance garnered rave reviews from the London press, which usually approaches anything that Gergiev does with both caution and awe. The effect of is appointment to the LSO seven months ago, a commitment he adds to his directorship of St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theater, is only now being felt by the concert-going public in London. 
“Gergiev has unsurprisingly Russified [the orchestra’s] repertoire,” wrote Matthew Rye in The Daily Telegraph on Wednesday. “There is a sense that the orchestra is a different beast from when it was under [former principal conductor] Colin Davis.”
Gergiev’s intense conducting style and choice of works seems to have startled London critics.
“Will Valery Gergiev ever come on stage looking neat and cool, with a florid baton, ready to conduct a wide-ranging program of Rameau, Brahms, and Dame Ethyl Smyth,” teased Geoff Brown in The Times, referring to a trio of genteel composers unlikely to be favored by the fiery maestro. “Maybe when pigs fly.”
Before a packed crowd, Brown wrote, “wild man Gergiev… gave them just what they came for: Russian music, nervous fury, crackling tension, fluttering fingers.”
The concert began with a series of Tchaikovsky’s tone poems set to Shakespearean themes, which Brown called “perfect Gergiev material” for their “electric charge.”
Prokofiev’s piano concerto was also on the bill with soloist and Gergiev collaborator Alexander Toradze at the keyboard. 
“Although his compulsive, stabbing style means he’s often by no means note-perfect,” wrote Rye in The Telegraph, Toradze “found himself in his element in the thunderous chords that lead out of the first movement’s monumental cadenza and into the elephantine orchestral climax. His scherzo, with its incessant run of notes, left the audience equally opened-mouthed.”
But it was the Prokofiev finale that impressed most. In the London Evening Standard, under the headline “Gergiev wins approval,” Fiona Maddocks wrote that the conductor “febrile and coaxing as ever” revealed the Seventh Symphony’s “quiet tragic potential” which was “a hair’s breadth from mawkishness.” 
Brown in The Times said: “A great performance of this elusive work must walk a tightrope between simplicity and mockery, brightness and worry” which George Hall in The Guardian concluded Gergiev managed to negotiate. 
“There was elegance both in the playing and its overall delivery, with the Russian conductor on his deftest form.”

TITLE: Life through a lens
AUTHOR: By Ali Nassor
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Work by the world’s best photojournalists are on display in St Petersburg, offering viewers both bitter and sweet memories of the world in 2006.
The World Press Photo 2007 exhibition at the Museum of the St. Petersburg History displays the best 200 from a collection of 78,083 photographs published in print media last year. About 4,460 professional photojournalists from across the globe submitted their work to the 50th annual competition that was held in February in Amsterdam.
The photographs reflect the world in a nutshell, covering everything from the material, spiritual and moral worlds to sports, entertainment and culture. Their creators went deep into the inland of the six continents and the bottoms of oceans to explore the secrets of both terrestrial and maritime life. 
However, the display, in the Commandant’s House of the Peter and Paul Fortress, is mainly a catalogue of calamities with images of hunger, refugees and desperate migrants, and wars in Africa, Middle East and Afghanistan.
One of the dozen shots reflecting the world at war in 2006 was named photo of the year. The photograph, by Getty Images photographer Spencer Platt, shows a group of youths driving past the rubble of a destroyed building in Beirut following an Israeli air attack immediately after a ceasefire was reached between Israel and Hezbollah militant group on August 15 last year.
Also depicting war is Per-Anders Pettersson, of Swedish Getty Images, who takes a visitor to the streets of Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo to witness a nine-year-old girl smoking a cigarette in a company of her two fellow homeless children forced into prostitution as a result of a decade of civil wars there. "There are tens of thousand of orphans and abandoned children in this country," the caption reads.
Davide Monteleone of Italy’s Contrasto joins Platt in his coverage of the war in Lebanon. He takes a visitor back to the July 12 bombardment by the Israeli forces of the cities of Qana, Tyre and Bent Jbail. In Bent Jbail, Monteleone shot an image of an elderly woman fleeing the bombed city.
His images of horror include of a week-old infant buried in a mass grave. In another, a man carries the body of a girl. She was one of dozens of victims of the Israeli air attack on a three-story building sheltering a large number of refugees in Qana. Monteleone also shows rubble from a building brought down by an Israeli aerial strike on the city of Tyre — one of the worst affected cities in the 34-day war. 
Lying on the main road of the same city on August 6 is the body of a victim of an Israeli rocket attack, a photograph published both in Newsweek and The New York Times, by Paulo Pellegrin of Italy’s Magnum Photos.
Moises Saman of Spain’s Newsday takes the viewers on an excursion in Afghanistan, five years after the U.S.-led invasion to oust the Taliban. He shows images of women wearing traditional burqas walking past a Kabul government building destroyed in the 1990s civil war before the current war. In the city of Gardez is another image of a building damaged during the same time. Machine gun ammunition lying on a sandbag, in a position overlooking a mountain passage on the Afghan-Pakistani border used by Taliban insurgents is typical of modern Afghanistan, through Saman’s lens. 
Arturo Rodriguez of The Associated Press eyewitnesses Spanish security forces and Red Cross workers attending to a group of starving and dehydrated African migrants who have just arrived on La Tejita beach in Tenerife, Canary Islands, aboard small wooden fishing boats across the 1,000 kilometer channel from West Africa. 
But good news comes from Europe. In Paris, Denis Darzacq of the Agence Vu takes shots of street dancers displaying their skills at breakdancing, capoeira and other personalized dance forms. While in Germany, David Klammer of Germany Vision sends his viewers to the World Cup Finals. His three photos depict mixed emotions of the fans depending on the country they support. In one, a German girl is applauding her team for a win, but in another is a Brazilian man carrying his nation’s flag in a mood of uncertainty. In a third, a Mexican couple shed tears after a loss.
In Grazia News for L’Equipe, Guardian Weekend, Sports Illustrated and Stern, Mathias Braschler and Monika Fischer of Switzerland published portraits of David Beckham immediately after his Real Madrid 4-0 win over Deportivo last year, Chelsea’s Didier Drogba’s after a 2-0 victory over Portsmouth and Carles Puyol’s after his FC Barcelona’s 5-0 win over Real Sociedad, as well as other soccer players.

World Press Photo runs until Sept. 8

TITLE: Death of a princess
PUBLISHER: The New York Times
TEXT: LONDON — Ten years have passed since Diana, Princess of Wales, died and Britain erupted in a febrile convulsion of grief and anger, but in some ways you would hardly know it.
The tabloids are still spinning breathless tales of conspiracy, cover-up and royal squabbling. “Document That Proves Diana Was Pregnant,” said a recent headline in The Daily Express, nicknamed The Diana Express because of its enthusiasm for even the most tenuous news about the princess.
“Charles ‘Hijacks’ Diana Memorial,” The Mail reported Sunday, in an article about fights over the guest list at the anniversary service, which is set for Friday at noon. (Elton John and Prime Minister Gordon Brown: in. Paul Burrell, Diana’s butler, who is now peddling products like tea sets and “Royal Butler” wine: out.)
The royal family is still fretting and bickering, still seemingly incapable of getting it right. After being attacked for deciding to attend Diana’s service, Prince Charles’s second wife, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, abruptly announced last weekend that she would stay away after all so as not to “divert attention from the purpose of the occasion.”
(“Who could blame Camilla for being worried sick at the prospect of being captured by TV cameras as she knelt in the Guards’ Chapel to pay tribute to the young woman, untimely ripped from us, who long ago nicknamed her The Rottweiler?” Allison Pearson wrote in The Daily Mail.)
And people are still arguing, as they did in that odd, volatile time a decade ago, over Diana’s significance, in life and in death. Was she a naïve innocent or a sophisticated schemer? Was Diana an extraordinary woman whose “lifetime of service touched the lives of millions,” as Brown wrote over the weekend, or a “devious moron” desperate for attention, as the feminist author Germaine Greer recently described her?
Also, did her talent for drawing people into the dysfunctional minutiae of her life, and the un-British paroxysms of anguish that followed her death, change the psyche of a nation known for making repression a virtue?
And, it has been 10 years. Why do we even care?
Patrick Jephson, Diana’s private secretary from 1990 to 1996, said that she still had the ability to capture and to polarize a crowd.
“Either you are a Diana fan or a Diana skeptic,” he said in an interview. “People tend to see her in these rather monochrome shades, whereas in fact, of course, she was a complex figure. People tend to overlook that she was a serious person in a serious role doing a serious job in her life.”
Diana’s death, in a car accident in a Parisian tunnel, is hardly the raw wound it was 10 years ago. People are not walking through London openly sobbing, depositing vast seas of flowers at the royal palaces or calling for Queen Elizabeth to show her humanity by, say, collapsing with grief in public. Life is going on much the way it did before.
But as the country prepares to commemorate the anniversary of the princess’s death, on Aug. 31, the woman the columnist Suzannne Moore calls “the ghost at every royal occasion” is hard to miss.
The royal memorial service is not open to the public, but shoppers at Harrods department store have been invited to remain silent for two minutes on Friday with Mohamed Al-Fayed, the owner, whose son, Emad Mohamed, known as Dodi, died with Diana. Fayed has not been invited to the official service, probably because he has repeatedly declared the crash to be an establishment plot orchestrated by the British security services, led by Prince Philip, the queen’s husband.
Newspapers and magazines, well aware that articles about Diana always bolster sales, no matter what they say, are awash in commemorative sections and analyses of What it All Means. On television, a stream of films starring Diana look-alikes has revisited various well-trod aspects of Diana’s life. An audio-visual exhibit at Kensington Palace, where she lived, is devoted to “Diana: A Princess Remembered.”
Crowds are still taking in the sunshine (when there is any) and having picnics beside the Diana, Princess of Wales, Memorial Fountain in Hyde Park. There, Diana is a topic, much like the weather, about which everyone is sure to have an opinion.
Jane Bowyer, 51, said there the other day that she was still angry that Camilla, or “the Duchess of Whatever She Calls Herself,” had moved from pilloried royal mistress to acceptable public figure.
On the other hand, Peter Hall, 45, said, “Camilla glams up really well.” But what about Diana? Did she transform the British psyche?
Sarah Adlington, 37, said Diana might well have changed the monarchy for the better, because “she brought them down to earth.”
Her husband, Peter, 35, said that while many non-royal Britons were undoubtedly more openly emotional than they used to be, the new candor did not extend to him. “I’m a Yorkshireman,” he said. “They don’t come any less emotional than that.”
Sitting near the fountain with her husband and another couple, Jan Gaskell, who said she was in her late 50s, complained that “a lot of people are making a lot of money out of Diana.”
She added, “My personal opinion is that she should be left in peace.”

TITLE: In the Spotlight
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
TEXT: Last week, the world gasped in awe as a 54-year-old man took his shirt off while on vacation. This week, Komsomolskaya Pravda responded to a huge wave of popular demand, probably, by publishing a page of exercises that promised to give you the abs and pecs of a presidential incumbent.
Actually, the article was pretty tongue-in-cheek, saying that it was going to train up bureaucrats for their national sports — wrestling for influence, running along the corridors of power and climbing the Kremlin wall — but its headline could have been written by Connie the Labrador: “Become Like Putin.”
At least KP found a new angle on the photos, which have been analyzed to death in both Russian and foreign papers. Tvoi Den tabloid took a typically nasty approach, publishing grainy unposed photos of foreign leaders in swimsuits alongside that shot of Putin as Rambo. In a low blow, they included a picture of Germany’s Angela Merkel in a black one-piece, with a caption saying that she “obviously doesn’t have time to do sport.”
The tabloid also quoted the British tabloid The Sun as saying that Putin “really is a powerful leader.” Unfortunately, it wasn’t able to convey the original article’s puns about “Russian bare” and “Putin on the style.” Strangely enough, the Russian tabloid didn’t report on The Sun’s follow-up article on the photos — obviously, one wasn’t enough — which drew a parallel between Putin hanging out topless with Prince Albert II of Monaco and the gay cowboy film “Brokeback Mountain.”
To be fair, it has been a pretty threadbare week for the tabloids. Tvoi Den fell back on its staples of blood, gore and grief, printing stories about a woman who tried to give herself a Cesarian section and a schoolgirl who gave birth in a toilet at a pioneer camp. The paper’s weekly bumper edition, Zhizn, surpassed itself with a story that managed to combine blood — lots of it — with flamboyant pop star Filipp Kirkorov.
The story was not for those of a sensitive disposition, since it interviewed an obsessive fan who paints pictures of Kirkorov using her menstrual blood. Apparently it is a form of black magic that the woman, Yelena, believes will win her the love of Filya. The tabloid added some deeply responsible commentary from “student of esoteric lore” Mikhail Kalyuzhny, who said that the magic could work, but she’s probably not doing it properly.
Luckily, the paper also has a couple of long-term grudges that help fill up space, due to a tendency for celebrities to beat up its journalists. Actor Alexander Abdulov — who in May hit a Tvoi Den photographer outside his birthday party, according to the tabloid’s version of events — is now hospitalized with a stomach ailment, but that didn’t stop the paper reporting that he was stopped by police in Astrakhan. They found black caviar in the trunk of his car, the tabloid wrote, but let him get away with it because he’s famous. 
Meanwhile, veteran comedian Vladimir Vinokur, is experiencing the full weight of Tvoi Den’s ire. The tabloid on Aug. 13 printed pictures showing a 17-year-old photographer lying in a hospital bed with red lesions on his face and back. He was beaten up by Vinokur, the tabloid reported, after entering a cafe in the southern town of Gelendzhik where the married comedian was sitting with a woman. 
The attack was reported to the police, the tabloid wrote, although Rossiiskaya Gazeta quoted an official as saying that Vinokur’s bodyguard was the accused, not the comedian himself. In any case, Vinokur is now enduring trial by tabloid: The latest story dug up the first boyfriend of that 23-year-old woman who accompanied him in the cafe. “She’s ready to do a lot to become a star,” he confided.

TITLE: Vox populi
AUTHOR: By Evgenia Ivanova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: It's been about two and a half years since Vox made itself a snug in the pedestrianized side street Solyanoy Pereulok. Despite fast changing restaurant fashions, this Italian restaurant remains popular. 
Vox’s central location (only a short walk away from the historic Summer Gardens), its summer breakfast menu and a beautiful view of a church from its terrace make the restaurant an elegant and convenient destination for tourists to start the weekend in St. Petersburg. 
The décor is a sample of a very popular in Russia design concept that equates style with luxury. Creamy, flowery wallpaper, alabaster-white tablecloths and the crystal-effect chandeliers make a statement that the restaurant is far away from being cheap. Black leather chairs, a dark marble floor, miniature ottomans for the guest’s handbags and massive mirrors reflect the same idea. 
Vox’s summer terrace also has the feel of a fine-dining place and features the same snow-white linen on the tables, and the satiny ottomans under them. The clientele represents an exciting mix of very important businessmen with their bodyguards, dressed-up girls languishing over their cigarettes as thin and stylish as they are, and locals who come here for a glass of wine on the way to walk their dogs. To whom by the way, rumor has it, the restaurant’s staff also bring food. 
The waiters know the ingredients of the dishes on the menu perfectly, unfortunately, that's the end of their usefulness. Service, whether it’s a weekday afternoon and the restaurant is half empty or the rush-hour of a busy Saturday evening, is slow, rude and snobbish with no hint of proverbial Italian friendliness. 
As for the food, the menu includes all such Italian favorites as risotto, pasta and pizza and other classics. Vox’s warm vegetable and chicken salad (420 rubles, $16.30) upholds the popular idea that the freshness of ingredients (as opposed to the way the dish cooked) is the main feature of Italian cuisine. A carpaccio of celery and truffles, seasoned with parmesan for 450 rubles ($17.50), although not very filling, is worth trying.
Fegato alla veneziana (Venetian style liver) for 600 rubles ($23.30) and mushroom linguine are among main course options. 
The liver, which is said to be one of the best-loved dishes of the Venice region, was tender, but despite the sauce, preserved its distinctive livery taste and, therefore, is not recommended for those who hate offal from when they had it for school dinner. 
The chanterelle and garlic linguine, with its flat and narrow pasta, bears a strong resemblance to another Soviet school-dinner classic, known as makarony. Given that the mushrooms, which grow intensively in the St. Petersburg region and can be bought very cheaply from a majority of markets, it’s a mystery why the dish costs 450 rubles ($17.50). 
However Vox is justly well-known for the quality of its coffee which attracts many guests. The dessert menu also deserves a mention.
The conclusion is that if you have time (the service might take a while) and money (the price-quality ratio is not always optimal) and want to enjoy the freshest ingredients or observe a quirky mix of passers-by sipping a glass of wine in elegant surroundings, you made the right choice coming to Vox.

TITLE: Gay Claims Sprint Double, Saladino Jumps Furthest
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: OSAKA, Japan — American Tyson Gay became the third man in history to win the world championship sprint double with an emphatic victory in the 200 metres final on Thursday.
Gay surged home in a championship record time of 19.76 seconds four days after his victory in the 100 metres to match the feat of compatriots Maurice Greene in 1999 and Justin Gatlin two years ago. Jamaica’s Usain Bolt finished second in 19.91 and Gay’s training partner and compatriot Wallace Spearmon Jr. took bronze in 20.05.
It was an eighth race in six days for Gay in the sauna-like atmosphere of the Nagai Stadium but he showed no sign of fatigue or of the hamstring problem that had troubled him in the heats.
After one false start by Spearmon, Gay got out of his blocks in the joint quickest time and it was soon clear that his main rival would be the big-striding Bolt in the lane outside him.
There was not much between them as they rounded the bend but Gay found another gear and powered ahead as the Jamaican faltered in the run-in.
After crossing the line, Gay raised his arm in the air with a single pointed finger skywards to indicate his now undisputed status in men’s sprinting.
Churandy Martina looked like he might snatch a first ever world championship medal for the Netherland Antilles in third place but Spearmon and his compatriot Rodney Martin came through to battle for bronze.
Spearmon won the race to the line by one hundredth of a second to claim a second world championship medal to add to the bronze he won behind Gatlin in 2005.
The victory made it an even better week for Tyson’s coach Lance Brauman, who also coaches women’s 100m champion Veronica Campbell and was released on Tuesday after spending more than nine months in a Texas prison for fraud. 
Irving Saladino won Panama’s first world championship gold medal with a dramatic last-gasp victory in the men’s long jump on Thursday.
Saladino took the gold medal with the final leap of the competition, soaring 8.57 metres to extend his winning streak to 16 and record his 23rd victory in 25 competitions. Italy’s European champion Andrew Howe had to settle for silver after believing he had done enough to win with his final attempt of 8.47 just minutes earlier.

TITLE: Russian 
Rowers Get 2-year Bans
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MUNICH, Germany — Three Russian rowers have been banned for two years for doping infractions on the eve of the world rowing championships.
Vladimir Varfolomeev, Denis Moiseev and Svetlana Fedorova were banned for violating rules concerning “use of a prohibited method,” the world rowing federation said Wednesday in a statement.
FISA executive director Matt Smith said the three rowers did not use banned substances, but an intravenous drip had been used by all three and although the substances they infused into their bodies were not on the banned list, the methodology is not permitted.
Moiseev and Varfolomeev were to compete in the lightweight men’s double sculls team. Fedorova was in the women’s eight. 
All three were disqualified from the worlds, which also serve as Olympic qualifying.
FISA said they would be banned until Aug. 28, 2009.
The testing was done before the start of the championships this week.

TITLE: Rawlinson Claims Back Title
AUTHOR: By Nick Mulvenney
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: OSAKA, Japan — Jana Rawlinson stormed to victory in the women’s 400 meters hurdles on Thursday to become only the second Australian to win two world titles.
The 24-year-old outpaced defending champion Yuliya Nosova over the last 200 meters to reclaim the title she won under her maiden name Pittman in 2003 in a season’s best 54.31 seconds.
Rawlinson, who gave birth to a son just last December, joined compatriot Cathy Freeman, the 1997 and 1999 400m gold medallist, as a twice world champion.
She also became the second woman to win the one-lap hurdle title twice after Morocco’s 1997 and 2001 champion Nezha Bidouane.
“Tonight’s victory is sensational,” Rawlinson told reporters. “It has only been eight months since the birth of my son. I’ve only been in training three or four months
“It’s been a rocky road ... but if we can climb this mountain, this early, then anything is possible.”
Nosova, also attempting to match Bidouane, set the early pace but could not stay with Rawlinson after the bend at the end of the back straight.
The Russian looked like she might catch Rawlinson when she hesitated before the final hurdle, but the Australian cleared it with ease and strode to victory with Nosova second in 53.50.
“She’s a great runner and I love to compete against her,” said Rawlinson. “Tonight I was simply the stronger hurdler although I have to admit I changed down too early.”
The 29-year-old Nosova, who won the 2005 title as Yuliya Pechonkina but has since reverted to her maiden name, also won silver at the 2001 worlds and bronze in 2003.
“There was a chance to catch her after the last hurdle but my muscles were too heavy,” she said. “I still hope to compete for many years, the revenge could come at the Olympics.”
A superb finish from Poland’s Anna Jesien, who finished fourth two years ago, helped her to her country’s second bronze of the championships ahead of Jamaica’s Nickiesha Wilson in 53.92.
“I’m in a big competition and this is my last chance so I pushed very hard to the end,” said the 29-year-old Pole.
“I broke my national record in the semi-final but when people talk to you they first ask ‘do you have a medal?” 
In other action, German policewoman Betty Heidler won a surprise gold in the women’s hammer. Heidler won her first major title with her second throw of 74.76 meters, just two centimeters more than twice world champion Yipsi Moreno of Cuba’s final throw.
“I was afraid to lose the gold medal,” Heidler, who works for Germany’s border police, told reporters. “I was really trembling. After Yipsi’s last throw I thought for a tiny moment I was only second.
“I knew there would a lot of suspense but it feels strange to win.”
Asian Games champion Zhang Wenxiu took bronze for China’s first medal of the championships with 74.39 before committing her third foul of the six rounds by clattering the hammer into the net with her final throw.
“I’m proud to bring China its first medal,” said Zhang. “It’s a real confidence booster for next year’s Olympics in Beijing.”
The competition in Osaka had been thrown wide open after world record holder Tatyana Lysenko tested positive for doping in May.

TITLE: Ohuruogu Left Upset By British Media
AUTHOR: By Ossian Shine
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: OSAKA, Japan — Britain’s newest world champion Christine Ohuruogu said on Thursday she was “very upset and very disappointed” by the mixed reaction to her world championships glory in the media back home.
The 400 meters winner has only just returned from a one-year suspension for missing three out-of-competition drugs tests and 91 percent of callers in a TalkSport radio station poll said her gold medal was tarnished and had not brought glory to Britain.
British newspapers also tempered their praise of the 23-year-old Londoner. “I must admit I was very upset and very disappointed,” Ohuruogu told reporters in Osaka on Thursday.
“The way I see it is you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. You know, if I hadn’t run well people would have been saying ‘why did you bring her out here?’
“When I do try and turn things around I have scepticism thrown in my face again so, you know, it is not really something I’m very happy about but you just have to deal with it anyway.”
Ohuruogu, who was banned for a year after missing three out-of-competition drugs tests in 2006, led a British 1-2 in the women’s 400 metrers final, winning in 49.61 seconds ahead of compatriot Nicola Sanders.
Sanders weighed in on behalf of her team mate.
“Everyone is so negative but I think everyone should just celebrate that she’s world champion and she’s run a fantastic time,” she said.
A smiling photograph of Ohuruogu appeared on the front page of The Guardian newspaper and The Times published a photo-finish of her race on its front page over a headline reading: “The moment Britain finally seized gold.”
Simon Barnes, chief sports writer for the Times, wrote a column headlined: “She can run, but this golden girl can never hide from the disasters of her past.”
He praised her for becoming only the fifth British woman to win gold since the championships started in 1983, but was also critical.
“But alas, she cannot celebrate yesterday’s gold medal without everyone pointing out that she was banned until this very month,” Barnes wrote.
“This makes it an even more extraordinary achievement but she may well feel dismayed that the tale of yesterday’s triumph cannot be told without a mention of those tests and that ban.”
Most reports focused on her plea to the British Olympic Association (BOA) to lift her life ban and allow her to compete in the Beijing Olympics next year and she even received a message of support from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
Ohuruogu said she was hopeful of having the BOA ban lifted. “The proceedings are in (motion) to overturn the ban. I’m hoping it will be a positive outcome and I’m hoping I’ve proved myself and the case they put forward is enough to overturn the ban.”

TITLE: Keane Tackles Basics On Return to Old Trafford
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON — Roy Keane returns to Old Trafford on Saturday, this time as Sunderland manager and Manchester United opponent.
Keane spent 12 years with Manchester United, winning seven Premier League titles and four FA Cups from 1993-2005, and developing a reputation as a fierce and combative midfielder.
Now he goes head-to-head with several former teammates and the man who shaped him — United manager Alex Ferguson.
Keane did not have the best preparation — he is still hurting from the 3-0 loss to League Championship team Luton in the second round of the League Cup on Tuesday, which he called his biggest disappointment since becoming manager on Aug. 29, 2006.
“It’s a massive challenge for me, but I knew that even when we won promotion five months ago,” said Keane, who has also lost captain Dean Whitehead for six months with a knee injury. 
“I wasn’t thinking that we’d made it then and I’m not thinking it’s the end of the world now.
 “Sunderland Football Club have had their disappointments over the years and I’ve got to change that. But I will say results like Luton make me even more determined to succeed.”
Sunderland was 23rd out of 24 teams after five games in the League Championship when Keane joined, and despite the progress, he is aware he still has a lot to learn.
“Everybody was saying I was the greatest thing since sliced bread, but I never believed that for a second,” Keane said.
Still, he’s mellowed, putting aside a previous feud to work with Sunderland chairman and former Ireland teammate Niall Quinn. But he’s still not afraid to speak his mind. Earlier this month, Keane lambasted “weak” and “soft” players who would not join the club, based in an industrial city in the northeast of England, because of the shopping habits of their wives and girlfriends.
Keane had left United after falling out with Ferguson after criticizing the attitude of his teammates. But he’s brought United midfielders Kieran Richardson and Liam Richardson to Sunderland. He’s also reunited the Red Devils’ feared late 1990s strike force of Dwight Yorke and Andy Cole and signed several former teammates from Celtic and Ireland. Chelsea leads the standings with 10 points, followed by Manchester City with nine and Wigan, Liverpool, Everton and Arsenal with seven.
Manchester United, the defending Premier League champion, got its first league win this season on Saturday, beating visiting Tottenham 1-0.
United is 10th with five points — having scored only two goals in four matches — and Chelsea defender John Terry wonders if the gap at the top of the standings is already too great.
“Five points is a hell of a gap to have this early on,” Terry said. “It’s going to be difficult for United.”
United has been hurt by the loss of striker Wayne Rooney, who broke his foot on the first day of the season, and creative midfielder Cristiano Ronaldo, who ends his three-match suspension after this weekend.
Also Saturday, it’s: Fulham vs. Tottenham; Reading vs. West Ham; Newcastle vs. Wigan; Middlesbrough vs. Birmingham; and Liverpool vs. Derby. On Sunday, Arsenal hosts Portsmouth, Manchester City is at Blackburn and Chelsea visits Aston Villa.
Liverpool, along with Arsenal, qualified for the group stages of the Champions League this week, joining Chelsea and Manchester United.
The Reds have won both their away games so far, something which let the side down last season, and are confident of beating Derby.
“Yes, we’re at home, but sometimes these games can be tricky because they’ll be focused and will probably get a lot of men behind the ball,” Liverpool defender Steve Finnan said. 
“We can’t let that frustrate us.
“We’ve got good enough players to break teams down now, so if we play to our potential, hopefully we’ll pick up the three points.”

TITLE: Equine Flu Ends Sydney’s Spring Racing Carnival
AUTHOR: By Michael Perry
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: SYDNEY — Sydney’s multi-million dollar spring racing carnival was cancelled on Thursday after eight horses at the city’s premier track were diagnosed with equine flu, officials said.
All thoroughbred horses in the worst affected state New South Wales (NSW) have been banned from Melbourne’s spring carnival, which includes the country’s most prestigious race the Melbourne Cup in November, reported local media.
“This is the darkest day for the industry in NSW,” said Racing NSW Chief Executive Peter V’Landys. “There are 50,000 people that cannot earn a wage out of racing.”
A Racing NSW spokesman told Reuters that Sydney’s entire spring carnival, not just Randwick races, had been cancelled.
The eight infected horses at Randwick are the only thoroughbreds infected, but all 700 horses at the stables will be quarantined for at least two months, said NSW state Primary Industries Minister Ian Macdonald.
“We have to wait until the last one gets infected and then its 30 days quarantine. It could be 60, 90 or 120 days,” said V’Landys.
All racing in Australia was cancelled when equine flu was detected last week in an attempt to prevent it spreading.
NSW racing has been stopped indefinitely, but officials hope racing may resume at provincial tracks next week. Racing has been cancelled in Queensland until next week, although other states hope to resume racing at the weekend.
The racing shutdown is costing the industry tens of millions of dollars each day, with officials warning a week of no racing will cost the country’s biggest wagering firm Tabcorp an estimated A$100 million ($82 million).
Tabcorp shares fell more than 4 percent on Thursday.
“It could well bring the industry to its knees,” said trainer John O’Shea, who has 50 horses at Randwick.
The highly contagious disease is not infectious to humans but has the same debilitating effect on horses as influenza has on people — causing high fevers, coughing, sneezing and lack of appetite. 
In rare cases, it can be fatal to horses.
More than 480 horses have been diagnosed with equine flu and another 1,600 suspected of being infected.
“I have 40 mares waiting to foal. I am just terrified if I get this bug, I’m going to probably end up with 40 dead foetuses spread over the paddocks,” said horse breeder Heath Ryan.
“I think if anyone gets this bug they have the right to be totally outraged. I will be screaming blue murder,” he said.
Australia has some of the toughest quarantine rules in the world and officials suspect equine flu might have come from Japan, which has just been hit by a large outbreak. Racing was cancelled in Japan for the first time in more than 35 years after almost 100 horses tested positive.
Horse trainers have warned of legal action if it is found that the flu escaped from Sydney’s quarantine centre.

JOB LOSSES
Australia’s first equine flu outbreak has forced a national ban on horse movements until Friday. The outbreak has occurred on the eve of the country’s thoroughbred breeding season, when some of the world’s top stallions arrive from the northern hemisphere.
About 40 international stallions have been quarantined in Australia and the New Zealand government has closed its borders to horses from Australia, including dozens of top American, European and Asian stallions worth an estimated $500 million.
Scores of people involved in the racing industry, from track riders to transport workers, have been laid off.
“This is a major crisis,” said V’Landys. “People have woken up this morning and their jobs have gone. I know a single mother who does track work to supplement her income who can’t even pay her rent.”
Australia’s national government announced on Thursday a A$4 million fund to provide emergency funds to people suffering financial difficulty due to equine flu.
Agriculture Minister Peter McGauran said NSW would receive A$2.5 million and Queensland would receive A$1.5 million to distribute to individuals involved in the racing industry.

TITLE: Celtic Squeezes Through, Ajax Fails Again
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON — Four-time European champion Ajax failed to reach the European Champions League group stage for the second consecutive season, eliminated by Slavia Prague in qualifying.
Ajax lost 2-1 in Prague on Wednesday to two goals by Stanislav Vlcek and lost 3-1 on aggregate. Ajax lost to FC Copenhagen at the same qualifying stage last year.
Joining Slavia in Thursday’s group stage draw were 2006 runner-up Arsenal, Valencia, Werder Bremen, former champions Steaua Bucharest and Benfica, Rosenborg, Ukraine clubs Shakhtar Donetsk and Dynamo Kiev and Turkey’s Besiktas and Fenerbahce.
Celtic prevailed over Spartak Moscow 4-3 on penalty kicks after finishing 1-1 in Glasgow for a 2-2 aggregate score.
Five-time champion Liverpool, Italian club Lazio and Scotland’s Rangers advanced in matches on Tuesday.
Two-time UEFA Cup champion Sevilla will play its second-leg, third-round qualifying match at AEK Athens on Monday. Tuesday’s match was postponed after the death of Sevilla midfielder Antonio Puerta from a heart attack and the devastating forest fires in Greece. Sevilla won the first leg 2-0.
Defending champion AC Milan, Manchester United, Real Madrid, FC Barcelona, Chelsea, Inter Milan and Stuttgart automatically qualified for the 32-team group stage.
Slavia won the first leg 1-0 in Amsterdam, and Vlcek scored in the 22nd and 86th minutes Wednesday, overwhelming the lone goal by Luis Suarez in the 33rd minute for Ajax.
It’s the first time Slavia Prague has reached the Champions League group stage. Ajax struggled in Prague despite scoring 12 goals in its first two Dutch league games.
Arsenal midfielder Tomas Rosicky scored against former club Sparta Prague in the seventh minute at Emirates stadium, converting a feed from Theo Walcott. Cesc Fabregas scored in the 82nd and Eduardo da Silva added a third in the 89th for a 5-0 aggregate score.
Werder Bremen beat Dinamo Zagreb 3-2 — getting two penalty kicks from Diego and another goal from Boubacar Sanogo. The German club advanced with a 5-3 aggregate score over the Croatian champion, which received goals from Ognjen Vukojevic and Luka Modric.
Celtic needed penalties to get past Spartak after Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink hit the crossbar with a penalty kick in extra time. Celtic led on Scott McDonald’s 27th-minute goal, but Roman Pavluchenko, who hit the post with a penalty kick in the 25th minute, equalized in the 45th to force extra time.
“We’ve seen a few great games here but that was just fantastic,” Celtic manager Gordon Strachan said. “I felt we would win. I felt it was our time. Mentally we were strong and that helped us physically.”
Spartak had defender Martin Stranzl sent off in the 85th for a tackle on Vennegoor of Hesselink. Celtic advanced after goalkeeper Artur Boruc saved Spartak’s fifth penalty from Maxim Kalinichenko.
Steaua Bucharest, the 1986 champion, advanced on a 4-2 aggregate score after Dorel Zaharia and Adrian Neaga tallied in a 2-0 win against BATE Borisov of Belarus.
Shakhtar Donetsk advanced 3-2 on aggregate over Austrian club Salzburg after a 3-1 win in Ukraine. Cristiano Lucarelli, Nery Alberto Castillo and Brandao each scored for Shakhtar, which lost the first leg 1-0.
Dynamo Kiev beat Sarajevo 3-0 to advance 4-0 on aggregate. Isamel Bangoura opened the scoring from close range after three minutes, Bosnian defender Semjon Milosevic scored into his own goal, and Serhiy Rebrov converted a penalty kick in injury time.
Matias Emilio Delgado scored in the 56th and 64th minutes for Besiktas in a 2-0 win over FC Zurich. Besiktas reached the group stage for the first time in four seasons with the 3-1 aggregate win.
Another Istanbul club, Fenerbahce also advanced with a 2-0 win at Anderlecht in a match that was briefly interrupted by rowdy fans.
Mateja Kezman scored the first goal in the third minute and Alex de Souza added the other in the 77th.
Referee Massimo Busacca halted the match for five minutes in the 81st after about 50 Anderlecht supporters tried to push through a barricade to enter the field. Riot police also had to keep Fenerbache and Anderlecht fans apart after bottles and garbage was thrown between the two camps.
Valencia beat Swedish champion Elfsborg 2-1 to advance on a 5-1 aggregate.
Ivan Helguera gave the Spanish side a 1-0 lead in the fourth minute. Daniel Alexandersson equalized in the 31st, before Daniel Vila’s winner in the 90th minute.

TITLE: Safin Looking Ahead, Not Back After First Round Win
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK — Marat Safin has banked two Grand Slams, more money than he knows what to do with, won 15 titles around the world and smashed untold rackets.
It’s an ongoing tennis career worthy of celebrating as he moves closer to retiring than returning to No. 1 in the world.
Yet as he struggles to string two singles wins together and his title drought approaches three years, Safin isn’t ready to reflect on a distinguished and enigmatic career. He’d rather continue to hope for the best than look back on his best.
After surviving Canadian qualifier Frank Dancevic 7-5, 7-6 (5), 7-5 (7) in the first round of the U.S. Open on Wednesday, Safin was asked about his decade-long pro career but wasn’t willing to walk down memory lane.
Was that victory over Pete Sampras for the 2000 U.S. Open title your best match ever? “Yeah, but who cares? It’s so far in the past. It’s already history. It’s time to move on,” he said with a smile.
How about how he will be regarded in, say, 30 years?
“Who cares? I will not care. I will be doing something else in my life and hopefully I will be happy.”
Do you think you could have achieved much more, as others do?
“Of course it would be greater if I had won the two finals I lost at the Australian Open. And of course it would have been great to win at Roland Garros. I’m not disappointed with my career. In the circumstances I did pretty well. I don’t have any regrets.”
Actually, he had two regrets. Tearing ligaments in his wrist at the 2003 Australian Open, soon after leading Russia to the Davis Cup title, and injuring his knee after winning the 2005 Australian Open.
“They broke the rhythm of my career,” he said. “I could have achieved more but I didn’t.”
He said he wasn’t expecting much from this Open or from the rest of a muddling year and it was getting tougher to win a Slam, but he the door was open if Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal lost ...