SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1304 (70), Friday, September 7, 2007
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TITLE: Indonesia, Russia Seal $1Bln Deal
AUTHOR: By Ahmad Pathoni
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: JAKARTA — Indonesia sealed on Thursday a $1 billion deal to purchase Russian tanks, helicopters and submarines during a visit by President Vladimir Putin, marking a further sign of Moscow’s growing re-engagement in the region.
The visit by Putin, the first to Indonesia by a Russian or Soviet leader in around five decades, is also due to see the signing of billions of dollars in mining and energy deals.
Russia, one of the world’s leading arms traders with annual sales topping $5 billion in bumper years, wants to break into new markets and to rebuild its influence in Asia where Washington, and now increasingly China, have held sway in recent years.
“We have agreed to expand cooperation in areas we consider most important such as energy and mining, aviation, communications and others,” Putin said after the talks with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono at the presidential palace.
“There’s a good perspective to work together in the military and technical fields,” he added.
Indonesia plans to purchase 10 transport helicopters, five assault helicopters, 20 amphibious tanks and two submarines from Russia, which will provide state credit facilities, Defence Ministry spokesman Edy Butar Butar told Reuters on Tuesday.
Last week, an Indonesian defence ministry official agreed to buy six Russian combat aircraft from plane manufacturer Sukhoi in a deal worth $335 million, but so far no banks have agreed to finance the deal, Butar Butar said.
Weapons for the Sukhoi fighter jets were part of the $1 billion deal, Butar Butar said. 
Jakarta turned to Russia and East European countries for weapons several years ago when it was under an arms embargo by the United States. Washington later restored military ties and lifted the arms embargo as a reward for Jakarta’s cooperation with the U.S. war on terrorism.
FEWER STRINGS ATTACHED TO ARMS SALES
Indonesian Defence Minister Juwono Sudarsono said that there were fewer strings attached to arms deals with Russia.
“Requirements for purchasing arms from Western countries are complicated, with pre-conditions attached such as human rights, accountability, not to mention licensing,” he told reporters, adding that the United States had not been consulted on the deal.
“In our past experience with Britain, we were not allowed to use Scorpion tanks in Aceh, even though we were facing armed separatists.”
The Indonesian government and Aceh rebels signed a peace agreement in 2005 ending a separatist war of about three decades.
Susan Stahl, press attache at the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, said that since the U.S. lifted military restrictions in 2005, it had sold $45.76 million of aircraft spare parts and support.
Dewi Fortuna Anwar, a political analyst and former Indonesian presidential adviser, said the Putin visit and accompanying deals marked “a new era” in Indonesia-Russia relations.
“These are very significant developments which bring back memories of the late 1950s and early 1960s when the Soviet Union was a major player in Indonesia’s development,” she added.
Putin, who is due to fly to Sydney on Thursday evening for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, said in an editorial carried in Indonesian newspapers that he would like to see trade grow to $1 billion a year from around $600 million now.
On energy, a joint statement welcomed the signing of an exploration agreement between Russian state-owned oil company LukOil and Indonesia’s state-owned firm Pertamina.
A Pertamina spokesman Wisnuntoro has said the firm would cooperate in East Kalimantan, on Borneo island, and in Papua. Indonesia’s state-owned miner, PT Aneka Tambang Tbk, is also due to sign a $1.5 billion deal for an aluminum project in Kalimantan with Russia’s United Company Rusal.

TITLE: Anti-Tower Protesters Prepare to March
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Residents who feel that the increasing number of new buildings in the historical center of St. Petersburg is threatening its integrity and risks disfiguring the architectural landscape will take to the streets on Saturday to make their voices heard against City Hall’s town-planning policies.
The rally, organized by the liberal opposition party Yabloko and pressure groups Living City and Okhtinskaya Duga, is expected to draw more than 5,000 supporters. 
The march will start at 2 p.m. outside the Oktyabrsky Concert Hall and proceed to Chernyshevsky Gardens via Fourth Sovietskaya Ulitsa. 
This route was proposed after the City Hall refused to allow the protest to take place on at least five other routes which would have gone along more central streets and provided greater public exposure for the demonstration. 
Maxim Reznik, head of the local branch of Yabloko, called the negotiations with City Hall torturous. 
“The officials were almost laughing in my face when rejecting our proposals one after another on nonsensical grounds,” Reznik said. “I cannot call it anything but deliberate scoffing.” 
Mikhail Amosov, formerly head of the Town Planning Commission of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, and the driving force behind St. Petersburg’s building code, said the regulations he helped write in December 2006 are largely ignored.
“Numerous examples illustrate that some companies are allowed to exceed the existing maximum height limits; the process of how these companies obtain permission to go ahead with their construction projects is not transparent,” Amosov said. 
“More detailed legislation and a transparent scheme would have put an end to such practices.”
Yabloko’s national leader and former presidential candidate, Grigory Yavlinsky, will join the rally along with an array of some of Russia’s cultural luminaries. Filmmaker Alexander Sokurov, actors Sergei Yursky and writer Valery Popov have supported the demonstration and are expected to take part. The actor Oleg Basilashvili is not expected to attend as he is on tour. The march has also won the support of the Communist Party.
The impetus for the demonstration, titled the March for the Preservation of St. Petersburg, is the construction of the Okhta-Center tower to serve as energy giant Gazprom’s new headquarters. The 396-meter tower has been branded by angry locals as Gazzilla for its mammoth size. Other nicknames for the skyscraper are Matviyenko’s Castle after its chief advocate Governor Valentina Matviyenko and Miller House after Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller.
Many locals feel the tower, planned for a site opposite Smolny Cathderal on the far side of the River Neva will ruin the city’s historic skyline. The $2.3 billion project is expected to be funded jointly by Gazprom and City Hall on an equal basis. City Hall said local taxes gathered from Gazprom will offset the cost for the city.
Meanwhile, the plan for the tower has been slammed by United Nations’ cultural body UNESCO. The organization asked Russia to stop development on the project until after it has been thoroughly evaluated and all possible risks to the city’s unique architectural legacy are taken into account.
Opinion polls have shown that up to 90 percent of residents are against the tower and architectural experts said it would destroy the architectural harmony of the city. 
The tower, if constructed, would be two-and a-half times higher than the Peter and Paul Fortress, the city’s tallest building,  and more than 3 times taller than Smolny Cathedral and St. Isaac’s Cathedral. 
The St. Petersburg Union of Architects went as far as to refuse to take part in the design competition which had suggested “a tower of about 300 meters high,” while the maximum height for buildings in central St. Petersburg is 48 meters.
The planned height of nearly 400 meters would put the tower among the top ten tallest buildings in the world. New York’s Empire State Building, the world’s tallest from 1931 to 1970, is 381 meters tall.
Yelena Malysheva of the Living City movement, the demostantion’s co-organizer, said residents’ rights are frequently and shamelessly violated in St. Petersburg when deep-pocketed investors have an interest in a particular plot of land, regardless of which area it is located. 
“In-fill construction [building on green spaces between existing buildings] continues in many areas despite concerns,” Malysheva said. “If a wealthy investor points to a plot of land, the authorities happily wipe out all residential buildings that get in the way of the plum project. The whole process is lawless. The residents are offered laughable compensation or a new home miles away from the city, not anywhere near where they originally lived. We are facing an invasion of barbaric construction.”
Earlier this year a group of enthusiasts, including Amosov, tried to initiate a city-wide referendum to decide the fate of the controversial Gazprom skyscraper but the plan was stopped on technicalities during a review at the city parliament.
The group has amended the questions and is intending to hold the poll later this fall.

TITLE: Deputies Sweat Out Wait for Party Lists
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — The indications were few during Wednesday’s State Duma session that deputies were even aware that there was an election campaign under way.
But the presidential decree officially opening the campaign was finally published Wednesday and, behind the scenes, deputies said their electoral prospects were the main thing on their minds.
Inside the parliament, deputies referred to the December vote only twice during the session, and there was no reference to the president’s decree at all.
Liberal Democratic Party Deputy Valentin Sviridov was responsible for one of the references, proposing that the Duma allocate one hour every day during the session to allow factions to deliver campaign statements.
“I can see that the daily agenda isn’t very heavy,” he said in an apparent suggestion that the move would not impede debate on legislation. Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov countered with a proposal, which was ultimately passed, that the regularly scheduled Friday time slot for such statements be extended from the current 30 minutes to a full hour.
Communist Deputy Viktor Tyulkin, addressing the topic of elections, called for newspapers to publish a list of deputies who have switched factions in the Duma, in order to discourage people from voting for them again.
He then added a dig at the LDPR, tied to the recent defection of one of its senior members, Alexei Mitrofanov, to pro-Kremlin party A Just Russia.
“We all understand perfectly that the ship is sinking,” Tyulkin said, in reference to the LDPR. “It has completed its political function.”
Gryzlov had warned on Tuesday that politicking would not be tolerated in the new session, and he reacted to Tyulkin’s comments by cutting his microphone.
“Let’s get busy with legislative activity instead of politics,” he said.
The temptation to play to the voters was high Wednesday because President Vladimir Putin’s decree, which sets the vote for Dec. 2, was finally published in Rossiiskaya Gazeta, the official government paper of record.
The decree was particularly important because parties are prohibited from nominating candidates until 10 days after its publication, and the real campaigning can only begin when the candidates are in place.
One of the most notable moments of the first 30 minutes of Wednesday’s session, when deputies are permitted to address issues not on the agenda, came courtesy of Communist Deputy Nikolai Kondratenko. He called for parliamentary hearings to question current widespread condemnation of Stalin’s purges, 70 years ago.
“A Zionist point of view has prevailed that the people who perished were the most talented and hardest working,” he said.
Gryzlov suggested that Kondratenko file a formal request.
Most other lawmakers were less controversial. Communist deputies Makhmud Makhmudov and Viktor Vidmakov proposed a Duma investigation into a recent doubling of cement prices that has driven up housing costs.
LDPR Deputy Andrei Ostrovsky urged the Duma to call on the Cabinet to make diamond monopoly Alrosa supply more raw diamonds to the Kristall cutting factory in the Smolensk region. Alexei Chernyshov, also from the LDPR, called on fellow lawmakers to address the question of disappearing rural schools.
“It has been a St. Bartholomew Day massacre for rural schools,” Chernyshov said, referring to a day that kicked off a wave of Catholic mob violence against Protestants in France in 1572.
After the 30-minute period ended, lawmakers steamrolled through a day’s worth of bills in a mere two hours.
With their legislative work done for the day, however, most deputies said behind the scenes that the December elections were the main thing on their minds.
“Whether we like it or not, this is the dominant subject,” Communist Deputy Oleg Kulikov said.
“You have just three days to pack up and leave once your term ends,” said Georgy Leontyev of United Russia. “People do get together and discuss their prospects.”
For some deputies, the nervousness stemmed from concerns that their parties might not include them on their lists for the next Duma, Leontyev said.
He added that this had not been a major issue yet, but that it was likely to have a greater effect on deputies’ moods in the parliament after the parties hold their congresses — from mid-September to early October — to finalize their candidate lists.
“Those whose names don’t make the lists will just stop working,” Kulikov said, adding that his party had already assured him he would have a spot.
United Russia faction members are perhaps feeling the greatest stress, as a large number won their seats in single-mandate districts, an opportunity not available this time around. According to the latest polls, the party does not have enough support to provide seats for all current members of the Duma faction.
But United Russia’s Leontyev, himself elected in the single-mandate district of Kamensk-Uralsky in the Ural Mountains in 2003, said some of his fellow faction members were ready to leave.
“Naturally, everybody has a fallback option,” he said. “They have thought it out in advance.”
Asked whether he himself had made plans for life after the Duma, he answered, “Of course.”
Despite Mitrofanov’s defection to A Just Russia so close to the election, LDPR Deputy Andrei Golovatyuk downplayed the effect that it would have on the party’s prospects. He said the Duma faction was confident that its performance this session would win the party more votes.
“We are in a competitive spirit and have increased our commitment to work,” he said.
But Svyatoslav Nastashevsky said Mitrofanov’s move might not be the last, as other deputies might switch allegiances if they think it will improve their chances of holding on to their seats. 
A former independent himself, Nastashevsky is now a member of the A Just Russia faction in the Duma and is in negotiations for a spot on its party list.

TITLE: 161 Schools Shut Down 
Over Safety
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Emergency Situations Ministry said Wednesday that it had closed more than 160 schools because of fire-safety violations.
“The activities of 161 educational establishments have currently been halted temporarily by the courts,” the ministry said in a statement on its web site. 
Courts will consider the closing of a further 900 schools for the same reason. 
During inspections earlier this year, more than 30,000 school employees who were charged with misdemeanors for failing to adhere to fire-safety regulations, the statement said, adding that the last four years had seen a 15 percent drop in the number of fires in schools.

TITLE: Europe’s Tallest Building Scaled by French Climber
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — French urban climber Alain Roberts scaled the 242-meter Federation Tower on Tuesday after getting permission from city authorities.
Roberts had planned to climb the tower in the Moskva-City business district as Moscow celebrated its 860th anniversary Sunday. But he canceled the climb after failing to secure permission. Authorities granted permission Monday.
“We never banned the climb. We just never authorized it because no one contacted us about it,” said Yekaterina Zolotareva, a spokeswoman for the administration of the city’s central district, RIA-Novosti reported.
Despite the permission, three police officers waited for Roberts on an upper floor and briefly detained him after he reached the top, Ekho Moskvy radio reported.
Dubbed Spider-Man because he climbs without ropes or suction cups, Roberts has climbed the Empire State Building in New York, the Eiffel Tower in Paris and the Abu Dhabi Bank in Dubai.
He is used to having difficulty getting permission for his climbs and has been detained several times, most notably on the 60th floor of the 88-story Petronas Tower in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
The smooth glass facade of the Federation Tower is too slippery to grip onto, so the tower’s constructor, Mirax Group, mounted a temporary safety system on the surface that simultaneously served as an obstacle course for Roberts.
The climb took around an hour.

TITLE: British Fighter Jets Scramble To Intercept Russian Bombers
AUTHOR: By Sophie Walker
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Britain’s air force scrambled four Tornado warplanes on Thursday to intercept eight Russian long-range bombers, the Ministry of Defence said.
The ministry said the Russian aircraft had not entered British air space.
“In the early hours of this morning four RAF (Royal Air Force) Tornado F3 aircraft from RAF Leeming and RAF Waddington (bases) were launched to intercept eight Russian Bear aircraft which had not entered UK air space,” it said in a statement.
The Tupolev Tu-95, codenamed “Bear” by NATO, is Russia’s equivalent of the U.S. B-52 bomber and is a Cold War icon.
Russia’s defense ministry published a statement earlier on Thursday which said 14 Russian strategic bombers had started long-range routine patrol operations on Wednesday evening over the Pacific, the Atlantic and the Arctic.
Relations between London and Moscow are at their worst since the Cold War. Russia’s refusal to extradite Andrei Lugovoy, a former KGB bodyguard suspected of murdering emigre Alexander Litvinenko in London last year, led to tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats from both countries.
Ties between Russia and the European Union have also deteriorated of late over issues such as energy policy, Kosovo and Moscow’s treatment of European firms operating there.
The Russian statement said six planes had already returned to base and the other eight were still in the air.
“The planes flew only over neutral water and did not approach the air space of a foreign state,” the statement said. “Practically all the planes were accompanied by fighters from NATO countries.”
Sky News said the Russian bombers were heading towards British air space and did a U-turn when approached by the British fighters. 
It is at least the second time in recent months Britain has scrambled jets to intercept Russian bombers.
The sorties by Russian bombers appeared to the latest of the regular long-range patrols that President Vladimir Putin announced last month would be resumed after a gap following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Hampered by a shortage of fuel and airworthy planes, Russian bombers have for years been making only occasional patrols. 
But Putin said that starting on August 17, they would be in the air more or less constantly.

TITLE: Rocket Crashes Back to Earth
AUTHOR: By Steve Gutterman
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — An unmanned Russian rocket carrying a Japanese communications satellite malfunctioned after liftoff Thursday, sending parts crashing in an uninhabited part of Kazakhstan and triggering concerns about environmental damage.
Nobody was hurt, but it was a potential blow to Russia’s program for commercial satellite launches.
The Proton-M rocket failed to put the JCSAT-11 satellite into orbit because of a problem during operation of the second stage, the U.S.-based American-Russian joint venture International Launch Services said.
The rocket failed 139 seconds after its launch from the Russian-rented Baikonur facility in Kazakhstan, and its second and third stages veered from the planned trajectory at an altitude of 46 miles, said Alexander Vorobyov, a spokesman for the Russian space agency Roskosmos.
Parts of the rocket fell in an uninhabited area about 30 miles southwest of the central Kazakh town of Zhezkazgan, Vorobyov said.
The rocket was carrying more than 220 tons of fuel, including highly toxic heptyl, Kazakh space agency chief Talgat Musabayev said, expressing concern about possible contamination around the crash site, Kazakhstan’s Kazinform news agency reported.
Deputy environment minister Zeynulla Sarsembayev said there had been six “serious situations” involving failed launches from Baikonur since 1996 and warned that Kazakhstan would tighten environmental safety requirements for launches, the Kazakhstan Today news agency reported on its Web site. He did not give elaborate.
Prime Minister Karim Masimov said Kazakhstan would be fully compensated for environmental damage under existing agreements, according to Russian news agencies.
Under an agreement with Kazakhstan, launches of Proton rockets from Baikonur were automatically suspended until the cause of the crash is determined, Vorobyov said.
He said that was unlikely to affect future launches, but an official at state-controlled Khrunichev State Research and Production Center, which makes Proton rockets, said that would depend on when an official investigative commission delivers its report.
Following an accident involving a different kind of rocket launched from Baikonur last year, the report came in about six weeks, and Proton launches are scheduled for November and December, Khrunichev spokesman Alexander Bobrenyov said.
Russian and Kazakh media quoted Musabayev as saying the accident was likely caused by the failure of steering mechanisms aboard the rocket, but Bobrenyov said it was too early to make that determination.
Russia has been aggressively trying to expand its presence in the international market for commercial and government satellite and space-industry launches, although its efforts have seen several high-profile failures.
In July 2006, a Dnepr rocket carrying 18 satellites for various clients crashed shortly after takeoff from the Baikonur, spreading highly toxic fuel over a wide swath of uninhabited territory in Kazakhstan.
The JCSAT-11 satellite, made by U.S.-based Lockheed Martin Commercial Space Systems, was to be used by Japan’s JSAT Corp., International Launch Services said. 
The heavy-lift Proton, a top income-generator for Russia’s space industry, is made by Khrunichev, a partner in International Launch Services.
The McLean, Va.-based ILS, which says it has exclusive rights for commercial sales and mission management of satellite launches on Russia’s Proton rockets, plans 21 Proton missions through 2013.

TITLE: United Russia Misses Deadline for Party Lists
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — United Russia has missed an internal deadline to select candidates for its party lists, fueling speculation that the pro-Kremlin party is entering the campaign season in disarray.
Each of the party’s regional branches was supposed to choose candidates for its list by the end of last month. The party’s general council was to meet Monday to review the results.
But the meeting has been indefinitely postponed, a United Russia spokeswoman said Wednesday, apparently after the regional branches failed to complete their lists.
The main problem lies with the Moscow region branch, Gazeta.ru reported Wednesday. Boris Gromov, the popular and influential governor of the Moscow region, balked after taking issue with the candidates recommended by the party’s leadership, the report said, citing sources in the State Duma and United Russia.
The leadership drafted a list of 33 candidates, including Gromov and 12 United Russia deputies in the current Duma, it said. Governors typically are placed at the top of party lists to raise support for their party, not to relinquish their posts for seats in the Duma.
An official in United Russia’s Moscow region branch said the region’s party list would not be completed until the end of September.
“We will have our conference to decide who will get on the regional ticket in the last days of September,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to speak to the media.
But United Russia’s point man for the elections, Andrei Vorobyov, maintained in a written reply to questions that the Moscow region branch had finished its list and the results would be announced Sept. 17.
He said all party lists would be finalized at a party conference Oct. 1.
Gromov’s spokesman, Andrei Barkovsky, directed all queries about the matter to the head of the regional branch of United Russia, Vladimir Shapkin. A secretary at Shapkin’s office refused to put repeated telephone calls through to him, saying he was busy in meetings.
The idea of having regional branches sign off on party lists was a mistake, said Rostislav Turovsky, a political analyst with the Agency for Regional Information. “It exposed conflicts between the party’s headquarters and regional party branches patronized by governors,” he said.
Duma First Deputy Speaker Lyubov Sliska, whom headquarters had expected to be in second place, after the governor, on the Tambov region’s list was instead ninth and on the last line of the list. In the Samara region, a local party activist, Alexander Zhivaikin, was placed at the top of the list, even though his candidacy was not proposed by headquarters.
The party-list problem comes after United Russia was accused earlier this week of delaying the start of the Duma campaign from Monday to Wednesday to help it keep up with electoral paperwork. United Russia denied the accusation. United Russia is expected to emerge as the biggest winner in the Duma elections Dec. 2, with 45 percent to 60 percent of the vote.

TITLE: Fugitive Russneft Chief Alleged to Be in London
AUTHOR: By Miriam Elder
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Former Russneft chief Mikhail Gutseriyev fled Russia via Turkey and is living in London, sources close to the wanted oil tycoon said Wednesday, as a Moscow court upheld a warrant for his arrest on what he has called politically motivated charges.
“He is in London, but has asked his friends to remain quiet during this difficult time,” one source said by telephone from London. Gutseriyev is observing 40 days of mourning for his son, Chingiskhan, who was killed in a car crash in Moscow on Aug. 22, the source said.
The death of his son came as prosecutors ramped up the campaign against Gutseriyev, who stepped down as head of the country’s seventh-largest oil firm on July 31 after what he called “unprecedented hounding” from tax and law enforcement authorities.
Basic Element, the holding company belonging to Kremlin-friendly oligarch Oleg Deripaska, is currently in talks to buy the embattled firm.
Tax authorities have brought a total of 11 lawsuits against eight current and former shareholders in privately held Russneft, and all the company’s shares and assets have been frozen.
Gutseriyev himself is wanted on charges of illegal business practices and tax evasion. The Moscow City Court on Wednesday rejected an appeal from his lawyers to withdraw an arrest warrant issued Aug. 28. Shortly after the warrant was issued, Gutseriyev was placed on an international wanted list.
“Gutseriyev is an honest man who follows the law, an upstanding person,” his lawyer, Alla Yaminskaya, said after Wednesday’s hearing. “All court decisions relating to this issue are illegal and will be appealed.”
Prosecutors said at the hearing that Gutseriyev had disappeared July 30 and that investigators were only alerted to his whereabouts Aug. 4, when Belarussian authorities said his passport had been used on a flight from Minsk to Antalya, on Turkey’s southern coast. Prosecutors said they had since lost track of Gutseriyev. 
At a second hearing Wednesday, the court rejected an appeal to unfreeze shares in Russneft, arguing that the company’s lawyers had not followed proper procedures. 
Judge Olga Kononenko said the share freeze would remain in effect.
A source inside Russneft, who also said Gutseriyev had left Turkey for London, said the company had already been sold to Deripaska’s Basic Element holding.
“The deal was made one and a half months ago,” the source said.  Basic Element on Tuesday requested approval for the deal from the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service.

TITLE: Germanwings Increases Scope
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Germanwings, the German budget airline, has announced the introduction of low-cost connecting flights from Russia. The company has introduced over 500 new destinations, which can be accessed through the airports of Cologne-Bonn, Stuttgart and Berlin-Schonefeld, spokesmen for Germanwings said Wednesday at a press conference in St. Petersburg.
The system, called Smart Connect, allows passengers to order stop-over flights indicating only the final destination and showing the total price, which is lower than the cost of two separate flights.
“Germanwings has been operating for just five years. But we are proud of the number of destinations we offer. Now we are introducing an innovation — convenient connecting flights for Russian passengers,” said Andreas Engel, director for public relations at Germanwings.
So far in Russia, Germanwings had operated direct flights from Moscow and St. Petersburg to its key European airports — Hamburg, Cologne, Stuttgart and Berlin. With the new connecting flights, ten destinations will be available from Moscow and seven destinations from St. Petersburg.
According to Mark-Christian Gerdes, director for Northern and Eastern Europe at Germanwings, between January and July this year Germanwings transported 124,000 passengers from Moscow and 37,000 passengers from St. Petersburg.
“Compared to last year, the number of passengers from St. Petersburg increased by 540 percent,” Gerdes said.
The average occupancy on flights from Moscow was 84 percent and 81 percent from St. Petersburg.
“The average occupancy level on flights from Moscow is higher that the average occupancy level across all destinations offered by Germanwings. St. Petersburg is more seasonal in this respect. From May-July the occupancy level here can exceed 95 percent,” Gerdes said.
Among the advantages of connecting flights, Engel listed the short time required to change planes, which is expected to be 90 minutes. Germanwings passengers will have to reclaim their luggage and register for the second flight prior to other passengers.
As a result, a connecting flight from St. Petersburg to Bologna through Cologne will take about four hours and cost $199.
Last year Germanwings served 3.5 million passengers in Northern and Eastern Europe, Gerdes said. This year the company expects this number to increase to four million, and to 4.7 million in 2009. The total number of passengers across all the regions was 7.1 million last year.
“The main advantage of Smart Connect is that we can enter new markets and attract new clients in regions where budget carriers have not operated so far,” Engel said.
“Thanks to Smart Connect we expect to attract 22,000 additional passengers in 2007, 77,000 passengers in 2008 and 91,000 passengers in 2009,” Engel said.
“In the near future we will offer new destinations through Dortmund airport,” Gerdes said.
An industry analyst was positive about this innovation. “This Germanwings service is a unique product for the Russian market. However in Europe such transit flights are a common thing,” said Anastasia Zhdanova, analyst at Brokercreditservice investment company.
“I think these flights will be popular. Many students in Russia are used to traveling abroad. Germanwings will occupy its niche in the market,” Zhdanova said.

TITLE: MKK to Invest In U.S. Plant
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: ST. PETERSBURG — Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works plans to invest more than $1 billion building a plant in the United States to supply steel sheet to the automotive sector, its billionaire owner said Wednesday.
MMK, Russia’s third-largest steel producer, expects the go-ahead from U.S. authorities by the end of the year to build the plant with a yearly capacity of 1.5 million tons in the state of Ohio, said the company’s chairman, Viktor Rashnikov.
“There are a few issues to be decided. We need the approval of the environmental committee,” Rashnikov said.
MMK plans to invest more than $5 billion by 2013 increasing the quality and amount of steel it produces.
The company operates Russia’s largest single steel plant and, although previous attempts to expand overseas were thwarted, it formed a $1.1 billion joint venture this year with Turkish group Atakas to build a steel complex in Turkey.
MMK Atakas Metalurji Sanayi, owned 50 percent plus one share by MMK, will start producing 2.6 million tons per year of hot- and cold-rolled steel sheet at two locations in Turkey within three years.
MMK produced 12.5 million tons of steel in 2006, or 17.6 percent of the total in Russia, the world’s fourth-largest steel producer.  The company made a first half net profit of $866 million.

TITLE: Russian Rail Tipped For Improvement
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Cabinet was due to discuss a development plan Thursday that could see Russian Railways spending 13 trillion rubles ($506 billion) to overhaul its infrastructure and expand railway connections to the country’s major ports and business centers by 2030.
The Cabinet meeting was also tipped to review a strategy to sell off a minority of shares in the company, which is currently wholly state-owned.
The program will aim to improve the rail network’s efficiency and quality of service, Russian Railways, or RZD, said in a statement posted on its web site.
RZD chief Vladimir Yakunin, who has been touted as a possible dark horse candidate in next year’s presidential election, unveiled the plan at a meeting with President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday. 
Under the program, some of the company’s outdated railcars and rolling stock will be replaced and 6,000 kilometers of new railroads, including high-speed rail tracks, will be built by 2015. A further 15,800 kilometers of rail lines are planned by 2030, including a 3,500-kilometer line to the Bering Straits and a link between Sakhalin and the mainland. 
Eduard Faritov, a railways analyst with Renaissance Capital, said the sheer size of RZD would make it difficult for the firm to accomplish its goals efficiently. “While the company can compete with rivals abroad in profitability, it is counterproductive in Russia to leave such huge profits at the disposal of state monopolies,” Faritov said. “Privatizing the company may help to raise efficiency.”

TITLE: City Budget Profits To Increase By 25%
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The city budget’s profits will increase by 25.5 percent next year, as local authorities expect to raise 293.8 billion rubles ($11.5 billion) through taxes and other payments in 2008, according to a draft of the city budget approved by the local government Tuesday.
By 2010 the city budget profits are expected to increase to 378.4 billion rubles ($14.8 billion) a year, according to estimations by City Hall’s finance committee.
“The budget for 2008 and for the period up to 2010 will be socially oriented,” Governor Valentina Matviyenko said in a statement released by the governor’s press service Tuesday.
“Once again the budget keeps the balance between spending on social activities and the development of communal services and the city’s infrastructure,” Matviyenko said.
Increasing budget spending on social projects and the development of local infrastructure will result in a budget deficit.
Next year budget spending is planned at 323.7 billion rubles ($12.6 billion), which exceeds the budget profits by 10 percent. The budget spending for 2010 was approved at over 400 billion rubles ($15.6 billion), which will exceed the expected budget profits by 5.7 percent.
Next year spending on the “Address Investment Program” will increase up to 102 billion rubles ($3.9 billion) — a 50 percent increase compared to 2007 and tenfold increase compared to 2003.
The main spheres of investment will be engineering networks, the transportation system and city roads, modernization of the power system, construction of affordable social housing, liquidation of demolished and dilapidated residential buildings and strategic projects. The governor named the main task for local officials as the necessity to make budget spending more efficient. Among the priorities, she indicated investment into the healthcare system, education, communal infrastructure and social projects.
“We have almost eliminated the number of people in the city with salaries or pensions below the minimum cost of living. In the future we will also maintain the income of the local population by all possible means,” Matviyenko said.
As for budget profits, the governor suggested finding new opportunities to increase the taxable base. The largest share of the budget profits comes from profit tax, income tax and property tax.
For the last few years city budget spending has exceeded the budget profits. Only in 2001 did the local government report a budget surplus.
Yekaterina Grigorieva, senior specialist in the corporate governance department at Balt-Audit-Expert, a part of Energy Consulting group, considers rising budget expenses and profits to be natural for St. Petersburg’s developing economy.
“Living on credit is advantageous. It allows higher rates of development compared to a situation of a self-supporting budget or budget surplus,” Grigorieva said.
Positive credit ratings from international agencies prove that the local government effectively handles credit risks, she said. For example, Standard and Poors’ ranks St. Petersburg “bbB-” with a positive forecast.

TITLE: Rosneft Touts Potential in Kamchatka
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW— Rosneft plans to start drilling next year for oil and gas off the Kamchatka Peninsula, where reserves could rival those at Sakhalin, CEO Sergei Bogdanchikov said Wednesday. 
Rosneft estimates that developing the Kamchatka shelf will cost about $24 billion, Bogdanchikov said in the Kamchatka town of Vilyuchinsk, which he was visiting with President Vladimir Putin, Interfax and RIA-Novosti reported. 
“We’ve already prepared everything to begin work on two exploratory wells, and drilling will start in 2008,” Bogdanchikov said. “The project’s size is equal to Sakhalin-1 or Sakhalin-2, or even surpasses it.” 
During a meeting on the project, Putin criticized government officials for holding up the construction of a long-delayed gas pipeline on the peninsula, Itar-Tass reported.
“I understand that it’s an unprofitable project for commercial companies, as Sergei Mikhailovich [Bogdanchikov] said,” Putin said. “What has the government done? Don’t you think [a delay of] seven years is intolerable? This is too long.”
Putin was on his way to the Asian Pacific Economic Forum in Australia, which begins Saturday.
Unified Energy System chief Anatoly Chubais told the meeting that the utility planned to sign an agreement with the regional government by Dec. 1 to build the pipeline. Rosneft, which has a 60 percent stake in the Kamchatka project, has so far invested around $90 million there and will inject $270 million to $300 million next year. 
It is unclear whether the Kamchatka reserves are oil or gas, but Rosneft’s partner Korean National Oil Corporation has previously said there could be up to 10.3 billion barrels of oil. 
During his Kamchatka visit, Putin toured a Navy base and played tenpin bowling with First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov.
Television pictures showed the pair touring refurbished officers’ accommodations at a submarine base in Vilyuchinsk.
Reuters, Bloomberg, MT

TITLE: Overheated Economy To Slow Down, says Klepach
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — The global liquidity crunch may hit the two key drivers of the country’s strong economic growth — consumer lending and the real estate sector, the Economic Development and Trade Ministry’s chief forecaster said Wednesday.
“There is some overheating in the economy. It can be seen in real estate, especially in large cities, as well as in consumer lending and home loans markets,” Andrei Klepach, head of the ministry’s planning department, told a news conference. “The market correction and capital outflows will lead to a slowdown in the banking sector growth, especially in overheated segments.”
Consumer loans grew by 75 percent in 2006 as apartment prices in large cities doubled. Banks borrowed heavily from abroad to finance consumer lending and home loans growth. They made hefty profits charging their customers double-digit interest but became vulnerable to rising international interest rates and liquidity levels. The Central Bank had to inject billions of rubles into the banking system in recent weeks as liquidity dried up due to a sell-off in Russian assets. Klepach said stabilization would take some time.
“I do not think there will be a crisis in the consumer lending sector, but some banks may face a bad debt problem,” Klepach said. “The correction in the banking sector development will take some time. I think the Central Bank’s efforts to support liquidity levels will continue.” 
Government officials so far have sounded upbeat about economic growth prospects. Klepach is the first senior official to strike a more pessimistic note.
Klepach said the country would see its enormous current account surplus disappear in 2009, or even earlier, due to rapidly rising imports and would need to improve its competitiveness to cope with global challenges. 
He said the new situation would require new economic measures.

TITLE: Belarus to Extract Iranian Oil
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: TEHRAN, Iran — Iran signed a contract with Belarus on Wednesday that will allow Minsk to extract oil from the Islamic state’s southern Jofeir oil field, the oil ministry’s news web site reported.
Shana news agency said the deal, with a value of at least $450 million over two phases, was the “first amended buy-back contract” and aimed to produce 40,000 barrels of oil per day from the Jofeir deposit.
“The contract to develop Jofeir oil field was signed with [Belorusneft] this morning. ... The contract will be implemented in 24 months,” Shana reported.
The agreement was first announced in May when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited Belarus, and officials in Iran said later that month that they hoped to finalize the deal in two weeks’ time.
 The United Nations has imposed two rounds of limited sanctions on Tehran since December over its disputed nuclear activities. Belarus has defended Iran’s right to pursue its nuclear program.

TITLE: Looking Ridiculous Is Politically Fatal
AUTHOR: By Gideon Rachman
TEXT: This summer, two Republican U.S. senators have had their secret lives revealed in humiliating circumstances. David Vitter admitted to a “very serious sin” after his name appeared on the phone records of a Washington escort agency. Larry Craig was given a 10-day suspended jail sentence after apparently cruising for gay sex in a public bathroom. 
This weekend, Craig resigned from the Senate. Vitter, however, is hanging on. So what does it take for a sex scandal to be truly fatal? Why do some politicians survive this sort of thing and others perish? 
In the British-American heartland of the political sex scandal, this is not a marginal question. The French may pride themselves on allowing politicians to lead their private lives unmolested. But in recent years, sex scandals have led to the impeachment of an American president and contributed mightily to the implosion of a British government. The British Conservative administration of the mid-1990s was badly wounded when its unfortunately named “Back to Basics” campaign for traditional values was followed by a string of salacious revelations about Tory politicians — ranging from gay affairs to auto-erotic strangulation. 
In the United States, the Republican Party is in danger of suffering similar damage. Senators Craig and Vitter are the most prominent Republicans to have run into trouble so far. But last year Representative Mark Foley had to resign from Congress after sending sexually explicit messages to underage male pages. And this summer Bob Allen, a representative in the Florida state legislature, was chucked off Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign after making the Craig-like error of soliciting sex in a bathroom from an undercover cop. 
The press tends to get a taste for this sort of thing, so there may be more scandals to come. The law of averages certainly suggests that there must be other senators who are harboring guilty secrets, but who have not yet had the misfortune of seeing their favorite brothel or public bathroom raided by the police. 
But when the dreaded day arrives — and the secret is exposed — what happens? There seem to be no iron rules to predict who will survive a scandal. Political consultants have their theories. The nature of the offense obviously matters. Breaking a law is worse than breaking your marriage vows. Gay sex is more politically hazardous than the heterosexual variety. Brazening it out is better than lying. 
Go through this checklist and it becomes clear that Craig was more vulnerable than Vitter on several counts. A conservative horror of homosexuality certainly played a part. But he was also convicted in court, unlike Vitter. And after admitting to his crime, Craig’s later denials made him look daft and dishonest. 
Obvious hypocrisy is also bad news — which makes it much harder for social conservatives such as Craig to survive a sex scandal. But liberals who have broken no laws can also see their political careers finished by a sex scandal. Think of the implosion of Gary Hart’s presidential election campaign in 1988 after he was caught dallying with an actress. 
Hart had made the mistake of challenging the press to follow him around and prove infidelity. That made him look absurd, as did the fact that he was photographed balancing his lover on his knee on a yacht called Monkey Business. 
It is absurdity — the snigger factor — that seems to be the truly fatal element in any sex scandal. Lying, hypocrisy, even a little law breaking — all of that can be survived. But when politicians lose their dignity, they are finished. Frequently, it is the small details of a scandal — and the bizarre little lies — that do the real damage. Craig suffered more than Vitter in large part because far more details of his indiscretion were revealed to a delighted public. Tapping your foot in a public bathroom will never seem safe again. Waving your hand under the cubicle was probably never a great idea. 
But it is Britain — the home of the saucy seaside postcard — that has repeatedly demonstrated that it is the ludicrous details in a sex scandal that are often most damaging. It was bad news for Mark Oaten, a leading member of Britain’s Liberal Democrats, when he was caught using male prostitutes. But why did he have to suggest that his behavior might have been provoked by the stress of going bald? Ron Davies, a Cabinet minister in the Blair government, also erred when he tried to argue that he had strayed into a gay pickup spot because he was looking for badgers. 
Years later, it is the weird details — rather than the serious charges — that are remembered. In the 1970s, British Liberal party leader Jeremy Thorpe was tried and acquitted of conspiracy to murder a male model. A serious matter, obviously. But the case is now colloquially remembered as “Rinkagate” — after one memorable detail of the incident. The would-be assassin failed to kill Norman Scott, the male model, and instead shot his dog, Rinka. When Thorpe was defeated in his bid for re-election to parliament, he found himself facing a satirist running for the “Dog-Lovers’ Party.” Even if he had improbably won re-election, he was finished as a politician. Nobody would ever take him seriously again. 
But there are politicians who have faced appallingly embarrassing sexual scandals and survived. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton is their patron saint. Remarkably, he managed to emerge from the Monica Lewinsky affair with his job and his popularity largely intact. He left office with 65 percent approval ratings. 
Clinton appeared to break many of the rules for surviving a scandal. He lied and he provoked plenty of snickers, with his lawyerly reinterpretations of words such as “is” and “sexual relations.” 
The “comeback kid” stayed in office because congressional Democrats rallied round him in the impeachment hearings. But he survived politically because — despite all the excruciating details — he never totally lost his dignity. By the end it was his prosecutors and persecutors — with their monotone, prurient questions — who came to seem rather odder than the president himself. 
Clinton’s survival also owed something to the fact that his sin was not completely at odds with his public image — so the gap between the public and the private Clinton was not too ludicrous to handle. Politicians are often unusual people who have to pretend to be regular guys. When the gap between image and reality becomes too glaring, they begin to look ridiculous and political death follows. Larry Craig is just the latest to learn this bitter lesson. 

Gideon Rachman is a columnist for the Financial Times, where this comment appeared.

TITLE: A Russian FBI — In Theory
AUTHOR: By Georgy Bovt
TEXT: A powerful new agency, the Investigative Committee, has been created to operate alongside the Prosecutor General’s Office. The head of the committee will have broad powers, operate independently of the prosecutor general and, like the prosecutor general, be appointed directly by the Federation Council on the president’s recommendation. The committee’s chief can even initiate proceedings against the prosecutor general, but not the other way around.
The idea for an investigative agency separate from the prosecutor’s office, something like the FBI in the United States, has been kicking around for a long time. A few years ago, Dmitry Kozak got the ball rolling as a member of the presidential administration, but political conditions at the time brought it to a halt. The prosecutor general at the time, Vladimir Ustinov, was in the middle of the Yukos investigation — a project he was keeping for himself. His office was becoming increasingly active in politics, not to mention the federal and regional economies. Ustinov’s ultimate transfer to the Justice Ministry, therefore, seemed to signal a reform.
Judging from events, however, the new prosecutor general, Yury Chaika, got a bit jealous. His report to President Vladimir Putin last week on successful investigations into a range of high-profile crimes — including the murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya — demonstrated his need to prove his own importance.
A good deal of authority has been shifted from the Prosecutor General’s Office to the Investigative Committee. Now criminal proceedings against senior government officials and State Duma deputies will be conducted not by the prosecutor general, but by the chief of the committee. The prosecutor has been stripped of its right to oversee interrogations, property seizures and the establishment of pretrial restrictions. Now the committee has exclusive authority to initiate criminal proceedings.
The prosecutor general does, however, retain the authority to call for inquiries and to issue instructions on their execution. But investigators, who used to have to get the go-ahead from the prosecutor general before applying to a court for an arrest warrant, can now just go straight to the judge.
In the political sense, the Prosecutor General’s Office has been sidelined. Its functions have been curtailed, and it has been eclipsed by a competing agency. A number of other law enforcement agencies, however, remain active in the political arena. The Interior Ministry retains the authority to conduct investigations, as do the Federal Security Service and the Federal Drug Control Service. So the potential for conflict between these powerful agencies, which have developed a kind of corporate interest, remains. Given the drastic increase in the influence each has wielded in political and economic spheres in recent years, the stakes for which they are playing are only likely to continue growing.
This “corporation” has created internal system of checks and balances, but is not subject to any external control — public, parliamentary or otherwise. It may be fragmented, and thus little threat to the authorities, but the lack of accountability makes it a greater threat to the general public.
The fact that the Investigative Committee did not turn out as the robust body initially proposed by Kozak suggests that there will be no real change in the balance between the investigative and prosecutorial functions.
There were once high hopes that taking prosecutors out of the loop would make the process less arbitrary. But the system introduced two years ago, where a court must grant an arrest warrant, has simply turned the courts into a rubber stamp for investigators, thus bringing them into the corporate fold.
We will see whether the same kind of tight bonds develop among investigators, the Prosecutor General’s Office and the courts — all of whom are officially supposed to be independent in Russia, as they are elsewhere. Here, of course, such independence always comes at a price.

Georgy Bovt is a Moscow-based political analyst.

TITLE: Dutch for beginners
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Once the Netherlands spawned a band that Russians immediately accepted as their own — to strum Shocking Blue’s “Venus” or “Never Marry a Railroad Man,” sung to with home-made Russian lyrics, was a must for any teenager with a guitar, alongside “Can’t Buy Me Love” and “Yesterday.” Greyish images of the band’s singer Mariska Veresm (who died at the age of 59 last December) on amateur photographic prints completed the myth.
Although the country hasn’t produced anything of such legendary status for Russians since then, there is Dutch Punch, that brings new music, film, art and some poetry from the Netherlands and opens this week.
“It takes a long time to find a new band with a lady singing ‘I’m your fire at your desire’ with a horny look in her eyes, probably…” wrote musician Jelmer Cnossen, who is due to perform at Dutch Punch under the moniker Malorix, in an email to The St. Petersburg Times. 
Luuk Bouwman of the techno-punk Aux Raus wrote that, “There have been some other Dutch successes, especially euro-dance [acts] like 2 Unlimited (though we don’t know if it reached Russia), and some  metal bands… 
“Shocking Blue was a great pop band, but these kind of worldwide hit singles is not something you can really rely on. But more than ever, music travels fast and I guess it’s much easier to reach an international audience with alternative/underground music now than before.”
Aux Raus’s Bastiaan Bosma still cites the band as one of his favorite.
“Shocking Blue is a great band! Especially the song ‘Inkpot’ is one of our favorites when we’re driving our car. There were a few more bands that were successful outside of Holland, but not too much... For a long time bands just copied each other and their American and English rock icons. It still happens, but I think there’s a lot more people in Holland now trying to create something a bit fresh.
“I think if Dutch people start making music that doesn’t sound like 10,000,000,000,000 other bands, there is a good possibility that one day a Dutch band can be big in Russia again.”
Mr. Point of the garage band Low Point Drains traces influences of Shocking Blue in the music of such bands as Nirvana.
“It was just a right place, right time thing. They even inspired Nirvana and lots of other bands,” he wrote. 
“At that time and still, there are a lot of bands that make such music but they don’t get heard at all. It’s all a matter of luck and knowing the right people to get your music distributed. To be honest, I don’t know why any Dutch band hasn’t repeated that success and made their way to Russia.”
According to Kultprom, a non-profit agency that promotes Dutch Punch, the idea behind the event is to reveal Dutch music and culture to a new Russian audience.
“For sure they will see and hear totally new bands and performances that they haven’t seen before. In terms of originality, yes!,” wrote Low Point Drains’ Mr. Point. “There are very independent and up-and-coming Dutch music groups taking part in the Dutch Punch music event. Each band has its own character.”
Bouwman of Aux Raus argues that a “pure” Dutch music scene does not exist.
“There is no such thing as a pure Dutch music scene. Everybody’s listening to everything, and like each country Holland has its own copies of U2, of Eminem, of Metallica etc.,” he wrote.
“This cultural cannibalism is not a negative thing, for example I live in front of a market where a lot of Indian and Arabic stores are playing music, so when I open my window I hear all kinds of exotic sounds. These Arabic pop tunes became part of Aux Raus.
“There is a big tradition in experimental electronic music in the Netherlands, but it doesn’t have a big influence on mainstream music.”
According to his sidekick Bosma, the band is excited to be coming to Russia.
“We are both big Dostoevsky fans, so we really want to see St. Petersburg! I guess Russia has a strange appeal to a lot of non-Russians,” he wrote. 
“For me it has always been a quite mysterious country, with the whole history of course and the language which sounds very bold to us Dutch. We don’t have a real connection to Russia, but we like vodka a lot and Russian cinema too.”
Apart from Aux Raus, Low Point Drains and Malorix, this year’s Dutch Punch will showcase Blues Brother Castro, Stoma, Applegarden and Deformer as well as cult poet, actor and jazz collector Jules Deelder, who will both read poetry and perform as a DJ. The film screenings will include two Filmbank programs of experimental film, a special program of films by Bas Jan Ader, Rosto AD’s animation trilogy “Mind My Gap” and Impakt videoart program.
The exhibitions held as part of Dutch Punch will feature photographs by Rotterdam-based artists Daniel Baggerman and Rene Castelijn, graphic works by Bruno Ferro Xavier da Silva and comics from Marcel Ruijters (also part of the ComicsBOOM festival, see page ii).

http://dutchpunch.kultprom.org

TITLE: Chernov’s
         choice
TEXT: After August’s tranquility, a busy autumn kicked off with a “secret” dual birthday party celebrated by the seminal local alt-rock band <b>Tequilajazzz</b> and the legendary underground club <b>Fish Fabrique</b> this week. The club provided the drinks while the band performed a set of its favorite numbers. Fresh from attending a concert by The Police in Stockholm, Tequilajazzz has released a new single called “Berlin.” According to frontman Zhenya Fyodorov, the band has performed the new song at its concerts during the past couple of months.
Political events have begun as well, with a Beslan memorial picket on Sept. 1, and will continue with the March for the Preservation of St. Petersburg on Saturday. Organized by the democratic opposition party Yabloko and organizations Okhtinskaya Duga and Living City, the rally will protest the demolition of historical buildings and recreational areas under the Kremlin-appointed governor, Valentina Matviyenko, as well as her plans to build a skyscraper that will destroy the city’s UNESCO-protected historical skyline.
The protesters are due to gather in front of Oktyabrsky Concert Hall at 2 p.m. on Saturday and march through the portion of the city following a backroads route — the only one approved by the authorities. 
<b>Televizor</b>, the band whose frontman Mikhail Borzykin wrote some of the strongest anti-authotarian anthems of the perestroika era in the 1980s and is now a frequent visitor at oppostion rallies such as the upcoming march, will perform at Port later that same day.
Folk-punk band <b>Iva Nova</b> will celebrate its fifth anniversary with a concert at Manhattan on Friday. Alternatives that night are <b>Dobranotch</b>, a lively folk band that performs Klezmer and Balkan folk tunes and features a Lebanese drummer (The Place) and a rare show by indie pop band <b>Kolibri</b> (Zoccolo).
<b>Deti Picasso</b>, a Moscow-based alt-rock band with an Armenian vocalist and Armenian folk influences, will perform at Manhattan on Saturday, while <b>Poimanniye Muravyedy</b>, a local band that blends punk, reggae and Latin rhythms, will perform at Zoccolo that same night. Saturday will also see Finnish electro-funk band <b>Imatron Voima</b> performing at The Place.
<b>Dutch Punch</b>, an annual showcase of alternative music, visual art and film from the Netherlands, opens on Wednesday. This year, it features bands <b>Blues Brother Castro</b>, <b>Aux Raus</b>, <b>the Low Point Drains</b>, <b>Applegarden</b>, <b>Deformer</b> and <b>Stoma</b>.
Read more about this in article, pages i and ii and find out about Dutch Punch’s “secret” opening party through your channels in the local music scene.
Finally, <b>Verandah More</b>, the summertime open-air club on Krestovsky Ostrov with music program supplied by promoter Light Music, will throw its farewell party with some of its resident DJs at 9 p.m. on Saturday. 

<i>— By Sergey Chernov</i>

TITLE: Glittering legacy
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Theo Fabergé, the last surviving grandson of Russian Imperial jeweler Carl Fabergé, died last month in the U.K. aged 85, the jewelry company with which he was associated said in a statement issued on Tuesday.
Romanov court jeweler Carl Fabergé had five sons, the last of whom Nikolai was sent from St. Petersburg to England to represent the family business in 1903. 
When the Russian revolution took place in 1917 Nicolas, as he was known in the U.K., remained in London, and following the closure of Faberge’s Bond Street shop established himself as one of England’s first fashion photographers. 
After an affair with a model, Nicolas’s only child Theo was born out of wedlock in 1922. It was not until he was an adult that Theo learned that his grandfather had been Carl Faberge.
Theo Fabergé was brought up in Twickenham and served in the RAF in North Africa in World War II. He established a successful engineering business in the 1960s. When he found out his true ancestry, Theo established a decorative arts business.
Theo Fabergé furthered his turning skills particularly with an 1861 Holtzappfel ornamental lathe which he restored. He made an ivory casket for the Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee in 1977 and developed techniques employing precious metals, enamel and gemstones. He established a workshop but initially refused to make eggs in deference to his grandfather. It was only the chance comment: “Why, Mr Fabergé, you’re making eggs!” by a visitor who saw him turning a piece of yew-wood as a gift for an 8-year old boy, that persuaded him. 
Given complexities surrounding the use of the name “Fabergé”, “St Petersburg Collection” was the name chosen in 1986 for the business established to represent Theo Fabergé’s designs and creations. 
With a Gallery at 42 Burlington Arcade, a stone’s throw away from Nicolas Fabergé’s premises, an enthusiastic group of collectors was formed and the production of small-series limited editions flourished. 
A proud moment in Theo’s career was when, accompanied by his daughter and grandson, he attended the White House for the launch of the White House Egg commemorating the 200th Anniversary of the building of the Presidential residence.
In 2003 Theo experienced the first of a series of small strokes and came to live in a home near his daughter and grandson. He maintained a keen interest in the art of turning. His only daughter Sarah bears forward the Fabergé name, and continues the family tradition.

TITLE: Boom town
AUTHOR: By Maria Zinchenko
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Comic book art, a virtually unknown genre in Russia, is in the spotlight at the first international festival of Comics to be held in St. Petersburg, showcasing the work of dozens of comic book artists from St. Petersburg and around the world. 
“It is very important to underline the international aspect of the festival,” the organizer of the ComicsBOOM International Festival, Dmitry Yakovlev, said. 
“That’s why we are displaying the best works from KomMissia International Comics Festival in Moscow at the University of France in St. Petersburg and French comics for children and teenagers at the Alexander Pushkin Central Children’s Library. 
“We also have an exhibition of Japanese manga, under the name of ‘Crime and Punishment’ based on Dostoyevsky’s novel. This will run, appropriately enough, at the Dostoevsky Museum from Sept. 5-25. If you come, you will see splendid manga by Tezuko Osamu, who created the genre in 1953.” 
ComicsBOOM is divided into six  parts so that comic book art can be embraced at venues throughout the center of the city.
The festival emphasizes printed works — not always translated — and represents a diverse range of examples, depending on the heroes, the color palette and the influences that weighed upon the artists. 
Yakovlev managed to bring together works by artists from Canada, Switzerland, Germany, France, Israel, Macedonia, Hungary, Estonia, Norway, Sweden and Finland. Some artists will come to St. Petersburg to meet their fans and even conduct master classes on drawing. 
“The other exhibition to mention is ‘The Moomins’ at Bolshoy Gostiny Dvor on the second floor on the Dumskaya Ulitsa side. Three comic books will be displayed. Not many people know that the first comics about the Moomins were made by Tove Jansson and published in 1954 in the London Evening News journal, which now no longer exists. Later the writer gave up comics because of a lack of time, but her brother Lars continued drawing until 1975. One set of prints that will be shown in St. Petersburg were drawn by Tove Jansson herself, one by herself with her brother, and the last by Lars on his own. The exposition will be opened by Lars’ daughter Sophia, on Friday, and will run for ten days.”
Other ComicsBOOM exhibitions include “Switzerland — Country of Comics” on the terrace of the Helvetia Hotel patio (Sept. 13-30) and “Contemporary Independent Comics” in the Fountain House garden at the Anna Akhmatova Museum (Sept. 15-30).
The first traces the intriguing development of comic art’s development in Switzerland, starting with drawings by Rudolph Topfer and ending with contemporary artists. The second features artists from all other the world.
“The exhibition of contemporary independent comics will also include a wide range of lectures, workshops, movies and performances prepared by Russian and foreign authors,” Yakovlev said. “Some of the catalogues will be brought by the artists from abroad.”
Beside work by the masters of the genre, ComicsBOOM will feature band-new digital art by livejournal users. The popular blogging site held a competition for the best work that closed on Wednesday with the winners to be announced on Monday. The winners will be awarded prizes and the opportunity to show their works within the main show. Since the theme of the internet competition is “Stories of the City,” organizers plan to exhibit the works in popular venues such as Dunes and Achtung Baby near  Konnyshennaya Ploshchad. 
“Preparations for some of the exhibits wasn’t simple at all,” Yakovlev said. “There were miscellaneous legal and managerial wrinkles to iron out, and institutes such as the General Consulate of Japan, General Consulate of Finland, The German-Russian Exchange and the Culture Committee of St. Petersburg, as well as the French Institute, the General Consulates of Germany, Netherlands and Switzerland helped a lot. As a result, I’m glad the festival is about to happen and then many people will have the chance to discover the wonderful world of comics.” 
http://boomfest.ru

TITLE: Luciano Pavarotti (1935-2007)
AUTHOR: By Bernard Hollanâ
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: Luciano Pavarotti, the Italian singer whose ringing, pristine sound set a standard for operatic tenors of the postwar era, died early Thursday at his home in Modena, in northern Italy. He was 71.
His death was announced by his manager, Terri Robson. The cause was pancreatic cancer. In July 2006 he underwent surgery for the cancer in New York and had made no public appearances since then. He was hospitalized again this summer and released on Aug. 25.
“The Maestro fought a long, tough battle against the pancreatic cancer which eventually took his life,” said an e-mail statement that his manager sent to The Associated Press. “In fitting with the approach that characterized his life and work, he remained positive until finally succumbing to the last stages of his illness.”
Like Enrico Caruso before him, Pavarotti extended his presence far beyond the limits of Italian opera. He became a titan of pop culture. Millions saw him on television and found in his expansive personality, childlike charm and generous figure a link to an art form with which many had only a glancing familiarity.
Early in his career and into the 1970s he devoted himself with single-mindedness to his serious opera and recital career, quickly establishing his rich sound as the great male operatic voice of his generation — the “King of the High Cs,” as his popular nickname had it.
By the 1980s he expanded his franchise exponentially with the Three Tenors projects, in which he shared the stage with Plácido Domingo and José Carreras, first in concerts associated with the World Cup and later in world tours. Most critics agreed that it was Pavarotti’s charisma that made the collaboration such a success. The Three Tenors phenomenon only broadened his already huge audience and sold millions of recordings and videos.
And in the early 1990s he began staging Pavarotti and Friends charity concerts, performing side by side with rock stars like Elton John, Sting and Bono and making recordings from these shows.
Throughout these years, despite his busy and vocally demanding schedule, his voice remained in unusually good condition well into middle age.
Even so, as his stadium concerts and pop collaborations brought him fame well beyond what contemporary opera stars have come to expect, Pavarotti seemed increasingly willing to accept pedestrian musical standards. By the 1980s he found it difficult to learn new opera roles or even new song repertory for his recitals.
And although he planned to spend his final years, in the operatic tradition, performing in a grand worldwide farewell tour, he completed only about half the tour, which began in 2004. Physical ailments, many occasioned by his weight and girth, limited his movement on stage and regularly forced him to cancel performances. By 1995, when he was at the Metropolitan Opera singing one of his favorite roles, Tonio in Donizetti’s “Daughter of the Regiment,” high notes sometimes failed him, and there were controversies over downward transpositions of a notoriously dangerous and high-flying part.
Yet his wholly natural stage manner and his wonderful way with the Italian language were completely intact. Pavarotti remained a darling of Met audiences until his retirement from that company’s roster in 2004, an occasion celebrated with a string of “Tosca” performances. At the last of them, on March 13, 2004, he received a 15-minute standing ovation and 10 curtain calls. All told, he sang 379 performances at the Met, of which 357 were in fully staged opera productions. In the late 1960s and 70s, when Pavarotti was at his best, he possessed a sound remarkable for its ability to penetrate large spaces easily. Yet he was able to encase that powerful sound in elegant, brilliant colors. His recordings of the Donizetti repertory are still models of natural grace and pristine sound. The clear Italian diction and his understanding of the emotional power of words in music were exemplary.
 Pavarotti was perhaps the mirror opposite of his great rival among tenors, Domingo. Five years Domingo’s senior, Pavarotti had the natural range of a tenor, leaving him exposed to the stress and wear that ruin so many tenors’ careers before they have barely started. Pavarotti’s confidence and naturalness in the face of these dangers made his longevity all the more noteworthy.
 Domingo, on the other hand, began his musical life as a baritone and later manufactured a tenor range above it through hard work and scrupulous intelligence. Pavarotti, although he could find the heart of a character, was not an intellectual presence. His ability to read music in the true sense of the word was in question. Domingo, in contrast, is an excellent pianist with an analytical mind and the ability to learn and retain scores by quiet reading.
Yet in the late 1980s, when both Pavarotti and Domingo were pursuing superstardom, it was Pavarotti who showed the dominant gift for soliciting adoration from large numbers of people. He joked on talk shows, rode horses on parade and played, improbably, a sex symbol in the movie “Yes, Giorgio.” In a series of concerts, some held in stadiums, Pavarotti entertained tens of thousands and earned six-figure fees. Presenters, who were able to tie a Pavarotti appearance to a subscription package of less glamorous concerts, found him a valuable loss leader.
The most enduring symbol of Pavarotti’s Midas touch, as a concert attraction and a recording artist, was the popular and profitable Three Tenors act created with Domingo and Carreras. Some praised these concerts and recordings as popularizers of opera for mass audiences. But most classical music critics dismissed them as unworthy of the performers’ talents.

Ailments and Accusations
Pavarotti had his uncomfortable moments in recent years. His proclivity for gaining weight became a topic of public discussion. He was caught lip-synching a recorded aria at a concert in Modena, his hometown. He was booed off the stage at La Scala during a 1992 appearance. No one characterized his lapses as sinister; they were attributed, rather, to a happy-go-lucky style, a large ego and a certain carelessness.
His frequent withdrawals from prominent events at opera houses like the Met and Covent Garden in London, often from productions created with him in mind, caused administrative consternation in many places. A series of cancellations at Lyric Opera of Chicago — 26 out of 41 scheduled dates — moved Lyric’s general director in 1989, Ardis Krainik, to declare Pavarotti persona non grata at her company.
A similar banishment nearly happened at the Met in 2002. He was scheduled to sing two performances of “Tosca” — one a gala concert with prices as high as $1,875 a ticket, which led to reports that the performances may be a quiet farewell. Pavarotti arrived in New York only a few days before the first, barely in time for the dress rehearsal. The day of the first performance, though, he had developed a cold and withdrew. That was on a Wednesday.
From then until the second scheduled performance, on Saturday, everyone, from the Met’s managers to casual opera fans, debated the probability of his appearing. The New York Post ran the headline “Fat Man Won’t Sing.” The demand to see the performance was so great, however, that the Met set up 3,000 seats for a closed-circuit broadcast on the Lincoln Center Plaza. Still, at the last minute, Pavarotti stayed in bed.
Luciano Pavarotti was born in Modena, Italy, on Oct. 12, 1935. His father was a baker and an amateur tenor; his mother worked at a cigar factory. As a child he listened to opera recordings, singing along with tenor stars of a previous era, like Beniamino Gigli and Tito Schipa. He professed an early weakness for the movies of Mario Lanza, whose image he would imitate before a mirror.
As a teenager he followed studies that led to a teaching position; during these student days he met his future wife. He taught for two years before deciding to become a singer. His first teachers were Arrigo Pola and Ettore Campogalliani, and his first breakthrough came in 1961 when he won an international competition at the Teatro Reggio Emilia. He made his debut as Rodolfo in Puccini’s “Bohème” later that year.
In 1963 Pavarotti’s international career began: first as Edgardo in Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor” in Amsterdam and other Dutch cities, and then in Vienna and Zurich. His Covent Garden debut also came in 1963, when he substituted for Giuseppe di Stefano in “La Bohème.” His reputation in Britain grew even more the next year, when he sang at the Glyndebourne Festival, taking the part of Idamante in Mozart’s “Idomeneo.”
A turning point in Pavarotti’s career was his association with the soprano Joan Sutherland. In 1965 he joined the Sutherland-Williamson company on an Australian tour during which he sang Edgardo to Sutherland’s Lucia. He later credited Sutherland’s advice, encouragement and example as a major factor in the development of his technique.
Further career milestones came in 1967, with Pavarotti’s first appearances at La Scala in Milan and his participation in a performance of the Verdi Requiem under Herbert von Karajan. He came to the Metropolitan Opera a year later, singing with Mirella Freni, a childhood friend, in a production of “La Bohème.”
A series of recordings with London Records had also begun, and these excursions through the Italian repertory remain some of Pavarotti’s lasting contributions to his generation. The recordings included “L’Elisir d’Amore,” “La Favorita,” “Lucia di Lammermoor” and “La Fille du Régiment” by Donizetti; “Madama Butterfly,” “La Bohème,” “Tosca” and “Turandot” by Puccini; “Rigoletto,” “Il Trovatore,” “La Traviata” and the Requiem by Verdi; and scattered operas by Bellini, Rossini and Mascagni. There were also solo albums of arias and songs.
In 1981 Pavarotti established a voice competition in Philadelphia and was active in its operation. Young, talented singers from around the world were auditioned in preliminary rounds before the final selections. High among the prizes for winners was an appearance in a staged opera in Philadelphia in which Pavarotti would also appear.
He also gave master classes, many of which were shown on public television in the United States. Pavarotti’s forays into teaching became stage appearances in themselves, and ultimately had more to do with the teacher than those being taught.

An Outsize Personality
In his later years Pavarotti became as much an attraction as an opera singer. Hardly a week passed in the 1990s when his name did not surface in at least two gossip columns. He could be found unveiling postage stamps depicting old opera stars or singing in Red Square in Moscow. His outsize personality remained a strong drawing card, and even his lifelong battle with his circumference guaranteed headlines: a Pavarotti diet or a Pavarotti binge provided high-octane fuel for reporters.
In 1997 Pavarotti joined Sting for the opening of the Pavarotti Music Center in war-torn Mostar, Bosnia, and Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney on a CD tribute to Diana, Princess of Wales. In 2005 he was granted Freedom of the City of London for his fund-raising concerts for the Red Cross. He also received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2001, and holds two spots in the Guinness Book of World Records — one for the greatest number of curtain calls (165), the other, held jointly with Domingo and Carreras, for the best-selling classical album of all time, the first Three Tenors album (“Carreras, Domingo, Pavarotti: The Three Tenors in Concert”). But for all that, he knew where his true appeal was centered.

THE FORCE OF DESTINY
It was a tribute to Pavarotti’s box-office power that when, in 1997, he announced he could not or would not learn his part for a new “Forza del Destino” at the Met, the house scrapped its scheduled production and substituted “Un Ballo in Maschera,” a piece he was ready to sing.
Around that time Pavarotti also made news by leaving his wife of more than three decades, Adua Veroni, to live with his 26-year-old assistant, Nicoletta Mantovani, and filing for divorce, which was finalized in October 2002. He married Mantovani in 2003. She survives him, as do three daughters from his marriage to Veroni.

TITLE: In the spotlight
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
TEXT: This week, MTV Russia launched a new reality show, “R&B Girls,” which brings in a handful of musical gurus to transform some leggy raw material into a group that will be Russia’s answer to the Pussycat Dolls.
The show, which started on Monday, hired the real-life music producer Alexander Tolmatsky, best known as the father and former producer of over-privileged rapper Detsl, to preside over the process. Meanwhile Moscow rapper Legalize is the musical adviser and former television presenter Otar Kushanashvili is supposed to teach the girls how to talk to the media.
Unlike the talent show formats aired on Channel One and Rossia, “Star Factory” and “People’s Artist,” this show doesn’t spend lots of time eliminating no-hopers, but narrows down the field to 10 contestants almost immediately, out of which six will form the eventual group.
In the first episode, Tolmatsky announced that he is looking for “cute girls who sing not badly.” He went into more detail, explaining that he wanted “to see breasts” and mentioning a desire to inspire viewers to masturbate. Which was nice. Legalize put it succinctly, saying, “We need hot chicks with tits and ass.”
Once the exhausting search for an artistic identity was over, the gurus got down to brass tacks and wheeled in the girls, who had to do a spot of singing and dancing. There was a blonde one who could sing and a blonde one who couldn’t sing, but had a strap that kept falling down. Don’t worry, they both got through. 
The girls also had to answer some searching questions about themselves to the camera. And it was useful to find out that one “only wears thongs” while another prefers “pink with black lace.” One girl had come prepared and had a little bikini to wear for the dancing that put the other girls in the shade. Although she’d better watch her back from now on — I hear there are things you can do with nail extensions that would make your hair stand on end.
In some very staged-looking scenes, the girls were shown gossiping on the stairs about the chances of their fellow contestants. A couple picked a girl with a slightly unfortunate hair-do as the one most likely to be eliminated. “She’ll get axed first,” one said, giggling. The other agreed: “Unless the stylist works magic.”
In another difference from the “Star Factory” and “People’s Artist” formats, the girls don’t live together in a Big Brother-style house but have to arrange their own accommodation in Moscow. It’s clearly not a live show, but I guess it’s being shown without a big time-lapse, which makes you wonder about the contestants watching each other on MTV and sharpening their nail extensions.
Still, they will all be in for a bit of a shock when they hear what the stylist, Tanya, said about them. Blonde and wearing pearls and a pink-and-white dress that was more of a stage-set for her cleavage, she complained that the girls were “cute, but they are all uncared for.” The girls were all wearing makeup, but their “more is more” attitude didn’t impress her. “What is going on with their eyes is an absolute nightmare,” she complained.
In the next shows, the girls will go to dance classes and get makeovers at a beauty salon where “they will do with you whatever I want,” Tolmatsky explained to the contestants. Oh, and there’s some singing involved as well. 
“You’ll learn that being a star is very hard work,” he promised, before sending the girls off home with an ironic military command, “Now you’re free.”

TITLE: A Korean feast
AUTHOR: By Edgar J. Morse
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Grand Café Koreana // 25, Ligovsky Prospekt, Tel: 275 5219 // Open daily 11.30 a.m. through 11 p.m. // Menu in Russian, English and Korean // Major Credit Cards Accepted // Dinner for two 1,625 rubles ($63)

Grand Café Koreana is an unpretentious looking establishment, near Moskovsky Station, offering excellent value Korean food and Japanese sushi. Perfect for lunch or dinner, the restaurant offers an authentic introduction to Korean food.
The interior is decorated in austere Korean style. It is basic, with simple wooden tables and chairs, and the restaurant relies on the quality of the food to attract customers. It is not uncomfortable however, with air conditioning and a separate area for those who don’t smoke. The background music can be a little loud, but the ambience was generally one of people enjoying their food.
We were seated promptly by a waitress who seemed to have had a bad day, and received the menus instantly. The selection is typically Korean, with traditional kimchi (red spicy pickled cabbage), a range of salads, bulgogi (thinly sliced or shredded beef marinated in soy sauce, sesame oil, garlic, sugar, green onions and black pepper, cooked on a grill) and a Japanese sushi section. The trademark barbecue, one of the staple parts of Korean food, was limited to samgyeopsal (pork cuts) which was a disappointment, but the rest of the menu more than made up for it. 
The food is fantastically good value. Other Korean restaurants in St. Petersburg charge large amounts for main courses, typically 800 rubles ($30) and upwards, but at Koreana the most expensive dish on the menu — king sized shrimps — was just 510 rubles ($20), and prices started from 45 rubles ($1.75) for a salad. Drinks were also wonderfully cheap, with half a liter of beer costing 50 rubles ($1.95).
Korean food is not taken in courses, and instead a selection of small tidbits (banchan) arrives with the main meal. Banchan relies on fermentation for flavor and preservation, with tangy, salty, and spicy results and this combination gives Korean food its unique personality.
We ordered bimimbap (175 rubles, $6.85) — a bowl of warm white rice topped with sautéed and seasoned vegetables, thinly sliced beef, a fried egg, and gochujang (a spicy fermented paste made from glutinous rice powder mixed with powdered fermented soybeans, red chilli powder and salt), samgyeopsal (350 rubles, $13.75, for 200 grams) — unseasoned pork bacon cut from the belly, grilled with garlic, dipped in ssamjang (a spicy paste similar to gochujang) and wrapped in lettuce leaves, squid rings (150 rubles, $5.90) and spicy chicken drumsticks (140 rubles, $5.50). 
The food arrived quickly, and the portions were huge. The squid rings were basted in a crispy batter and were cooked perfectly, arriving with lemon and soy sauce dip. The chicken drumsticks came with a mayonnaise sauce and were not overly greasy as is often the case, but a little plain. The banchan was simple but excellent. The kimchi was perfectly prepared, with a heavy feel and the spicy grated carrot offset it well, offering a lighter taste to the palate. The cucumber and tomato salad was fresh and arranged nicely, but needed salt, and the bamboo shoots were crispy and flavored with oil and garlic. 
The bimimbap arrived with a hot egg based clear soup, which was a perfect accompaniment to the more powerful flavors of the main dish and, and was excellent value for money. It arrived in a huge warm bowl, and in keeping with the rest of the meal, was perfectly cooked. The beef, cut into thin strips, was tender and tangy, and the vegetables — carrots, soy beans and green beans — were fresh and provided a pleasing contrast to the egg. The gochujang was particularly fiery and, mixed in with rice, gave the dish a latent heat, releasing hidden flavors.  
The gas-powered barbecue ring for the samgyeopsal was left on the table and ignited on request. The pork cuts were thinly cut, but fatty. The dish is served with crisp lettuce, thinly sliced garlic, ssamjang and rice. Frying the meat and the garlic oneself is fun, and the combination of the coldness of the salad, the warmth of the rice, the sharpness of the garlic and the heat of the ssamjang made for an orgy of sensations in the mouth. 
The bill arrived promptly, but was a little confusing because the prices were higher than those quoted in the menu. When confronted, the waitress explained that the banchan was not free and was included in the cost of the main dishes. This is misleading. However, Grand Café Koreana is a hidden gem, and it represents the best Korean food in St. Petersburg at rock bottom prices.

TITLE: Adult viewers only
AUTHOR: By Alastair Gee
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Russian cinema audiences finally saw late last month what they’ve been waiting three months for: a film about a 21-year-old from the United States who is brought in front of a camera, given a choice of porn stars and allowed to carry out his sexual fantasies with one of them.
The 38-minute short by controversial U.S. filmmaker Larry Clark, best known for his teen drama “Kids,” is one of seven sexually explicit movies about pornography that make up the compilation “Destricted,” now showing in St. Petersburg. Most contributors are internationally acclaimed artists, including Britain’s Sam Taylor-Wood and New York-based conceptualist Matthew Barney.
But according to the film’s Russian distributors, “Destricted” almost didn’t make it to Russia’s cinema screens. It was shown at this year’s Moscow International Film Festival in late June, but its planned cinema release later that month was repeatedly postponed, amid rumors of a ban from the Federal Culture and Cinematography Agency.
The film had a limited cinema release in Britain and the United States last year.
Sem Klebanov, president of the movie’s Russian distributor, Cinema Without Frontiers, said Wednesday that he submitted the film to the cinema agency a few weeks before the Moscow International Film Festival to obtain approval for general release. However, “they said it couldn’t be shown because it was an amoral film, it was pornography,” he said. He declined to name the officials he had spoken with.
In July and August, newspapers speculated on the reasons why the release of the film, whose Russian title is “Banned from Cinemas,” was pushed back. “Employees of the Federal Culture and Cinematography Agency perceived the name of the film as telling them how to act,” Izvestia suggested on Aug. 20.
According to the agency, though, the reasons for the holdup were merely procedural, and fault lay with Klebanov’s company. “Certification was given as soon as all the necessary documents were received,” said Yelena Uvarova, the agency’s press secretary, on Wednesday. She wouldn’t specify which documents were late, but added that the explicit content of the film was not a factor in the delay.
For his part, Klebanov maintains that his company filed all the documents they usually submit, and that in previous cases certification had only taken two weeks.
Even though “Destricted” finally received certification, it looks like opponents of pornography need not worry: At a recent showing, audience member after audience member got up and left, seemingly more out of boredom than disgust.
Selected for screening at the Cannes and Sundance film festivals in 2006, “Destricted” is described as a series of reflections on how pornography affects society. Highlights include Serbian performance artist Marina Abramovic’s “Balkan Erotic Epic,” which is refreshingly uncomplicated where other contributions seem laden with intellectual baggage.
Abramovic solemnly narrates how sexual rituals are integrated into traditional Balkan culture: Farmers hump the ground to ensure a successful crop, and women give their husbands a drink containing a fish that was stored in their vaginas to ensure fidelity. “Long live our Slavic faith,” Abramovic’s subjects sing as they massage their breasts during a fertility rite.
Clark’s contribution, meanwhile, deftly reveals the unglamorous side of pornography as Daniel, the nervous star, questions his possible sexual partners: He finds out that one was raped as a teenager, and that another began acting in porn movies because she was desperate for money. Their rapturous descriptions of their favorite sexual activities seem fake and cliched.
“The film is especially interesting in Russia because what happened in the 1960s and ‘70s in the West — the sexual revolution — happened in Russia in the ’90s,” argued Klebanov, who also presents a film show on the state-owned Kultura television channel. “We only recently began to consider the role of sex in our lives.”
The film was only permitted in Russia for viewing by over-21s, although at a Moscow showing at 35MM cinema, no one checked viewers’ ID. Giggles punctuated the showing, as did the silhouettes of dissatisfied audience members exiting the hall — of around 50 viewers, only 15 were left by the end. Perhaps, due to publicity surrounding the rumored ban, the film had been misconstrued as actual pornography. While watching the first section, Barney’s opaque “Hoist,” one woman voiced a protest. As a moss-covered man was shown masturbating under a crane at a construction site, she shouted out, “Give me back my 200 rubles.”

TITLE: Monitors Slam Israel On Lebanon
AUTHOR: By Mark Lavie
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: JERUSALEM — In its harshest condemnation of Israel since last summer’s war, Human Rights Watch charged that most of the Lebanese civilian casualties came from “indiscriminate Israeli airstrikes,” according to a report to be released Thursday.
In a statement issued before the report’s release, the human rights organization said there was no basis to the Israeli claim that civilian casualties resulted from Hezbollah guerrillas using civilians as shields. Israel has said it attacked civilian areas because Hezbollah set up rocket launchers in villages and towns.
More than 1,000 Lebanese were killed in the 34-day conflict last summer, which began after Hezbollah staged a cross-border raid, killing three Israeli soldiers and capturing two others. They are still being held.
Israeli warplanes targeted Lebanese infrastructure, including bridges and Beirut Airport, and heavily damaged a neighborhood in Beirut known as a Hezbollah stronghold, as well as attacking Hezbollah centers in villages near the border. Hezbollah fired nearly 4,000 rockets at northern Israel, killing 119 soldiers. In the fighting, 40 Israeli civilians were killed.
Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth said in the statement, “Israel wrongfully acted as if all civilians had heeded its warnings to evacuate southern Lebanon when it knew they had not, disregarding its continuing legal duty to distinguish between military targets and civilians.”
He added, “Issuing warnings doesn’t make indiscriminate attacks lawful.”
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev rejected the report’s findings. “Hezbollah adopted a deliberate strategy of shielding itself behind the civilian population and turning the civilians in Lebanon into a human shield,” he said, charging that Hezbollah “broke the first fundamental rule of war in that they deliberately exploited the civilian population of Lebanon as a human shield.”
The full report was being released Thursday at a news conference in Jerusalem. Human Rights Watch had to cancel a similar news conference in Beirut last month because of threats of Hezbollah protests. That report accused Hezbollah of firing rockets indiscriminately at civilian areas in Israel.
Human Rights Watch said it investigated 94 cases of Israeli air, artillery and ground attacks “to discern the circumstances surrounding the deaths of 510 civilians and 51 combatants,” about half the death toll in Lebanon in the conflict.
The group said simple movement of vehicles or people, “such as attempting to buy bread or moving around private homes,” could trigger a deadly Israeli attack. The group charged that Israeli aircraft targeted vehicles carrying fleeing civilians.
Roth said Hezbollah guerrillas did not wear uniforms, making it hard to pick them out from civilians, but that did not justify the Israeli military’s failure to distinguish between them. He said the laws of war dictate “if in doubt to treat the person as a civilian.”
The report said the investigation “refutes the argument made by Israeli officials that most of the Lebanese civilian casualties were due to Hezbollah routinely hiding among civilians.” It said Hezbollah “did at times fire rockets from, and store weapons in, populated areas and deploy its forces among the civilian population.”

TITLE: U.S. Women Gymnasts Dominate Worlds
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: STUTTGART, Germany — The United States women bounced back with two of the most dazzling routines of the entire competition to clinch their second title at the world gymnastics championships Wednesday.
The United States finished with 184.400 points, putting them nearly a point ahead of defending gold medallist China. Olympic gold medallist Romania took the bronze.
“We all started crying,” Nastia Liukin said. “It’s such a great feeling to know that finally we’re on top of the world again. It’s just a great feeling to know we’re on top again.”
The Americans came into the finals as heavy favorites after breezing through qualifying, finishing almost four points ahead of China, a massive margin in a sport decided by tenths and hundredths of points. But scores start over in team finals, and the United States faltered badly on balance beam, going into the final rotation .100 points behind China. Canada’s women’s team finished 14th earlier in the week, failing to earn a berth at the Beijing Olympics in the team event.
“I certainly want to win the gold, and in Beijing also,” said Lu Shanzhen, China’s coach. “But it’s competition. There’s only one gold, and you cannot always keep the gold.”
The Chinese didn’t have a chance. U.S. champion Shawn Johnson could have touched the flags hanging from the ceiling, she got so high on her tumbling passes, and she landed every one of them without a wobble or a wiggle.
And that wasn’t even the best the Americans had to offer. Alicia Sacramone, the world champ on floor two years ago, was the anchor, and Las Vegas might want to get her under contract now. This was no athletic performance, this was a show.
She sashayed and sauntered, playing to the judges and crowd. She tumbled as if she had springs in her legs, and landed as if she had sticky tape on her feet.
She knew it was good, beaming as she finished. And as soon as she turned away from the judges and began trotting toward her teammates, the tears began to flow.
“I told them, ‘Everyone makes mistakes, but we still have one more event and it’s one of our best events, so we might as well go out there and have fun and show everybody what we’ve got,”’ said Sacramone, the team captain. “This is what we came to do.”
Gold seemed like a given for the Americans, especially after their romp through qualifying. China had only two carryovers from last year’s gold medal squad, and was testing out some of their kids in preparation for next year’s Beijing Olympics. Russia was so beaten up that Yelena Zamolodchikova made the squad despite being two weeks shy of her 25th birthday.
But team finals isn’t always about who has the best team. Unlike in qualifying, every single mark counts. Teams put up their three best gymnasts on each event and pray for no mistakes. With this format, one botched routine will cost you a gold medal. Two usually means all you’re getting is the souvenir T-shirt.
And after their debacle on beam, the Americans appeared to be off the top of the podium.
Liukin, a former world champion on beam, had been practically perfect. She landed tricks so effortlessly on the beam she seemed weightless. She has the kind of positioning coaches dream about: perfectly extended legs, toes pointed just so.
But as she landed her final trick before her dismount, there was that loud thud. It wasn’t clear if she’d aggravated the ankle injury that had slowed her the last year, but something had definitely gone wrong.
Instead of doing her usual dismount, a dazzling twisting flip, she did a simple somersault, a move so easy grade schoolers do it. She ran her hands over her hair as she walked off the podium, despair written across her face. Her score of 15.175 was almost a full point below what she normally scores.
Liukin’s troubles appeared to rattle the rest of the Americans. Johnson, normally rock solid, landed awkwardly on a back somersault and couldn’t save herself. She wobbled and bobbled but couldn’t save it, finally jumping off the beam. Her score of 15.025 left the Americans only .10 behind China heading into the final rotation.
That’s when things really got weird.
Li Shanshan, China’s first gymnast up on floor, had the crowd going with a bouncy, acrobatic routine. But she put way too much power into her last tumbling pass, two piked somersaults. She stumbled backward, toppled over and skidded out of bounds.
Not a good way to finish, and her score of 13.825 put China in a big hole.
Meanwhile, over on vault, Russia’s Ekaterina Kramarenko flew down the runway and put her arms up to ready herself for a roundoff onto the springboard. But she suddenly cut her speed, stayed upright and stopped at the top of the springboard.
It was a sight rarely seen, especially at this level, and it meant Russia had to count a zero. After being in position for a bronze medal — or better — Russia wound up dead last in the eight-team finals.
As Kramarenko sat in a chair on the sidelines, crying, Zamolodchikova stood on the runway, tears filling her eyes. The former Olympic champion did her vault, but it was meaningless.

TITLE: Injury-Hit England To Face Israel
AUTHOR: By Mike Collett
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — England head into Saturday’s Euro 2008 qualifier against Israel at Wembley with a serious injury crisis threatening their chances of securing a vital victory.
England will be without David Beckham, Frank Lampard, Wayne Rooney and almost certainly Owen Hargreaves for the Group E match which they must win to keep alive their chances of qualifying for next year’s finals in Austria and Switzerland.
The rest of the walking wounded, who would have either been in the starting lineup or in the squad, includes Ben Foster, Ledley King, Gary Neville, Sol Campbell, Jonathan Woodgate, Wayne Bridge, Kieron Dyer and Aaron Lennon.
Liverpool striker Peter Crouch is suspended but will be available for the qualifier against Russia next week.
His club skipper Steven Gerrard is expected to play although he may need a pain-killing injection in his broken toe.
Head coach Steve McClaren has called Emile Heskey into the squad for the first time since the striker won his 43rd cap three years ago and he may partner Michael Owen in attack.
England are fourth in the standings with 14 points, behind Croatia and Israel (both 17) and Russia (15), although the Israelis have played one more match.
As well as deciding on his attacking options, McClaren also has to weigh up whether to maintain his faith in first choice goalkeeper Paul Robinson or give David James his first start since May 2005.
Despite the injuries and last month’s 2-1 friendly defeat by Germany at Wembley, when Robinson was criticised for a mistake that led to the equaliser, England should win on Saturday even though Israel fought for a 0-0 draw in Tel Aviv, in March.
However. the Israelis are quietly confident and feel the pressure on their injury-hit opponents gives them a chance to steal a good result from a match they are expected to lose.
“If we get a victory it will be talked about for 100 years... they’re under pressure and we can do it,” said Israel captain Yossi Benayoun.
“You don’t expect us to come to Wembley to play an open game and end up being 3-0 down after 20 minutes,” he added.
In contrast to England’s long injury list, Israel have only one seriously doubt, although he is a significant one.
Argentinian-born striker Roberto Colautti, Israel’s top scorer with six goals in the campaign, looks like being replaced by Yaniv Katan.
With an experienced back line, Israel will rely mainly on a solid defensive performance with Dudu Aouate of Deportivo Coruna in goal behind Tal Ben Haim of Chelsea and Beitar Jerusalem’s Shimon Gershon in central defence.
Arik Benado, who normally plays in central defence, will move up to a defensive midfield position, a similar role he played against England in March.
The rest of Israel’s lineup is also set to rely mainly on experience with Walid Badir of Hapoel Tel Aviv, Idan Tal of Beitar Jerusalem and Liverpool’s Benayoun in midfield supporting Katan and Barak Yitzhaki of Beitar up front.

TITLE: Germany Debates Security After Bomb Plot
AUTHOR: By Sylvia Westall
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BERLIN — German politicians called for tougher anti-terrorism measures and immigration rules on Thursday after police said they had foiled a plot by Islamist militants to carry out massive bomb attacks.
Leading conservatives demanded new laws to punish those who visit what the authorities say are terrorist training camps, new powers for online monitoring of computers and immigration curbs.
The calls came as security services said they were searching for at least 10 more men involved in what they said was a plot to attack U.S. installations in Germany.
Police on Tuesday arrested three men suspected of planning attacks — two German converts to Islam and a Turk living in Germany.
“Germany must check much more thoroughly to determine who the fanatics and Islamists are,” Bavaria’s interior minister Guenther Beckstein, a leading conservative, told daily Die Welt.
“Fundamentalists have a much stronger desire to obtain a German passport than normal guest workers,” he said, adding that the most dangerous suspects should be banned from having a mobile phone or Internet access.
Beckstein also suggested that police should closely monitor all converts to Islam because they are often more fanatical.
Beckstein and other conservatives have long called for increased surveillance to help them track suspected terrorists, but the proposals have encountered strong resistance.
Germans are sensitive about state surveillance after their experiences with the Nazi Gestapo secret police and former communist East Germany’s Stasi.
All three of the arrested men, identified by prosecutors as 28-year olds Fritz G. and Adem Y., and 21-year old Daniel S, had trained at what authorities described as camps for terrorists in Pakistan.
Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble called for new powers to punish people who go to such camps and he received the support of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany.
Politicians also renewed calls for greater powers to monitor computers, saying that “online searches” are essential to targeting and capturing terrorism suspects.
“We also need to be able get evidence via the Internet when a home computer is used to arrange a crime,” federal police chief Joerg Ziercke told a news channel.
Germany’s top appeals court ruled in February that the clandestine monitoring of computers by police is illegal.
The arrested men had been on the verge of launching attacks after acquiring enough material to make a bomb with explosive power equal to 550 kilograms of TNT.
Officials could not confirm reports that the suspects had been targeting Frankfurt International Airport and a U.S. military base in Ramstein, but said they had scouted out sites frequented by Americans including discos and bars.

TITLE: Steely Kuznetsova On Course for Second U.S. Open Crown
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: NEW YORK — Svetlana Kuznetsova beat Hungarian teenager Agnes Szavay 6-1 6-4 to reach the U.S. Open semi-finals on Wednesday and believes she is a better player than when she won the title in 2004.
The St. Petersburg native was too consistent for the 18-year-old Szavay, who was appearing in her first grand-slam quarter-final, easing to victory in 67 minutes to set up a clash with her compatriot and sixth seed Anna Chakvetadze.
When Kuznetsova won the title three years ago, she was a little-known 19-year-old upsetting the odds.
She is a much more experienced player now and although this will be only her third grand-slam semi-final, the Russian is in confident mood.
“Everybody will compare how I feel now and 2004, and it’s different,” she told reporters.
“It was something like, OK, maybe I win, maybe not. Now I know I’m here and I’m here to do my best and I have all chances to win if I play my game.
“This (puts) you under a little bit of pressure, but also your expectation is higher and you know your value more.
“I know I have grown as a person and as a player. I can see it in the matches. It really motivates me a lot to do what I’m doing, and I really enjoy playing tennis.”
Szavay, who had to retire with a back injury after taking the first set off Kuznetsova in the New Haven event final just before the U.S. Open, looked nervous early in the match.
Kuznetsova took the first set in 26 minutes and broke in the first game of the second. Though Szavay lifted her game, the Russian held on to reach the semi-finals for the first time since her 2004 win.
Szavay thinks Kuznetsova has a great chance of winning the title.
“She’s playing really, really good now,” Szavay said. “She has a good chance to be in the final I guess. She has everything, serves good. Big, big forehand and backhand also good. She’s tough mentally, so I think she has good chances in this tournament.”
In other matches three-time champion Roger Federer and two-times winner Venus Williams took different paths to the semi-finals.
World number one Federer stopped American Andy Roddick 7-6 7-6 6-2 in business-like fashion while Williams was pushed to the brink before beating Jelena Jankovic 4-6 6-1 7-6, setting up an engaging semi-final with top-seed Justine Henin.
Defending champion Federer took two hours to record his 14th win in 15 games against Roddick, who had 14 aces but could not overcome 42 winners and only 18 unforced errors by the Swiss.
“It was a tough match and he was serving out of a tree,” said Federer. “But I came through in the end. It was a beautiful night.”
On the women’s side, Williams won the decisive tiebreak 7-4 under the lights in sold-out Arthur Ashe Stadium to snap a three-match losing streak against third seed Jankovic.
Despite a lopsided middle frame, neither player could manage a final-set service break. 
In the tiebreak, 12th seeded Williams bolted out to a 5-1 lead and held on to win.
“I would have loved to have a couple breaks in the third set and cruised,” said Williams, who had lost to Jankovic in their two previous grand slam meetings. “She’s a very good competitor, and anyone has to play a lot of balls against her.
“I just went for it all the time non-stop and it paid off.”
Jankovic said she fought as hard as she could.
“I tried to do my best,” the Serb said. “I tried to win. But tonight, it didn’t go my way. A few points in the tiebreaker I made some unforced errors.
“But you have to take the loss and have to go on.”

TITLE: Chinese Hack British Networks
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: LONDON — Chinese computer hackers are infiltrating British government networks, giving them access to secret information, according to media reports on Thursday.
The reports in The Times and The Independent newspapers come a day after U.S. President George W. Bush said he may bring up the issue of suspected Chinese cyber-attacks on the U.S. defence department in a meeting with China’s President Hu Jintao.
“China is engaged in hostile intelligence activities, and instead of using the old-fashioned methods, they are focusing on electronic means to hack into systems to discover Britain’s defence and foreign policy secrets, and they are technologically pretty advanced and adept at it,” an unnamed government source told The Times.
Another senior government source, meanwhile, told The Independent: “Governments throughout the West have been aware of this for a number of years. It has been an ongoing practice by the Chinese. They are trying it all the time. The firewalls that need to go in are going in.”
Both the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence have declined to comment on the reports.
In Washington, the Pentagon said Tuesday that several nations and groups were trying to break into the U.S. military’s computer system after the Financial Times reported China’s military had successfully hacked into the network in June.

TITLE: Search for Survivors After Hurricane Felix Hits
AUTHOR: By Ariel Leon
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PUERTO CABEZAS, Nicaragua — Desperate families searched through the early morning hours Thursday for scores of missing Nicaraguans on the Caribbean coast where Hurricane Felix blew away villages, flooded rivers and killed at least 18 people.
Some 150 Miskito Indians who were adrift on the ocean clinging to buoys, canoes and slabs of wood were rescued by authorities, said Honduran federal Congresswoman Carolina Echeverria, who represents the northeastern province of Gracias a Dios, on the Nicaraguan border.
Nine of those rescued were in serious condition and were being attended by five Honduran doctors, Echeverria said.
“We believe there are many others out there floating on the sea,” she said.
Far to the northwest, meanwhile, Henriette plowed into Mexico for the second time in two days, making landfall shortly before 9 p.m. local time near the port city of Guaymas with top sustained winds of 120 kmh. Seven deaths were reported from the Pacific storm, which hit Baja California on Tuesday.
Felix came ashore Tuesday in Nicaragua as a Category 5 hurricane packing 160 kilometer winds and heavy rains that caused mudslides, destroyed homes, uprooted trees and devastated villages.
Wednesday night, Nicaraguan Civil Defense Department spokesman Alvaro Rivas said the confirmed death toll had doubled to 18. Defense officials said President Daniel Ortega had put the toll at 21. There was no immediate explanation for the discrepancy.
Rivas also said at least 60 people were missing: more than 50 in the Matagalpa province in the north and another 10 around hard-hit city of Puerto Cabezas.
The dead included a man who drowned when his boat capsized, a woman killed when a tree fell on her house and a newborn who died shortly after birth because her mother couldn’t get medical attention.
Among the missing were four fishermen whose small sailboat sank as Felix’s center passed overhead. A survivor, Fernando Pereira, 24, said he clung to a piece of wood for 12 hours, despite a dislocated shoulder, and washed ashore at the village of Sandy Bay only hours after Felix made landfall there. He hadn’t seen his friends since.
“I felt horrible,” he said. “I was drinking salt water, and I thought I was going to die.”
Others were caught in the sea as well. Jelivaro Climax, 22, said he had to swim through enormous waves to reach shore.
“Lightning flashed through a pitch black sky,” he said. “I don’t know how I survived. I swam with everything I had, and I was sure the sea would take me.”
Felix swept over the Miskito Coast, an impoverished region where about 150,000 people live in jungle settlements. Their hamlets of wooden shacks and coconut groves are remote even in good weather, reachable only by air or flat-bottom boats.
The Miskitos, descendants of Indians, European settlers and African slaves, live semiautonomously, much like people on Indian reservations in the U.S.
There wasn’t enough fuel after the storm for boats to make long trips, and Felix snapped steel cables that guided a small ferry carrying people and cars from Puerto Cabezas to the village of Wawahum.
Felix also wiped out crops and damaged most of the 70 tons of food and emergency goods that had been flown in before the storm.
On Wednesday, it was hard to find a building that wasn’t damaged. Puerto Cabezas’ hospital was filled with water, and doctors attended to the injured at an improvised clinic.
The remains of Felix were still dumping rain Wednesday on Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala, and thousands of evacuees anxiously stayed away from shaky hillside slums and swollen rivers.
In San Pedro Sula, in northern Honduras, one shantytown filled with water after a river burst its bank. Police rode bulldozers to evacuate slum dwellers from water that was waist-deep and rising, but many refused to leave, fearing their remaining possessions would be stolen.
David Serato, 42, left. “Life is more important than personal belongings,” he said. “If I stayed, I would die.”
Many had feared a repeat of the 1998 nightmare of Hurricane Mitch, which stalled over Central America for days, causing floods and mudslides that killed nearly 11,000 people and left more than 8,000 missing.
On Mexico’s western coast, Henriette moved across the Gulf of California, and at 5 a.m. local time, its center was located over the state of Sonora in Mexico, about 400 miles southwest of El Paso, Texas, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami. Its center later made its second landfall near the Mexican city of Guaymas in Sonora, said Jack Beven, a specialist with the Miami-based center.