SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1321 (87), Tuesday, November 6, 2007
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TITLE: Fire In NursingHome Kills 28
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — At least 28 people died in a fire in a Russian home for the elderly and officials blamed its management on Monday for failing to evacuate residents in time.
“Firefighters received a very late fire warning because the personnel waited for some reason for 30 minutes before calling,” Russian Emergency Ministry spokesman Viktor Beltsov said adding that over 200 people lived in the residence.
The blaze broke out at lunchtime on Sunday near the city of Tula, 200 kilometers south of Moscow.
The tragedy is the latest of a series of fire disasters in Russia where state-run institutions for the elderly and for the socially deprivved have frequently been criticized for poor management and inadequate attention to safety procedures, fire drills and equipment.
Beltsov said the residence in Tula, built in 1952, had neither the warning system nor the equipment to combat the blaze, which took a space of over 1,000 square meters when the firefighters arrived.
“They had nothing at all... And yet when the fire broke, the personnel had plenty of time to evacuate the old people. Investigators will now need to find out why it had not been done,” he said.
Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov ordered an immediate inquiry into the tragedy. 
The governor of the Tula region Vyacheslav Dudka said he believed the building was too old to serve as a home for the elderly, Russian news agencies reported.
In October, at least nine students died and 51 were injured when a fire engulfed a Moscow business institute.
In December last year, 45 patients at a Moscow women’s drug treatment clinic burned to death when doors that had been locked by personnel at the clinic prevented them from escaping a blaze.
A fire in a retirement home in the Kuban region of southern Russia in March this year killed 62 residents and staff.

TITLE: Passions Run High as Vote Approaches
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: As Dec. 2 parliamentary elections draw closer and political temperatures rise, two different street demonstrations held in St. Petersburg last weekend both ended in arrests.
Sunday’s “Russian March,” organized by the radical nationalist Movement Against Illegal Migration (DPNI) under Russia-for-Russians slogans ended violently outside the Chernyshevsky Gardens, when a group of broke the windows of a nearby Chinese restaurant, an Arab fast-food cafe and several kiosks.
More than 20 activists were arrested by riot police including Konstantin Dushenov — currently under investigation for inciting ethnic hatred — and Nikolai Bondarik, the leader of the ultra nationalist Russian Party.
Earlier, on Saturday, an “Empty Saucepans” march against food price rises, organized by the National Bolshevik Party and Sergei Gulyayev’s freshly formed Narod movement, gathered just fewer than 1,000 protesters who marched from Gorkovskaya metro station to the nearby Peter and Paul Fortress, where they held a subsequent meeting.
Many activists were carrying empty saucepans and banging them with ladles. 
At the march, protestors attempted to install an impromptu gallows and hang a puppet with President Vladimir Putin’s initials on its chest. The puppet was destroyed by the police on the spot. 
The police detained three activists including National Bolshevik leader Andrei Dmitriyev, one of the march’s organizers. 
The protesters have been charged with breaking the rules of holding a meeting and hooliganism.
Participants in the “Empty Saucepan” event included a group of war veterans and survivors of the Siege of Leningrad, who held posters reading “Siege Survivors are Starving.”
Hundreds of thousands of residents of St. Petersburg, then known as Leningrad, died of starvation during the Nazi siege of the city during World War II.
The protesters called for the end to the importing of expensive wheat and held the pro-Kremlin United Russia party, which has an overwhelming majority in the State Duma, responsible for the poor quality of life in Russia.
One of the key demands was the immediate resignation of both Putin and Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov.
The increasing gap between Russia’s poor and rich featured prominently in the speeches as it fuels a sense of alienation, protestors said. There is a 17-fold difference between the country’s richest and its poorest citizens, up from 15 times in December 2006.
Russian ombudsman Vladimir Lukin called the gigantic wealth gap the country’s most urgent problem in his annual report this year.
Skyrocketing food prices have recently hit Russia. 
According to a recent report by the State Russian Statistics Committee (Rosstat) prices rose by as much as 30 percent for 9 out of 10 food products in September. Rosstat has said the sharpest rise was registered in September prices for cooking oil (13.5 percent), pasteurized milk (9.4 percent), and other dairy products (7.9 percent). The Finance Ministry has said the annual inflation rate is likely to exceed 10 percent, RIA-Novosti reported.
Gulyayev, the founder and leader of Narod, said the crisis is likely to exacerbate within the next few months. 
“Russia’s socially vulnerable groups may find themselves on the edge of real starvation,” he said at Saturday’s meeting. “We are talking about up to one third of Russian citizens. For larger cities like St. Petersburg the situation looks more optimistic, but the provinces might be thrown into a real abyss.”
Putin has ordered Zubkov to stabilize prices and the government and the State Duma have urgently begun to work out anti-inflation measures.
According to Rosstat, 89 percent of food products in Russia became more expensive in the first month of fall.
According to a poll held by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTSIOM), 51 percent of Russians have been hit by price rises.

TITLE: Television Reporter in Coma After Car Crash
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A television reporter is in a coma after the TV crew he was traveling with was involved in a car crash in east Leningrad Oblast on Sunday night, Fontanka.ru reported. 
Valery Dragilyev, a reporter with the north west bureau of national channel NTV, suffered serious head injuries in the accident. 
A Peugeot car that the TV crew was using was overtaking a truck and drove into the oncoming lane, where it collided with a Zhiguli car.
Dragilyev, who was sitting in the back seat, flew through the back window and seriously injured his head. The driver broke his arm but a cameraman escaped with minor injuries.
The driver of the Zhiguli and his female passenger also received injuries.  
All of those in the accident were taken to a hospital in nearby Lodeinoye Pole, a town between Lake Ladoga and Lake Onega 244 kilometers northeast of St. Petersburg. 
Since Dragilyev could not be transported to St. Petersburg, a medical car with neurosurgeons went to Lodeinoye Pole to assist in his treatment.
Early Monday surgeons operated on Dragilyev who remains in a severe condition, Fontanka.ru said.
Yury Zinchuk, head of St. Petersburg’s NTV bureau, traveled to the hospital and remained with Dragilyev during his treatment.
The NTV crew was coming back from the town of Kondopoga, Karelia, where it had been reporting on the verdict of the trial of 12 people who took part in race riots in the town in 2006.

TITLE: OSCE To Go Ahead With Monitoring Plans
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WARSAW, Poland — An international security organization said Friday that it will go ahead with plans for a “restricted” mission to monitor Russia’s parliamentary election, and urged Moscow to cooperate fully.
Russia earlier this week significantly curtailed the number of international observers it would accept for the Dec. 2 vote, limiting the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe to 70. 
The organization initially reacted by saying it was unsure whether it would send any observers at all.
However, on Friday, the OSCE branch that organizes observer missions said it would “attempt to observe the upcoming Duma elections by deploying a restricted election observation mission.”
The OSCE’s Warsaw-based Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights stressed in a statement that time was running short to monitor the election campaign — although “we hope that we may still be able to offer some assessment of the legislative framework and the very last stages of the campaign.”
It urged Moscow to offer “full cooperation” in processing visas, issuing accreditation and providing other logistical assistance. It called for “full and timely access to all relevant officials and other election stakeholders.”
The Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights has requested 20 visas for observers and is planning to seek 50 more, spokeswoman Urdur Gunnarsdottir said.
The OSCE — which includes 56 countries from Europe, central Asia and North America — sent 400 observers for the last parliamentary election in 2003. The observers described that vote as a step backward for democracy.
Dmitry Peskov, President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, said this week that past OSCE missions had been “unsatisfactory.” He refused to elaborate, but Russia has accused Western election monitors of bias against Russia.
On Thursday, U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said in Vienna that “we regret very much” the Russian decision to curtail the number of international observers, which he described as “rather unprecedented” in the OSCE’s history.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry criticized Burns on Friday for making what it called “a series of tactless statements directed toward Russia” in the Austrian capital, where the OSCE is headquartered.
“Such statements, having no basis in fact, speak only to the allergies in certain circles in the West in connection with the sovereign character of the Russian democratic system,” the ministry said in a statement.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>Frozen Reptiles Found</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — More than 300 reptiles and amphibians froze to death during a flight from France to Russia, Interfax reported on Friday.
St. Petersburg experts from Russian Agriculture Watch found during an examination of the reptiles and amphibians that all 309 snakes, lizards and frogs died during the flight from exposure to cold temperatures.
The cargo was returned to the supplier.

<b>Wolves Seen in City</b>
PETROZAVODSK (SPT) — Wolves have been sighted for the first thime this year in one of the outlying districts of Petrozavodsk in Karelia north of St. Petersburg, Interfax reported on Friday.
Policemen on patrol in the area saw several wolves. Traces of wolves were also found on the city’s Lesnoi Prospect, not far away from a private nursery for dogs, it was reported.
Scientists at the Karelian Scientific Institute said the appearance of wolves in the city was early this year because normally at this time wolves are teaching their young to hunt.
They said that during recent years they have registered many attacks by wolves on dogs. They connect it to low numbers of elk, wolves’ main prey.

<b>Antarctic Expedition</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Russian polar scientists will open two stations in the Antarctic closed since the Soviet era, Interfax reported on Friday.
The Russian scientific expedition ship Akademik Fyodorov is to leave St. Petersburg on Nov. 6.
The expedition plans to reopen the Russkaya and Leningradskaya seasonal stations, closed since the 1980s. They will install automatic meteorological and seismological equipment at the stations.
The ship will also continue to drill ice above Lake Vostok, a lake below the ice. The hole above the lake is now 3,665 meters deep with 85 meters left before explorers reach the lake, Valery Lukin, head of the expedition, said.

TITLE: Georgian Leader Blames Protests on Russia
AUTHOR: By Misha Dzhindzhikhashvili
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TBILISI, Georgia — Georgia’s president on Sunday accused Russia of fomenting mass protests against him, saying his powerful neighbor would benefit from instability in the country.
Mikhail Saakashvili’s remarks were his first response to three days of protests in the capital Tbilisi with more than 100,000 people calling for the president’s resignation.
“Consider the fact that this situation is taking place on the eve of elections in Russia, and the goal — to foment disorder in the country — is as clear as day,” Saakashvili told Georgian Television.
Four years after assuming power in the so-called Rose Revolution, Saakashvili is facing his the worst political crisis of his presidency. Now, as then, tens of thousands of people have amassed on the steps of parliament.
Sunday’s crowd — estimated from 20,000 to 50,000 according to various sources — remained late in the evening, many waving flags and holding candles and shouting “Go away, Misha” — using the short form of the president’s first name.
Protesters initially demanded that the president revoke a decision to postpone parliamentary elections to fall instead of spring and reform the electoral system. But they later insisted the president resign.
Saakashvili, however, was unmoved and said he would not reconsider the decision to postpone the ballot, which he made to save money.
“There will be no giving in to dark forces,” he said.
Saakashvili has sought to decrease the influence of Russia, which dominated Georgia for most of the past two centuries, by looking westward and pushing his nation to seek membership in NATO and the European Union. That policy put him on a collision course with Russia.
Under his leadership, Georgia has introduced market reforms and improved both its business climate and democratic credentials. U.S. President George Bush even visited the Caucasus country in May 2005, an event that boosted Saakashvili’s prestige at home and abroad.
Saakashvili reiterated his promise to integrate the country into Western institutions on Sunday.
“We will see our path to the end,” he said. “We will join NATO and achieve everything that aggravates our northern neighbor.”
Popular discontent with Saakashvili erupted after Irakli Okruashvili, a hawkish former defense minister, accused the president of corruption and plotting to murder a prominent Georgian businessman. Okruashvili was arrested, but then freed on a multimillion-dollar bail after he retracted his allegations.
Saakashvili said opposition forces had organized a “campaign of lies” against him and dismissed the accusations as a ploy to weaken the Georgian state.
Saakashvili also announced that he would run for a second term in the presidential election scheduled for late 2008.
“I am confident that I will win,” he said.

TITLE: Medvedev, A Soft-Spoken, ‘Smart Kid’ Lawyer
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: None of Dmitry Medvedev’s friends can remember hearing him bark an order. If he ever did, it would sound forced, they said.
Soft-spoken and a full 10 centimeters shorter than the diminutive President Vladimir Putin, Medvedev is a far cry from what the public expects in a leader, political consultants said.
But people who know Medvedev personally said he has many leadership traits, including a knack for learning quickly, the integrity to stand by what he believes, and the aptitude to work as a team player.
One thing everyone seems to agree on is that his chances of becoming the next president rest solely on whether he wins Putin’s backing. Voters are expected to elect whomever Putin names as his preferred successor in the election next March.
Medvedev, a first deputy prime minister, has a relationship with Putin unlike that of any other possible candidate: While other, older contenders, such as Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov and First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, treat Putin like the master, the 42-year-old Medvedev looks up to Putin like a father, friends and political analysts said.
“Medvedev’s personality was shaped under Putin’s strong influence, and he worships Putin like a father figure, or at least like an older brother,” said Valery Musin, Medvedev’s former academic adviser and law professor at Leningrad State University.
Putin and Medvedev both attended law classes taught by future St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak at Leningrad State University, although more than a decade apart. Sobchak later called on Putin, Medvedev and Musin to work in City Hall.
Different types of people have led the country from the Kremlin, including the “chatterbox” Mikhail Gorbachev, the “macho” Boris Yeltsin and the “soldier of the empire” Vladimir Putin, said Stanislav Belkovsky, a former Putin spin doctor who heads the Institute of National Strategy, a think tank.
“Medvedev would be the ‘smart kid’ type, and Russians would accept him under the right circumstances,” he said.
Medvedev seems to have filled the role of a “smart kid” since he took his first steps. He is the only child of two St. Petersburg university professors. He understood the value of education and studied hard, participated in the local Komsomol youth group, and earned the respect of other students, said Irina Grigorovskaya, a math teacher at St. Petersburg School No. 305 who has known Medvedev since he was 11.
“Medvedev was very focused on what he was doing and polite,” she said.
“But, you know, frankly, there were many others like him,” she said.
Medvedev met his future wife, Svetlana, at the school, and they both graduated in 1982. The couple has one son, Ilya, 11.
Five years ago, Medvedev, then a deputy chief of the presidential administration, organized a 20-year class reunion in St. Petersburg. “He was very open and easygoing with the others there,” Grigorovskaya said.
Medvedev entered law school at Leningrad State University in the fall of 1982, and he developed a reputation as a hardworking student and team player, Musin said. “I remember him and another student, Anton Ivanov, digging potatoes together during a trip to a collective farm where students helped gather the crops,” Musin said. “Medvedev was good company for us.”
Ivanov, then a close friend of Medvedev’s, is now chairman of the Supreme Arbitration Court.
After graduating in 1987, Medvedev decided to become a professor like his parents, and he completed the university’s doctoral program in 1990. He taught law there on and off until 1999, when Putin brought him to Moscow.

Meeting Putin
Sobchak offered Medvedev and Putin jobs shortly after he was elected mayor in 1991. Putin took over the city committee on external relations, while Medvedev became a Sobchak adviser and legal consultant for Putin’s committee.
“Several times we briefed Putin together on various legal issues, and I noticed that Putin regarded Medvedev’s recommendations with respect,” Musin said. “Medvedev may seem soft and pliable as a team member, but he is quite rigid on the things that he believes are right.”
Later this firmness would assert itself in Medvedev’s incessant denial of the notion of sovereign democracy, a term coined by Vladislav Surkov, a deputy head of the presidential administration who once served under Medvedev in the Kremlin. The term sovereign democracy — used to describe how Russia’s democracy differs from that in the West — has been eagerly picked up by Putin and widely exploited by pro-Putin party United Russia.
“I still don’t like this term,” Medvedev said in an interview with Vedomosti in July. “In my opinion as a lawyer, playing up one feature of a full-fledged democracy — namely the supremacy of state authorities within the country and their independence [from influences] outside the country — is excessive and even harmful because it is disorienting.”
Medvedev’s aide responsible for media relations, Zhanna Odintsova, declined repeated requests for an interview for this report. For more than a month she also turned down requests to accompany Medvedev on one of his frequent trips around the country, citing a lack of space among the pool of reporters who travel with Medvedev.
In 1996, Putin’s and Medvedev’s paths parted after Sobchak lost his post in elections. Putin eventually got a job in Moscow at the Kremlin’s property department, and Medvedev returned to teaching and went into private business. In 1998, he served as chairman of the Bratsk Forestry Complex.

Few Clues in the Kremlin
Putin hired Medvedev as deputy head of the government administration in November 1999, within three months of being named prime minister. A month later, Yeltsin resigned and Putin appointed Medvedev as deputy head of the presidential administration. Three years later, Medvedev was named head of the administration.
“Medvedev is very soft and psychologically dependent on Putin,” Belkovsky said. “This is extremely important for Putin. He needs to feel comfortable with his subordinates.”
Inside the Kremlin, Medvedev aligned himself with a powerful clan often described as the St. Petersburg lawyers or technocrats. This group is thought to have a more liberal view on the state’s role in the economy, foreign policy and civil liberties than the other major Kremlin clan, the siloviki, which consists of hawkish defense and security service officials.
It is difficult to discern to what extent Medvedev’s purported liberal economic views have shaped the aggressive, expansionist policies of Gazprom, which he has led as chairman since June 2000. The state-controlled gas giant has shown no qualms about using the state’s muscle to edge out independent rivals in recent years.
As pressure was mounting on TNK-BP to let Gazprom into its lucrative Kovykta gas field last summer amid state threats to revoke a key license, Medvedev said in the Vedomosti interview that key sectors of the economy such as energy and the defense industry should remain in state hands.
“Don’t blame him,” Belkovsky said. “Putin is the real master of Gazprom, and Medvedev is just his envoy.”
Medvedev said in the interview that the state should privatize some strategic enterprises like Gazprom one day, but that for now, state control ensured that the company had the political clout needed to expand at home and abroad.
In the Kremlin administration, Medvedev oversaw judicial reforms that he said would make the courts more transparent and open to ordinary people. In February 2005, when the court system was under fierce fire at the height of the Yukos affair, Medvedev announced that his reform was complete and the courts were finally “genuinely independent.”
At the end of the year, Putin made the shock announcement that Medvedev, still largely unknown to the public, had been promoted to first deputy prime minister. Stunned politicians and Kremlin watchers immediately declared that Medvedev was Putin’s likely successor.

Presidential Material?
The once obscure Medvedev quickly became a household name, with the state television channels providing extensive coverage of his activities. Putin made sure journalists had news to report, placing Medvedev in charge of the multibillion-dollar national projects to improve health care, education, housing and agriculture.
Medvedev’s popularity ratings soared, passing the other lead contender for the presidency, then-Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, and leaving him second only to Putin. His ratings, however, began to slump earlier this year as people noticed a disconnect between his social spending promises and their unchanged well-being, sociologists said.
If the presidential election were to be held today, 26 percent of Russians would vote for Medvedev, compared with 25 percent for Ivanov, according to the most recent nationwide survey by the independent Levada Center. They were the top two names in the survey, which had a margin of error of 3 percentage points. In a sign of growing dissatisfaction with Medvedev’s work, a separate Levada survey in August found that 53 percent of Russians felt that the national projects have had no impact on their lives. An overwhelming 74 percent said the money allocated for the projects would be wasted or stolen.
New housing remains out of reach for most Russians, education standards are still sagging, and food prices are continuing to grow — trends that could provide siloviki rivals with damaging ammunition should Medvedev run for president.
Medvedev’s appearance has changed noticeably since he was appointed first deputy prime minister. He has lost weight, his facial features have gotten tighter, and he has learned to talk more firmly and confidently. Observers said he seemed to be modeling himself after Putin.
“Medvedev has made progress in sharpening his new image, but he has not been able to get rid of his softness. He still looks like a scholar straight out of a library,” said Tatyana Stanovaya, an analyst at the Center for Political Technologies.
Moreover, the weight loss has revealed Medvedev’s thin shoulders, and he has taken to wearing old-fashioned double-breasted suits, she noted.
The lack of visible toughness in Medvedev should be treated as an asset, said Igor Yurgens, vice president of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, the country’s biggest lobby group.
“Medvedev is the kind of a leader who doesn’t bark orders but works with people and shares the proceeds with them,” Yurgens said.
“I believe that modern Russians who understand that the economy can’t be run by loud commands will support Medvedev, just like I do,” he said.
Yurgens pointed to Medvedev’s work with former Health and Social Development Minister Mikhail Zurabov as an example of how a businesslike, nonpolitical approach could benefit government. As the overseer of health care reform, Medvedev had every right to attack Zurabov, widely blamed for a government failure to provide cheap medicine to the poor, Yurgens said. But instead, he said, Medvedev focused on the elements of Zurabov’s program that were working and tried to push them forward. Zurabov was ousted in a government shake-up in September.
Attempts like this to be a team player will prevent Medvedev from becoming president, said Mikhail Delyagin, a longtime government economic adviser who now heads the Institute of Globalization Problems.
“Medvedev has such a weak personality that he would be raped by lobbyists right on his table on the second day of his presidency, and Putin knows this,” he said.
Medvedev lacks a thirst for power and the skills needed to lead and motivate people, Delyagin said. “Unlike Putin — who understands that rage is a big part of the Russian nature and aptly manages this knowledge — Medvedev is a refined and pleasant nobleman’s son who can’t force his will on anyone,” he said.
He grudgingly allowed, though, that Medvedev was a good manager when given a well-defined task.
Medvedev’s softness may degenerate into fickleness, and this is not what Putin wants during the transition of power next year, Stanovaya said.
Furthermore, the appointment of Zubkov as prime minister in September dealt a serious blow to Medvedev’s presidential prospects, she said. Zubkov, who has shouted at Cabinet meetings and projects the image of a tough but fair boss, fits the popular perception of a national leader better than Medvedev, she said.
“Zubkov also has taken over the role of defender of the poor from Medvedev,” she said.
But the Westernized middle class, Yurgens said, would largely vote for Medvedev, relating to his enthusiasm for the British hard rock band Deep Purple and appreciation for “Olbanian,” the slang that Russians use in Internet forums. Asked during an online call-in conference in March whether Olbanian should become a school subject, Medvedev said, “One cannot ignore the necessity of learning the Olbanian language.”

TITLE: MI5 Says Spying 
A Waste
AUTHOR: By Mark Trevelyan
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Russian spying against Britain remains at Cold War levels, diverting intelligence resources that would be better devoted to fighting al Qaeda, the head of the MI5 intelligence agency said on Monday.
Jonathan Evans said espionage by a number of countries, also including China, was a distraction from countering militant Islamists who were growing in number and now targeting children as young as 15 in Britain.
“Since the end of the Cold War we have seen no decrease in the numbers of undeclared Russian intelligence officers in the UK — at the Russian embassy and associated organizations conducting covert activity in this country,” Evans said.
“So despite the Cold War ending nearly two decades ago, my service is still expending resources to defend the UK against unreconstructed attempts by Russia, China and others to spy on us,” he added in his first public speech since taking over as head of MI5, the domestic spy agency, in April.
Evans said a number of countries were still actively seeking to steal sensitive civilian and military technology, political and economic intelligence, including via sophisticated electronic attacks on computer networks.
“It is a matter of some disappointment to me that I still have to devote significant amounts of equipment, money and staff to countering this threat,” Evans said.
“They are resources which I would far rather devote to countering the threat from international terrorism — a threat to the whole international community, not just the UK.”
His singling-out of Russia underlined the poor state of relations between the two countries’ governments and between their security agencies.
Each expelled four of the other’s diplomats in July in a row over Moscow’s refusal to extradite the chief suspect in the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB agent turned Kremlin critic who was poisoned with radioactive polonium in London a year ago. The two sides have also suspended cooperation on counter-terrorism.
In his speech, Evans said MI5 knew of at least 2,000 British-based individuals who posed a direct threat to national security because of their support for terrorism, “and we suspect that there are as many again that we don’t yet know of.”
A year ago, his predecessor put the figure at about 1,600.
“As I speak, terrorists are methodically and intentionally targeting young people and children in this country,” Evans said.
“They are radicalizing, indoctrinating and grooming young, vulnerable people to carry out acts of terrorism. This year, we have seen individuals as young as 15 and 16 implicated in terrorist-related activity.”
Several British militant conspiracies have featured links to al Qaeda in Pakistan.

TITLE: On Day of Unity, President Gives Veiled Warning to West
AUTHOR: By Chris Baldwin
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — On a holiday created to unite his country, Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a veiled warning that foreigners were seeking to split up the vast country and plunder its resource wealth.
“Some people are constantly insisting on the necessity to divide up our country and are trying to spread this theory,” Putin told military cadets during a speech in Moscow on Sunday, Russian news agencies reported.
“There are those who would like to build a unipolar world, who would themselves like to rule all of humanity,” Putin said, a phrase he has used over the past seven years of his administration to mean the United States.
Putin, who has a black belt in Judo, the Japanese martial art that stresses calm, emotionless and powerful shifts of an opponent’s weight and balance against himself, also said Russia was well respected by admirers as a stabilizing world factor.
“Some minor countries, under pressure from larger ones, are having a hard time figuring out how to defend their own interests. And Russia has played and will continue to play a positive, stabilizing role in the world,” he said.
Sunday was National Unity Day, an Autumn holiday created by Putin’s administration three years ago to replace October Revolution Day, formerly the most patriotic celebration in the Soviet Union, when tanks, missiles and troops filled Red Square.
Unity Day, according to Putin’s own explanation of the holiday, is meant to show the power of the Russian people as a unified whole, rising up to meet the challenges of economic development and national defense.
A Levada Centre poll of adult Russians showed only a quarter of adults could correctly identify why they had Monday off from work.
A further 48 per cent had no idea whatsoever, while the remaining poll participants confused the holiday with the National Day of Reconciliation or Halloween.
To end this national confusion, this year’s National Unity Day celebrations were heavily advertized on government television channels, and thousands of people across the country staged rallies, meetings and marches to show their patriotism.
“Some think we have too much resource wealth and should divide it,” Putin told the cadets. “They themselves have no wish to share their own riches, and we should take that into account.”

TITLE: Federal Security Service Not Amused by Communit Jokes
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — They seemed like a few lame jokes. But for the Federal Security Service, they were no laughing matter.
The agency’s Novosibirsk region branch has accused the Communists of campaign violations for distributing leaflets poking fun at pro-Kremlin party United Russia and President Vladimir Putin, who tops the United Russia ticket in the Dec. 2 State Duma elections.
The Communist Party’s Novosibirsk branch late last month stuffed 11,200 leaflets in mailboxes, literature that was critical of other parties and contained jokes about United Russia and Putin, regional Communist spokesman Artyom Skatov said by telephone Thursday.
One of the knee-slappers tacked references to Putin and ubiquitous, much-despised sculptor Zurab Tsereteli to a famous saying about poet Alexander Pushkin, Russia’s most famous cultural icon: “Now it is clear that Pushkin is our everything, Tsereteli is our everywhere and Putin is our forever.”
After discovering the mass mailing, the regional FSB branch filed a complaint to local election officials, Skatov said. An FSB spokesman in Novosibirsk declined to comment, and a faxed request for comment to the agency’s central headquarters went unanswered Thursday.
The complaint, however, did not go too far.
Stanislav Palamarchuk, head of the election commission in Novosibirsk’s Sovietsky district to whom the claim was addressed, said a review of the party literature in question revealed no violations.
Senior Communist official Vadim Solovyov, the party’s chief lawyer, said the FSB complaint betrayed a “misunderstanding of many aspects of election laws.”
The leaflets were “part of our consistent opposition stance, not part of an election campaign,” Solovyov said. “It’s not campaigning. It’s informing.”
The official Duma campaign kicks off Saturday.
Central Elections Commission member Yevgeny Kolyushin said tracking campaign violations “is not the business of the FSB.”

TITLE: Imperial Energy Gets Offer to Sell a 25 Percent Stake
AUTHOR: By Catrina Stewart
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Imperial Energy, a London-listed oil company that has come under sustained pressure in Russia this year over the size of its reserves, said Thursday that it had received an unsolicited offer for a 25 percent stake.
“The board ... is currently reviewing this proposal and there is no certainty that any agreement will be entered into,” Imperial said in a statement.
The company said a financial investor proposed to subscribe for newly issued shares and that the offer represented a discount on the current share price.
Imperial’s shares were trading down 1.9 percent as of 3 p.m. Thursday on the London Stock Exchange at 1,350 pence ($28.07).
Imperial, which has most of its assets in the Tomsk region, has been targeted by the Natural Resources Ministry’s environmental watchdog this year and accused of inflating its reserves. The claims have prompted outrage from Imperial’s management, which has accused Oleg Mitvol, the deputy head of the watchdog, of overstepping his authority.
The sustained pressure from the authorities has created volatility in the company’s share price, and analysts say the company now presents an obvious target for investors.
“The company looks cheap, and the quality of assets has never been in doubt,” said Artyom Konchin, an oil analyst with Aton brokerage, adding that he saw fair value of 1,650 pence for the company.
Mitvol’s statements in April this year drove Imperial’s share price down by about 30 percent. In September, Mitvol said his agency had revoked five of the oil firm’s licenses, sending the shares down by 15 percent. It later emerged that the statements were related to fields previously relinquished by Imperial for lack of prospects.
Imperial’s management has strongly hinted that Russian officials close to Mitvol’s agency have been involved in insider trading in the company’s shares and, in July this year, it asked the Financial Services Authority, Britain’s financial watchdog, to look into the trading in its stock. The FSA refused to confirm on Thursday whether it was or had been investigating the matter.
Analysts said a well-connected investor could offer the company’s shareholders some level of comfort.
“Whoever [the potential buyer] is probably came along and said: ‘You need money, you need some protection, I can give you both and here’s my price,’“ said a London-based analyst, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Aton’s Konchin identified other companies operating in the Tomsk region, such as Tomskneft and Gazprom Neft, as potentially interested parties. Gazprom Neft and Imperial have a cooperation agreement in the Tomsk region, dating back to mid-2006.
Natalya Vyalkina, a spokeswoman for Gazprom Neft, denied on Thursday that the company was holding any talks with Imperial.
Konchin said a parallel could not necessarily be drawn between the investor behind the approach and the wrangles with the Russian watchdog.
“You might take advantage of the situation, but that doesn’t mean you created it,” he said.

TITLE: Gasunie To Take Pipe Stake
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Dutch firm Gasunie will probably finalise a deal to acquire a 9 percent share in the Nord Stream gas pipeline project this week during Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende’s visit to Moscow, a Kremlin source said.
The source said on Monday the deal would be finalised in talks between Balkenende and President Vladimir Putin.
Russia’s gas export monopoly Gazprom holds 51 percent of the project to build a gas pipeline from Russia under the Baltic Sea to Germany.
The deal under discussion could see Gasunie, the Dutch pipeline operator, taking a 4.5 percent stake from both BASF and E.ON.
German companies E.ON and Wintershall, which is part of BASF, currently own 24.5 percent each in the project.
Gazprom would in turn receive a 9 percent stake in another Dutch firm, BBL Company, set up to build and operate the BBL pipeline to carry natural gas from the Netherlands to Britain.
Gasunie owns 60 percent of BBL, with E.ON Ruhrgas and Belgium’s Fluxys owning 20 percent each.
Gasunie might have to pay extra cash to Gazprom in the deal as a 9 percent stake in Nord Stream is potentially worth more than a 9 percent in BBL, which is a smaller project.

TITLE: Lufthansa Hub To Stay in Place
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: Deutsche Lufthansa AG, Europe’s second-biggest airline, won’t relocate its central Asian air- freight hub to Russia soon because technical equipment for bad- weather flights is lacking at the proposed location, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported, citing Lufthansa spokesman Klaus Walther.
A relocation would take two years, the newspaper quoted Walther as saying in an advance copy of an article in tomorrow’s edition. He was referring to Russian pressure on the carrier to move the hub to Krasnoyarsk from the Kazakh capital of Astana, Frankfurter Allgemeine said.
Lufthansa Cargo is permitted to fly across Russian airspace through Nov. 14 while the German and Russian governments hold talks about moving the hub. Reinstating an Oct. 28 fly-over ban would force Lufthansa to re-route freight flights around Russia, delaying cargo services and increasing fuel costs.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>Local Bank IPO</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Bank St. Petersburg expects to raise $274.32 million through a public offering of shares which is to start on Nov. 6, Prime-Tass reported Friday. Ordinary shares will be offered at $5.4 per share and GDR at $16.2.
As a result of the IPO, the capitalization of Bank St. Petersburg will increase up to $1.524 billion. The bank will offer 50.68 million ordinary shares to the fund market, which is 18 percent of the total number of shares.

<b>Lenenergo Loan</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Lenenergo power distribution company will take a loan of 5 billion rubles ($202.8 million) for three years, Interfax reported Friday.
Barclays Bank will organize a syndicated loan for Lenenergo. Credit resources will be used to finance development of power infrastructure in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast. Next year Lenenergo will spend 22.8 billion rubles ($925 million) on these plans.

<b>Hotel For Sale</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The St. Petersburg Property Fund will auction off the Hotel Na Sadovoi open joint-stock company on Nov. 30, Prime-Tass reported Friday.
The six-storey-high hotel offers 2,671 square meters of space. The building occupies a land plot of 1,075 square meters in the center of the city.
Applications are accepted until Nov. 26. The starting price is 80 million rubles ($3.24 million). Advance payment of 16 million rubles is required.

<b>Investment Influx</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Investment projects worth $40.5 billion are currently being realized in Leningrad Oblast, Prime-Tass reported Friday.
The regional government expects new investment projects to be launched in the near future, including a pulp and paper plant in Podporozhsky district, a timber plant in the Boksitogorsky district and an oil and gas processing plant in the Slantsy district. 

<b>Port Traffic Up</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The Vysotsk sea port (Leningrad Oblast) increased turnover of cargo by 8.4 percent over the last ten months compared to January-October 2006, up to 3.59 million tons, Interfax reported Friday.
In October this year the Vysotsk port processed more than 410,000 tons. During the whole of last year the port processed four million tons, an 11 percent increase on 2005 figures.

<b>LEK’s Mixed Results</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Net profit at LEK construction group will decrease sevenfold this year compared to 2006, Interfax reported Friday.
By the end of 2007, LEK expects to earn net profit of $13.3 million. Though revenue will increase by 14.2 percent up to $265.9 million, earnings before taxes will decrease sevenfold to $17.5 million. Sales will increase by six percent up to 209,025 square meters.
In 2008, LEK expects net profit of $72.4 million and revenue at $965.266 million. Sales are expected to amount to 489,107 square meters next year.

<b>Siemens Make Turbines</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — German concern Siemens AG signed an agreement with Power Machines for the production of two gas turbines for 69.4 million euros, Prime-Tass reported Friday.
The two SGT5-PAC 4000F turbines will be equipped with Siemens generators. The equipment was ordered by OGK-5 power generation company to be installed at a hydroelectric power station at Nevinnomysk.

<b>Bank Profit Increase</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Baltinvestbank increased net profit by 2.8 times in the period from January until September this year compared to the same period last year, Prime-Tass reported Friday.
The bank reported net profit of 263 million rubles ($10.67 million). Earnings before taxes increased up to 329.5 million rubles ($13.37 million). Assets of the bank increased by 50 percent up to 15.9 billion rubles ($645.2 million). 

<b>Capital Increases</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) – Ruskobank, a subsidiary of the Eastern-European Financial Corporation, will increase authorized capital stock from 5.1 million rubles to 503.3 million rubles by issuing new shares, Prime-Tass reported Friday.
About 500 million new shares will be distributed through a closed subscription. As a result, the bank’s capital will increase to over 800 million rubles.

TITLE: PetroChina First $1 Trillion Firm
AUTHOR: By Elaine Kurtenbach
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SHANGHAI, China — PetroChina became the world’s first company worth more than $1 trillion on Monday, surging past Exxon Mobil as the Chinese oil producer’s shares nearly tripled in their first day of trading in China.
State-owned PetroChina Co., a unit of state-owned China National Petroleum Corp., is the country’s biggest oil and gas producer. Its Shanghai initial public offering of 4 billion shares raised $8.94 billion — a record for a mainland bourse.
Adding the value of PetroChina shares traded in Shanghai, Hong Kong and New York — and those still owned by the government — the company’s total market capitalization ballooned to just over $1 trillion, compared to Exxon Mobil Corp.’s $488 billion.
However, more than 85 percent the shares outstanding — 157.9 billion shares — are held by PetroChina’s parent company CNPC and are unlikely to trade in the market any time soon.
PetroChina’s new shares listed in Shanghai surged to 43.96 yuan ($5.90) Monday, nearly triple the IPO price of 16.70 yuan ($2.24).
The stellar performance was expected: Shares in elite companies like PetroChina tend to soar in their trading debuts given the strong appetite among Chinese investors for highly valued companies.
Like other yuan-denominated “A shares” traded in China, the PetroChina shares issued in Shanghai are meant for domestic investors and are not generally available to foreign buyers. They account for 2.18 percent of the company’s enlarged share capital of 183.02 billion shares.
“PetroChina’s return to the A-share market is a result of the Chinese economy’s fast growth and surging energy demand,” the company said in a statement. “PetroChina’s public offering will bring renewed energy to domestic capital markets and also provide an important investment indicator.”
Before PetroChina’s IPO, coal producer China Shenhua Energy Co.’s debut in Shanghai in September was the largest for a domestic exchange, raising $8.91 billion.
The benchmark Shanghai Composite index has more than doubled in value this year as investors have piled into the market chasing a slew of IPOs by big-name companies, hoping for higher returns than they can earn on bank savings.
The index fell 2.5 percent Monday, or 143.36 points, to 5,634.45 as institutional investors cut holdings in energy and financial companies to buy into PetroChina.
As of Friday, PetroChina’s market value was $456.6 billion.
That was based on the company’s share price in Hong Kong, where it has listed 21.09 billion shares, or about 11.5 percent of total stock. Those shares closed Monday at 18 Hong Kong dollars, or $2.31.
In Shanghai, PetroChina’s shares closed Monday at a much higher $5.90, lifting the value of company’s remaining 162 billion shares — mostly held by CNPC — to $955 billion.
Adding the value of PetroChina’s Hong Kong shares, worth about $49 billion, the company’s total market capitalization rose to more than $1 trillion.
PetroChina’s status as the world’s most highly valued company by market capitalization thus does not necessarily reflect stronger profitability or productivity than its rivals.
The company has seen revenues soar amid surging oil prices but has struggled to boost production from its aging domestic oil fields. In refining, it has struggled with a widening gap between soaring world crude oil prices and state-controlled prices for oil products in the domestic market.
PetroChina reported that its first-half net profit rose 1.4 percent from a year earlier on modest output growth, to 81.8 billion yuan ($10.8 billion), compared with 80.7 billion yuan a year earlier.
Like other Chinese energy giants, PetroChina is investing heavily in both overseas and domestic oil and gas fields as it rushes to meet soaring demand. The company’s luster appears to have been undimmed by a decision by Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s decision to sell off all its 2.3 billion PetroChina shares.

TITLE: Citgroup Inc. Seeks New Chairman
AUTHOR: By Madlen Read
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK — Citigroup Inc. shareholders may have finally gotten what they wanted — the resignation of Chairman and Chief Executive Charles Prince — but Wall Street’s worries are far from over.
At an emergency meeting of the Citi board Sunday, the nation’s largest bank announced Prince’s widely expected departure, but also estimated it would take additional losses of $8 billion to $11 billion. In the third quarter, it already took a hit of $6.5 billion in asset mark-downs and other credit-related losses.
Meanwhile, the company remains entrenched in a mire of off-the-books investment vehicles funded by risky debt. Citigroup may need to take the fall for them if they fail.
And Citigroup’s not alone in its debt problems. When borrowers with poor credit stopped paying their mortgages, many banks not only had to take losses on those subprime mortgages, they also saw instruments in their portfolios backed by mortgages plummet in value. No one knows how much longer home prices will keep slumping, and whether problems related to the housing market will start affecting other types of consumer debt.
Also to be seen is how much longer the credit markets will stay tight, and if the currently strong portions of the economy will be hampered by banks’ inability to make loans.
“It’s the lending practices,” said Steven Goldman, chief market strategist at Weeden & Co. in Greenwich, Conn. “How much is that going to be impaired?”
Citi said former U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin, once co-chairman of Goldman, Sachs & Co., will be chairing the beleaguered bank. Sir Win Bischoff, chairman of Citi Europe and a member of the Citi management and operating committees, will serve as interim CEO.
Prince joined former Merrill Lynch & Co. CEO Stan O’Neal, who resigned from the investment bank last month, as the highest-profile casualties of the debt crisis that has cost billions at other financial institutions as well.
Prince, 57, became chief executive of Citigroup in October 2003. Many shareholders criticized him openly for much of his tenure, as Citigroup’s stock lagged that of its peers while Prince executed what was called an umbrella model of corporate organization, with several separate lines of business. Shares closed Friday at $37.73, about 20 percent below where they were when Prince became CEO.
Rubin, 69, after 26 years at Goldman Sachs, became President Bill Clinton’s chief economic adviser in 1993 before leading the Treasury Department. His experience steering the U.S. economy during the Mexican and Asian financial crises could come in handy as Citigroup attempts to navigate the tight credit markets.
Bischoff was the chairman of the British investment bank Schroders PLC, then joined Salomon Smith Barney Inc., a subsidiary of Citi, when it acquired Schroders. He began his current position in May 2000.
“There’s no change of strategy that we see, actually, going forward,” Bischoff said, noting that the company still plans to focus on international expansion, at least until a new CEO is chosen.
It was not known whether Bischoff was in the running to replace Prince as CEO. Before Sunday’s meeting, many ideas for Prince’s replacement were floated by industry watchers; one name that has come up often is John Thain, who was once president of Goldman Sachs and is now CEO of NYSE Euronext.
But it may take more than a figurehead change to restore shareholders’ confidence in Citigroup, considering how much bad debt it has on its hands and its hard-to-shed image of a rule-flouting old boys club.

TITLE: Hollywood Writers Down Pens, Begin Strike
AUTHOR: By Gary Gentile
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LOS ANGELES — Film and TV writers resolved to put down their pens and take up picket signs after last-ditch talks failed to avert a strike.
The first picket lines were set to appear Monday morning at Rockefeller Center in New York, where NBC is headquartered.
In Los Angeles, writers were planning to picket 14 studio locations in four-hour shifts from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day until a new deal is reached.
The contract between the 12,000-member Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producer expired Oct. 31. Talks that began this summer failed to produce much progress on the writers’ key demands for a bigger slice of DVD profits and revenue from the distribution of films and TV shows over the Internet.
Writers and producers gathered for negotiations Sunday at the request of a federal mediator.
The two sides met for nearly 11 hours before East Coast members of the writers union announced on their Web site that the strike had begun for their 4,000 members.
Producers said writers refused a request to “stop the clock” on the planned strike while talks continued.
“It is unfortunate that they choose to take this irresponsible action,” producers said in a statement.
Producers said writers were not willing to compromise on their major demands.
Writers said they withdrew a proposal to increase their share of revenue from the sale of DVDs that had been a stumbling block for producers. They also said the proposals by producers in the area of Internet reuse of TV episodes and films were unacceptable.
“The AMPTP made no response to any of the other proposals that the WGA has made since July,” writers said in a statement.
The strike is the first walkout by writers since 1988. That work stoppage lasted 22 weeks and cost the industry more than $500 million.
The first casualty of the strike would be late-night talk shows, which are dependent on current events to fuel monologues and other entertainment.
Daytime TV, including live talk shows such as “The View” and soap operas, which typically tape about a week’s worth of shows in advance, would be next to feel the impact.
The strike will not immediately impact production of movies or prime-time TV programs. Most studios have stockpiled dozens of movie scripts, and TV shows have enough scripts or completed shows in hand to last until early next year.
One key factor that could determine the damage caused by the strike is whether members of a powerful Hollywood Teamsters local honor the picket lines.
Local 399, which represents truck drivers, casting directors and location managers, had told its members that as a union, it has a legal obligation to honor its contracts with producers.
But the clause does not apply to individuals, who are protected by federal law from employer retribution if they decide to honor picket lines, the local said.
The battle has broad implications for the way Hollywood does business, since whatever deal is struck by writers will likely be used as a template for talks with actors and directors, whose contracts expire next June.
“We’ll get what they get,” Screen Actors Guild president Alan Rosenberg told The Associated Press.
The guilds have been preparing for these negotiations for years, hiring staff with extensive labor union experience, and developing joint strategies and a harder line than producers have seen in decades.
“We haven’t shown particular resolve in past negotiations,” said John Bowman, the WGA’s chief negotiator.

TITLE: Seasoned Executive Brings Disney to CIS Region
AUTHOR: By Anna Smolchenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Her grandfather worked with Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, and she is waging a revolution of her own. Marina Jigalova-Ozkan, head of The Walt Disney Company CIS, is introducing Mickey Mouse and other Disney characters to Russia.
Jigalova-Ozkan learned the value of a good story from her early years. She was born into an elite family and spent several years living in Libya as a child. Her father was a foreign trade official, and her grandfather was a diplomat serving in postwar Berlin, Cuba, Burma and Yemen.
“Grandfather was Fidel Castro’s economic adviser, so since my childhood there were lots of different stories, including some about his work with Che Guevara,” Jigalova-Ozkan said in a recent interview in her central Moscow office.
Enrolling at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, or MGIMO, was a natural move for her, she said. What was unusual was the timing. In 1989, she entered the country’s best school on recommendation from the Communist Party, and graduated in 1994 after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
“We began by studying the works of Marx and Lenin and finished with Keynes and Samuelson,” she said, referring to renowned Western economists. “The surrounding reality has changed completely.”
As a student, she joined an International Finance Corporation team that helped conduct privatization in Nizhny Novgorod.
“We were privatizing stores,” she said. “It was incredibly interesting because we got to write laws ourselves and planned how we’d conduct auctions. It was the first experience of market reality.”
As part of the IFC, she also took lectures on financial management in Washington, Vienna, Rome and Amsterdam.
With a MGIMO diploma and several years’ experience at the IFC, Jigalova-Ozkan landed a job as a financial consultant at the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development. Dividing her time between London and Moscow, she helped provide financing for Russian companies, including for Sakhalin and Far Eastern shipping companies.
In 1996, 25-year old Jigalova-Ozkan left her comfortable, London-based job after receiving an offer to join billionaire Vladimir Potanin’s Interros as senior economy officer, and was later promoted to become the group’s vice-president. She also joined the board of the North-Western Shipping Co., where Interros was a main shareholder.
“I was told I was the first woman to join the board of a shipping company,” she said. “It’s captains who run shipping companies. And a woman on board ... well you understand,” laughed the slim, 36-year old brunette.
In her three years at the job, she helped build the steamship company into a profitable business, changing its fleet and buying new vessels.
Her decision to leave wasn’t easy but Jigalova-Ozkan wanted to “broaden horizons,” she said. She applied to one of the world’s most selective programs — Harvard MBA — and was accepted.
“I was extremely happy,” she said. “Within two years, we studied 500 different business cases.”
Between her first and second year there, Jigalova-Ozkan and her friends organized a trip to Hollywood, the first by Harvard students. During the trip, about 70 students visited studios and met producers and talent agencies. One of the people she met was an analyst from Disney, but Jigalova-Ozkan said she never thought she would work for Mickey & Co. “Majors didn’t look at Russia as one of the priority or strategic markets back then,” she said.
But that summer was fun. As a result of the trip, she spent it working for a talent agency in Los Angeles and worked as an observing director as part of a David Kelley Productions crew filming “The Practice,” an award-winning television series.
“We even went to parties,” Jigalova-Ozkan said. “I remember we went to a party celebrating the launch of a new season of ‘Sex and the City.’”
During her second year at Harvard, she took interest in the idea of resuscitating Russian science and wrote a case for setting up a direct investment fund to support promising start-ups.
Upon her return to Russia in 2001, she took the post of deputy general director at Prof-Media, Potanin’s media vehicle, and oversaw the company’s strategy. In 2002, she got a seat on the board of directors and worked at the company until 2006. She also joined the boards of Izvestia, Komsomolskaya Pravda and other media outlets, where she helped introduce international financial management and audit standards.
One morning she got a call from a headhunting agency.
“My first reaction was very lukewarm: thank you but I am doing great,” Jigalova-Ozkan said. And then she thought again. After meeting a host of Disney officials, including the global CEO, she was sold. Prof-Media supported her decision. “Marina, we’ve been together for many years but you don’t turn away from such offers,” she said she was told.
As the first and only representative of the entertainment giant in Russia, she started from scratch. The office now employs more than 70 people and plans to expand to at least 100 staff by next September.
Asked for her advice on successfully doing business in Russia, she said it was essential to understand “that we are working in the conditions of a quickly developing market.”
“That means it’s necessary to quickly take initiative, take responsibility upon yourself, make decisions and at the same time not be afraid of making mistakes.”
Daniel Frigo, Walt Disney Studios’ London-based general manager for Europe, Middle East and Africa, said Jigalova-Ozkan was a tremendous asset for the company.
“Her keen understanding of the Russian market, coupled with her ability to translate the Disney vision as well as strategically coordinate all of Disney’s various business will allow our company to become a part of the fiber of the great Russian culture,” he said in e-mailed comments.
In Russia, the global giant is eyeing a family entertainment niche and gearing up to shoot its first movie here, due to be released in 2008. “We very much want to do a quality live action Disney movie,” Jigalova-Ozkan said.
Apart from that, the company is publishing children’s books and magazines, and thousands of Russians are getting hooked on Disney television series such as “Lost” and “W.I.T.C.H.”
Jigalova-Ozkan’s 4-year old son’s favorite character is Winnie the Pooh. And which Disney hero won her heart?
“Johnny Depp,” she breaks into a wide smile, her face has a dreamy expression for a split second, and then she’s all business again. “There was a meeting in a studio, and we had a chance to talk to him... He has a magic influence on people of all ages.”

TITLE: Global Developers Target Russia’s Rich
AUTHOR: By Max Delany
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Top-end developers and real estate agents from around the globe were out in force at Moscow’s prestigious Extravaganza-2007 fair in late October, proving that Russia is an increasingly crucial market for companies looking to hawk their luxury properties.
Stretching over three days, the annual Extravaganza event, billed as a supermarket for the super-rich, lined the Manezh exhibition center with everything the wealthy could want, from sports cars to private jets and even luxury porta-potties.
Most eye-catching, however, was the preponderance of stands offering elite real estate around the world, from villas in the south of France to holiday homes in Dubai.
“Real estate is really something that has the wind in its sails at the moment,” said Peter Illovsky, a partner at Burger Sotheby’s International Realty.
Fueled by the influx of petrodollars, the economy has boomed over the past few years, pushing up the flow of wealthy Russians to many of the world’s most desirable destinations.
“You are mainly looking at places like Dubai, London and the French Riviera,” Illovsky said, as a pair of bikinied female models cavorted in a Jacuzzi opposite his stand.
Illovsky sells homes in the south of France, where top-end properties range from $7 million to $150 million for a beachfront home.
“The Russians are more interested in the luxury properties because the Russians are the ones with the money now,” he said.
At a neighboring stand, George Englezos, sales executive for Cypriot developer The Residence, stood proudly over a model of his exclusive beachfront development near the seaside resort of Limassol in Cyprus.
Since launching the project at last year’s Extravaganza event, over half of the development’s 57 units have been snapped up. Eighty percent of the buyers were Russian.
“We target the Moscow market,” Englezos said, explaining that although some customers come from the regional towns, such as Perm and Yekaterinburg, most are from the capital. Prices for the villas range up to $12 million, Englezos said.
Despite their heavy presence at the fair, representatives from a range of companies said very few deals were actually struck at the shows in Moscow. Firms are still trying to test the water in Russia and build up awareness among potential buyers.
“Developers have been going to Hong Kong and the Far East for a long time but haven’t yet come to understand this market,” said Andrew Williams, managing director of the residential and hotels department at Cushman & Wakefield in London.
Work is also penciled to start next spring on the final part of the development of London’s tallest residential building, Williams said. The penthouse will cost somewhere in the range of $40 million to $50 million, Williams estimated.
“We think that Russians will be one of the key markets because of the wealthy Russian interest in London,” he said.

TITLE: 72 United Russia Hopefuls Have Links With Business
AUTHOR: By Francesca Mereu
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin told United Russia last month to ditch State Duma candidates with business interests.
But an analysis of United Russia’s party lists shows that at least 72 of the 600 candidates — or 12 percent — have direct links to big or medium-size businesses. Many of the candidates occupy high spots on the lists, indicating that they have a good chance of winning Duma seats.
Campaigning for the Dec. 2 vote officially kicked off on Saturday. United Russia is expected to win at least two-thirds of the 450 seats in the Duma.
Putin agreed to top United Russia’s federal list at an Oct. 1 convention, where he urged party officials to scrub party lists of business representatives. He said Duma deputies should not be engaged in business and businessmen should not be protected by the immunity afforded deputies.
“Power and money should stay separated,” he said.
Having ties to a United Russia candidate, however, offers numerous advantages to a business, political analysts said. For a big company, it serves as a show of loyalty to the Kremlin and a signal to investors that the business is stable and promising. For a small company, it is a way to discourage harassment by bribe-hungry fire and tax inspectors, police officers and thugs.
“We have an idiom in Russia that says the closer you are to a cannon, the better it is, meaning it is better to stay on the side of those who have power,” said Mark Urnov, a political scientist at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics.
The breakdown of United Russia’s candidates broadly reflects the breakdown of the economy. The largest number of candidates — 18 — come from oil companies, which, of course, power the Russian economy. At least 14 people have links to metals and mining companies, while six have worked in the financial sector. 
Most of the rest represent local businesses that are little known in Moscow but important in the regions. (For a list of all 72 candidates, see below.)
Many of the candidates are Duma deputies seeking re-election. United Russia officials and the deputies themselves stress that they abide by a law that prohibits deputies from holding a second job other than teaching or research.
But the law can be easily skirted. After taking Duma seats, deputies often become board members of their firms and declare themselves in compliance with the law because the position is nonpaying.
Another way to get around the law is to reregister firms in the name of a spouse or other relative.
While the analysis of United Russia’s lists connected roughly 12 percent of the 600 candidates to businesses, some analysts said the figure was probably closer to 50 percent.
“Ninety-five percent of the people on United Russia’s lists are bureaucrats, and half of them are engaged in business,” said Vladimir Pribylovsky, head of Panorama, a think tank.
He said Putin’s call for United Russia to get rid of businessmen was meant to curry public favor, not lead to actual change.
“What Putin said was mere demagogy,” he said.
After Putin’s warning, however, United Russia officials did remove several candidates. Gadzhi Makhachev, a United Russia deputy who was arrested in 1967 on rape and robbery charges and spent three years in jail, lost his spot on the list, as did Deputy Suleiman Kerimov, listed as a billionaire by Forbes magazine.
Pribylovsky said he knew of several instances of small businesses paying cash for spots low on a United Russia list, knowing they had no chance of getting into the Duma. “To run on a United Russia list means that bandits and the police respect them,” he said. “If they are harassed, they can show the bandits that they are United Russia candidates. It is better than nothing.”
Being a United Russia candidate is also seen by small businessmen as a way to advertise their companies, Urnov said.
Another thing that attracts businesspeople to the Duma is the promise of immunity from prosecution. The issue became particularly relevant after former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky was arrested about a month before the Duma elections in 2003. He had been financing opposition parties.
Interestingly, six businessmen connected to Yukos won seats with United Russia in the 2003 elections, and three resurfaced on this year’s lists.
Spots on United Russia’s lists are usually not given for free; businessmen have to pay a “membership fee” whose size varies depending on how high the spot is on the list, Pribylovsky said. This year, a spot high on a United Russia list costs $2 million to $4 million, double the amount in the 2003 Duma elections, he and other experts said.
United Russia denies any wrongdoing with its lists.
The party faced some difficulty putting the lists together. Each of the party’s regional branches was supposed to choose candidates for its list by the end of August. But the Moscow region branch missed the deadline after Governor Boris Gromov took issue with the candidates recommended by the party’s leadership, Gazeta.ru reported in September.
Also, party leaders decided to intercede after some regions failed to follow instructions. First Deputy Duma Speaker Lyubov Sliska, whom the leaders had expected to be in second place, after the governor, on the Tambov list was instead ninth and on the last line of the list.
In Samara, a local party activist, Alexander Zhivaikin, was placed at the top of the list, even though his candidacy had not been proposed by headquarters.
The leadership of United Russia’s branch in Samara annulled the results of the local primaries to draw up a new ticket topped by new Samara Governor Vladimir Artyakov.
<hr>
<b>United Russia candidates with Business Ties</b>
Of United Russia’s 600 candidates on its regional lists, at least 72 — or 12 percent — have direct links to big or medium-size businesses. Of them, 18 have links to oil companies such as LUKoil, Sibneft and TNK, 14 to metals and mining firms, and six to the financial sector. Many of the candidates occupy high spots on the lists, indicating that they have a good chance of winning State Duma seats on Dec. 2. Here is a selection of the 72.

Oil and Gas
Adam Amirilayev: Director of Rosneft-Dagestan. No. 4 on Dagestan list.
Vladimir Anufriyev: Former v ice president of Petrokommerts, a top-20 bank that markets itself as LUKoil’s “support bank” and is its main settlement bank. No. 23 on Moscow city list.
Artur Chilingarov: Now serving his fourth term in the Duma. A loyal LUKoil political partner and said to be a friend of LUKoil president Vagit Alekperov. No. 1 on Nenets list.
Alexander Filipenko: Governor of Khanty-Mansiisk and TNK board member; former board member of Surgutneftegaz, he ran in 2003 with United Russia but did not take a Duma seat. No. 1 on Khanty-Mansiisk list.
Alexander Furman: Former deputy counsel to UralNefteKhim, a chemical oil company; first elected in 2003. No. 7 on Bashkorstan list.
Ildar Gimaletdinov: Chairman of Salavatneftemash, a leading maker of oil and gas refinery equipment. No. 12 on Bashkortostan list.
Rafael Gimalov: Major shareholder in Motovilikhinskie Factories, which produces equipment for the oil industry; first elected in 1999. No. 5 on Perm list.
Alexander Ishchenko: Former head of LUKoil in Pyatigorsk; first elected in 2003. No. 5 on Stavropol list.

Maxim Korobov: Former president of Yukos-affiliated Tomskneftegaz, Tomskneft; first elected in 1999. No. 3 on Tomsk list.
Vasily Kuznetsov: Former director of Buryatneftprodukt, part of Sidanko, which is majority owned by BP-TNK; first elected in 1999. No. 2 on Buryatia list.
Lyudmila Maltseva: Former head of LUKoil’s economic management department; first elected in 2003. No. 5 on Astrakhan list.
Liana Pepelyayeva: Lawyer who has represented Sibneft; first elected in 2003. No. 2 on Novosibirsk list.
Valery Prozorovsky: Former head of LUKoil’s public relations department; first elected in 2003. No. 2 on Astrakhan list.
Dmitry Savelyev: Former head of Transneft (1998-99), Norsi Oil (1996-98) and various LUKoil branches (1994-96); first elected in 1999. No. 3 on Tula list.
Pavel Semyonov: Former general director of Volga Rosneftetrans, an oil production company; former director of the Yukos-M Commercial House and Rosneftetrans-2; former senior expert on Yukos board; first elected in 2003. No. 3 on Chuvashia list.
Leonid Simanovsky: Former vice president of Yukos; former chairman of Novatek; first elected in 2003. No. 3 on Khanty-Mansiisk list.
Vyacheslav Timchenko: Former vice president of TNK; first elected in 2003. No. 2 on Tyumen list.

Metals and Mining
Otari Arshba: Nonexecutive director of Evraz; former Evraz vice president; KGB graduate; first elected in 2003. No. 3 on Kemerovo list.
Andrei Burenin: Former director of SUAL, the aluminum smelter; first elected in 2003. No. 5 on Vologodsk list.
Valery Draganov: Former head of the State Customs Committee; elected in 2003 but quit in 2006 to become deputy director general for government relations with Russian Aluminum. No. 12 on Moscow region list.
Vladimir Gridin: Former head of Sibirsky Delovoi Soyuz, a holding company with interests in coal. No. 8 on Kemerovo list.
Alexander Khloponin: Krasnoyarsk governor and former Norilsk Nickel general director; ran in 2003 but did not take a seat. No. 1 on Krasnoyarsk list.
Andrei Morozov: Deputy CEO of Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works. No. 4 on Chelyabinsk list.
Viktor Rashnikov: Chairman of Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works and a billionaire according to Forbes; ran in 2003 but did not take a seat. No. 2 on Chelyabinsk list.
Alexander Shishkin: Main shareholder of Amurmetal, a manufacturer of rolled wire in the Far East; owns shares in factories controlled by Estar, a holding company. No. 5 on Khabarovsk list.
Andrei Skoch: Co-owner of Gazmetall with a fortune of $1.7 billion according to Forbes; first elected in 1999. No. 2 on Belgorod list.
Vadim Varshavsky: Co-owner of coal firm Russky Ugol and the Estar metals holding, which holds 25 percent of FK Rostov; first elected in a by-election in 2005. No. 8 on Rostov list.
Eduard Yanakov: Former director of Russky Ugol, a Yaroslavl plant that supplies Russian Aluminum. No. 4 on Amur list.
Oleg Yeremeyev: General director of the Coordination Council of the Russian Union of Employers; former chairman of Norilsk Nickel and close to Vladimir Potanin; first elected in 2003. No. 4 on Kaluga list.
Vitaly Yuzhilin: Former vice president of First Quantum UK Limited, a broker of Russian steel scrap; first elected in 1999. No. 6 on St. Petersburg list.
Boris Zubitsky: Former general director of Koks, a coal company in Kemerovo; first elected in 1999. No. 2 on Tula list.

Regional Businesses
Andrei Benin: Former general director and chairman of LEMO, a leading forestry company; first elected in 2003. No. 13 on St. Petersburg list.
Nikolai Bortsov: Co-owner of Lebedinsky, a juice plant; first elected in 2003. No. 3 on Lipetsk list.
Natalya Burykina: Former first deputy general director of Yunikon, a joint stock company; first elected in 2003. No. 16 on Moscow city list.
Nikolai Denin: Bryansk governor; former director of Snezhka, a poultry firm; first elected in 2003 but quit to become governor in 2004. No. 1 on Bryansk list.
Valentin Drusinov: Former director of Mosoblstroi, a construction firm; first elected in 2003. No. 15 on Moscow region list.
Yevgeny Fyodorov: Board member of the Konstantinov Kirovo-Chepetsky Chemical Plant in St. Petersburg; first elected in 2003. No. 2 on Kaliningrad list.
Magomedkadi Gasanov: Former president of Adam International, a joint stock company founded in 1991; first elected in 1999. No. 8 on Dagestan list.
Vladimir Golovnev: President and owner of Vostok-Service, which makes working clothes. No. 3 on Novgorod list.
Andrei Golushko: Chairman of Bautsentr, a regional chain of hypermarkets; former deputy Omsk governor. No. 4 on Kaliningrad list.
Vladimir Gruzdev: Founder of Sedmoi Kontinent, a supermarket chain; former intelligence officer; first elected in 2003. No. 7 on Moscow city list.
Anatoly Gubkin: Former general director of the Tomsk Petrochemical Factory; former general director of Azot, a Kemerovo oil company; first elected in 2003. No. 4 on Tomsk list.
Igor Igoshin: Former general director of Real Agro, a food distribution company; first elected in 1999. No. 1 on Kirov list.
Nikolai Kalistratov: Director of Sevmash, the country’s largest shipbuilder. No. 2 on Nenets list.
Airat Khairullin: Former head of Krasny Vostok, a brewery; first elected in 2003. No. 5 on Tatarstan list.
Gleb Khor: Former director of Geopolis, an insurance group in Moscow; first elected in 2003. No. 3 on Krasnodar list.
Andrei Knorr: Former chairman of Arsal, an exporter in Altai; first elected in 2003. No. 6 on Altai region list.
Alexander Kogan: Former head of KomInKom, an electronics company in Orenburg; first elected in 2003. No. 3 on Orenburg list.
Georgy Lazarev: Former director of Elektron, a production company; first elected in 2003. No. 8 on Chelyabinsk list.
Zelimkhan Mutsoyev: Former general director of Prominkor, a construction company; former chairman of Pervouralsk Pipe Factory’s supervisory board; first elected in 1999. No. 5 on Sverdlosk list.
Asanbuba Nyudyurbegov: Former chairman of Sea Star, a sea food company; first elected in 2003. No. 10 on Dagestan list.
Nikolai Olshansky: Former general director of Agrokhiminvest; former chairman of Agrokhimexport; former head of the Union of Agrochemical Manufacturers and Exporters; first elected in 1999. No. 1 on Voronezh list.
Vladimir Pekaryev: Co-owner of OST, an alcohol producer; first elected in 1999. No. 17 on the Chukotka-Magadan list.
Vladislav Reznik: Former chairman of Rosgosstrakh, the state insurer; former general director and owner of Rus Insurance; former deputy chairman of Rossiya Bank; first elected in 1999. No. 5 on St. Petersburg list.
Lyubov Rudikova: Former head of the Voronezh Regional Association of Farms and Agrarian Cooperatives; first elected in 2003. No. 4 on Voronezh list.
Valery Ryazansky: Former general director of the Izmailovo hotel complex in Moscow; first elected in 1999. No. 2 on Kursk list.
Oleg Savchenko: Founder of the European Bearing Corp.; former head of the Nenetsk Pipeline Consortium; first elected in 2003. No. 1 on Volgograd list.
Ivan Savvidi: Former director of Donskoi Tabak in Rostov-on-Don; first elected in 2003. No. 7 on Rostov list.
Martin Shakkum: Former general director of Rida, a medical equipment distributor in the Moscow region; first elected in 1999. No. 4 on Moscow region list.
Stepan Shorshorov: Former general director of Drinks of Don, a beverage company in Rostov-on-Don; first elected in 1999. No. 5 on Orlov list.
Nikolai Tonkov: Federation Council senator; former head of the Yaroslavl Tire Plant; former head of NTM Holding; unsuccessfully ran for Duma in 2003 with United Russia and became a senator in 2004. No. 5 on Yaroslavl list.
Yevgeny Tugolukov: Owner of EmAlyans, a heavy machinery production company. No. 10 on Rostov list.
Igor Yesipovsky: Former general director of AvtoVAZ, a carmaker. No. 2 on Amur list.
Mikhail Yurevich: Chelyabinsk mayor; controls 90 percent of Makfa, a food producer. No. 2 on Chelyabinsk list.

TITLE: Pollution Is Not Cost-Free
AUTHOR: By Joschka Fischer
TEXT: Since the end of the Cold War all kinds of barriers have come down and the world economy has fundamentally changed. By 1989, the global market encompassed 800 million to 1 billion people. Today, it is three times larger and growing. Indeed, we are witnessing one of the most dramatic revolutions in modern history, and it is occurring almost unnoticed. From a model that was once applicable only to a minority of the world’s population, “Western consumer society” is becoming the dominant economic model of the world, one to which there is increasingly no alternative. By mid-century, the lives of 7 billion people might be governed by its laws.
The West has established the economic model of the 21st century, with its hitherto unheard of standard of living, and almost all nations and regions are trying to equal it, no matter what the cost. When, in the 1970s, the Club of Rome, a global think tank, issued its famous report on the “Limits to Growth,” the reaction was one of concern. Over the years, however, as the world economy continued to grow without interruption — and, in the current age of globalization, seemingly without limits — the dire predictions of the Club of Rome have become increasingly an object of ridicule. And yet the Club of Rome’s basic insight — that we live and work in a finite global ecosystem with exhaustible resources and capacities — has returned to challenge us again.
The world is not preoccupied today by the “limits to growth,” but awareness of the consequences of growth on the earth’s climate and ecosystem is becoming prevalent. China, for example, needs annual growth rates of 10 percent to keep its huge economic, social and environmental problems under control. There would be nothing sensational about this if China were a country like Luxembourg or Singapore. But China has 1.3 billion people, so the consequences of its economic growth are much more serious.
Global demand for energy, raw materials and food is increasingly influenced by rising demand in China and India, whose combined population is 2.5 billion. Other large and populous emerging countries in Asia and South America are following in these giants’ footsteps. Steadily rising prices of raw materials, agricultural products and energy already reflect fears about future shortages.
These undesirable consequences of the expansion of world markets have assumed alarming proportions within a relatively short period of time. China is on course, this year or next, to overtake the United States as the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide, even though its per capita emissions are less than one-fifth of the U.S. level. What will the world look like when China reduces this difference to one-half? And India is following close behind China in its level of carbon emissions.
Will the global ecosystem be able to absorb these additional pollutants without considerable changes? Obviously not, as a large majority of climatologists are now warning. These basic data have been known for a long time, and only a few deny that rapidly accelerating man-made climate change is occurring. But one might conclude from the bizarre debates we engage in about climate change that what the world needs is a change in its political and psychological mood, rather than a profound social and economic transformation. So, despite grand rhetoric, very little is being done. Emerging countries continue to grow every year. The United States has almost completely backed away from the global fight against pollution, and, through uncontrolled growth, solidifies its position as the world’s leading polluter. The same pattern holds true for Europe and Japan, albeit on a slightly smaller scale. In view of this global challenge, the Group of Eight countries have made a heroic decision: The eight wealthiest industrial countries — which are also the largest polluters — promised to “seriously examine” cutting their emissions in half by 2050. This rhetorical heroism is enough to leave the world speechless. Indeed, it remains to be seen if the European Union will even be able to implement its promise to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 20 to 30 percent by 2020. So far, the EU has not really come up with any practical ways to do this.
But the solution to the challenge of global climate change is as plain as day. The only chance of improvement is to decouple economic growth from energy consumption and emissions. This must happen in the emerging countries and even more urgently in the old industrial economies.
Such decoupling can occur only if we do away with the illusion that pollution is cost-free. We can no longer get away with subsidizing economic growth and standards of living at the expense of the global environment. Human population has simply become too large to be able to afford it.
Doing away with this illusion requires the creation of a global emissions market — still a very distant goal. It also requires more energy efficiency, which means a reduction of waste in both energy production and consumption. Rising energy prices already point in this direction, but this knowledge has yet to register. Finally, it requires technological, political and economic breakthroughs in favor of renewable energy, rather than a return to nuclear power or coal. In essence, then, we are confronted by a three-pronged challenge of a new “green” industrial revolution. Coping with this global challenge also offers an enormous opportunity for future prosperity and social justice that we must seize.
Of course, there will be many powerful losers as we make these changes. They are not about to accept their “disempowerment” without a struggle. At the moment, they still seem to have the upper hand, as evidenced by much talk and no action. This is precisely what needs to change.

Joschka Fischer, Germany’s foreign minister and vice chancellor from 1998 to 2005, led Germany’s Green Party for nearly 20 years. This comment appears © Project Syndicate.

TITLE: Combatting Inflation With WTO Membership
AUTHOR: By Anders Åslund
TEXT: President Vladimir Putin’s annual televised question-and-answer session with the nation on Oct. 18 was a carefully staged event, but it gave Putin an unexpected opportunity to make some bold pronunciations.
Three themes stood out: the military, inflation and international integration. The military questions concerned mainly social conditions and rearmament, which Putin called “grand,” but he carefully avoided clarifying its purpose. The giveaway, however, was no fewer than three anti-U.S. questions. Iran, by contrast, was respected and honored.
Last year, Putin’s communication with the people marked a sharp turn to more state intervention and protectionism. This year, the economic rhetoric was very different. National projects were mentioned just once, and Putin suggested state financing for social welfare and infrastructure investment.
Putin’s economic policy contains two constant, positive features: a strong emphasis on macroeconomic stability and high economic growth. They were present, but this time Putin expressed strong concern about rising inflation, which he admitted was not likely to stay within the planned 8 percent and might surge to 10 percent.
Putin made this topic his economic lead. Conspicuously absent was any advocacy of price regulation, a Soviet reflex reaction. But far-reaching regulation of food prices was introduced a few days later. As usual, Putin proved himself as the professional disinformer. But price regulation is no cure against inflation, only a stopgap measure at best.
Nor did Putin discuss the possibility of faster ruble appreciation, which most economists suggest. But the exchange rate of the ruble is bound to rise because of persistent currency inflows. It is the only immediate cure to inflation arising from imports.
The standard macroeconomic advice for the control of inflation is to tighten fiscal and monetary policies. For the last two years, Russia has had an impressive budget surplus of 7.5 percent of gross domestic product because of the artificially low exchange rate. After Putin’s speech, the government suddenly decided to slash the budget surplus to 2.8 percent of GDP in 2007, flooding Russia with cash in the last quarter of 2007, which will send inflation soaring.
After eight years of exemplary macroeconomic policy, the country’s finances remain solid. Yet the combination of a sudden fiscal spending spree in the midst of an inflationary surge and price controls is very bad policy, and it is arousing new worries. Russia’s macroeconomic policy has unexpectedly fallen into disarray.
Instead, Putin focused on freer trade as a means to combat inflation. Import tariffs for several kinds of foods have been cut to reduce domestic prices. Export tariffs on grain have been tried, but they were patently ineffective.
A farmer who called in to Putin was worried about the effects of Moscow’s accession to the World Trade Organization on domestic agriculture. Putin, who usually agrees with the questioner (undesired questions are obviously not allowed), responded that the country’s producers did not cope with their tasks, which resulted in rising food prices. Therefore, Russia would have to cut import tariffs further for a large number of foods.
Putin repeated his standard statement that Russia will only enter the WTO under conditions that are acceptable for the country, including agriculture, but he added that its negotiators had now achieved such conditions also for agricultural subsidies. He even pointed out twice that the European Union had decided to reduce such subsidies.
Indeed, Putin has not argued for membership in the trade organization so clearly since his annual address in 2002. He concluded, “I think that if we act accurately and attentively pursue our interests, we can attain positive results, including in WTO accession.”
Considering that Putin has not said a positive word about the WTO in public for the last 18 months, this was quite a breakthrough. In June, he even called the trade organization “obsolete.” Suddenly, the persistently optimistic statements by Russia’s WTO negotiator, Maxim Medvedkov, that Russia can complete its accession negotiations to the organization before the end of 2007 sound plausible. His big interview in Izvestia on Oct. 23 looked like an attempt to prepare the public. One consequence of the recent government change is that Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Kudrin gained more responsibility for WTO negotiations, while his control over finances seems to have waned. On Putin’s order, Kudrin has re-energized the country’s negotiation efforts, in which the president seemed to have lost interest. WTO accession seems to have become a top priority at long last.
As it stands, Russia has only two bilateral protocols left for its WTO entry — Saudi Arabia and Georgia — and about 10 multilateral issues in Geneva, mainly the reinforcement of intellectual property rights, the inspection of imported food and export tariffs. If Moscow shows some good will, it can settle these issues within two months. Indeed, it would make little sense not to do so.
Putin received numerous call-in questions about international integration, and his main theme was the need for openness. One questioner desired more protectionism for construction, but Putin objected by saying that “open competition is highly beneficial.”
He also praised the convertibility of the ruble and emphasized that it had not led to any capital flight as “many experts predicted”; on the contrary, it has led to a substantial inflow. Putin took great pride in the country’s large international currency reserves and warned against populist forces that aspired to dissipate them. He talked about Russia as “an open country” and encouraged people to learn foreign languages.
Apart from inflation, one of the country’s new, great problems is the shortage of labor. On this occasion, Putin promoted the program on the return of “compatriots,” referring to Russian speakers who live outside of the country. This was in sharp contrast to his appearance a year ago, when he initiated legal discrimination against foreign citizens in street trade. Even a week before the call-in show, Putin complained about the excessive number of foreign managers in Russian companies.
The president’s latest trade statements must be welcomed, but he needs to decide where he actually stands. Most of all, he sounded as if he was debating with his own pronouncements made a year ago. Nor is it very credible to argue for discrimination against foreigners one week and for increased immigration the next. Moreover, the official neglect of hate crimes against ethnic minorities and foreigners becomes increasingly disturbing. Freedom and democracy were strikingly absent.
If Putin’s conversation with the people were to be summarized in two phrases, it would be: military rearmament and the country’s accession to the WTO; in some respects, the two goals contradict each other. The next couple of months may give us an indication whether the president is more inclined to international aggression or economic integration. Macroeconomic policy has suddenly become interesting again.

Anders Åslund is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. His book “Russia’s Capitalist Revolution: Why Market Reform Succeeded and Democracy Failed” will be published this month.

TITLE: Even Putin’s Popularity Can Evaporate
AUTHOR: By Christopher Granville
TEXT: Opinions about President Vladimir Putin run the gamut. In the West, he is regarded as an authoritarian, an autocrat, even as a dictator. In Russia, a huge majority regards him as the most democratic of leaders on the grounds that he has done more than his predecessors to improve the lot of ordinary people. But there is one point on which both camps agree: Putin intends to remain in power indefinitely.
That conclusion stems from Putin’s recent statement that he might become prime minister after relinquishing the presidency in May. Regardless of what Putin does, his personal influence and the strategic direction in which he has taken the country will remain dominant for years to come.
Given this reality, what matters now is how this “Putin system” will work, which will depend on institutional frameworks and practices. At stake, both for Russia and the wider world, are stability and legitimacy, hence the prospects for steady political and economic modernization.
Legitimacy and stability are inseparable in practice because maintaining stability in the absence of legitimacy would ultimately require Tiananmen-style repression. But this can be ruled out in today’s Russia because the instruments to implement it — notably an army that would obey orders to fire on people — are lacking.
Many opinion polls show that the presidency is the only institution that Russians accept as legitimate — in contrast to the legislature and judiciary, which are perceived as corrupt and ineffective. This is not surprising, given the country’s history and culture. More important is that an almost equally large majority values the power to hire and fire their tsar in free elections held at regular intervals in line with the Constitution.
In the country’s current political cycle, which will culminate in the presidential election of March 2008, there will be no difficulty in meeting the main conditions of legitimacy: respecting the Constitution’s rules about regular free elections to the presidency. Given Putin’s popularity, these rules present no threat to the ruling group’s power. The voters will enthusiastically elect anyone who has Putin’s blessing.
But looking forward to the next political cycle, in 2012, or the one after that, in 2016, there is no guarantee that today’s conditions will still apply. Invincible popularity can evaporate. Even in the rosiest economic scenario, expectations about rising living standards will outstrip reality, causing disenchantment.
If, in the meantime, the political system has not acquired more institutional cushioning and the presidency’s unique legitimacy remains based merely on the public’s approval of an incumbent surrounded by shady and bickering Kremlin factions, there would be a high risk of chronic destabilization. In these circumstances, an isolated and increasingly unpopular regime might decide to cancel or rig the presidential election when it fell due.
This is what happened in Ukraine in November 2004, with revolutionary consequences. It would be rash to assume that the outcome in Russia would be as benign as Ukraine’s Orange Revolution.
Integrating the presidency into broader political structures and procedures — especially into party politics — would reduce this risk. A political party infused with a normal instinct for self-preservation would produce a fresh face to run in a proper presidential election, replacing an unpopular incumbent and his cronies.
As it happens, Putin is now entrenching the already dominant United Russia party by his decision to head the party’s candidate list in December’s State Duma elections. Could Russia emulate Japan’s postwar model, in which a single dominant party revives and modernizes the country?
Like all historical analogies, this one may prove flawed, but it is not absurd. Japan’s de facto one-party state is more democratic than authoritarian, owing not only to its law-based framework, but also to its culture of accountability. The Liberal Democratic Party elite always reacts to the popular mood and concerns — often stealing its opponents’ ideas.
While inferior to the open alternation of power between two or more political parties, the evolution of United Russia into something resembling the LDP would still leave Russia in a much better shape than a personal regime confined to the Kremlin. Despite the country’s history after 1917, one dominant political party is preferable to none at all.
Putin’s recent public statements point to such a vision: a dominant center-right ruling party, with a non-Communist, social democratic alternative waiting in the wings to maintain stable government should the main party falter. As so often in politics, much will depend on how far Putin matches deeds to words after leaving the presidency.
Should he choose to exercise his vast residual influence through United Russia with its inevitable majority in the newly elected parliament, we will know that he means what he says. If, by contrast, he leaves the presidency, gets himself appointed prime minister and overhauls the Constitution to shift powers to give himself new powers, we will know that he is going for a personal regime after all.
Emasculating the elected presidency, which is Russia’s sole source of political legitimacy, would pave the way to chaos. The habit of changing the rules to keep power would persist after the strongman eventually leaves the scene, but the superficial stability of his rule would not.

Christopher Granville, a former British diplomat in Moscow, is managing director of Trustedsources, an independent research service on emerging markets. This comment appears © Project Syndicate.

TITLE: From Bolshevism to Chauvinism
AUTHOR: By Lev Ponomaryov
TEXT: The Kremlin took a very important step in 2005 when it decided that Nov. 7, the date that traditionally commemorated the Great October Socialist Revolution, would no longer be an official government holiday. During the Soviet period, millions celebrated the Bolshevik rise to power each year on Nov. 7 in grand fashion. The Communist Party considered the Nov. 7 holiday to be on the same level of importance as May 9, which is the day Russia celebrates the victory over Nazi Germany in World War II.
Even after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the October Revolution holiday was still celebrated — by inertia — for another three years. In 1994, President Boris Yeltsin renamed the holiday the Day of Accord and Reconciliation. This was, in part, a clumsy attempt to repeat Spain’s national reconciliation. Many people recalled how Spain was able to reach a peaceful reconciliation in the 1970s between the former supporters of dictator Francisco Franco and the former political emigrants.
Supporters of the Communist Party continued to commemorate Nov. 7 with anti-government demonstrations all across the country.
After Vladimir Putin became president, the Kremlin, in accordance with its strategic concept of building a “sovereign democracy,” came up with the idea of placing a patriotic and anti-Western accent on this holiday. Since 2002, pro-Kremlin youth organizations, which have positioned themselves as ardently anti-Communist, have used Nov. 7 as a convenient date for staging demonstrations in honor of the expulsion of the Polish and Cossack garrisons from Moscow in 1612, the end of the Times of Troubles and the beginning of the Romanov dynasty — all rolled into one holiday.
In 2005, the Kremlin revoked the Stalin and Yeltsin interpretations of the November holiday and introduced a new name, People’s Unity Day, and a new day, Nov. 4, to replace the old Bolshevik anniversary. The twist this time was that the holiday was linked with the Day of the Icon of the Mother of God of Kazan, one of the greatest sacred symbols of Russian Orthodoxy, which the Vatican recently handed over to Russia.
The new holiday immediately took on a distinctly anti-liberal and anti-Western meaning and, among other things, it was used by many Russians to thumb their noses at Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution. In addition, pro-Kremlin forces declared that Nov. 4 was a day to celebrate the strengthening of Russian statehood and superpower status.
But the Kremlin failed miserably to contain the nationalistic elements of People’s Unity Day within moderate boundaries. The majority of the 4,000 demonstrators who gathered on Nov. 4, 2005, were members of openly neo-Nazi and xenophobic movements. This led to a huge public uproar. After the country was shocked by riots against people from the Caucasus in Kondopoga in September 2006, the Kremlin outlawed public demonstrations in Moscow the following Nov. 4. Moscow police also brutally broke up anti-fascist demonstrations in front of the Mayor’s Office. Then the authorities tried to weaken some of the more odious of the ultranationalist groups, the Movement Against Illegal Immigration and the Slavic Union. This attempt also failed, as widespread demonstrations were held in several cities by thousands of skinheads.
In the end, shortsighted Kremlin ideologists and strategists have given the extremists a wonderful holiday. The baffled authorities saw with their own eyes that chauvinism and xenophobia a priori cannot assume a tame form. Attempts were made to stop the so-called Russian Marches that were held by various ultranationalist groups this year. 
But what the authorities fail to understand is that the slogans of these demonstrators are merely cruder versions of what we hear from the anti-liberal and anti-immigrant Kremlin propagandists, siloviki, ministers, governors and mayors.

Lev Ponomaryov is executive director of the All-Russia Movement for Human Rights, a Moscow-based nongovernmental organization.

TITLE: Bush Creates Anxieties With Policy of Bullying
PUBLISHER: The New York Times
TEXT: The United States’ allies and increasingly the U.S. public are playing a ghoulish guessing game: Will President George W. Bush manage to leave office without starting a war with Iran? Bush is eagerly feeding those anxieties. This month he raised the threat of “World War III” if Iran even figures out how to make a nuclear weapon. 
With a different White House, we might dismiss this as posturing — or bank on sanity to carry the day, or the warnings of exhausted generals or a defense secretary more rational than his predecessor. Not this crowd. 
Four years after his pointless invasion of Iraq, Bush still confuses bullying with grand strategy. He refuses to do the hard work of diplomacy — or even acknowledge the disastrous costs of his actions. 
The world should not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon, but there is no easy fix here, no daring surgical strike. The neocons pushing an attack on Iran admit that a prolonged bombing campaign would be necessary and would likely only delay Iran’s program. But it is still worth it, they say, and if everybody gets lucky maybe the attacks will unleash that popular uprising against the mullahs they’ve been promising for years. 
That is the same kind of rose-petal thinking that was used to sell Americans a fantasy about the invasion of Iraq. Large numbers of Iranians are fed up with their government’s corruption and repression and with being branded a pariah state. Rain down U.S. bombs, however, and the mullahs and Iran’s Holocaust-denying president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, are more likely to be turned into national heroes than hung from lampposts. 
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is the other great hope (after U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates) for holding off a war. She still wants to give sanctions and diplomacy a chance. But, as with everything else she does, there’s nowhere near enough follow-through. 
They also need to offer Iran a credible way back in from the cold — and clear rewards and security guarantees if it is willing to give up its nuclear ambitions. 
For this to have any chance, Bush will have to tone down the rhetoric. Sure, a lot of these countries are letting greed cloud their judgment when they balk at restricting trade with Iran. But it’s a lot easier to justify when they say they’re not giving the crazy U.S. government an excuse for another war. 
Maybe the country will get lucky and Bush will listen to the exhausted generals. But this isn’t just about surviving the rest of his presidency. Fifteen more months of diplomatic drift will bring Iran 15 months closer to figuring out how to make a nuclear weapon. 

This comment appeared as an editorial in The New York Times.

TITLE: Dreaming of New Conflicts
AUTHOR: By Alexander Golts
TEXT: Russia’s approach to foreign policy is going back in time. During his speech at a February security conference in Munich, President Vladimir Putin told his listeners that the relationship between Moscow and Washington was most stable during the 1980s. In recent days, Putin has swung the clock all the way back to the early 1960s. While speaking at a news conference following the EU-Russia summit last week, Putin declared that “from the technical point of view,” the United States’ plan to deploy elements of its missile defense system close to Russia’s borders was comparable to the Soviet Union’s decision to deploy its rockets in Cuba — a move that precipitated the Cuban missile crisis and placed mankind on the brink of nuclear war.
Putin has been interpreting historical events rather loosely. Even if one disagrees with Washington’s current political course, it would be difficult to defend Putin’s rather audacious comparison of the United States’ plans for a missile defense system with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s reckless brinkmanship 45 years ago in Cuba.
First, the missile defense system the United States proposes for Poland and the Czech Republic is designed to intercept enemy nuclear missiles, not to deliver a nuclear strike. Second, Khrushchev, whose intentions to deploy nuclear missiles in Cuba were held in the utmost secrecy, had little desire in the beginning of the conflict to reach an agreement with Washington.
It is surprising that Putin drew this inappropriate analogy at the exact moment when Washington was making clear steps toward finding a compromise with Moscow. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, speaking in the Czech Republic, said the United States could delay activating the missile defense program in Eastern Europe “until there was definitive proof of the threat from Iran.” Gates also offered to consider allowing Russian inspectors to tour the U.S. missile defense installations in return for Moscow’s agreement on the deployment of the system. Russian officials, however, were clearly not happy about their diplomatic victory. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made the chilly, obstinate remark that there was too much idle talk in connection with the missile defense system and that Moscow had yet to receive the U.S. proposal in written form. Following an informal meeting with NATO military leaders, Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov announced that the country’s position regarding the missile defense system remained unchanged.
It is clear that Moscow has no desire to reach a compromise on the missile defense issue. On the contrary, the Kremlin has a vested interest in preserving an ongoing, smoldering conflict with the United States over nuclear weapons and missile defense. Putin and his inner circle are convinced that this is the only way Russia can regain its status as a superpower and stand on equal footing with the United States — at least in the nuclear sphere. This is why Moscow is always pushing for negotiations on nuclear weapons, such as the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty or the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty I. And in order to underscore the importance of such talks, the Kremlin periodically threatens to pull out of a treaty or to deploy a mysterious, miracle warhead capable of overcoming U.S. missile defense systems.
In reality, however, the nuclear factor plays an increasingly minor role in U.S.-Russian relations. And, paradoxically, its importance began to diminish after the Cuban missile crisis, when it became clear that neither side was willing to use its nuclear weapons against the other. Despite having 20 times more nuclear weapons than the Soviet Union, the United States rejected any plan involving a first strike against Moscow. In the late 1950s, Robert McNamara calculated the probable losses in the event of a Soviet first nuclear strike against the United States. After becoming defense secretary in the early 1960s, however, McNamara acknowledged that Soviet nuclear weapons were not capable of inflicting the level of damage that he had earlier estimated, and he thus ruled out any plan for a U.S. first strike.
For nuclear weapons to be an important factor in politics, there must be a real fear that the leader possessing the weapons is crazy enough to actually use them. That is why the nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea have generated such heightened concern around the world.
Putin, however, has shown — whether he intended to or not — that he is a rational leader. And even drawing unfounded, exaggerated historical parallels with the Cuban missile crisis can’t ruin that reputation — at least not yet.

Alexander Golts is deputy editor of the online newspaper Yezhednevny Zhurnal.

TITLE: David’s Paris Is ‘Perfect’
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: PARIS — Argentine David Nalbandian extended his perfect record against Rafael Nadal by crushing the world number two 6-4 6-0 in the final of the Paris Masters Series tournament on Sunday.
The unseeded Nalbandian, who had destroyed the Spaniard 6-1 6-2 in their first meeting in the quarter-finals of the Madrid Masters two weeks ago, highlighted his brilliant form with a spectacular display.
Nalbandian, who beat Roger Federer for the Madrid crown before knocking out the world number one en route to the final here, claimed his second title in the showcase series and will be rewarded with a return to the top 10 on Monday at number nine.
Nadal, who had never lost a match in the French capital and was appearing at the $2.45 million indoor event for the first time, failed to emulate American Andre Agassi, the only player to have won both the French Open and the Paris Masters.
The first set was extremely tight with no break opportunity for either player until Nalbandian got two in the ninth game and converted the first with a return winner.
The Argentine then won his service game to love to take the set in 41 minutes.
“After I broke him, I felt I was playing better than him and started hitting winners almost from everywhere, which gave me confidence,” Nalbandian said.
The 25-year-old, who struggled in the first part of the season with knee and back injuries, stepped up a gear in the second set and Nadal collapsed.
The 21-year-old Mallorcan looked helpless at times and showed signs of nerves, notably when he dropped serve with a double fault in the third game of the last set.
Asked if he had experienced a problem, Nadal said: “Yes, Nalbandian. He was just playing with unbelievable confidence.”
Nalbandian served for the match and swiftly earned three match points. He needed only one, a forehand winner which bounced on the net cord ending the three-times French Open champion’s suffering.
A former top three player, Nalbandian served efficiently, returned superbly and dictated play with aggressive groundstrokes and occasional sharp volleys in a one-sided contest that lasted 68 minutes.
The 2002 Wimbledon runner-up narrowly missed out on a spot at the season-end Masters Cup featuring the world’s top eight in Shanghai, where Federer, Nadal and company will battle it out from Nov. 11, but might still go to China as an alternate.
Nalbandian, one the world’s most formidable players when on song, famously defeated Federer in the 2005 Masters Cup final.
Asked if the awe-inspiring tennis he has played over the past few weeks could take him all the way to number one, he remained cautious.
“To be the number one I would have to play like this the whole season,” he said. “It’s not easy to play that well on clay, hardcourts, grass and indoors. I think the only player who can do that at the moment is Roger [Federer].”
Meanwhile, France’s Richard Gasquet secured the last spot at the season-ending Masters Cup featuring the world’s top eight players.
Only Marcos Baghdatis could have stopped Gasquet from making the Nov. 11-18 event in Shanghai but the Cypriot dropped out of contention when Nadal beat him 4-6 6-4 6-3 in the semi-finals of the Paris Masters on Saturday.
Gasquet later went on to lose to Nalbandian in the other semi-final later on Saturday, setting up the Nalbandian-Nadal clash.
Gasquet joined Federer, Nadal, Novak Djokovic, Nikolai Davydenko, Andy Roddick, David Ferrer and Fernando Gonzalez in the Shanghai field. 
World number twelve Andy Murray of Great Britain, winner of the St. Petersburg Open on Oct. 28, failed to make the top eight after falling to Gasquet in the quarterfinals in Paris.

TITLE: 1000s Held as Martial Law Sweeps Pakistan
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Legions of baton-wielding police clashed with lawyers to squash protests against President General Pervez Musharraf on Monday, while international pressure mounted against the imposition of emergency powers that have led to more than 1,500 arrests.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged Musharraf to follow through on past promises to “take off his uniform” and restore civilian rule.
“I want to be very clear. We believe that the best path for Pakistan is to quickly return to a constitutional path and then to hold elections,” she said at a news conference in Ramallah, West Bank.
Musharraf suspended the constitution on Saturday ahead of a Supreme Court ruling that could have floored his re-election as president. He ousted independent-minded judges and granted sweeping powers to authorities to crush dissent, flinging Pakistan deeper into crisis.
Independent TV news networks remained off the air Monday. Police raided a printing press in Karachi belonging to Pakistan’s largest media group, blocking publication of its Urdu-language evening newspaper, Awam, or People, Jang Group managing director Shahrukh Hassan said from the scene.
Hassan said printing for Monday’s evening paper was stopped, but negotiations were continuing over whether the press could reopen for the group’s Tuesday editions, including Pakistan’s largest-circulation daily, Jang.
The United States has said it is reviewing its aid to Pakistan, a key ally in fighting al-Qaida and Taliban militants that has received billions in assistance since Musharraf threw the Islamic nation’s support behind the U.S.-led war on terror after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
On Monday, the U.S. Embassy said that a U.S.-Pakistan defense cooperation meeting planned for this week had been postponed amid the current uncertainty in Pakistan.
Western nations had urged Musharraf against taking authoritarian measures, but the military leader said it was needed to counter a growing militant Islamic movement and a court system that hindered his powers.
Musharraf briefed foreign ambassadors Monday, saying the “superior judiciary paralyzed various organs of the state and created impediments in the fight against terrorism,” state-run Associated Press of Pakistan reported.
Musharraf, however, reiterated that he would complete the transition to democracy. His government said Sunday parliamentary elections could be delayed up to a year.
Since late Saturday, between 1,500 and 1,800 people have been detained nationwide, an Interior Ministry official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. They include opposition leaders, lawyers and human rights activists who might mobilize protests.
At least 67 workers and supporters of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto — who in recent months has held talks with Musharraf over an alliance to fight extremism — had been arrested, said Pakistan People’s Party spokesman Farhatullah Babar. He said those figures were from Sunday and more arrests were made on Monday.
Bhutto was to preside over a meeting of secular opposition parties in Islamabad on Wednesday over the suspension of the constitution and to discuss ways to restore it, Babar said. It was not immediately clear when she would travel from Karachi, where she is currently staying.
Lawyers attempted to stage rallies in major cities on Monday, but were beaten and arrested.
In the biggest gathering, about 2,000 lawyers congregated at the High Court in the eastern city of Lahore. As lawyers tried to exit onto a main road, hundreds of police stormed inside, swinging batons and firing tear gas. Lawyers, shouting “Go Musharraf Go!” responded by throwing stones and beating police with tree branches.
Police bundled about 250 lawyers into waiting vans, an Associated Press reporter saw. At least two were bleeding from the head.
Aftab Cheema, the city police chief, said lawyers started the trouble by throwing stones. However, Sarfraz Cheema, a senior lawyer at the rally, condemned it as police brutality that “shows how the government of a dictator wants to silence those who are against dictatorship.”
“We don’t accept the proclamation of emergency,” he said.
Clashes also were reported in Karachi, where 100 lawyers were arrested, and in Rawalpindi, where at least 50 were detained. In Multan, dozens of lawyers chased a car bringing two newly appointed judges to the high court, chanting “Shame on you!” and “Traitor judges!”
The crackdown on dissent came despite comments Sunday by Deputy Information Minister Azim that protests would be tolerated.

TITLE: Washington Stumped as Musharraf Turns Tail on Democracy
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON — President Bush says he gains influence with world leaders by building personal relations with them. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf got a dose of that diplomacy at the White House last fall, when Bush hailed him as a friend and a voice of moderation.
“The president is a strong defender of freedom and the people of Pakistan,” Bush said that day, side by side with Musharraf.
Over the weekend, that advocate of freedom emerged with a different world image: a military dictator willing to crush the rights of his own people. Now Bush will need to rely on the other half of his personal diplomacy formula — dealing bluntly with those he has put faith in — and hope it works.
By unleashing a police state on his country, Musharraf put in motion a trifecta of trouble for the Bush administration. A nuclear-armed Pakistan lurched further into instability, civil rights and parliamentary elections were shoved aside, and the credibility of a Bush-backed leader took an enormous hit.
Musharraf declared a state of emergency on Saturday on grounds that Islamic militancy had become a grave threat to Pakistan. But his move also clearly targeted the Supreme Court in his country, which was weighing the legitimacy of his recent election and checking his power.
So, in a flash, came accounts from Islamabad that appalled and embarrassed U.S. leaders.
Police and soldiers rounded up Musharraf’s rivals and dragged off protesters. Government buildings became barbed-wire compounds. Phones were cut off, the independent media were censored, and Musharraf, an army general serving a dual role as elected president, had authoritarian control.
The crisis revealed the limits of Bush’s leverage.
His top diplomat, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, had implored Musharraf not to suspend the constitution and invoke emergency rule. Such outreach had worked before. It did not this time.
On Sunday, the second day of the crisis, Bush’s team showed public signs of reassessing its options.
Rice, in Ramallah, West Bank for Middle East talks Monday, said Musharraf should cut his affiliation with the army and restore civilian rule. At a news conference, she urged him to follow through on past promises to “take off his uniform.”
The Pentagon postponed a meeting scheduled for this week in Islamabad between senior U.S. and Pakistani defense officials.
And, Rice’s admonitions for a return to democracy grew. She said the U.S. government was reviewing billions of dollars in aid to Pakistan. But even there, there are limitations.
Most U.S. aid to Pakistan goes toward military support; the U.S. counts on Pakistan to help capture al-Qaida operations and provide intelligence. “We’re obviously not going to do anything that will undermine the war on terror,” said Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for Bush.
Making matters worse: The parliamentary elections in Pakistan, considered by the U.S. to be a genuine step toward democracy in Pakistan, have long been scheduled for January. They now may be delayed up to a year.
“Let’s not be delusional about the U.S. government’s influence. This is a huge, complex country, and most everything is going to happen outside of our play,” said Rick Barton, a Pakistan expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “But we can be a leader here.”
By putting military rule ahead of the rights of his people, Musharraf has presented Bush with a test of sincerity of his freedom agenda, Barton said.
“Let’s just accept that Musharraf’s probably going to go down,” he said. “Let’s just do the right thing, and be seen by the Pakistanis as holding true to our own values and principles. Musharraf has clearly moved from being a force of moderation to being somebody who’s more of a self-serving leader.”
Another hopeful scenario in the U.S. view is that Pakistan’s emergency states ends fast — a setback, but not a devastating one. Democracy is still the path that Pakistanis want, Johndroe said. “This is a slight detour,” he said. “But I think they will get back on it. And we will strongly encourage them to do so.”
Joseph Cirincione, a nuclear security expert and senior fellow for the liberal Center for American Progress, said there are few good American policy options in Pakistan. He said Pakistan is the world’s most dangerous country — an unstable place of strong Islamic fundamentalist influences and a nuclear arsenal.
“If the government falls, if the Army splits, who gets the weapons?” Cirincione said. “Who gets the material for the weapons? Who gets the scientists who know how to build the weapons? Pakistan could go overnight from a major non-NATO ally to our worst nuclear nightmare.”
Musharraf came into power in a coup in 1999. He became an ally of Bush’s after the Sept. 11 attacks, and helped coalition forces battle al-Qaida.
Bush must now try to find a balance — maintain a strategic relationship with Pakistan on security without seeming to abandon the importance of human rights.
<hr>
<b>PAKISTAN FACT BOX</b>
• Musharraf suspended the constitution on Saturday, and ordered Supreme Court justices to take an oath to abide by a provisional constitutional order or face dismissal.
• Paramilitary troops have been deployed on the streets, reporting curbs placed on the media and hundreds of opposition supporters, lawyers, politicians and rights activists detained.
• Musharraf gave sweeping powers to police to arrest and detain people and suspended fundamental rights, such as freedom of speech and expression, and rights of assembly have been curtailed.
• Musharraf's suspension of the constitution goes beyond typical state-of-emergency provisions. He imposed the emergency rule in his capacity as army chief and not as president. He allowed the central government, provincial governments and parliament to stay. But he barred courts from issuing orders against himself, the prime minister or any authority designated by the President.
Under the constitution, the tenure of the National Assembly could be extended up to a year but Musharraf set no timeline in his order, and there are doubts about when national elections, expected in January, will be held. Critics say Musharraf's main motivation was not to stop terrorism, but to tighten his personal grip on power by pre-empting a looming Supreme Court decision that could have ruled invalid his re-election by parliament on Oct. 6 because he contested while still army chief.
• Former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto said the imposition of emergency rule is "mini-martial law" and has vowed that her party will protest against it.
• Exiled former leader Nawaz Sharif also slammed the move, calling for Musharraf to step down.
• Martial law typically involves removal of the civilian government and sweeping powers for the military.
• Giving the military control of police, courts and legislature, it is usually imposed during wartime, after a natural disaster such as flooding or an earthquake, or during the occupation of a country.
• In October 1999, then army chief, Musharraf proclaimed emergency rule when he deposed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, suspending the constitution, dissolving the National Assembly and bringing Pakistan under the control of the armed forces.

TITLE: FC Zenit Poised For Greatness In League
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW — Zenit St. Petersburg beat FC Moscow 1-0 in the penultimate round of the Russian Premier League on Saturday to stay firmly on track for their first title in nearly a quarter of a century.
Russia captain Andrei Arshavin fired home from close range midway through the first half to give Zenit its ninth victory in the last 10 league matches.
The win kept Dick Advocaat’s team two points ahead of second-placed Spartak Moscow, which crushed bottom club Rostov 3-0 to maintain its slim title hopes alive.
“Certainly, I am very contented by the result. In first half we fought back magnificently,” Advocaat said in post-match comments posted at www.fc-zenit.ru. “In the second half we didn’t play as well, but, considering the outcome, we could not take any risks, because any error would have practically winnowed us out of the champion race.”
Zenit, which won its first and only league title in the Soviet Union in 1984 as FC Zenit Leningrad, can clinch first place by beating mid-table Saturn Ramenskoye next Sunday.
Ukraine midfielder Maxim Kalinichenko, Brazilian striker Wellinton and Russian winger Denis Boyarintsev scored for Spartak, who host city rivals Dynamo in the season’s finale.
If both Zenit and Spartak end up equal on points, then the Moscow club would be declared champions thanks to the better head-to-head record.
However, Advocaat was not fazed by the nail-biting finale and predicted victory for the St. Petersburg team.
“I am absolutely not interested in how Spartak conducts its games,” Advocaat said. “Several weeks ago we said that if Zenit wins all the remaining matches, then it becomes champion. At the same time, we are assured that Spartak will be watching our match with Saturn.”
Outgoing champions CSKA Moscow beat lowly Kuban Krasnodar 1-0 to move into third place, a point ahead of FC Moscow.
CSKA, however, are certain to finish outside of the top two for the first time in six years as they stayed six points behind arch-rivals Spartak.
Only one club from outside Moscow and its nearby regions has won the title since the Russian league was established in 1992. 

(Reuters, SPT)

TITLE: Welsh Dragon Unites Titles Against Great Dane
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: CARDIFF, Wales — Undefeated Joe Calzaghe added Mikkel Kessler’s WBA and WBC super-middleweight titles to his own WBO crown early Sunday, unanimously outpointing the previously undefeated Dane.
The 35-year-old Welshman shook off the Dane’s powerful right hands and finished strongly for his 44th victory in a row and 21st defense of the WBO title in 10 years.
“To win the four major title belts, to be the unbeaten champion and 10 years a champion it’s just amazing and I’m so proud,” said Calzaghe, who said it could well be his final fight at 168 pounds before he finishes his career as a light-heavyweight.
“An extra seven pounds at this stage in my career — 10 years a champion, four major belts — what else is there to do? Dig all those guys up — Roy Jones, Bernard Hopkins, come on let’s do it.
“I think I’ve shown them in the States what I’m all about. I’m looking at fighting for another 12 months and I want to fight the big fights and hopefully this will set this up for the big fight and Hopkins will come out of hiding.”
Calzaghe closed with three standout rounds at the Millennium Stadium to unify the three titles in front of 35,000 of his fans.
After both fighters traded big shots and combinations in all 12 rounds, the three judges gave the decision to Calzaghe. Raul Caiz scored it 117-111, fellow American John Stewart had it 116-112 and Massimo Barrovecchio of Italy scored it 116-112.
Kessler dropped to 39-1 and said he wasn’t sure of his next move after losing for the first time.
“I haven’t thought about it. He just crushed my dreams,” the Dane said.
“I hit him with some clean shuts but I should have punched more combinations, not trying to punch hard with the right hand. When I put him under pressure I thought I would be OK. But he has such a good chin. I have got to give him that.”
With combined records of 82 victories, something had to give and both fighters refused to let each other take control amid deafening roars from the fans at the Millennium Stadium, a rugby ground which had the roof closed.
The left-handed Calzaghe connected with his trademark overhand left in the second round, but Kessler — seven years younger and with a punishing jab — got through with a right uppercut that pushed the Welshman back onto the ropes.
Kessler’s fans chanting his name between rounds but Calzaghe’s followers silenced them as he came back in the third.
As if stung by that right hand, Calzaghe charged at Kessler at the start of the third, spinning him down with a combination that ended with the Dane on the floor. Referee Mike Ortega ruled a slip, but it gave Calzaghe confidence. He varied his punches to the head and body and even taunted the Dane with a short dance of celebration as he got through with his left hands. That prompted his fans to sing to the Danish followers “You’re not singing any more.”
The two fighters traded fast combinations, which ended with Kessler getting home with a right uppercut that shook Calzaghe and he landed another later in the round to quiet the local man’s followers.
Kessler got through with some more left jabs and rocked Calzaghe with two right hands in the seventh. But the Welshman, showing that his 35 years were not catching up with him, came back with some strong combinations that pushed Kessler around the ring.
The two fighters continued to trade punches but it was the younger Kessler who looked more tired at the end of each of the last three rounds and Calzaghe threw far more punches.
On the undercard, Enzo Maccarinelli stopped New Zealand-based challenger Mohammed Azzaoui less than a minute into the fourth round to retain the WBO cruiserweight title. The Welshman improved to 28-1, while Azzaoui dropped to 22-1-2.

TITLE: French Charity Workers Slammed as ‘Amateurish’
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: PARIS — A journalist arrested with French aid workers as they tried to fly 103 African children out of Chad criticized the activists for their “amateurishness” but said they were convinced their mission was legitimate.
Marc Garmirian, one of three French reporters who were released and flown back to France on Sunday, said he filmed some of the aid workers putting bandages on children to make them seem injured before the flight.
“I realized rather quickly that in what you could call the investigation, or the interviews they conducted with the children or the people who brought them the children, they displayed a dramatic amateurishness,” he told TF1 television on Monday.
Several of the 10 Europeans still in custody are members of the organization ‘Zoe’s Ark’, which has said it intended to place orphans from Darfur with European families for foster care and that it had the right to do so under international law.
But UN and Chadian officials say most of the 103 children, who are between 1- and 10-years old, have at least one living parent and came from the violent Chad-Sudan border area.
Garmirian’s employer, French news agency CAPA, released on Sunday television footage that showed members of Zoe’s Ark putting bandages on children and pouring liquid on them to make it seem as though they were injured.
The head of Zoe’s Ark, Eric Breteau, said in the footage that he knew he might be arrested over the operation.
“If I am thrown in prison for saving children from Darfur ... I think that after all I would be proud to go to prison for that,” Breteau said.
Garmirian, who was flown to France on French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s plane along with the two other reporters and four Spanish flight attendants, played down the fake wounds.
“The bandages were also to make the journey seem less dramatic. The children found it amusing and at no moment were they scared or anything,” he said.
“It was indeed difficult to stay in the role of the journalist, of the witness who does not intervene. At no moment, according to what I saw, were the children in danger, so there was no question of putting the camera down and stopping,” he said.
Two members of Zoe’s Ark — Breteau and Emilie Lelouch — remained convinced that they had acted legally, he said.
“You could say that they are lunatics, fanatics. In any case, up until the moment I left the prison, Emilie Lelouch and Eric Breteau remained convinced that their mission was legitimate,” he told Europe 1 radio in a separate interview.
Members of Zoe’s Ark and the three remaining Spanish air crew members were taken to the main court house in capital city N’Djamena on Monday.

TITLE: Food Needed as Mexico Floods
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: VILLAHERMOSA, Mexico — Authorities worked early Monday to deliver badly needed food and water to thousands of residents stranded by devastating floods that have damaged the homes of up to 500,000 people.
Since swollen rivers first broke their banks on Oct. 28, flood waters have isolated many Gulf coast communities. Thousands of residents who rescuers haven’t been able to reach have run out of food, water and are living with no electricity and no way to flee.
“People are fighting over food and water, and the lack of electricity and running water are making life in the city impossible,” said Martha Lilia Lopez, who has been handing out food to victims on behalf of a nonprofit foundation she heads.
Authorities said two more bodies were found Sunday floating in brackish waters covering much of the region. If confirmed the deaths were caused by the flooding, the disaster’s toll would stand at 10.
“We are seeing one of the worst natural catastrophes in the history of the country,” President Felipe Calderon said in Tabasco state. “Not only because of the size of the area affected, but because of the number of people affected.”
Many in Tabasco remained camped out on the rooftops or upper floors of their flooded homes to guard their possessions from looters, but their resolve was running out — along with essential supplies.
“I would prefer to be in my house instead of a shelter, but we ran out of everything,” said Patricio Bernal, 53, who was evacuated by boat along with his wife from their home in the state capital, Villahermosa.
“We spent days without food. We thought we were going to die,” said Marta Vidal, 47, who was taken to safety by helicopter.
Daniel Montiel Ortiz said rescuers were now focused on “selective evacuations” — primarily of sick people — and delivering badly needed supplies to isolated communities.

TITLE: Local Girl Kuznetsova Looks Ahead to Victory
AUTHOR: By Mark Elkington
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MADRID — Svetlana Kuznetsova believes she can improve despite achieving a career-best world number two ranking as she prepares for her third season-ending WTA Championships next week.
The 22-year-old St. Petersburg native has been one of the most consistent players on the tour this year but is conscious that she has won only one title, in New Haven, and lost in five other finals.
“This is something I have to work on. I have beaten some great players but when I am in a final I have to switch it on and be more focused, more decisive in key moments,” Kuznetsova told a news conference on Sunday.
“This is what will make the difference if I want to move to another level. There is definitely something mental there but every final is different. Some finals I lost to [world number one] Justine Henin which isn’t an upset loss but others were and so this is something I have to work on.”
Kuznetsova explained she had spent a lot of time working on the psychological aspect of her game.
“It’s the first time I have been number two and it’s a great achievement but I definitely want to keep growing and developing my game and rankings. This year I have been more consistent. I feel more confident on the court and with what I am doing with my life,” she added.
“I am making big changes with myself, getting to know myself better. I have a better attitude on the court. I am focused more on what I want and on my future.”
The Russian’s last two appearances in the Championships, in 2004 and 2006, both ended with exits in the round-robin stage, but she felt the outcome would be different this year.
“I much better prepared now for the tournament. I feel much fresher than in the previous years and I am a much better player,” she said.
Play gets underway in Madrid on Tuesday with Kuznetsova in the same group as Ana Ivanovic, Maria Sharapova and Daniela Hantuchova.

TITLE: Oprah School in Abuse Shock
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: JOHANNESBURG — U.S. television magnate Oprah Winfrey said on Monday she was “cleaning house” at her all-girl academy in South Africa after a dormitory matron was charged with abusing students at the facility.
Describing the charges — including soliciting under-age girls to perform indecent acts — as one of the most devastating experiences in her life, the billionaire philanthropist said she had not renewed the head mistress’s contract.
“We are removing the dorm parents, and as I have said to the girls, (we are) cleaning house from top to bottom,” she said in video news conference from Chicago.
“It has shaken me to my core.”
Former dormitory matron Virginia Mokgobo, 27, was arrested on Thursday on charges including assault, indecent assault and soliciting under-age girls to perform indecent acts.
She was freed on 3,000 rand ($458) bail on Monday after a brief court appearance and left the Sebokeng magistrate court, south of Johannesburg with a blanket over her head. The court postponed the case to December 13 to allow for more investigations.

TITLE: Russian Boxers Take Three Top Titles at World Championships
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: CHICAGO — Russian middleweight Matvei Korobov defended his 2005 title with a 29-4 win over Venezuela’s Alfonso Blanco as Russian fighters contested six finals and came away with three titles at the World Boxing Championships on Saturday. 
Bantamweight Sergei Vodopyanov beat Mongolia’s Enkhbat Badar-Uugan 16-14 and featherweight Albert Selimov downed Ukrainian Vasyl Lomachenko 16-11 to round out the Russian medals. 
Light flyweight Zou Shiming of China and light welterweight Serik Sapiyev of Kazakhstan repeated as champions. Shiming was a 17-3 winner over Harry Tanamor of the Philippines, and Sapiyev beat Russia’s Gennady Kovalev 20-5. 
Italy ended on a strong note, with heavyweight Clemente Russo narrowly outpointing Russia’s Rakhim Chakhkeiv 7-6 and super heavyweight Roberto Cammarelle beating the Ukraine’s Vyacheslav Glazkov 24-14. Flyweight Rau’shee Warren and welterweight Demetrius Andrade became the first Americans to win gold medals at the world championships in eight years with convincing victories. 
Warren beat Thailand’s Somjit Jongjohor 13-9 despite having two front teeth knocked out and Andrade’s bout with Non Boonjumnong, also of Thailand, was stopped in the second round due to an injury. Traditional power Cuba did not participate in this event. 
Ukrainian light heavyweight Abbos Atoev outpunched Artur Beterbiyev of Russia 20-17 and Frankie Gavin of England beat Italy’s Domenico Valentino 18-10 for the lightweight title. 
Andrade went right at his opponent, landing combinations that resulted in a 6-0 lead and a standing eight count after the first minute, and he led 10-1 at the end of the round.

TITLE: Justin Rose Blooms at Volvo Masters
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SOTOGRANDE, Spain — Justin Rose made sure to clinch the European Order of Merit, then added a win at the Volvo Masters for good measure.
Rose secured the Order of Merit by reaching a three-way playoff at Valderrama, where the Englishman rolled in a 12-foot putt at the second extra hole to win the season-ending tournament over Simon Dyson and Soren Kjeldsen.
Rose rallied after blowing a four-shot lead with nine holes to play, finishing with a 3-over 74. Dyson shot a 70 and Kjeldsen had a 67. They tied at 1-under 283.
“On the 16th hole I actually looked like losing the Order of Merit as well as the tournament,” Rose said. “I saw Graeme McDowell had made an albatross. Padraig (Harrington) was maybe going to even par up in front of me, Soren was 2 under. It looked like it was very much in the wrong direction.”
Rose, however, quickly turned it around, shooting a 192-yard 7-iron to within 15 feet at the par-5 17th that allowed for a two-putt birdie.
“I’m not out there shaking like a leaf anymore. I’m out there calm, pretty collected,” the 27-year-old Englishman said. “I feel like I’m in control.”
By the time he was heading back out for the first playoff hole, Rose’s name was already being engraved into the Harry Vardon trophy since the top-three finish meant he had overtaken Ernie Els to top the European Tour’s money list.
“It’s emotional. It was a hard day,” Rose said. “It’s been a long road to get here, but I feel great.”
Rose overtook Els — who opted to play on the Asian Tour this weekend —and Harrington thanks to Valderrama’s winning prize of $960,488. He topped the money list with $4,276,062 after 12 tournaments, the fewest played by any champion in the Tour’s modern history.
“That’s been the key for me, consistency,” said Rose, who moved up to No. 7 in the world rankings and top of the Ryder Cup points list for Europe with his second victory of the year.
“That’s why the win was so valuable today, I’ve had a lot of top-10 finishes and three seconds and I think that’s what was missing from the year, a win.”
Harrington, who won last year’s Order of Merit title after finishing in a three-way tie for second at Valderrama, couldn’t make birdie putts at Nos. 17 and 18 that would have gotten him into the playoff. The British Open champion shot 1-over 72 to finish two shots back in a tie for fourth with McDowell (68).
“I’m disappointed, I didn’t putt well today,” Harrington said. “I tried to hole that putt at No. 18 and put a little pressure on him.”
Rose had a four-shot lead after sinking a birdie at No. 9, and was soon six ahead of Harrington.
But Rose’s round began to unravel at the 11th. A double-bogey was followed by bogeys at Nos. 13 and 14.
McDowell holed his second shot at No. 17 for the albatross-2, while Kjeldsen birdied. Both players then bogeyed No. 18.
Kjeldsen, who had three birdies in his first five holes for the day’s lowest score, watched from the clubhouse as Rose and Dyson missed par putts to send it to a playoff.
The last time the tournament went to a playoff, England’s Ian Poulter beat Sergio Garcia of Spain in 2004.
Rose is the first Englishman to take the season-ending money title since Lee Westwood did in 2000. The trophy has been awarded annually since 1971.
Els, who took the Order of Merit in 2003 and 2004, finished with $3,624,407 and Harrington was third with $3,577,355.
Harrington, who led Rose by $948 coming in, cut the Englishman’s advantage to three strokes by making a 10-foott birdie at the par-4 first.
Rose answered with a birdie on the par-5 fourth, and went up five shots when Harrington, playing one group ahead, couldn’t make a 22-footer for par.

TITLE: Queen Elizabeth Touted as ‘Fashion Icon’
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — One is in vogue. At the age of 81, Queen Elizabeth on Monday joined models Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell on Vogue Magazine’s list of the world’s most glamorous women.
The style bible slavishly worshipped by dedicated followers of fashion decreed that age was no barrier.
Sensible brogue shoes, waxed jackets and headscarves knotted firmly under the chin are clearly no passing fad.
“It’s a great compliment. She has a very practical approach to fashion and a great sense of occasion,” a Buckingham Palace spokeswoman said when asked about the accolade.
“This month she becomes the first British monarch to celebrate a diamond wedding anniversary and next month she becomes Britain’s oldest ever reigning monarch,” she added.
Even model of the moment Agyness Deyn has said of the octogenarian monarch: “She’s cool.”
Kate Moss is reported to have told her once at a Buckingham Palace reception “I love the stuff you wear. You have great fashion sense.”
Vogue was gushing in its praise, declaring the queen to be “as glamorous in her brogues and headscarf at Balmoral as she is wearing the crown jewels.”

TITLE: Sports Watch
TEXT: <b>Coach Transfer Rules</b>
VIENNA (Reuters) — FIFA President Sepp Blatter has proposed introducing restrictions aimed at stopping coaches from changing clubs outside the transfer window.
“We’ll try to extend the rule that is valid for players to coaches,” Blatter told La Gazzetta dello Sport when asked about Ronald Koeman’s recent move from PSV Eindhoven to Valencia and Juande Ramos’ switch from Sevilla to Tottenham Hotspur.

<b>Armstrong Improves</b>
NEW YORK (AP) — Lance Armstrong improved his time by 13 minutes at the New York City Marathon on Sunday, and didn’t have to battle shin splints.
“I enjoyed it much more this year,” said Armstrong, who finished 698th in 2 hours, 46 minutes, 43 seconds. “Last year, I had no idea what to expect with 26.2 miles, and I paid for it.”
The seven-time Tour de France winner trained harder, was injury-free and drew upon the experience of running in the showcase event. Last year, he called the five-borough race “the hardest physical thing I have ever done.”

<b>Dutch Resignation</b>
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) —Willem II Tilburg coach Dennis van Wijk resigned on Monday after a disappointing start of the season, the first division club said.
Willem II lost 2-1 at home against bottom side VVV Venlo on Friday and slipped to 15th with six points from 10 matches.
Van Wijk is the third coach to resign in the Dutch league this season after Henk ten Cate moved to Chelsea from Ajax, while Ronald Koeman left PSV Eindhoven last week to join Valencia.

<b>Beijing Tickets Blip</b>
BEIJING (Reuters) — Beijing organizers will revert to a lottery system to allocate the second tranche of tickets for next year’s Olympics after huge demand forced the suspension of sales on a first come, first-served basis last week.
Residents of mainland China will be able to register to buy the 1.8 million tickets between Dec. 10 and Dec. 30, according to a statement posted on Monday on the Games’ web site (www.beijing2008.cn).
“The ticketing policy modifications aim to reflect a people-oriented policy and to adhere to principles of fairness, impartiality, and convenience to the public,” read the statement.

<b>Tunisia Prepares</b>
TUNIS (Reuters) — Tunisia has arranged a friendly against Namibia on Nov. 1 as part of its African Nations Cup preparations, the Tunisian Football Federation said on Monday.
Tunisia, who will also play Austria in Vienna on Nov. 21, will play in Group D of the Nations Cup finals in Ghana in January.

<b>India ODI Victory</b>
GUWAHATI, India (Reuters) — India beat Pakistan by five wickets in the first one-day international on Monday.
Brief scores: Pakistan 239-7 in 50 overs (S. Butt 50, M. Yousuf 83 not out); India 242-5 in 47 overs (M. Dhoni 63, Y. Singh 58).

TITLE: Tutankhamun’s Face Revealed at Long Last
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LUXOR, Egypt — King Tut’s buck-toothed face was unveiled Sunday for the first time in public — more than 3,000 years after the youngest and most famous pharaoh to rule ancient Egypt was shrouded in linen and buried in his golden underground tomb.
Archeologists carefully lifted the fragile mummy out of a quartz sarcophagus decorated with stone-carved protective goddesses, momentarily pulling aside a beige covering to reveal a leathery black body.
The linen was then replaced over Tut’s narrow body so only his face and tiny feet were exposed, and the 19-year-old king, whose life and death has captivated people for nearly a century, was moved to a simple glass climate-controlled case to keep it from turning to dust.
“I can say for the first time that the mummy is safe and the mummy is well preserved, and at the same time, all the tourists who will enter this tomb will be able to see the face of Tutankhamun for the first time,” Egypt’s antiquities chief Zahi Hawass said from inside the hot and sticky tomb.
“The face of the golden boy is amazing. It has magic and it has mystery,” he added.
Hawass said scientists began restoring the badly damaged mummy more than two years ago. Much of the body is broken into 18 pieces — damage sustained when British archaeologist Howard Carter first discovered it 85 years ago, took it from its tomb and tried to pull off the famous golden mask, Hawass said.
But experts fear a more recent phenomenon — mass tourism — is further deteriorating Tut’s mummy. Thousands of tourists visit the underground chamber every month, and Hawass said within 50 years the mummy could dissolve into dust.
“The humidity and heat caused by... people entering the tomb and their breathing will change the mummy to a powder. The only good thing [left] in this mummy is the face. We need to preserve the face,” said Hawass, who wore his signature Indiana Jones-style tan hat.
The mystery surrounding King Tutankhamun — who ruled during the 18th dynasty and ascended to the throne at age 8 — and his glittering gold tomb has entranced ancient Egypt fans since Carter first discovered the hidden tomb, revealing a trove of fabulous gold and precious stone treasures and propelling the once-forgotten pharaoh into global stardom.
He wasn’t Egypt’s most powerful or important king, but his staggering treasures, rumors of a mysterious curse that plagued Carter and his team — debunked by experts long ago — and several books and TV documentaries dedicated to Tut have added to his intrigue.
Archeologists in recent years have tried to resolve lingering questions over how he died and his precise royal lineage. In 2005, scientists removed Tut’s mummy from his tomb and placed it into a portable CT scanner for 15 minutes to obtain a three-dimensional image. The scans were the first done on an Egyptian mummy.
The results ruled out that Tut was violently murdered — but stopped short of definitively concluding how he died around 1323 B.C. Experts, including Hawass, suggested that days before dying, Tut badly broke his left thigh, an apparent accident that may have resulted in a fatal infection.
The CT scan also provided the most revealing insight yet into Tut’s life. He was well-fed and healthy, but slight, standing 5 feet, 6 inches tall at the time of his death. The scan also showed he had the overbite characteristic of other kings from his family, large incisor teeth and his lower teeth were slightly misaligned.
The unveiling of Tut’s mummy comes amid a resurgence in the frenzy over the boy king. A highly publicized museum exhibit traveling the globe drew more than 4 million people during its initial four-city American-leg of the tour. The exhibit will open Nov. 15 in London.