SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1329 (95), Tuesday, December 4, 2007
**************************************************************************


TITLE: United Russia Gets 50% In City
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia won the Duma election in St. Petersburg with 50.3 percent of vote, followed by Just Russia with 15.1 percent, the Communist Party with 12.4 percent, and Liberal Democratic Party or LDPR with 7.8 percent, the city’s election committee said on Monday.
Other parties did not overcome a seven percent barrier needed to get seats in the lower house of Russia’s parliament. Yabloko received 5.1 percent of the St. Petersburg vote, the Union of Right Forces (SPS) received 2.59 percent, the Agragrian Party received 2.4 percent, Civil Force received 2.2 percent, Patriots of Russia received 1 percent, Democratic Party of Russia 0.14 percent, and the Social Justice Party received 0.14 percent.
Turnout among St. Petersburg voters was 51.68 percent, the election committee said.
On Sunday at polling stations in the city, mainly located in schools, cheerful music was played and traditional pirozhki and pancakes were sold. In the middle of the day there were lines of two or three people to each desk in many polling stations. Most voters were of middle or old age, and some came with children. However, only a few young voters were observed.  
Of 12 people asked by The St. Petersburg Times about how they voted outside a polling station in the city’s outskirts, eight people said to have voted for United Russia, two voted for  LDPR, one for Yabloko, and one for Civil Force.
Pensioner Alla Kosaryeva, 70, who voted for United Russia, said she came to vote because now she feels more than ever a citizen of the country. 
“I have voted for United Russia because life has become better now under Putin, and we don’t want any other changes or revolutions.  Everything has calmed down now, and people can live safely,” she said.
Vladislav Fedoryenko, 35, said he voted for United Russia “because in the last several years life has become better, more interesting, and safer.” 
Alexander Vepryev, 36, a driver, said he voted for LDPR.
“I always vote for LDPR [and its leader] Vladimir Zhirinovsky. I hope he could bring changes. For instance, my wife and I are young and healthy people but we still can’t afford to buy our own apartment.  We really can’t afford to take a loan for an apartment. So, I hope Zhirinovsky and his party could change this situation for people. He doesn’t promise much but this makes me believe him more compared to the other parties.”
Yelena, 32, a manager, who did not give her last name, said she chose Yabloko.
“I don’t want to vote for United Russia because I think, today our country seriously suffers from bureaucracy and other problems. For instance, a foreign business can hardly get to the Russian market without a bribe to some bureaucrat.  Our own production and industry are completely forgotten and we only rely on our oil, gas and raw materials. The pensions are ridiculously low - the average of 3,000 rubles a month [$122] makes the life of old people almost impossible financially,” Yelena said.
“The last straw in my negative attitude towards United Russia was its aggressive pre-election propaganda,” she said.
Sergei Petrov, 33, a manager, who voted for Civil Force, said he did so because he liked the party’s leader Mikhail Barschevsky and wanted to have the balanced presence of different parties at the country’s parliament.
“In fact, I’m not against United Russia but I think any party that prevails should have opposition in the parliament to keep the balance and not take all the power,” he said.
Boris Vishnevsky, political analyst and member of Yabloko party, said Yabloko expected to gather one-and-a-half to two times more votes in St. Petersburg than in the rest of the country.
“Yabloko is the only party that defends the interests of St. Petersburg residents when speaking against the construction of Okhta Tower and in-fill construction, so we hoped people would support us more,” Vishnevsky said.
Vishnevsky said the victory of United Russia was directly attributable to propaganda on state-controlled television. He said Yabloko did not have money to buy commercial advertisements on TV.
“United Russia in its turn had lots of presence on TV.  It wasn’t simply ads but Putin, [United Russia leader and Speaker of the State Duma Boris] Gryzlov and [United Russia candidate and St. Petersburg Governor Valentina] Matviyenko were on TV a lot thanks to their official positions,” he said. 
Meanwhile, St. Petersburg opposition groups announced that they were treating Monday was a day of mourning for political freedom.  They suggested that people who disagreed with the way the elections were run should go to the streets wearing black ribbons, black scarves and carrying candles, Fontanka.ru reported.

TITLE: Monitors Say Russian Duma Vote Unfair
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Isachenkov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Foreign observers and Russian opposition groups accused authorities Monday of manipulating a sweeping parliamentary election victory for the party of President Vladimir Putin, who hailed the results as a validation of his leadership.
With ballots from nearly 98 percent of precincts counted, Putin’s United Russia party was leading with 64.1 percent of the vote, the Central Election Commission said — which would give it a sweep of 70 percent of seats in parliament.
The only opposition party to make it into parliament, the Communists, trailed with just 11.6 percent of the vote, with Kremlin-allied parties claiming the rest of Sunday’s vote.
The Communists, Liberals and foreign observers criticized the vote as unfair. Opposition leader Garry Kasparov, the ex-chess champion, denounced the vote Monday as “the most unfair and dirtiest in the whole history of modern Russia.”
But Putin and his allies praised the result as an overwhelming endorsement of his leadership and policies.
“Of course it’s a sign of trust,” Putin said in televised remarks. “Russians will never allow the nation to take a destructive path, as happened in some other ex-Soviet nations.”
The election followed a tense Kremlin campaign that relied in part on persuasion and intimidation to ensure a rout for United Russia and the president, who has used Russia’s energy riches in an effort to restore Moscow’s influence on the global stage.
Putin is expected to claim the victory gives him the mandate to remain Russia’s de facto leader even after he steps down as president in May, as required by the constitution.
It was “not a fair election,” said Goran Lennmarker, president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
The election monitoring arm of the OSCE — regarded in the West as the most authoritative election monitor — did not send observers, saying Russia delayed granting visas for so long that the organization would have been unable to meaningfully assess election preparations.
Luc van den Brande, who headed the delegation from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, said Russian authorities exerted the “overwhelming influence of the president’s office and the president” on the campaign, skewing its outcome.
In Berlin, government spokesman Thomas Steg said Germany considered Russia’s vote neither fair nor free, adding that the country could not be considered a democracy.
The Bush administration and Britain’s Foreign Office urged Russian authorities to probe alleged voting irregularities.
“In the run-up to election day, we expressed our concern regarding the use of state administrative resources in support of United Russia, the bias of the state-owned or -influenced media in favor of United Russia, intimidation of political opposition, and the lack of equal opportunity encountered by opposition candidates and parties,” said Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for the U.S. National Security Council.
Kimmo Kiljunen, vice president of the OSCE’s Parliamentary Assembly, called the elections “strange” and “problematic,” citing reports of harassment of parties and confiscation of election materials.
“These elections, from my point of view, were done in a Russian way,” he said. “I mean that there was the strange situation that the executive branch almost chose the legislative branch. It is supposed to be the other way round.”
Turnout was about 63 percent, up from 56 percent in the last parliamentary elections four years ago.
The Kremlin portrayed the election as a plebiscite on Putin’s nearly eight years as president. Putin is widely popular, in part because of Russia’s oil-fueled economic boom and his ambition to revive Russia’s status as a great power.
United Russia said it will name its presidential candidate at its congress set for Dec. 17 — most likely a figurehead who stands to be overshadowed by Putin.
Putin is constitutionally prohibited from running for a third consecutive term, but he clearly wants to remain in power even though he has ruled out changing the constitution to allow him to run for another term as president.
A movement has sprung up in recent weeks to urge him to become a “national leader,” though it’s not clear what that would mean.
United Russia’s victory would give it 315 seats in Russia’s 450-seat State Duma, election officials said. The Communists would have just over 50 seats.
Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov called the election “the most irresponsible and dirty” in the post-Soviet era and party officials vowed to challenge the results.
Two other pro-Kremlin parties — the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party and populist Just Russia — also appeared to have made it into parliament, with 8.2 percent and 7.6 percent of the vote, respectively.
Andrei Lugovoi, a former KGB officer and the chief suspect in the London poisoning death of Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko last year, will serve as a deputy from the Liberal Democratic Party.
“Now Mr. Putin and Mr. Lugovoi stand together as the emblem of Russia — the two people linked by a murder,” Litvinenko’s widow, Marina, said in a written statement. Litvinenko in a deathbed statement accused Putin of ordering his killing — which the Kremlin has denied.
No other parties passed the 7 percent threshold for gaining seats in the legislature. Both opposition liberal parties, Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces, were shut out.
Anatoly Chubais, head of Russia’s electricity monopoly and a leader of the Union of Right Forces, called the vote a “disgusting” repeat of Soviet practices.
“United Russia is becoming monopolist and restoring a Soviet spirit and Soviet mentality,” he said in a statement.
Many voters said they were pressured to cast ballots for United Russia, said Alexander Kynev, a political expert with the election monitoring group Golos. In Pestovo in the western Novgorod region, some said their they ballots already were filled out for United Russia, he said.
In Chechnya, where turnout was over 99 percent, witnesses reported seeing election authorities filling out and casting ballots.
European election monitors criticized changes in Russian election law that restricts voters to choosing only for a party, not candidates, and for making it more difficult for smaller parties to make it into parliament.
In previous elections, half the seats were chosen among candidates contesting a specific district, allowing a few mavericks to get in.

TITLE: Small Election Protest Squashed by Riot Police
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A protest meeting against electoral violations during the campaign for the State Duma and Sunday’s election was suppressed by police at around 4:30 p.m. on Monday.
Eleven protestors were detained, including Andrei Dmitriyev, the leader of the local branch Eduard Limonov’s banned National-Bolshevik Party (NBP), and Sergei Gulyayev, a former Yabloko deputy in St. Petersburg who now leads Narod movement.
Flagged as a day of mourning for political freedom (“Pominki po Svobode”) the meeting held on Pionerskaya Ploshchad drew between 50 and 100 protestors, said Gulyayev, who spoke by mobile phone from police precinct No. 38, where the detained protestors were being held Monday evening.
“Three hours have already passed, but we have not even been told what we are doing here at all,” Gulyayev told The St. Petersburg Times. 
“They [the police] are hastily cooking up protocols. There are some ‘witnesses,’ who even weren’t on the scene.”
According to Gulyayev, the police began stopping protestors far from the location of the meeting. 
“Several people from the Oborona [Defense] movement were detained in the metro,” he said. “When they started to detain people [at the rally], people stepped aside and were watching what was happening from a distance.
Gulyayev said that the relevant City Hall committee authorized the rally. 
“We sent an application on Thursday, signed by myself and Andrei Dmitriyev,” he said.
“On Thursday evening I got a call from the Committee for Law, Public Order and Security and was told that ‘we can’t allow you to picket the election committee on St. Isaac’s Square, but we can allow you to hold a meeting at the same time on the same day near TYuZ theater on Pionerskaya Ploshchad.’ I agreed and said, ‘No problem.’ They asked me, ‘Which way can we send [the permission] to you?’ I said ‘Send it by email or fax’.”
According to Gulyayev, he received a letter with the offer, but when he and the other protestors arrived at the location, he was told by a senior police officer that it was an “unsanctioned event.”
“He said ‘We were called an hour ago by [Committee for Law, Public Order and Security chief] Nikolai Valeryevich Strumentov and said he did not permit it,’” Gulyayev said.
“I called Strumentov and he said ‘You agreed to the location only today.’ I noted that actually we spoke on Thursday, and so now there are no formal reasons to reject us. But he said, ‘We won’t let you hold this event in any case.’”
According to Gulyayev, OMON special forces riot police were ordered to start detaining people almost immediately.
“People kept arriving, some with flags, and there was a command to the OMON to detain everybody, and they did it in quite a hard way,” he said.
“Now we have been here [in the police station] for over three hours without being charged, which is not legal, so we are here completely perplexed about what we are doing here.”
The police’s strong presence, complete with several heavy trucks, buses and fully-equipped riot policemen, was also seen on St. Isaac’s Square, the location originally suggested by the protestors.
Calls to Police Precinct No. 38 for police reaction went unanswered on Monday evening.

TITLE: Party Ponders Life After Landslide Voting Victory
AUTHOR: By Anna Smolchenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — At polling station No. 2074 at the Russian Academy of Sciences, President Vladimir Putin looked relaxed and content as he arrived with his wife, Lyudmila, to vote.
Most of the people at the station just froze, some clapped and, after he cast his ballot, one elderly woman even came up to him to thank him for taking care of the people.
“Thank God the election campaign is over,” Putin said.
Putin has kept busy juggling his duties as president with those of United Russia’s top candidate ever since he agreed to head the pro-Kremlin party’s list.
Television cameras caught him taking a break with Lyudmila at a western Moscow restaurant after the vote, but with the question of his and the party’s choice for his successor still up in the air, the break isn’t likely to last long.
Putin has said the victory would strengthen his hand and give him the “moral authority” to expect the government and legislature to continue implementing his policies after he steps down as president next year.
Party leader Boris Gryzlov declared that task accomplished while addressing United Russia members at the party’s headquarters on Sunday night.
“Vladimir Putin has won the first round,” Gryzlov told a packed news conference after the first results were announced Sunday evening. “This is support for our national leader. A referendum has been held.”
He added that the party leaders were to speak to Putin later that evening.
Gryzlov said the outcome of the vote clearly showed that Russia was a multiparty democracy and that Putin’s course would continue. “It looks like we’ve received 250 seats.”
United Russia is expected to convene later this month to nominate a candidate to see that plan through. Mayor Yury Luzhkov, a senior United Russia leader, suggested on Sunday that the party would convene on Dec. 17 and that the name of the candidate would be announced after that date.
“This is a very complicated question. Wait and be patient,” he told reporters after casting his ballot in the morning, Interfax reported. The candidate will be named after consultations with Putin, Luzhkov added.
Whoever gets Putin’s backing will be the prohibitive favorite to win in March, but the president has so far been silent on his choice — whether because he is undecided, fears becoming a lame duck, or even plans to find a constitutional loophole to run again himself.
United Russia representatives said the convention was expected to take place later this month but that an exact date has yet to be confirmed. Andrei Vorobyov, chairman of United Russia’s central executive committee, said by telephone that top party members were scheduled to meet later this week to decide on the date.
The convention will be part two of the Oct. 1 gathering where Putin made a surprise announcement that he would head the party’s ticket and would “have to determine a presidential candidate,” one State Duma source said.
Political parties have until Dec. 23 to nominate a candidate.
Sergei Markov, a Kremlin-connected political analyst who recently joined United Russia, said Putin was likely to endorse at least two candidates, which would probably mean that the presidential vote would go to a second round. This would stand in sharp contrast with the expected landslide triumph on Sunday, helping Putin cement his position as leader and demonstrate that he is a much stronger figure than his successor.

TITLE: U.S., Russia Split on Kosovo
AUTHOR: By Matt Robinson
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BELGRADE — Russia insisted on Monday the U.N. Security Council have the final word on Serbia’s breakaway Kosovo province, putting it on a collision course with the West days before mediators report to the United Nations.
Moscow’s Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko, visiting Belgrade with fellow envoys from the EU and United States after the failure of talks last week, said the four-month dialogue had been the most serious since the 1998-99 war, and should continue.
“The Security Council began considering this question and this question will be finally resolved in the Security Council,” he told a news conference. Russia, which has a veto in the Security Council, has already blocked one Western-backed independence plan for Kosovo at the U.N.
American mediator Frank Wisner said it would be up to individual governments to decide how to proceed after the mediators’ report is submitted to the United Nations by Dec 10.
“It is a matter for governments to take over and carry forward thereafter,” he said. “Our positions as national governments have been articulated elsewhere. There are no surprises there.”
Washington and almost all EU member states support Kosovo’s independence from Serbia as the best option for stability in the Balkans and leaders of Kosovo’s 90-percent Albanian majority says they will declare it within months.
The mediators will submit their report on the talks to the U.N. by next Monday, after failing at talks last week to bridge the gap between Serbia’s offer of broad autonomy and the Kosovo Albanian independence demand.
“This report will conclude that the two sides have not been able to reach agreement,” said EU mediator Wolfgang Ischinger. It would not prescribe a solution, or a way forward. “We are not making any proposals that could surprise anyone.”
Kosovo has been under U.N. rule since 1999, when NATO bombs expelled Serb forces accused of the killing and ethnic cleansing of Albanian civilians while battling separatist rebels.
Almost 18 months of negotiations, led first by U.N. envoy Martti Ahtisaari, have failed to produce compromise.

TITLE: Trepashkin Freed After Serving 4-Year Sentence
AUTHOR: By David Nowak
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Mikhail Trepashkin, a former Federal Security Service agent, was freed from a Urals prison on Friday after serving four years for divulging state secrets.
Trepashkin, who maintains that the FSB set him up after he uncovered evidence of its involvement in the 1999 Moscow apartment bombings, expressed relief when speaking to reporters after his release.
“The worst is in the past. Before, I fought on my own, but now I have many more supporters,” Trepashkin said during an impromptu news conference in central Yekaterinburg on Friday, The Associated Press reported.
“I’ve served four years for things I haven’t done,” he added.
After resting at a friend’s house in Yekaterinburg, Trepashkin flew to Moscow to meet his wife, Tatyana, and three children.
Tatyana Trepashkina said in e-mailed comments Friday that she had “mixed feelings” about meeting her husband, a potential witness in the poisoning death of his former FSB colleague, Alexander Litvinenko.
“I myself don’t even know what to expect from Mikhail, though I am hoping for the best,” Trepashkina said, adding that she was currently looking for a clinic in Moscow to treat her husband’s asthma, which he developed in prison.
Before his arrest, Trepashkin turned down offers from London-based Kremlin foe Boris Berezovsky to move there, despite his wife’s pleas.
“Now he might agree to go to London,” she said. “Now he probably has no grounds to be so stubborn.”
But Gleb Edelev, head of the Yekaterinburg Movement Against Violence and Trepashkin’s friend, said he had no plans to leave the country.
“Mikhail has said he is going to sue the authorities for wrongful arrest and fight for the rights of other prisoners, so I would say there is little likelihood he is planning anything like that,” said Edelev, who was one of the first to meet Trepashkin on his release.
Although prison authorities had informed Edelev’s group that Trepashkin would be released around midday Friday, the former FSB agent was actually freed at 8 a.m., when it was still dark, Edelev said. Out of prison and on the street, he made a call from a pay phone to arrange a meeting with his supporters in central Yekaterinburg.
He flagged down a passing minibus and traveled alone along the 2 1/2-hour route from the Nizhny Tagil medium-security prison, Edelev said.
Last month, a court ordered Trepashkin to serve the last two weeks of his sentence in a higher security prison in Nizhny Tagil, leading friends and family to worry he might not survive.
“We couldn’t believe that decision, and we were very scared something would happen,” Edelev said.
Trepashkin was arrested on suspicion of illegal firearms possession in October 2003, weeks before he was to give evidence in a court hearing into the 1999 apartment bombings.
The following year, he was sentenced to a four-year term for divulging state secrets. The judge ruled that Trepashkin made copies of FSB files on certain criminal figures and stored them in his Moscow home. 
Trepashkin, then a lawyer by profession, said the charges had been fabricated.
Some believe the sentence to be FSB revenge for a news conference he held with Litvinenko, at which the two accused the FSB of corruption and operating a department that carries out extra-judicial killings.
Litvinenko died in a London hospital in November last year after ingesting a highly radioactive isotope that some said could only have been produced in Russia.
Britain charged a former Federal Guard Service officer, Andrei Lugovoi, with Litvinenko’s murder earlier this year. Lugovoi met with Litvinenko in a London bar three weeks before he died.
Citing a constitutional ban, Russia has refused to extradite Lugovoi, who was on the ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party’s list for Sunday’s State Duma elections, despite Britain’s insistence that he be handed over to stand trial.
n Trepashkin had an emotional telephone conversation with Litvinenko’s widow on Saturday, the AP reported. Marina Litvinenko, 44, broke down in tears as she spoke with Trepashkin by phone a day after the former agent was released from jail.
Trepashkin has said he was asked in 2002 to join a group of Russian intelligence agents targeting Berezovsky and Litvinenko. He said he warned Litvinenko about the alleged death squad.
After the phone call, Marina Litvinenko said Trepashkin had promised to provide a written deposition on his claims to lawyers who have opened a case against the Russian government in the European Court of Human Rights for complicity in her husband’s murder, the AP reported.
“He told me that it’s very important to show people that this operation was launched four years ago,” Marina Litvinenko said.

TITLE: Putin Says May Return To Arms Pact, If Revised
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin on Monday said Russia might one day return to a key post-Cold War arms treaty, but only if NATO members ratify an updated version of the pact.
Putin signed a law last week suspending Russia’s participation in the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty in a move which could allow it to deploy more forces close to western Europe. The move comes into force on December 12-13.
The Kremlin chief has repeatedly called on NATO members to ratify an updated version of the treaty.
“If our partners eventually ratify these agreements and start complying with it, then we could re-establish our participation,” Putin told workers outside Moscow at the Lavochkin spacecraft design bureau.
But Putin added: “I would like to emphasize that we cannot wait forever.”
The CFE treaty, signed in 1990 and updated in 1999, limits the number of battle tanks, heavy artillery, combat aircraft and attack helicopters deployed and stored between the Atlantic and Russia’s Ural mountains.
The United States, the European Union and NATO had urged Putin not to suspend the treaty, seen as a cornerstone of European security.
Moscow argues it has been used by an enlarged NATO to limit Russian military movements while NATO builds up forces close to Russia in contravention of earlier agreements.
Western partners have refused to ratify an amended version of the pact until Russia pulls its forces out of Georgia and Moldova as it promised in 1999 when the treaty was reviewed.

TITLE: Europe’s Largest Outdoor Rink Opens in City
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The largest open-air skating rink in Europe opened with a festive ceremony on St. Petersburg’s Palace Square on Saturday, at the same time as a similar attraction opened on Moscow’s Red Square. 
Dozens of guests, including Russian Olympic and world ice skating champions, attended the ceremony on the square next to the Winter Palace. Dressed in red and white Russian 2006 Winter Olympic Team colors, the champions put their skates on to hail the opening of the rink as temperatures dropping to minus 8 Celsius and a cold wind blew across the square.
“The main ice rink in Paris is located just next to Eiffel Tower, and in London it’s also in the center,” said Governor Valentina Matviyenko, also wearing skates, in an apparent reference to opposition voiced locally about the wisdom of erecting the rink in St. Petersburg’s historic center.
One of the main opponents was Mikhail Piotrovsky, director of the State Hermitage Museum, which occupies the Winter Palace and faces Palace Square.
Olympic champion Alexei Yagudin, and world champions Alexei Tikhonov and Maria Petrova, performed as part of the opening ceremony. Stars from the popular TV ice show “Lednikovyi Period” (Ice Age) also performed.
“It’s great to have a skating rink in the center of St. Petersburg,” said Petrova, world champion in pairs figure skating. “I’m sure it will give lots of joy to people who skate here, and won’t damage the image of St. Petersburg at all.” 
Yekaterina Romanova, 22, a post graduate student visiting the rink, also said she liked the idea.
“I really enjoy skating here. I like the view, the fresh air. I think, this skating rink will serve to make skating even more popular and to attract more people to a healthy way of life. I’m sure it will also be attractive to tourists,” Romanova said.
However, not everybody had such an optimistic view. Pyotr Petrov, 39, said he wasn’t very excited about the idea.
“I think, it’s not the right place for the skating rink, and the city could live without having it here,” Petrov said.
Piotrovsky said on Monday that the construction of the skating rink amounted to hiring out Palace Square as an advertising hoarding, Interfax said.
“I think, we’re now looking at a vulgar ad campaign that insults the city,” Piotrovsky said. “The opening of the venue on Palace Square is a sad event in our life because it proves one more time how ridiculously the name ‘cultural capital’ sounds in regards to St. Petersburg today,” he said.
The 5,000 square-meter rink is twice as big as the similar skating rink built on Moscow’s Red Square. There are cloakrooms, skate rental, booking offices, cafes, a store and a medical station on both sides of the rink.
Organizers partly met demands by Hermitage authorities that guaranteed the safety of architectural monuments located on the square.  
During the three months that the rink will operate fireworks will be forbidden and low music will be played only until 11 p.m.
Tickets will cost from 200 to 300 rubles for adults, and 100 rubles for children up to 12 years old and pensioners for 90 minutes. Children under seven years are free.  The rent of skates costs 200 rubles for adults and 100 rubles for children. The construction of the skating rink around the square’s central Alexander Column was organized by City Hall’s Sports Committee and businessman Mikhail Kusnirovich, head of the Bosco di Ciliegi company.
Kusnirovich organized the skating rink on Red Square last year and this year, and is also known as an official sponsor for Russian Olympic Team at the 2006 Winter Olympic Games in Turin.

TITLE: Paper Reports Rise in Spying
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BERLIN — Russia’s foreign intelligence services are accelerating efforts to recruit young lawmakers and academics in Germany, a German newspaper reported Sunday.
The German domestic intelligence service, the BfV, has information about efforts by Russian agents to recruit young members of the Bundestag, Germany’s lower house of parliament, Welt am Sonntag reported Sunday.
Young officials from political parties and foundations were also being targeted for inside information or recruiting those with good career prospects, the newspaper said. It did not identify the source of its information.
The BfV, which stands for the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, said on its web site that Russia was among countries that continue to target Germany for intelligence gathering activities.
It also cited China, Iran and North Korea as countries particularly active in this field.
Officials at the BfV were not immediately available for comment.

TITLE: Pro-Kremlin Youths’ Exit Poll Reflects Official Results
AUTHOR: By John Wendle
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — The exit poll results from Nashi Vybory, a spinoff from the pro-Kremlin youth movement Nashi, lay among hamburger wrappers Sunday on a table at the McDonald’s on the Arbat, a central thoroughfare in Moscow.
Sheet after sheet — of exit polls, not burger wrappers — showed checkmarks next to United Russia. “Some organizations will claim that there were election falsifications, and we need to show that the vote was clean,” said Igor Boiko, a 19-year-old volunteer.
Nashi Vybory mobilized 20,000 teenagers nationwide to conduct exit polls for the State Duma elections. Minutes after the Central Elections Commission issued its first results late Sunday, showing United Russia with 62 percent of the vote, Nashi Vybory announced that the party had taken 61.88 percent. 
Volunteers were dressed Sunday in bright red scarves and jackets with a portrait of President Vladimir Putin on the left sleeve and the phrase “Politspetsnaz,” or “Political Commandos,” over the heart.

TITLE: 44 Miners Injured in Ukrainian Explosion
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: KIEV — An explosion injured 44 miners on Saturday as a colliery in eastern Ukraine was struck by the country’s worst mining accident two weeks earlier.
Ukraine’s mining inspectorate said 63 miners were in the affected section when the blast occurred just before 6 a.m. — in the same area of the Zasyadko pit as last month’s deadly methane explosion. All 63 were brought to the surface.
Ukraine’s industrial safety watchdog said 44 miners were hospitalized, nine of them in severe condition, RIA-Novosti reported.
“An explosion occurred at 5:55 a.m. in a section of the mine isolated by fire. Sixty-three people were in the immediate vicinity,” said a duty officer with the mining inspectorate. “All have now been brought to the surface. There are no miners remaining below.”
The Emergency Situations Ministry said seven miners remained in the hospital suffering from gas poisoning and various injuries Sunday.
The ministry also said a miner died in an incident involving a coal wagon at another mine near Donetsk.
The explosion on Nov. 18 at the Zasyadko mine, the site of four major accidents since 2001, killed 101 miners.
About 10 bodies have still to be brought out of the mine in Donetsk in the heart of the Donbass coal field. Fires were still burning more than a kilometer below the surface.
Ukraine’s mining industry, which operates some pits dating from the 19th century, has suffered a long series of accidents. At least 193 miners have died in the Donetsk region alone this year.
Ukraine’s mines are regarded as some of the world’s most dangerous, partly because many are in poor repair. In addition, the country’s mines typically are more than 1,000 meters deep — twice the depth of most European coal beds. High levels of methane accumulate at such depths. Zasyadko is viewed as one of Ukraine’s technically most advanced and profitable pits. But experts say that mining far below the surface at this and other Ukrainian collieries increases the risk of accidents.
Reuters, AP

TITLE: Kazakhs To Head OSCE
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MADRID — Kazakhstan won approval Friday to take over the chairmanship of Europe’s main human rights and security watchdog in 2010 after accepting U.S. demands to pledge to protect the OSCE’s election monitoring body.
“These are very important commitments by the government of Kazakhstan. We intend to see these commitments are implemented,” U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said at a news conference at the end of a ministerial meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which agreed to Kazakhstan’s chairmanship.
The United States had demanded that Kazakhstan promise to defend the election monitoring body, which has been fiercely criticized by Russia.
Kazakh Foreign Minister Marat Tazhin, whose country has oil and gas needed by Europe, gave that promise Thursday. He also said his country would move to increase press freedom and make it easier for political parties to register following recent elections in which supporters of the president won every seat in the parliament.
The Kazakhstan decision immediately drew criticism from New York-based Human Rights Watch, which described Kazakhstan as a “classic soft authoritarian state.”
It will be the first time a former eastern bloc country will hold the presidency, said Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos, who has chaired the OSCE during 2007.
The OSCE conference was overshadowed by the dispute between the United States and Russia, which wants to reform the organization’s election monitoring body, the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights. 
The ODIHR has pulled out of monitoring the State Duma elections.
“We will try to make the OSCE an organization of equal partners, so that no one is discriminated against in this organization,” said Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, whose bid to reform the ODIHR was not accepted.
Russia’s decision to suspend its participation in the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe also raised U.S. hackles.
Spain will hand over the OSCE chair to Finland before it passes to Greece and then Kazakhstan.

Reuters, AP

TITLE: Okruashvili Asked For Asylum
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: TBILISI, Georgia — Georgian opposition leader Irakly Okruashvili applied for asylum in Germany days before police arrested him in a Berlin hotel on a request from Georgia’s government.
Okruashvili, 34, a former defense minister, had previously said he wanted to return to Georgia to face charges of corruption.
“He applied for political asylum in Germany before the arrest. Legal procedures regarding this request have not been finished,” Eka Beselia, Okruashvili’s lawyer, said Friday. “It confirms the fact that Okruashvili is a victim of political repression.”
Germany’s office for migration and refugees confirmed that Okruashvili had applied for asylum but declined to give further details.
German police arrested Okruashvili on Wednesday following an extradition request. The Georgians have 40 days to file full extradition documents to the German authorities. Georgian police arrested Okruashvili on corruption charges in September, just days after he accused President Mikheil Saakashvili of economic theft and plotting murder, charges Saakashvili denies. 
Okruashvili later was released on $6 million bail, and he immediately left for Germany, where he repeated his allegations. His arrest sparked the biggest street protests against the government since a peaceful revolution in 2003. Police cleared protesters off Tbilisi’s streets using tear gas and rubber bullets, and Saakashvili called an early presidential election for Jan. 5. He was to step down Sunday to start campaigning.
Meanwhile, opposition leader Salome Zurabishvili said Friday that the presidential election would not be free and fair. Zurabishvili was France’s ambassador to Georgia before joining Saakashvili’s government, but she was fired after less than two years.

TITLE: ‘Godzilla’ Dies After 6 Months on the Run
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: DONETSK, Ukraine — A crocodile that escaped from a traveling circus in Ukraine and evaded capture for six months died Friday after two days back in captivity, officials said.
“The crocodile was lying in the water and suddenly he just floated to the surface,” Oleksander Soldatov, an official with Ukraine’s Emergency Situations Ministry, said in the eastern city of Donetsk.
The crocodile, nicknamed “Godzilla,” or “Godzi,” was captured alive earlier in the week after escaping from a traveling circus in May.
It had been spotted several times lurking around industrial sites near the city of Mariupol, on the coast of the Sea of Azov. But it repeatedly eluded search teams. 
It was finally found basking in a pool at a thermal power station, where the water was warmer than the nearby sea. The crocodile, which was more than a meter long, was then taken 100 kilometers by car to Donetsk, where it was freed into a tank of water used by firefighters.
The crocodile’s owner said he could only collect it Monday because of circus commitments.
Soldatov said Godzilla would be cremated. 
“This is an exotic animal. He simply cannot be buried,” he said.

TITLE: Fancy Medal Unveiled for Foreigners
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: ASHGABAT, Turkmenistan — An extravagant gold and diamond medal was unveiled Friday to honor late Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov, who died a year ago after two decades of eccentric rule.
Known as the “Turkmenbashi the Great, First President of Turkmenistan Medal,” the decoration is to be awarded to senior foreign visitors for their achievements, state media reported.
Niyazov called himself Turkmenbashi, or Father of All Turkmen, and ruled Turkmenistan through an authoritarian personality cult for 21 years. He named a month, a seaport and a number of towns after himself.
The medal is encrusted with 32 diamonds and sports a gilded profile of Niyazov.
While stressing his loyalty to Niyazov, the new president, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, has sought to soften the country’s image — and has removed a logo featuring Niyazov’s profile from state television and most banknotes.

TITLE: Deripaska Inks $20Bln St. Pete Deal
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: Basic Element, a diversified investment holding owned by Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska, will invest 480 billion rubles ($19.6 billion) into development projects in St. Petersburg by 2015, Basic Element said last week in a statement.
According to the agreement signed between St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko and Oleg Deripaska, BasEl supervising board chairman, the funds should be spent on “affordable housing” and infrastructure projects — road and bridge construction.
“The city authorities offered convenient and transparent investment schemes attractive for transnational companies, especially for industrial construction enterprises. Russian companies also want to participate in the development of the city,” Deripaska said in the statement.
Besides Basic Element and its subsidiaries (Altius-Development and Glavstroi), other Russian and foreign companies including Transstroi, Hochtief, Strabag, Bouygues and Egis will be coinvestors for the projects.
In the statement released last week Valentina Matviyenko said that the St. Petersburg government “will provide all necessary conditions for the company, which has become a strategic partner of St. Petersburg.”
The main development project of Basic Element in St. Petersburg is the construction of about 5.5 million square meters of housing in two residential complexes — Konnaya Lakhta and Severnaya Dolina.
At the beginning of this year Basic Element won a tender and was awarded a long-term rental agreement for two land plots with a total area of 437 hectares. Besides constructing “economy class” housing in Severnaya Dolina and low-rise residential complexes and apartment buildings in Konnaya Lakhta, Glavstroi should provide engineering and social infrastructure for the areas.
The future projects include participation in a tender for the redevelopment of Apraxin Dvor, a shopping area in the center of St. Petersburg. Basic Element and its partners (Transstroi, Mostootryad 19, Strabag, Hochtief, Bouygues and Egis) will also take part in the tenders for the construction of Orlovsky Tunnel and the Western High-Speed Link-Road.
According to the statement, Basic Element is interested in work on the planned over-ground railway system and underground parking lots in St. Petersburg. In addition, the company will open plants for the production of construction materials in the city in the near future.
Nikolai Pashkov, director for professional activities at Knight Frank St. Petersburg, strongly doubted if Basic Element will offer “affordable housing.”
“At Severnaya Dolina they could construct economy class buildings that are compactly planned. However, the location does not allow very cheap housing in comparison with the south-western areas of the city. At Konnaya Lakhta they will construct low-rise housing, which simply can’t be cheap. In developing this swampy area they will have to invest heavily in engineering infrastructure,” Pashkov said.
Pashkov estimated that that the cottages and townhouses at Konnaya Lakhta could cost a minimum of $2,500 per square meter at current prices.
As for the redevelopment of Apraxin Dvor, “no investor would go into this project of their own free will,” Pashkov said. “The law strictly limits the development opportunities, banning reconstruction and demolition of the buildings, while ownership structure and tenant agreements are very complicated,” he said.
Basic Element comprises power enterprises, raw materials supplies, construction, financial services, development and aviation. Last year, Basic Element reported consolidated revenue of over $18 billion. Assets of the group are estimated at over $23 billion.
Deripaska owns 30 percent of Austria’s Strabag and 10 percent of Germany’s Hochtief.

TITLE: Alfa Says Megafon Dispute Resolved
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW — Altimo, the telecoms investment vehicle of billionaire Mikhail Fridman, said Friday that it had resolved a long-running dispute over its stake in the country’s third-largest mobile operator, MegaFon.
The stake has been disputed by IPOC, a Bermuda-based fund, since August 2003, when Altimo bought a 25.1 percent stake in MegaFon for $295 million.
IPOC, which now owns a minority stake in MegaFon, said it agreed to buy the 25.1 percent stake before it was acquired by Altimo. IPOC has been fighting the Altimo-MegaFon deal in court for nearly four years, complicating MegaFon’s plans for an initial public offering.
“The legitimate ownership rights of Altimo for 25.1 percent of MegaFon shares will not be challenged by any of the parties,” Altimo said in a statement Friday.
“It’s another important step in Altimo’s firm strategy toward the resolution of all remaining disputed issues still existing between the shareholders of our investee companies,” Altimo chief executive Alexei Reznikovich said in the statement.
Neither IPOC president Michael North, nor its owner, Danish lawyer Jeffrey Galmond, was available for comment Friday when contacted at their offices in Moscow.
The High Court in Bermuda on Thursday validated a master settlement agreement between IPOC and LV Finance, ending global litigation and arbitration proceedings over the stake, Justin Michaelson, a lawyer for LV Finance, said in a statement Friday.
IPOC had said it gained rights to the MegaFon stake by signing two options agreements with LV Finance, the previous owner, in 2001. Alfa acquired the stake in 2003. IPOC started arbitration proceedings that year, saying LV Finance’s then-chief executive, Leonid Rozhetskin, and Fridman colluded in an attempt to defraud IPOC of the stake.
The settlement ends a dispute involving proceedings in Zurich and Geneva and related actions in Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands and other jurisdictions begun in September 2003.
A Zurich-based arbitration tribunal concluded in May 2006 that IT and Communications Minister Leonid Reiman was the beneficial owner of IPOC. Reiman has repeatedly denied the connection to IPOC.
MegaFon spokeswoman Marina Belasheva said the company was aware of the agreement between the shareholders but declined to comment further.
 
Reuters, Bloomberg

TITLE: Fund Boss Touts Siloviki Ties
AUTHOR: By Miriam Elder
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Kremlin and an Israeli investment fund on Sunday sought to distance themselves from Oleg Shvartsman, an unknown Russian fund manager who claimed in an interview that he was a key money manager for the siloviki clan.
In an interview with Kommersant newspaper published Friday, Shvartsman said his firm, FinansGroup, benefited from links with the presidential administration, as well as internal and external intelligence services, in owning and managing $3.2 billion worth of assets.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the article “fake” and said it had “nothing to do with the truth.”
Shvartsman runs FinansGroup subsidiary Finans-Trust, a venture capital fund that has won an auction to receive budgetary support from the Russian Venture Company, a state fund created in August to support new startups.
In a series of surprisingly open statements to Kommersant, Shvartsman said he had official sanction to conduct a “velvet reprivatization” to win resources and industries that were originally sold off at knockdown prices during staged auctions in the 1990s.

TITLE: Investors Hoping for Clarity After State Duma Election
AUTHOR: By Catrina Stewart
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: While the international community’s attention was fixed on the State Duma elections this weekend, investors were eagerly awaiting the clarity they are expected to bring on President Vladimir Putin’s plans for the next administration.
But Sunday’s elections are important insofar as a high voter turnout will provide an air of legitimacy to Putin’s efforts to carve out a role in the future administration, analysts said.
“What is important is that with the Duma elections behind us, we shall start focusing on the presidential campaign,” said Alexei Zabotkin, chief strategist at Deutsche Bank. “We think that in the coming weeks, the visibility on the presidential succession will dramatically improve and that will have a very tangible impact on the market because investors are largely in limbo still.”
There were few indications last week that investors had been deterred by a wave of negative news from Russia, namely the detention of opposition candidates and allegations that the vote was being manipulated.
The view from most investors does not appear to have substantially changed in recent weeks, with stability remaining uppermost in their minds.
“As an investor, predictability is what you care about. You do have predictability here, which most Westerners don’t see,” Peter Halloran, president of the Pharos Fund, said in a recent interview.
“It isn’t Myanmar,” he added.
While markets traded down at the beginning of last week, both the RTS and MICEX started to pick up Wednesday, buoyed in part by improving U.S. sentiment.
On a local level, Gazprom enjoyed an upswing as the Federal Tariffs Service nears a decision on whether to raise domestic gas tariffs. In a time of global upsets, Russian blue chips are benefiting from renewed investor interest.
But all eyes were on Norilsk Nickel, as speculation was ramped up this week regarding the prospect of a full-blown merger between Norilsk Nickel and RusAl if the aluminum giant succeeds in buying a 25 percent stake from Mikhail Prokhorov.
Immediately, that raised concerns regarding the terms the minority shareholders in Norilsk could hope to receive.
UralSib issued a note on the likelihood of a reverse takeover between RusAl and Norilsk, a scenario with negative implications for minority shareholders because of the danger of their shares being diluted. Additionally, the bank’s analysts said, the proposed tie-up terms — as far as they are known — assume a generous valuation for RusAl and a rather less generous valuation for Norilsk.
While a merger between RusAl and Norilsk would create a diversified, global mining company, analysts say there is still uncertainty over the real intentions of billionaire Oleg Deripaska, the majority owner in RusAl.
By close of business Friday, Norilsk was down 1.3 percent on the week.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>Kovytka Deal Delayed</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Gazprom delayed its acquisition of the Kovykta gas field because it needs more information from TNK-BP, Gazprom deputy chief executive Alexander Medvedev said Friday in New York.
“To close the Kovykta deal, we need serious analysis to value the asset we are buying,” Medvedev said. “Our partners have not supplied us yet with all necessary documents.” 

<b>Gazprom Mulls Sales</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Gazprom may start selling its crude and gas production in rubles rather than dollars and euros, deputy chief executive Alexander Medvedev said Friday.
“We are seriously thinking about selling our resources in rubles,” Medvedev said. 
He did not give a specific timeline for the decision.
Medvedev also said Gazprom was interested in selling shares on the New York Stock Exchange to boost the stock’s liquidity. 

<b>RZD Bank Borrows</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — TransCreditBank, the lending arm of Russian Railways, plans to borrow as much as 50 billion rubles ($2 billion) by the end of 2008, the bank said Friday.
The lender plans to sell $1 billion of bonds to international investors and $300 million to $400 million in subordinated securities, said Marina Alekseyeva, a spokeswoman for TransCreditBank. 

<b>Prof-Media Stake</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov agreed to sell his half of Prof-Media to Vladimir Potanin as the two partners split their holdings, including Norilsk Nickel.
Potanin and managers of Prof-Media, which owns radio stations, magazines, a movie studio and television stations TV3 and MTV Russia, will buy out Prokhorov before the end of the year, KM-Invest said in a statement late Thursday. KM-Invest, jointly held by Potanin and Prokhorov, said Prof-Media was valued at $1.8 billion. 

<b>Polyus Wins License</b>
MOSCOW (Reuters) — The country’s top gold miner, Polyus Gold, said Friday that it had won an auction for a license to develop a field in the Irkutsk region, with resources of 80 tons.
Polyus said in a statement that its winning bid for the license to develop the Medvezhy deposit amounted to $1.3 million. 

<b>GAZ Foreign Order</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — GAZ, the country’s second-biggest automaker, may order $1.5 billion in parts from Michigan-based suppliers during the next five years, a law firm for the company said Friday.
The purchases were discussed in a meeting Thursday between GAZ president Leonid Dolgov and Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, said Rosemary Gilchrist, business-development manager for Giarmarco, Mullins & Horton. The Michigan-based firm represents the automaker. 

<b>Novolipetsk Net Falls </b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Novolipetsk Steel, the steelmaker controlled by billionaire Vladimir Lisin, said third-quarter profit fell 20 percent because asset-disposal gains from a year earlier were not repeated. Net income declined to $592.5 million, from $740.9 million a year earlier. The earnings were calculated by subtracting first-half profit from nine-month figures reported Friday by the company in a statement. Sales increased 10 percent to $1.94 billion in the quarter. 

<b>UES Venture to China</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — National utility Unified Energy System agreed to start work on a venture with China State Energy Corp. that will mine coal and build power plants.
UES’s board on Friday proposed to spend initially 2.1 billion rubles ($88 million) on the East Energy Co. venture, it said in a statement. The funds will come from the initial public offering of the OGK-5 generator, now part-owned by Italian utility Enel. 

<b>Mechel Mulls Spinoff</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Mechel, the steelmaker controlled by billionaire Igor Zyuzin, plans to decide by mid-2008 whether to spin off its coal business and sell shares in the unit.
Mechel may sell a minority stake in the unit in an initial public offering if it opts to pursue a spinoff, company spokesman Ilya Zhitomirsky said Friday. The coal assets are valued at $6 billion to $10 billion, he said. 

<b>TGK-7 Manager Killed</b>
MOSCOW (SPT) — A criminal investigation has been opened into the killing in Samara of the deputy financial director of TGK-7, Interfax reported Friday.
Yury Chibikov, 45, was killed Thursday evening in front of his home when an unidentified assailant struck him on the head four times with a metal rod, investigators said, Kommersant reported.
Chibikov had been preparing the company for an IPO, the newspaper said.
<b>Hotel Sold for $10.3M</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The St. Petersburg Property Fund sold Na Sadovoi hotel for 254 million rubles ($10.38 million) to Peterburgskie Oteli, Interfax reported Friday.
Seventeen companies took part in the auction. The starting price was 80 million rubles ($3.27 million). The lot comprised the six-story building at 53 Sadovaya Ulitsa and its land plot. The total area of the building is 2,600 square meters.

<b>Tunnel Tender</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Four companies will take part in the tender for the construction of Orlovsky Tunnel under the Neva River, the press service for the St. Petersburg governor said Friday in a statement.
The participants are Nevskaya Kotsessionnaya Kompania Ltd., Nevsky Tunnel Ltd., Buigproject Operating CJSC and Neva Traverse Gmbh. 
The winning company will sign an agreement for the construction of a 1,000-meter tunnel with a capacity of 60,000 cars a day.

<b>New Polymer Plant</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A new polymer center has opened at Komsomolskoi Pravdy Scientific and Production Association, the press service for the St. Petersburg governor said Friday in a statement.
The new center will supply polymers to Russian Railways, Svetlana Optoelectronics, Bosch & Siemens, Electrolux, Sumitomo and other Russian and foreign companies, being the most technologically advanced research center in Russia.

<b>VTB, SITQ Cut Deal</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Vneshtorgbank has signed an agreement with SITQ, one of the largest Canadian development companies, the bank said Friday in a statement.
Vneshtorgbank and SITQ will create a direct investment fund accumulating $200 million. The fund will invest in commercial real estate projects in Russia and the CIS.

TITLE: Gazprom Undervalued, By $207Bln, Alfa Says
AUTHOR: By Greg Walters and William Mauldin
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: Gazprom is “seriously undervalued” and investors should buy the world’s biggest gas company because it’s worth $521 billion, two-thirds more than the current market value and more than Exxon Mobil Corp., Alfa Bank said.
Alfa analysts Ron Smith and Konstantin Batunin raised their recommendation on Gazprom Monday to “buy” from “hold” and more than doubled their price target for the shares to $22, saying rising gas prices will boost their value in the next 12 months. The new target is 48 percent higher than the average estimate of 13 other investment banks, according to Bloomberg data.
The state-run company’s shares climbed as much as 0.8 percent to 325.07 rubles ($13.27) on the Micex Stock Exchange in Moscow, valuing the company at $314 billion. Moscow-based Gazprom fell as much as 1.1 percent before Alfa’s upgrade.
“Gazprom’s massive gas production, reserves and future earning power all call for a substantial re-rating of the stock,” the analysts wrote.
Gas prices are linked to crude and Alfa raised in October its forecast for oil to $85 per barrel in 2015. Gas exports bound for Europe should rise to $357 per 1,000 cubic meters from an average of $262 in 2006, while domestic prices should advance to $189 per 1,000 cubic meters in 2015 from a forecast $51 average this year, Smith and Batunin said. Gazprom supplies a quarter of Europe’s gas.
Alfa’s energy analysts led other investment banks in downgrading oil stocks on March 15. Goldman, Sachs & Co. and Citigroup Inc. followed in May and June, respectively.
Separately, Morgan Stanley raised its long-term oil price outlook to $85 per barrel from $65 to $70 per barrel. The higher price assumption led the U.S. bank to also raise its price estimate for Gazprom’s global depositary receipts to $79.30 from $69.50. Each London-traded GDR represents four Russian shares.
“It is only a slight exaggeration to say Gazprom is the Saudi Arabia of gas,” Smith and Batunin wrote. “Russia as a whole holds 26 percent of the world’s gas reserves.”
Gazprom produces the energy equivalent of about 10 million barrels of oil a day, more than Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil producer. Its market value is now the seventh-biggest just behind Microsoft Corp. PetroChina Co., China’s biggest oil company, has the highest market value at $706 billion, followed by Exxon at $487 billion.
Gazprom is currently valued at 12 times its earnings, compared with a price-to-earnings ratio of 13.6 at Exxon and 18 for PetroChina’s Hong Kong-listed shares, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Gazprom shares have climbed 6.5 percent this year compared with a gain of 8.9 percent for Moscow’s Micex Stock Exchange and a rise of 20 percent for the MSCI World Energy Index.

TITLE: Putin to Double Science Funding
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin pledged on Friday to double the government’s spending on science in the next two years, saying it was crucial to ensuring the country’s development.
Putin promised to boost government spending on science to more than 400 billion rubles (about $16.5 billion) by 2010, which is twice this year’s spending.
The pledge, made at a meeting with some of the country’s leading scientists and academics, was the latest in a string of apparent campaign promises made before Sunday’s State Duma elections.
Putin has encouraged voters to hand his party, United Russia, an overwhelming victory, suggesting that it would give him a mandate to retain influence over the government when his second term expires in May.
The president also criticized the Russian Academy of Sciences for engaging in commercial activities, saying that as many as 200 of its 600 scientific institutions were not used for scientific research.
“The Academy of Sciences is not a business corporation; it’s not a commercial organization,” he said.
When state funding dried up after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, many institutes began leasing their premises to businesses or moonlighting for private companies.
Putin said he also expected private companies to contribute to the regeneration of Russian science by investing 200 billion rubles by 2010.
“We need to create stimuli to involve the business community,” he said.
The president stressed the need to develop new scientific fields such as nanotechnology, nuclear physics, bioengineering and others to provide for the country’s defense needs and social development.

TITLE: Severstal Profit Falls 18% Due to Disrupted Output
AUTHOR: By Maria Kolesnikova
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW —Severstal, Russia’s largest steelmaker, said third-quarter profit fell 18 percent because of disruption to steel and coal production. The shares fell.
Net income fell to $326 million, or 32 cents a share, from $399 million, or 43 cents, a year earlier, the Cherepovets-based company said on its Web site today. Sales climbed 10 percent to $3.56 billion.
“These are awful results, way worse than we had expected,” Dmitriy Kolomytsyn, a Moscow-based analyst with Aton Capital, said by telephone today. Kolomytsyn, who has a ”hold” rating on the company, had expected profit of about $600 million.
Russian steel consumption will expand 25 percent this year, according to the Brussels-based International Iron & Steel Institute. The country’s oil-fueled economy is expanding for a ninth consecutive year, spurring Russians to buy more houses, cars and other goods containing the metal.
Severstal fell $0.70, or 3 percent, to $22.70 as of 12:24 p.m. in London trading. The stock fell 8.75 rubles (36 cents), or 1.6 percent, to 554.50 rubles on the Micex Stock Exchange in Moscow. They have gained 81 percent this year, better than the 63 percent advance in the 15-member MSCI EM Europe/Materials Index.
Output slowed at the Cherepovets steel plant in the quarter while an accident curbed production at the Komsomol coal mine at its OAO Vorkutaugol unit. Railroad bottlenecks at Severstal iron- ore producing unit OAO Karelsky Okatysh also caused delays.
Sales in Russia rose 25 percent in the third quarter, while European sales grew 15 percent, Severstal said. Third-quarter prices remained “strong,” the company said.
The Russian government has also pledged 980 billion rubles ($38 billion) for homebuilding and other projects including the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics complex.
North American sales fell 14 percent because of “poor” market conditions and the relining of a blast furnace at Severstal North America. Severstal plans to spend about $1 billion on its U.S. business through 2010. The nation accounts for about 16 percent of total sales.
Severstal agreed today to increase its stake in the SeverCorr steel mini-mill in Columbus, Mississippi, to 71.1 percent. 
The steelmaker will pay Chief Executive Officer Alexei Mordashov $84.4 million for an unspecified stake in SeverCorr, an $880 million venture with a group of American steel executives.
Severstal today also said it bought the 50 percent it didn’t already own of a steel-cord venture in Russia with ArcelorMittal.
Severstal will meet “market expectations” for the full year because of “operational improvements, a robust and growing Russian economy, and relatively strong prices in other world markets,” Mordashov said today in a statement distributed by the Regulatory News Service.

TITLE: UES to Sell 21 Percent of Mosenergo to City
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — The board of state utility Unified Energy System on Friday approved the sale of 21.2 percent of Moscow utility Mosenergo to the city government for 6.5 rubles per share, valuing the stake at $2.25 billion.
The city, which already owns 5.4 percent of Mosenergo, will have until Jan. 30, 2009, to pay for the stake in full, UES said in a statement after the board meeting. Mosenergo is majority controlled by Gazprom.
The board also sought to make progress on the utility’s various spinoff sales, which have so far had mixed results.
Integrated Energy Systems, the investment vehicle of billionaire Viktor Vekselberg, said Friday that it wanted more talks on the price of power firm TGK-9 despite UES dropping the price by 6.2 percent to appease IES.
The utility decided Friday to lower the minimum asking price for TGK-9 to 0.801 kopeks per share after IES declined to pay the initial price.
“The lowering of the price was predictable, but we will continue in the course of the next week to talk about this price with UES,” IES chief Mikhail Slobodin said.
The initial asking price set by UES was 0.854 kopeks per share, at a premium of about 15 percent to market levels. IES declined to enter a bid at that price last month. Talks with UES over the sale of TGK-9 then broke down.
IES already owns more than 30 percent of TGK-9, and UES was depending on IES to purchase control. Reported talks with other potential buyers did not produce a deal.
UES could put off a secondary share offering of its power producer OGK-6 until as late as the first quarter of 2009, the utility said Friday. UES initially planned to sell OGK-6 shares in October but decided to postpone the offering, citing unfavorable market conditions. UES had said the placement would still be carried out before the end of 2007.
But the board decided Friday that the share sale could be split into two parts, the first taking place either this year or in the first quarter of 2008. The money raised from this part of the sale would finance OGK-6 investment until the second round of the sale could be held sometime between the fourth quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009.
OGK-6 is majority controlled by Gazprom, and analysts have said the initial plan for the share sale broke down because not enough investors were ready to become Gazprom’s strategic partners.
UES also said Friday that it would not lower the price of the supply firms that it has twice failed to sell at auctions, and is seeking instead to sell them on a new platform.

TITLE: School Strives to Educate ‘Disobedient Pioneers’
AUTHOR: By Maria Antonova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Sergei Bebchuk no longer remembers the exact circumstances when he claimed to know how to make a perfect school.
“I think it was at the annual computer science conference in Abrau-Durso,” he said.
That slip of tongue redirected him from a career in computer science to creating a unique public school for only 60 students with no gradebooks, its own constitution and month-long studies in Crimean caves.
Graduating from Moscow State University’s Faculty of Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics, Bebchuk, along with other classmates, was sent to work on the hotel and airline reservation system for the 1980 Olympic games. This jump-started his career in computer science and formed one of the country’s best programming teams at the time.
While working on building the informational system for Pravda newspaper from scratch, Bebchuk met the academic Andrei Ershov, who was concerned that the promising new field of computer science was totally ignored by Soviet schools. Bebchuk became one of the co-authors of the Soviet Union’s first textbook on the subject, which came out in 1986, and volunteered to field-test it as a teacher.
After a few years of part-time teaching, Bebchuk was invited to help open a school with an emphasis on mathematics. The new school opened right after the 1991 putsch.
“We were put into in a preschool building that had stood open and empty for four years,” he said. “There was no heat, no linoleum, no windows or doors, and remodeling was not completed by September. The hallways were finished, but there was only room in there for two grades.”
Bebchuk took most of the pupils on a camping trip to the Crimean Peninsula, packing all the pasta and grains that the parents could gather during a time when buying food was a problem.
In 1994, Bebchuk became the head of a new public school, No. 1199 — also called Liga, or “a league of schools” by its students — in the southern Moscow district of Yasenevo, incorporating many of his new ideas of what a school should be. The Crimean trip became the initiation for all newly admitted seventh graders: every September they live in a cave, bond, and study history among the ancient ruins of Khersones, astronomy in the Crimean observatory and botany in the Nikitsky Botanical Garden.
Making lemonade out of life’s lemons and finding unconventional solutions to unexpected problems are abilities that Bebchuk seeks to cultivate in all students. “Bringing up disobedient pioneers” who take risks, go against the norms and use their intuition, is one of the school’s principles listed on its web site.
“This school is for kids with an inner drive who want to be a plug for every hole, as its often put,” Bebchuk said.
Children join the school in seventh grade, after passing a two-tier examination and memorizing the school’s constitution. After graduating, most go on to study in Moscow universities.
Bebchuk’s idea of teaching is quite different from the approach of other institutions. Most teachers in the school don’t have degrees in education and come to the school part time from careers in research and professorships at Moscow’s leading universities. Some teachers come because they enjoy each other’s company, and others want to attract young minds into their field.
“To teach kids in this school, the person has to be an inspired expert in their field, and have a boundless pool of energy,” Bebchuk said. “Working here is hard, but no one has quit in the past five years.”

Courtesy of Sergei Bebchuk
The trip is an initiation for 7th graders.	
Last year, this smallest school in Moscow was ranked among the top 30 out of 1,654 public schools, according to an evaluation in Izvestia newspaper. Mikhail Berezin, who graduated from the school in 2005, praised its approach.
“I dislike bureaucracy and school in general had a hostile atmosphere for me until I came to Liga, where I was always comfortable,” Berezin said. “Students communicated as equals with Bebchuk and other teachers. It’s hard to overestimate his role in the school’s existence,” he added.
Bebchuk, who is 50, admitted that the ability to travel four months out a year was one of the reasons why he enjoyed working at the school. He said he was preparing to ride across northern Greece on a tandem triple cycle with his wife and daughter. Bebchuk designed the bike himself and had it custom made.
“As long as the school has freedom that I originally asked for, the school will live,” Bebchuk said, referring to Article 15 of the Law on Education. “But as soon as they change that, we will close.”

TITLE: Euro 2008 May Bring Economy $2.1Bln
AUTHOR: By Bradley Klapper
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LUCERNE, Switzerland — The European Championship will be a big moneymaker for its hosts, Austria and Switzerland, even without England and its 40,000 traveling fans.
The June 7-29 soccer tournament, which will involve 16 teams, will boost the European economy by 1.4 billion euros ($2.1 billion), according to study commissioned by MasterCard Inc. and released Sunday.
Euro 2008’s impact will “include a rise in ticket sales, travel, food and beverage sales, merchandising, sponsorship revenue, advertising and use of telecommunications and new media services,” said the 11-page report.
The economic impact, the report added, will be felt not only in the Austrian and Swiss cities hosting the matches, but also at the national and Europe-wide level. A UEFA-commissioned study after the Euro 2004 tournament in Portugal found that the European economy had benefited to the tune of 800 million euros.
Written by Simon Chadwick, director of sport business at Coventry University in England, the new study said the most lucrative matches would be Italy vs. Netherlands on June 9 and the Netherlands vs. France on June 13 — both in the Swiss capital of Bern — and France vs. Italy, June 17 in Zurich. Those matches could be worth up to 56 million euros ($82.7 million) to the economies of the two competing nations, and contribute to an overall “halo effect” that could total of 300 million euros ($442.8 million) in economic value to Austria and Switzerland.
Every match in the tournament will be felt throughout Europe, even in countries that failed to qualify, “principally driven by sponsorship and commercial revenues,” said Chadwick.
The study rejects the notion that England’s exclusion from the tournament will dampen its economic value.
England missed out after losing to Croatia in its last qualifying match, handing Russia second place in the group and a spot in the finals. More than 40,000 English were expected to travel to the Alpine countries.
Chadwick said England’s loss “creates an interesting dimension to Euro 2008.”
Russia, Europe’s largest nation, has only qualified for one major tournament in the last decade — the Euro 2004 in Portugal — and becomes the economic wild-card for next year’s event.
Chadwick said it is “difficult to predict what the economic impact of the country’s participation in EURO 2008 will be,” but hinted that it could exceed expectations because of rising economic growth and income levels in Russia.
Russia’s “telecommunications market is strengthening and the sponsorship and commercial rights market is burgeoning,” Chadwick said. “Expenditure on overseas tourism and interest in football are growing.”

TITLE: Vivendi to Buy Major Stake in Activision
AUTHOR: By Keith St. Clair
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LOS ANGELES — Vivendi SA said Sunday that it plans to acquire a controlling stake in Activision Inc. and combine the company with Vivendi Games in a deal that would create a rival to Electronic Arts Inc. as the world’s largest video game publisher.
The combination of Santa Monica-based Activision, whose titles include “Guitar Hero,” “Call of Duty” and the “Tony Hawk” series, and Vivendi Games, which publishes “Crash Bandicoot” and owns the online role-playing franchise “World of Warcraft,” would create the world’s largest pure-play online and console game publisher, the companies said.
Vivendi Games will convert its equity into Activision shares valued at $8.1 billion, and Vivendi will buy an additional $1.7 billion of stock, for a total of $9.8 billion, giving Vivendi a 52 percent stake in a new company to be called Activision Blizzard. On that basis, Activision and Vivendi valued the combined company at $18.9 billion.
“This transaction has always stuck out as the way to become the number one most successful video-game publisher,” Activision Chief Executive Bobby Kotick said in an interview.
Vivendi’s Irvine, Calif.-based Blizzard Entertainment is behind the top multiplayer online role-playing game franchise, “World of Warcraft,” which the company says more than 9.3 million subscribers worldwide. Blizzard’s Warcraft and Diablo series are two of the top-selling video game lines of all time.
Jean-Bernard Levy, chairman and chief executive officer of Vivendi, pledged the deal “will unlock the value of Blizzard.”
Said Jeff Brown, spokesman for Electronic Arts: “We wish them luck. We look forward to the competition and believe that EA still has the strongest portfolio of perennial game franchises.”
Kotick, who will stay on as president and CEO of the new company, said the deal had been in negotiations since January. Under the agreement, shares of Vivendi Games will be converted into 295.3 million new shares of Activision common stock at a price of $27.50 per share, for a value of $8.1 billion, the companies said in a statement.
Vivendi, based in Paris, France, also will purchase 62.9 million newly issued shares of Activision common stock at a price of $27.50 per share, or $1.7 billion, giving Vivendi its 52 percent stake.
Activision Blizzard will continue to operate as a public company traded on the Nasdaq Stock Market under the ticker ATVI.
After the transaction closes, expected in the first half of 2008, Activision Blizzard will launch a $4 billion all-cash tender offer to purchase up to 146.5 million Activision Blizzard common shares at $27.50 each. Vivendi also has agreed to acquire an additional $700 million of newly issued Activision shares, giving Vivendi about a 68 percent stake in Activision Blizzard if the tender offer is fully subscribed.
The offer price is a 24 percent premium to Activision’s closing price Friday of $22.15 per share.
Activision Blizzard’s board of directors will be comprised of six directors designated by Vivendi, two Activision management directors and three independent directors who currently serve on Activision’s board of directors.
Vivendi Games CEO Bruce Hack will serve as vice chairman and chief corporate officer of Activision Blizzard.
The merger will provide Activision Blizzard with the most diversified and broadest portfolio of interactive entertainment assets in the industry, according to the statement.
The companies said the transaction would be accretive to earnings for both companies’ shareholders in the first year after the deal closes. The combined company is targeting pro forma operating income of $1.1 billion and pro forma earnings per share of more than $1.20 in calendar year 2009.

TITLE: U.S. Rehabbers Begin To Cash In on Foreclosed Houses
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MAPLE HEIGHTS, Ohio — After the unpaid mortgage bills, the creditor warnings and finally the sheriff’s sale, it’s sometimes left to a handy man like Adrian Brad to clean up the mess left by the nation’s home foreclosure crisis.
“I’m not trying to become a millionaire,” said Brad, a firefighter who has found a new part-time career buying and fixing up foreclosed homes. “It’s something I do.”
Most foreclosed homes are bought at auction by the lenders, get fixed by contractors who specialize in the work and return to the real estate market. Few get the attention of one-man operations like Brad’s, according to Leo Baez, construction director in New York with Enterprise Community Partners Inc., which works on housing issues with neighborhood development organizations across the country.
Rehabbers gamble that the renovations they do — new carpeting, fresh paint, refinished floors, for instance — will enable them to quickly resell or rent a property. A rehabber’s stake depends on the market and neighborhood, and that can be as little as $20,000 or $30,000 for a fixer-upper in blue-collar Cleveland, where a rehabbed home might fetch $50,000 or $60,000.
In the current down market, “If you can get away with 15 grand profit, shoot, I would take it,” said Tony Patterson, who buys and fixes up two or three foreclosed homes a year, in addition to his home repair contracting business in Pittsburgh.
In a hot real estate market, Patterson said he can make $20,000 to $40,000 fixing up and selling a foreclosed home, sometimes turning them over in one or two months.
Brad rents out one rehabbed home, lives in the second one and took on a tougher project for his third: a three-bedroom, 1,150-square-foot bungalow with detached garage in a blue-collar neighborhood that has become a poster community for foreclosures.
On a recent afternoon, for-sale signs were outside three of the eight homes closest to Brad’s house in this city of 27,000. Some homes had a fresh coat of paint but others had a well-worn or vacant look.
The number of U.S. homes in foreclosure is expected to keep soaring after more than doubling during the third quarter from a year earlier, to 446,726 homes, according to Irvine, Calif.-based RealtyTrac Inc. That’s one foreclosure filing for every 196 households, a 34 percent jump from three months earlier.
The Cleveland suburb of Maple Heights was ranked in the top one-half of 1 percent nationally in foreclosures by ZIP code.
A recent RealtyTrac listing showed 1,101 troubled homes in Maple Heights, including 199 on the auction block, 564 owned by banks and 268 in the early stages of foreclosure proceedings.
At a recent county sheriff’s foreclosure sale, with Brad in the drab auditorium keeping tabs, the auction of more than 120 homes lasted about 81 minutes. Some homes failed to attract a bid, some were withdrawn, and most got a single bid, typically by the lender, for the minimum asking price.
Like loyal bingo players but without the occasional moments of excitement, a few dozen bankers and attorneys and a smattering of contractors and one-man operators like Brad assemble for similar scenes each Monday.
“If you’re willing to work hard, there’s a niche for you in this county,” said Brad, who routinely heads to his rehab house for a day’s work after 24 hours on duty at the firehouse in suburban North Royalton.
Brad, 28, successfully bid $65,000 in June for the home, which had been appraised at $120,000. His goal: sell it for about $110,000, which would mean a profit of $10,000 to $20,000, depending on the final rehab cost.
On his first visit to the house Brad found a trail of personal items including wedding photos, credit cards, bank statements and clothes. “It seems like they left in a hurry,” he said. He discarded the personal items and checked with his church about taking the clothes to give to the needy.
Chipping away at aging kitchen tile between phone calls from his fiancee, he brushes aside the litany of possible complications, such as whether he can sell the house in a community of declining income or find a reliable tenant. He said he was confident his sweat equity — the increased value of the home from his handiwork — eventually would pay off.
“The risk is big, but the rewards can be 10 times that,” he said.
Rehabbing foreclosed homes isn’t for everybody, and Brad worries that the TV shows with 60-minute makeovers may give people the wrong impression. “This is not like TV. They’ve got unlimited budgets,” he said.

TITLE: The Vote Was Not Free or Transparent
AUTHOR: editorial
TEXT: Vladimir Churov, head of the Central Elections Commission, gave a small group of foreign reporters a personal guarantee five days before the State Duma elections took place. “They will be the most free, most transparent and most suitable elections for citizens,” Churov said.
Churov was right about one thing: The elections were transparent. Indeed, it was clear long before the results started coming in Sunday night that United Russia would win by a landslide. The preliminary results indicate a big step back from the 2003 elections, when United Russia only secured a two-thirds majority by hastily cobbling together alliances with independent deputies after the vote. Even Kremlin insiders have admitted privately that Sunday’s vote was no contest.
By the standards of leading democracies, the elections did not come close to being transparent. In large part this was because the Kremlin did not even bother to conceal its distaste for transparency. Its decision to sharply reduce the number of international election observers, and a subsequent visa imbroglio that caused a key observer mission to pull out, cast a dark cloud over the elections and their credibility.
Even the presence of the observers, however, might not have offered assurances of a more transparent vote. A senior election official told Moscow Times reporter Francesca Mereu in an article published Tuesday that regional election officials manipulated results from polling stations in 2003 as foreign observers watched on unsuspectingly.
Ahead of Sunday’s elections, the official said, regional committees were ordered to resort to any means necessary, including fraud, to ensure that United Russia won 70 to 80 percent of the vote — up to double the amount that the party was getting in opinion polls last week.
The orders to guarantee a big victory are all the more astonishing because United Russia would have won anyway. Over the past month, United Russia has enjoyed a near-monopoly on campaign billboards nationwide. The state-controlled airwaves have been so saturated with United Russia coverage that 8 percent of voters actually believed the party had beat its opponents in televised debates — even though the party had refused to participate in them.
More disturbing are the statements from numerous people — including bureaucrats, doctors, teachers and students — that they planned to vote for United Russia and convince friends to vote as well to avoid being fired, passed up for a promotion or given bad grades. The senior election official — who was told to vote for United Russia and asked to recruit 10 people to follow suit — said the pressure was coming from the party.
This kind of badgering is unacceptable. Elections cannot be described as free unless they are insulated from external authority, interference or restrictions, and no talk of the peculiarities of sovereign democracy can explain this away.
Free elections are held to determine the will of the people, and Russian voters have long backed President Vladimir Putin’s course. This is what makes the hijinks surrounding Sunday’s vote all the more disappointing and seemingly unnecessary.
But does this in any way make the elections the “most suitable for citizens,” as Churov put it? The Kremlin obviously thinks that its current course is best for the country — as well it should. Some Kremlin insiders, however, say the only way to guarantee this course is to block Grigory Yavlinsky, Garry Kasparov, Boris Nemtsov and other opposition figures from the Duma. But this sounds like nonsense even to the most cynical manipulator: A small opposition faction would in fact give the Duma a semblance of credibility while posing no threat to United Russia.
It would be easy to view this mindset as another example of paranoia from a Kremlin intent on controlling every aspect of politics. But in this case, the Kremlin actually might have something to be nervous about. Its bet that Putin’s endorsement of United Russia would translate into a bigger victory for the party was looking shaky as recently as last week. United Russia’s popularity was somewhere from 45 to 60 percent, depending on the opinion poll, while Putin’s rating was above 80 percent. This was disturbing news for a Kremlin that had sold the elections as a referendum on Putin’s course. This might be why Putin made an eleventh-hour televised appeal to Russians to vote for United Russia on Thursday.
No Western election observer is needed to determine that this vote did not meet the common standards of being free and transparent. But Churov never promised a fair democratic election. What he offered instead was a fair sovereign democratic election. Sunday’s vote serves as another brick in the wall that is isolating Russia from the true values of democracy.

TITLE: Dubai on the Moscow River
AUTHOR: By Alexei Bayer
TEXT: Writing in the Nov. 22 issue of The New York Review of Books, former Soviet dissident Sergei Kovalyov analyzed the reasons for President Vladimir Putin’s remarkable popularity. A consistent critic of Putin’s neo-Soviet policies, Kovalyov nevertheless recognized that Putin’s skillful revival of certain Soviet myths gave the people what many of them craved — a national narrative and a sense of continuity.
Kovalyov wrote the article before the worshiping of Putin reached its grotesque crescendo in the weeks preceding Sunday’s State Duma elections. He might have changed his mind about continuity in Russia.
A friend of mine, a renowned food critic, visited Moscow this fall for the first time in five years. She was impressed with the world-class restaurants popping up all around the capital but also dismayed by the sense of disconnect that pervades the city. She said it reminded her of Dubai, a showcase of petrodollar glamour that grew up seemingly overnight smack in the middle of a desert society.
It is a remarkably apt comparison. Today’s conspicuously wealthy, top-heavy Moscow is only vaguely, if at all, derived from Russia’s recent history. Certainly none of those restaurants, boutiques, gated communities and “elite” apartment blocks represents a natural progression of seven decades of building communism or an attempt to build a Western-style democracy during the 1990s.
Russians I have talked to recently express disgust at the three-ring circus created around Putin, but also considerable surprise. Why is this pathetic spectacle required at all, they ask themselves, if the victory for United Russia is assured anyway and Putin can do whatever he wants?
But this is a crucial point. Putin’s Russia — this supposedly prosperous, sovereign democracy, respected military power and legitimate member of the Group of Eight — is, in fact, a mirage. Whatever prosperity there is, it has been bought by petrodollars. It may have happened on Putin’s watch, but not due to some mythical plan of his. Putin has not created a diversified, enduring economic system over the past eight years. Russia’s new wealth has just sprung out of the ground, and it is measured on a superficial level — by the incredible amount of imported expensive gadgets and other consumer goods that Russians have been buying up with a frenzy.
Putin’s support is equally ephemeral. It is based on nothing more solid than the wholesale swearing of allegiance by government employees, a sycophantic chorus of politicians and official artists and KamAZ-size loads of voter petitions begging him to remain a national leader.
Putin has not created a national idea. Nostalgia for the Communist Party, represented by United Russia, may do the trick for the bureaucrats, but not for the nation. Russian society still casts about in search of a suitable national identity, reaching for uglier forms of nationalism in the process.
A very telling episode took place this summer, after a British police investigation into the murder of former Federal Security Service officer Alexander Litvinenko in London traced the poison to Moscow. Putin responded to the legitimate request to extradite the suspect in the case, Andrei Lugovoi, by lashing out against Britain, all but threatening to put the puny little island in its place.
Britain only shrugged in response. The longevity of the British political system is the envy of the world. The same institutions — which include its legal system — have endured for centuries.
Over the past century, Britain and other outside observers have seen a dozen similar Putins rise to the pantheon of world-historical geniuses one day only to be cast upon the dust heap of history the next. The wheels of British justice will continue to turn and, with patience, there is a pretty good chance that Lugovoi and those who sent him on his deadly mission will yet stand trial in London.

Alexei Bayer, a native Muscovite, is a New York-based economist.

TITLE: Unmasking President Putin’s Grandiose Myth
AUTHOR: By Anders Aslund
TEXT: Most political leaders are mediocre, a few are heroes and some are just plain lucky. In Russia, many see President Vladimir Putin as a hero — an authoritarian reformer who has brought economic growth and stability to Russia. But let’s scrutinize his record a little closer. Russia’s outstanding achievement is that its gross domestic product has increased six fold from $200 billion in 1999 to $1.2 trillion this year, but this is primarily a result of the market reforms undertaken in the 1990s.
The real growth rate is not outstanding. The whole Eurasian region raging from China to the Baltics has been growing at rates from 7 percent to 11 percent annually since 2000, but Russia’s growth rate has only been 6.7 percent. In spite of its abundance of oil and gas, it ranks 9th among the 15 former Soviet republics in growth for this period. The reason is that Russia is lagging behind in most reforms.
Financial stabilization remains incomplete. Last year, inflation stopped at 9 percent, but it is rising. Before the State Duma elections, the government abandoned macroeconomic caution. Although inflation is rising, the government is sharply increasing public spending. At the same time, it has imposed informal price controls on gasoline and food, and this has caused some shortages. In this way, detrimental Soviet economic thinking has been revived.
What political stability is possible when nobody knows anything about Russia’s political future after March 2008? In his speech on Nov. 21, Putin said, “In the next several months, a complete renewal of Russia’s highest state power will take place,” but he refuses to explain what he meant, thus leaving the country in complete uncertainty. He also has not explained what the well-advertised “Putin’s Plan” is.
Putin has built a personal authoritarian system in which he makes all major decisions himself. This overcentralization of power leaves the decision makers poorly informed about everything they decide, and the government-controlled media has suffocated all policy debate. As a result, fear is rising with the steadily increasing repression.
As a consequence, central decisions are few and of poor quality. During his second term, Putin has undertaken virtually no economic reforms, and therefore has not contributed to economic growth. His entire endeavor has been to reinforce authoritarianism and to let his KGB friends from St. Petersburg indulge in lawless renationalization and larceny that has impeded investment and production, especially in energy.
Personal authoritarian systems are not very stable because they depend entirely upon one ruler. If he leaves office, such a system usually collapses. Since Putin has conscientiously undermined many state institutions, he has obviously intended to stay on all along.
This system has no other legitimacy than economic growth. Fortunately, Putin has not developed any ideology, even if he toys with Russian nationalism. Nor does he have any party. After all, United Russia is only a bunch of state bureaucrats. It is interesting that Putin’s big Moscow speech on Nov. 21 managed to mobilize only 5,000 supporters. When the regime fails to deliver steady high economic growth, it is likely to be frail even while maintaining a policy of repression.
Everybody around Putin is completely corrupt, but many think that the president himself is honest. In February 2004, presidential candidate Ivan Rybkin named three men as Putin’s bagmen, including Gennady Timchenko, the co-founder of the Gunvor oil-trading company. After Rybkin made this statement, he vanished from the political stage. In September, the Polish magazine Wprost wrote that Timchenko, a former KGB officer and member of Putin’s dacha cooperative in St. Petersburg, has a net worth of $20 billion. Officially, Timchenko sells the oil of four Russian oil companies, but how are the prices determined to generate such profits?
In a sensational interview in Germany’s Die Welt on Nov. 12, Stanislav Belkovsky, the well-connected insider who initiated the Kremlin campaign against Yukos in 2003, made specific claims about Putin’s wealth. He alleged that Putin owned 37 percent of Surgutneftegaz (worth $18 billion), 4.5 percent of Gazprom ($13 billion) and half of Timchenko’s company, Gunvor (possibly $10 billion). If this information is true, Putin’s total personal fortune would amount to no less than $41 billion, placing him among the 10 richest in the world.
These shareholdings have been rumored for years, but now a prominent international newspaper has published such allegations made by a well-informed source. If these numbers contain any truth, Putin would be the most corrupt political leader in world history, easily surpassing Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines and Zaire’s Mobutu.
Last year, a private arbitration tribunal in Zurich, Switzerland, ruled that Putin’s close St. Petersburg friend from his days in foreign intelligence, IT and Telecommunications Minister Leonid Reiman, is the beneficiary of telecommunications assets presently valued at $6 billion. Putin’s only reaction was to block this information in Russian media.
Both the World Bank and Transparency International assess that corruption in Russia has increased after 2004, while it has declined in most post-Soviet countries. Recently, a few senior officials have been arrested for organized crime, but this has nothing to do with the actual fight against corruption. The common view is that these arrests are only part of a turf war among Putin’s KGB men from St. Petersburg.
Nor has Putin brought some law and order to Russia, according to an excellent analysis by Brian Taylor of Syracuse University. Despite sharply rising expenditures on law enforcement, the average annual murder rate under Putin has been higher than under Yeltsin. According to Taylor’s report, no country outside of Iraq and Afghanistan has suffered so many terrorist attacks as Russia (even outside of Chechnya) after Sept. 11.
The final claim of Putin’s supporters is that he is re-establishing Russia on the world stage and restoring its military, but even that is not true. Military reform has stopped, and hundreds of conscripts are driven to suicide every year because they are exploited as slave labor. Military procurements and wish lists focus on the priorities of the Cold War in the 1970s — intercontinental ballistic missiles, nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers — rather than new smart weapons for contemporary military needs.
My verdict is that Putin has had tremendous luck, which he has utilized to build up an anachronistic authoritarian reign. One could draw a historical parallel between Putin and Tsar Nicholas I, who ruled from 1825 to 1855 to the benefit of nobody except his own close circle. Abundant oil revenues have made it possible for Putin to avoid difficult reforms and to allow his inner circle to indulge in some of the worst corruption the world has ever seen.

Anders Aslund, a senior fellow of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, is author of the recently published book “Russia’s Capitalist Revolution: Why Market Reform Succeeded and Democracy Failed.”

TITLE: ‘Teddy’ Teacher Set Free by Sudan Leader
AUTHOR: By Opheera McDoom
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: KHARTOUM — The British teacher jailed in Sudan for letting her students name a teddy bear Mohammad won a pardon on Monday and was released into British care.
Gillian Gibbons, sentenced on Thursday to 15 days in jail followed by deportation for insulting Islam, was pardoned after an appeal by two prominent British Muslims to Sudan’s president for her early release.
An adviser to Sudanese President Hassan al-Bashir, asked to confirm Gibbons had been pardoned, said: “Definitely, yes.”
Students waved flags and beat drums in protest outside the British embassy in Khartoum, following demonstrations on Friday when sword-waving Islamists called for the teacher’s death.
Gibbons apologized after the pardon announcement for any discomfort she had caused to the people of Sudan. The British embassy said she was in its care.
“I have been in Sudan for only four months but I have enjoyed myself immensely. I have encountered nothing but kindness and generosity from the Sudanese people,” she said, in a statement read by British Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, one of the peers who met Bashir.
“I have great respect for the Islamic religion and would not knowingly offend anyone. I am sorry if I caused any distress.”
A Sudanese presidential adviser said she was expected to leave Sudan on Monday. She was leaving for security reasons.
Gibbons prompted a complaint after she let her pupils at Khartoum’s private Unity High School pick their favorite name for a teddy bear as part of a project in September.
Twenty out of 23 of them chose Mohammad — a popular boy’s name in Sudan, as well as the name of Islam’s Prophet.
The two British peers, Warsi and Lord Ahmed, had launched a private initiative to secure Gibbons’ early release. 
They delayed their departure after President Omar Hassan al-Bashir confirmed a last-minute meeting, following a two-day wait.
The staff of Unity High School where Gibbons worked shouted gleefully when they heard the news.
“Everybody is so happy, everyone is just laughing now,” Robert Boulos, head of the school, told Reuters.
He said Gibbons would be welcome to rejoin the teaching staff if she wanted. Gibbons had been suspended following a school investigation into the affair.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, whose country has had poor relations with Sudan for several years mainly due to the ongoing conflict in Darfur, said he was “delighted and relieved” to hear that Gibbons would be released shortly.
“Common sense has prevailed. She will be released into the care of our embassy in Khartoum after what must have been a difficult ordeal,” he said in a statement.
Sudan’s influential Council of Muslim Scholars had urged the government on Sunday not to pardon Gibbons, saying it would damage Khartoum’s reputation among Muslims around the world.
About 50 demonstrators shouting “There is no God but Allah” and “We will die for the Prophet Mohammad” handed over a petition to the embassy about the affair.
“Retracting this light sentence ... would wound the sensibilities of the Muslims in Sudan,” Council Spokesman al-Sheikh Mohammad Abdel Karim said.
Many Sudanese said they thought it was an innocent mistake which could be forgiven after an apology.
Khartoum has had tense ties with the West in recent years over disagreements over how to handle Darfur, where the U.N. Security Council wants to deploy a joint U.N.-African force to help end the conflict and help displaced people return home.
Khartoum reluctantly agreed but is disputing many details. International experts say some 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have fled their homes in ethnic and political conflict in Darfur since a revolt by mostly non-Arab rebels in 2003.

TITLE: Team U.S.A. Beats Russians in Davis Cup
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PORTLAND, Oregon — James Blake smiled his way through an ultimately meaningless match Sunday, still reveling in the United States’ victory over Russia in the Davis Cup final.
“It’s starting to sink in,” Blake said. “We did it.”
Blake defeated Dmitry Tursunov 1-6, 6-3, 7-5, and the U.S. beat Russia 4-1 to win the Davis Cup title.
Igor Andreyev gave the Russians their only win in the final by defeating Bob Bryan 6-3, 7-6 (4) earlier in the day, after United States had already clinched the title for the first time in 12 years.
Bryan and his brother Mike defeated the Russian duo of Andreyev and Nikolai Davydenko 7-6 (4), 6-4, 6-2 on Saturday to give the Americans an insurmountable 3-0 advantage.
At a ceremony following the final two matches, captain Patrick McEnroe was brimming with pride.
“It’s pretty emotional. I think it’s finally setting in that these guys did it,” McEnroe said. “We won the Cup.”
Blake called it one of the greatest moments of his career.
The first match on the hard court at Memorial Coliseum was supposed to be between sixth-ranked Andy Roddick and Mikhail Youzhny, but the captains for Russia and the United States each made substitutions.
Andreyev claimed the first set, and then the crowd tried to spur Bryan with chants of “Go Bob Go!” At one point he got frustrated and dropped his spinning racket to the court, but he saved serve on a pivotal game that went to deuce four times, evening the second set at 3-3.
The second set would go to a tiebreaker, which Andreyev won with a forehand that sailed past Bryan at the net.
“Of course, we didn’t want to lose 5-love, but today I couldn’t take this much too serious ... At least we showed we could fight and maybe make up a little for the score,” Andreev said.
Each player had seven aces in the 1 hour, 22 minute match.
Bryan said such meaningless matches are “probably the worst thing in sports.”
“Imagine Jordan winning an NBA title and having to play a pickup game against the guys he just beat,” Bryan said.
Tursunov easily won the first set against 13th-ranked Blake, but the American, playing loose and often smiling, won the second.
Blake broke Tursunov to go up 6-5 in the final set, then held serve to complete the 1 hour, 40 minute match. Tursunov finished with seven double-faults.
The once-dominant United States had not won the Davis Cup since 1995, the longest span without an American victory. Pete Sampras last led the team to victory over Russia on clay in Moscow.
The victory gave the United States its 32nd title in the international competition, dating to 1900.
On Friday, Roddick defeated Tursunov 6-4, 6-4, 6-2 in the opening match and Blake outlasted Youzhny 6-3, 7-6 (4), 6-7 (3), 7-6 (3).
No. 34 Tursunov was the lowest-ranked member of the Russian team, following fourth-ranked Davydenko, No. 19 Youzhny and No. 33 Andreyev.
Davydenko came into the Davis Cup final under investigation for unusual betting patterns on a match he played in August.
The best-of-five final was a culmination of a year’s worth of international competition. 
Sunday’s reverse singles were shortened to best-of-three sets because the U.S. had already clinched the title.
The United States last hosted the Davis Cup final in 1992, in Fort Worth, Texas. 
In 1992, Andre Agassi, Jim Courier, Pete Sampras and John McEnroe defeated Switzerland.

TITLE: Sri Lanka Jubilant At Test Record
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KANDY, Sri Lanka — Sri Lanka’s Muttiah Muralitharan broke former Australian legspinner Shane Warne’s record for test wickets Monday, reaching 709 against England.
Muralitharan, playing in his 116th test, reached the milestone when he bowled England’s Paul Collingwood for 45 during the third day of play at Asgiriya Stadium.
Muralitharan had a frustrating first spell, bowling nine overs without success and conceding 19 runs. His breakthrough came in the first over of his second spell, the 26th of the day, when he clipped Collingwood’s middle stump.
The dismissal was met with a rousing cheer from the home crowd and fireworks as his teammates rushed to offer congratulations.
The 35-year-old Muralitharan equaled Warne’s mark Sunday, claiming four wickets before play was stopped at tea because of rain. The offspinner broke West Indian fast bowler Courtney Walsh’s mark of 519 in 2004, but was later passed by Warne. In July, Muralitharan entered an exclusive club with Warne when he brought up his 700th wicket.
Muralitharan said he was pleased to break the record at Kandy, rather than on the just-completed tour of Australia.
“It’s my hometown, my parents are here, my wife is here ... all the relatives are here and all my schoolfriends,” he said. “Everybody is here. It’s a bigger moment than if I had taken it in Australia, it’s the right time I think. It’s not easy to take six wickets in an innings, I managed to let my pressure off now.”
Muralitharan has only taken 12 wickets at 75 in five tests in Australia. His averages at home and against England are much better.
The 37-year-old Warne who retired in January and is playing county cricket in England, claimed his 708 wickets from 145 tests.
Warne was quick to congratulate his successor Monday.
“Congratulations to Murali, he’s been a wonderful player for a long period of time,” Warne said. “He’s an excellent competitor and he’s been great for Sri Lankan cricket.
“He’ll probably go on and get 1,000 (wickets) now, but today I would just like to say well done on the record,” he added.
Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapakse congratulated Muralitharan after his record-breaking effort.
“Your achievement makes Sri Lanka proud and brings new glory to Sri Lanka cricket,” Rajapakse said in a statement.
The Sri Lankan postal department has also released a commemorative stamp.

TITLE: Democrat Wins HK Election
AUTHOR: By Dikky Sinn
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: HONG KONG — Pro-democracy candidate Anson Chan, a hugely popular former government official, won a seat in Hong Kong’s legislature Monday, a win she hailed as a victory for democracy in the southern Chinese territory.
Chan received 175,874 votes, or about 54.6 percent, of the ballots cast in Sunday’s election, according to official results announced early Monday. The race, billed as a referendum on democracy, was one of the most keenly watched and closest fought elections since the territory was returned to China a decade ago.
“The result of this election indicates that Hong Kong people are anxious to put forward democracy. We think we’re all ready to implement universal suffrage in 2012,” Chan said on hearing her election win.
Dubbed “Hong Kong’s conscience” for her championing of civil liberties, Chan wants Hong Kong to be able to elect all its lawmakers and leader by 2012. Currently, only half the legislature is elected by voters, and Beijing has refused to set a date for full democracy.
Her closest opponent, former security chief Regina Ip, who had the backing of Beijing-allied parties, received 137,550, or 42.7 percent of votes.
Six other candidates vying for the seat — made vacant when a lawmaker died earlier this year — received one percent or less each, according to the electoral officials.
Although Chan’s victory was not expected to change the balance of power in the legislature, where pro-Beijing voices dominate, the race had been seen as a gauge of the public’s desire for democratic reform — especially at a time when the former British colony is experiencing a booming economy.
Ip also claimed to support full democracy for the vibrant, capitalist city, but only when Beijing gives its approval.
Political analysts said they expected the territory’s communist leaders in Beijing to keep a close eye on the election, but cast doubt on whether the outcome would lead to any real change.
“Beijing has already made up its mind on Hong Kong’s democratic development. It’s unlikely that it will allow universal suffrage in 2012, regardless of whether Chan wins the election or not,” said James Sung, a political academic at the City University of Hong Kong.
China’s state-run media have not reported on Chan’s win, and a man who answered the phone at the government offices that deal with Hong Kong affairs in Beijing said there was no official response. He did not give his name.
Chan’s victory allayed some fears that political reform had fallen off the agenda amid an economic upswing in the territory, Ma Ngok, political academic at the Chinese University in Hong Kong told government-run RTHK radio.
“The striking factor is that Anson Chan won a lot of middle-class votes, which means that the middle-class voter is sending a message that they still support democracy, despite the political and economic changes,” he said.
Chan was the first woman and the first ethnic Chinese to rise to the No. 2 government post, chief secretary for administration, under British rule. She continued in the post when the territory was handed back to China in 1997, but stepped down in 2001 amid, she says, a disagreement with Hong Kong’s then-chief executive Tung Chee-hwa over his plan to introduce appointed ministers.

TITLE: Reunited Spice Girls Reanimate Girl Power
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — It has been nine years coming, but some early reviews of the Spice Girls’ comeback concert in Vancouver late on Sunday said it was worth the wait.
“The solid gold Spice Girls” said the Evening Standard, a reference to golden outfits the “girl power” quintet sported during the show, one of several costume changes on the night.
The reviewer called the performance “ebullient pop music of a very high standard, presented with panache, and highly unlikely to provoke any attendance at the refund window.”
And despite the sassy young singers who stormed the pop world in the 1990s all now being in their 30s, four of them with children, they had yet to pass their sell-by date.
“There seems no diminution in the energy they are prepared to expend, or the lengths they will go to please the audience.”
The Vancouver Sun noted the crush for Spice Girls merchandise, underlining the lasting appeal of Victoria “Posh Spice” Beckham, Melanie “Sporty” Chisholm, Geri “Ginger” Halliwell, Melanie “Scary” Brown and Emma “Baby” Bunton.
“Just as it was 10 years ago, the show wasn’t about great singing or dancing,” wrote the reviewer. “But it was about great entertainment. And the girls delivered the spice.”
Not everyone was convinced.
London’s free daily the Metro headlined its review: “Spice Girls: Embarrassing and Lacklustre”, although it conceded that fans seemed to enjoy the gig nonetheless.
“While the hits were all received with enthusiasm, there were definite lulls in the performance,” the review said.
“New single ‘Headlines’ was as lacklustre live as recorded, and a Las Vegas-style cabaret sequence was as bewildering as it was embarrassing.”
It went on to describe the solo performances as “hit and miss,” adding that Beckham, who has faced criticism of her vocal ability, uttered not a note during her spot in the limelight. The reunion tour heads to Los Angeles before arriving in Britain later this month.

TITLE: Draw For Euro 2008 Pits Foes in Tough Groups
AUTHOR: By Mike Collett
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LUCERNE, Switzerland — World champion Italy faces a tough task if it is to add the European title to its world crown after being grouped with the Netherlands, France and Romania in the finals of Euro 2008.
Sunday’s draw was also unkind to the co-hosts with Switzerland facing the Czech Republic, Portugal and Turkey in its group while Austria meets Croatia, Germany and Poland.
Holder Greece kick off the defense of its title against Sweden and also faces Spain and Russia.
Switzerland opens the tournament against the Czechs in Basel on June 7 with the final taking place in Vienna on June 29.
Italy, which beat France on penalties to win the World Cup final in Berlin last year and also faced France in the qualifying competition, will meet the team again in its last Group C match in Zurich on June 17. Italy and France have met three times in the Euro finals — with France winning twice, including the 2000 final in Rotterdam which it won 2-1, with one match drawn.
Italy last won the European title in 1968 when it hosted the finals.
The group will see at least one major title hopeful eliminated as it also contains the Netherlands and Romania which met each other in the qualifying round.
Italy coach Roberto Donadoni told reporters at Lucerne’s Congress and Culture Centre: “We didn’t have an easy qualification group and we haven’t been lucky here either. I had a gut feeling on the way here it would turn out like this.”
France coach Raymond Domenech was extremely unhappy at the outcome.
“I have to say the way the seedings are worked out is madness. Not to have Italy, as the world champions, in the first pot is crazy. I would have also preferred to have played in Austria and not Switzerland because we would have been hassled less. I am not happy, nothing I wanted has worked out.
“We would love to have avoided the three other teams but now we’ve got it we’ll have to deal with it.”
After meeting the Czech Republic, Switzerland faces Turkey on June 11 in Basel, a game that recalls an ugly incident two years ago when Turkish and Swiss players were involved in a brawl at the end of a World Cup playoff in Istanbul, leading to severe sanctions for both sides.
Switzerland coach Koebi Kuhn said: “There is no problem between Switzerland and Turkey. Too many people have been fixating on things that should have been long forgotten. I think we will see a fair game with no spectator problems.”
Fatih Terim, the Turkish coach added: “I think it’s a very competitive group, a really serious group. What happened on the pitch (in Istanbul) remains on the pitch. “
Fellow hosts Austria, taking part in the Euro finals for the first time, will meet highly-fancied Croatia in its opening match in Vienna on June 8 and then faces Poland in Vienna on June 12 before a match against old rival and three-times European champion Germany on June 16.
The two countries have met 10 times in the finals of either the European championship or World Cup with Germany’s eight victories including, as West Germany, an infamous 1-0 win in the 1982 World Cup in Spain — a scoreline which allowed both to advance at the expense of Algeria.
Germany will play two matches in Klagenfurt, with thousands of its fans descending on the smallest of the eight venues.
The Germany-verses-Poland match there on June 8 will prompt organizers to review security arrangements due to possible trouble between rival fans.
Champion Greece starts against Sweden in Salzburg on June 10, plays Russia there four days later and Spain in the same venue on June 18.
Greece’s group is almost a replica of Group A in Portugal in 2004 when Greece, Spain and Russia were drawn together along with Portugal.

For more on Group D, in which Russia plays, see page 23.

TITLE: Redskins Fans Mourn Sean Taylor at Funeral
AUTHOR: By Matt Sedensky
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MIAMI, Florida — Hundreds of mourners waited in a line a block long Sunday to pay their respects to Washington Redskins star Sean Taylor, as four young men sat in jail cells across the state charged with his killing.
Taylor’s family gathered alone around his casket and left before the doors of Second Baptist Church opened to the public. They left in black limousines, SUVs and two buses.
Mourners filed through the church, pausing at the athlete’s open casket, where he lay in a dark suit, as a choir sang behind it. Some made the sign of the cross, some sobbed, some walked silently.
One man erected a display in the parking lot in the athlete’s honor with dozens of balloons, including those representing his jersey numbers in high school, college and professionally.
“I just wanted to do something,” said James Lovett of Fort Lauderdale, who said he met Taylor when he was displaced from his home after Hurricane Andrew. “I just loved the kid, truly loved him.”
Dozens of flower arrangements filled the church, including an orange and green U symbolizing the University of Miami and one in the shape of a badge for the Florida City Police, where Taylor’s father is chief.
People came for many reasons. Some had met Taylor, many had not.
Josh Persad, a freshman at Miramar High School, came wearing a Taylor jersey. “He’s like my hero,” he whispered.
The service Sunday came only hours after a fourth man charged in the shooting death of the 24-year-old Taylor appeared briefly in court and, like his co-defendants, was denied bond.
Jason Mitchell, 19, appeared briefly via videoconference in a Fort Myers courtroom, about 100 miles from here. Dressed in an orange jumpsuit, he responded quietly when asked if he understood the charges.
“He looks like he’s in shock,” said Sawyer Smith, one of his attorneys.
Three others — Eric Rivera, 17; Charles Wardlow, 18; and Venjah Hunte, 20 — made their first court appearance Saturday.
All four have been charged with unpremeditated murder, home invasion with a firearm or another deadly weapon and armed burglary. They will be transported to Miami, though authorities haven’t said when.
Probable cause affidavits for Mitchell and Rivera obtained by the Associated Press said the two confessed to participating in armed burglary. 
According to the reports, Mitchell and Rivera admitted entering the home and said someone had a gun and shot Taylor, but they didn’t identify who. Police and attorneys also have said some of the young men confessed, though they wouldn’t elaborate.
Taylor died Tuesday, one day after being shot at his home in an affluent Miami suburb. Police said the suspects were looking for a simple burglary, but it turned bloody when they were startled to find Taylor home.
The suspects all have prior arrests, according to Lee County Sheriff’s Office records.
Wardlow was arrested twice for selling marijuana and once for grand theft of a vehicle, and Hunte was arrested previously this year on drug and trespassing charges.
Mitchell has been arrested twice, most recently in October on charges of driving with a suspended license and violation of probation. Rivera was arrested in October for trafficking cocaine and methamphetamine, and he previously was behind bars for altering the identification number on a firearm.
Those who know the young suspects attempted to defend them.
Cordaveous Brown, 16, who said he was a close friend of Rivera, described the suspect as calm and quiet. “He’s not the type of guy to do something like this,” he said. A woman who identified herself as Wardlow’s grandmother called him “a sweet young man,” and Jose Ortiz, a 36-year-old neighbor of Hunte, said he’d never heard of any problems or trouble surrounding the accused.
Smith, who represents Mitchell and Rivera, simply said the suspects were terrified.
Police remain tightlipped about how the suspects wound up at Taylor’s home. The Miami Herald reported Mitchell cut the player’s lawn and did other chores at the house and that Taylor’s sister Sasha dates Wardlow’s cousin. 
The Naples Daily News quoted a woman who identified herself as Jason Mitchell’s mother as saying her son was at a birthday party at Taylor’s home within the past two months.
Taylor’s former attorney Richard Sharpstein said Taylor’s sister had a 21st birthday party at her brother’s home on Thanksgiving weekend. Bennie Williams, a neighbor to Wardlow’s cousin, said he had seen Taylor’s sister Sasha in the area recently. “She was here all last week for the holidays,” he said.
Miami-Dade police wouldn’t confirm any of the possible links.
Police have said the four suspects were intent on stealing, not killing.
“Murder or shooting someone was not their initial motive,” Miami-Dade County police Director Robert Parker said.
Early Monday, Taylor and his longtime girlfriend, Jackie Garcia, were awakened by loud noises at his home. He grabbed a machete for protection, but within moments, someone broke through the bedroom door and fired two shots, one hitting Taylor in the upper leg.
Neither the couple’s 18-month-old daughter, also named Jackie, nor Garcia were injured.
The bullet damaged the femoral artery in Taylor’s leg, causing significant blood loss. He never regained consciousness and died early Tuesday.
Authorities haven’t said whether they’ve linked the suspects to a break-in at Taylor’s home eight days before the shooting. 
In that incident, someone pried open a front window, rifled through drawers and left a kitchen knife on a bed.
Sharpstein said he had spoken with Taylor’s father since the arrests. Though the family was appreciative police had worked so effectively, Sharpstein said the news provided little relief.
“The arrest of Sean’s killer provides no comfort or solace to Sean’s family,” Sharpstein said. 
“They are grieving and haven’t buried their son, boyfriend and father yet.”

TITLE: Christmas Hams Stolen By Grateful Robbers
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SYDNEY, Australia — Thieves stole 17.6 tons of ham and bacon from a warehouse and left behind a message busting the owners’ chops, police said Monday.
“Thanks,” the crooks daubed on a wall of the Zammit Hand and Bacon curers warehouse in suburban Sydney. “Merry Christmas.”
Police said the robbery occurred some time between late afternoon Saturday and dawn Sunday.
Owner Anthony Zammit said that when he arrived for work Monday he found a hole in a wall of the building where the thieves appeared to have entered. The stolen meat was worth up to $88,000, he said.
Zammit said he was offering a $4,420 reward for anyone who helped to recover the meat, and that his company would work overtime to make sure all its Christmas orders were filled.
“We’re working 24 hours a day, seven days a week and put on extra staff,” he said. “We won’t let anyone down.”

TITLE: Sex And Chocolate Are Good For The Brain, Say Experts
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Enjoy dark chocolate, have plenty of sex, eat cold meats and fish for breakfast and you could boost your brain power, say the authors of a new book.
Cognitive psychologist Terry Horne and biochemist Simon Wootton — who co-authored “Teach Yourself: Training Your Brain” — argue that lifestyle choices are crucial for keeping you in tip-top mental condition.
“Lifestyle can boost your brain power,” Horne said. 
“What your lifestyle does is help to create the chemical conditions in your brain.”
Horne told Reuters in an interview to mark the book’s publication that the brain is more like a chemical factory than a computer.
“You can create the optimum conditions in your brain,” he said. “You are not just a passive victim of your genes.”
The authors take issue with those who argue that a decline in cognitive ability is inevitable from the age of 17 onwards. With careful lifestyle choices “you can create spare cognitive capacity,” Horne said.
They offer an intriguing list of do’s and don’ts and insist that people can be pro-active in keeping their brains agile.
Much of it is pure common sense.
“Stress is bad for your thinking. Avoid excessive alcohol and smoking cannabis,” he said.
Intriguingly, the authors also urge readers to avoid watching soap operas and Horne said “Don’t mix with whingeing, whining, moaning and cynical sorts of people.”
And the book is full of practical tips on how to keep the brain firing on all cylinders.
“Cold meats and fish are good for you at breakfast,” Horne said after writing the book which the authors say is based on leading scientific research from around the world.
“Dark chocolate is also good for you because it contains many of the chemicals present when your brain is thinking well. It relaxes the muscles around your blood vessels and actually improves the flow of blood to your brain.”

TITLE: Kaka Wins Ballon d’Or Prize
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: PARIS — AC Milan and Brazil playmaker Kaka was awarded the 2007 Ballon d’Or by French magazine France Football on Sunday.
Kaka, who won the Champions League with Milan last season, beat Manchester United’s Cristiano Ronaldo of Portugal and Barcelona’s Lionel Messi of Argentina, who were second and third respectively.
Until last year, when Italy captain Fabio Cannavaro won the award after leading his side to World Cup glory in Germany, 52 European journalists voted for a player from a European club.
For this year’s award, 96 journalists from around the world voted and the shortlist of 50 players featured players based in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, the United States and Qatar.
Kaka earned 444 points to Ronaldo’s 277 and Messi’s 255. Chelsea’s Ivory Coast striker Didier Drogba was fourth on 108 points with AC Milan midfielder Andrea Pirlo fifth with 41 points.
For the first time since 2003, Brazil’s Ronaldinho was out of the top five in 12th place.
“To be honest, I was expecting it a little bit,” Kaka was quoted as saying by France Football’s Web site (www.francefootball.fr).
“I won the Champions League and was the competition’s top scorer. That’s what made the difference with the others.
“Cristiano Ronaldo lost to AC Milan in the Champions League. Had he won maybe he would have won the award. And Milan would not have played Liverpool in the final, let alone have won the trophy,” he added.
“That is the key. You have to play in a winning team.”
The elegant Kaka is already the winner of the FIFPro world Player of the Year and UEFA European Club Player of the Year awards and is the big favorite for FIFA’s World Player of the Year award to be announced later this month.
His 10 goals in guiding Milan to their seventh European Cup triumph in May set up this flurry of awards in a year without a World Cup or European championship.
Kaka defies the model of a modern footballer. The devoted Christian largely avoids celebrity parties and does not worry too much about his image, expressing himself on the pitch with his mesmeric skill and driving runs.
Kaka has always shone through however and his energy and passing rather than his goals have this time put Milan into the Champions League knockout stages.
His wife announced last week they were expecting their first son while Kaka said life as an evangelical pastor appealed to him after soccer.
Despite this, there are signs that being seen as the world’s best player are starting to make him more self-aware.
Kaka is featuring in more advertisments and magazine shoots, one talking openly about losing his virginity, while he has consistently hinted in interviews that the prospect of playing for Real Madrid interests him.
Madrid tried to tempt Milan to sell throughout the close season with an 80 million euro ($118 million) offer and the Italian club even acknowledged that Kaka’a father and agent had held talks with the Spanish champions.
Another bid seems likely in January or at the end of the season, but Milan can now easily up the price knowing he is officially the world’s best player.

TITLE: World Gathers To Mull Environment
AUTHOR: By Joseph Coleman
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BALI, Indonesia — Faced with melting polar ice caps and worsening droughts, climate experts at a massive U.N. conference Monday urged quick action toward a new international pact stemming an increasingly destructive rise in world temperatures.
A key goal of the two-week conference, which opened with delegates from nearly 190 countries in attendance, will be to draw a skeptical United States into an agreement to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other so-called greenhouse gases.
While the U.S. delegation declared it would not be a “roadblock” to a new agreement, Washington remains opposed to steps many other countries support, such as mandatory emissions cuts by rich nations and a target for limiting the rise in global temperatures.
The American position suffered a blow Monday when the new Australian prime minister signed papers to ratify the Kyoto Protocol climate pact. The move leaves the U.S. — the world’s top emitter of greenhouse gases — as the sole industrial power not to have joined.
Conference leaders urged delegates to move quickly to combat climate change.
“The eyes of the world are upon you. There is a huge responsibility for Bali to deliver,” said Yvo de Boer, the executive secretary of the conference. “The world now expects a quantum leap forward.”
The conference kicked off amid growing global momentum for dramatic action to stop rising temperatures that scientists say could lead to swamping of coastal areas and islands by higher oceans, the wiping out of species, economic havoc and a spike in natural disasters such as storms, fires and droughts.
The Bali meeting will be the first major conference of its kind since former Vice President Al Gore — due to arrive next week — and a U.N. scientific council won the Nobel Peace Prize in October for their environmental work.
The immediate aim will be to launch negotiations toward a pact to replace the Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012, and set an agenda for the talks and a deadline. The U.N. says such an agreement should be concluded by 2009 in order to have a system in place in time.
Among the most contentious issues ahead will be whether emission cuts should be mandatory or voluntary. Also to be tackled will be to what extent up-and-coming economies like China and India will have to rein in their skyrocketing emissions, and how to help the world’s poorest countries adapt to a worsening climate.
The American delegation was clearly on the defensive in Bali, presenting a statement detailing the ways the U.S. is fighting global warming without submitting to mandatory emissions targets.
“We’re not here to be a roadblock,” insisted Harlan L. Watson, the senior U.S. climate negotiator. “We’re committed to a successful conclusion, and we’re going to work very constructively to make that happen.”
Confronted with the scientific reports of the past year, the Bush administration has signaled a willingness to play a larger role in the negotiations, and U.N. officials agree they must craft a post-Kyoto framework that Washington will go along with.
Australia abandoned the anti-Kyoto alliance with the U.S. on Monday, when new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd signed the paperwork to ratify the pact. Delegates in Bali erupted in applause when Australia’s delegate, Howard Bamsey, told the plenary that Canberra was jumping on board.
Environmentalists at the conference cited what they saw as growing international momentum for tougher safeguards against global warming. Even critics of the Bush administration pointed out that many individual states, such as California, were on the forefront of cutting emissions.
“Despite the failure of the current president to take serious action on global warming, the political landscape in the United States is shifting dramatically in favor of mandatory limits on global warming pollution,” said Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists, citing upcoming action in the U.S. Congress.
Trying to fend off charges that America is not doing enough, Bush said last week a final Energy Department report showed U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas, declined by 1.5 percent last year while the economy grew.

TITLE: Russians Are ‘Not Underdogs’ in Group D
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LUCERNE, Switzerland — It looks like 2004 all over again for Spain, who will hope to avoid past mistakes when they come up against old sparring partners in Euro 2008.
Group D is almost a replica of Spain’s group last time round, when they beat Russia and drew with eventual and unlikely champions Greece but still left the tournament early after a 1-0 loss to neighbors Portugal.
Spain, Russia and Greece were drawn together again next year in an Austria-based group. The fourth team is hardly a stranger either, as Spain met Sweden in the Euro 2008 qualifying stages.
Spain, who have under-achieved for years and won just one major trophy, the 1964 European title, traded blows with Sweden in qualifying, losing the away match but easing to a convincing 3-0 win when the teams met in Madrid last month.
“I think Spain is one of the absolutely best teams in Europe so it’s always a challenge to play teams like that and it’s a good thing, I think, that we had the experience of these two matches in qualification,” Sweden coach Lars Lagerback said.
Otto Rehhagel, who steered Greece to victory in 2004, said winning that title would be of no help this time round, while Russia’s coach Guus Hiddink, whose team qualified ahead of England, thought there would be no underdogs in Group D.
“We are very happy to be here, but that’s not enough for me,” Hiddink said. “Let’s try to surprise as well.”

TITLE: AWOL Sumo Wrestling Champion Says Sorry to Japanese
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: TOKYO — Troubled sumo champion Asashoryu returned to Japan on Friday with bows and apologies for secretly playing soccer when he said he was too ill to wrestle.
“I am deeply sorry for the trouble I have caused,” the firebrand Mongolian told a news conference. “I did something wrong. I will do my best not to stray from the path again.”
Asashoryu was banned in August and fled to his homeland after he was caught on video heading a ball into a goal while supposedly out of action with a back injury. That outraged the fans of a sport where ritual and respect for tradition is almost as important as who wins the brief bouts between the nearly naked giants in the sumo ring.
The 150-kilogram wrestler was banned for two tournaments, triggering clinical depression and a trip home to Mongolia to recuperate.
But on Friday, Asashoryu flew into Tokyo with a fur coat draped over his kimono and walking with his old swagger, to be greeted by a scrum of reporters at Narita International Airport.
Television crews filmed from helicopters the sports celebrity’s drive into the city, where he explained himself in a media conference carried on live TV.

TITLE: Chavez Loses Presidency-For-Life Vote
AUTHOR: By Saul Hudson
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: CARACAS — President Hugo Chavez crashed to an unprecedented vote defeat on Monday as Venezuelans narrowly rejected his bid to run for re-election indefinitely and accelerate his socialist revolution in the OPEC nation.
In a fiercely contested referendum on Sunday, voters said “No” to a raft of reforms that would have scrapped term limits on Chavez’s rule, boosted his powers to expropriate private property and allowed him to censor the media in emergencies.
The “No” camp won with about 51 percent of the vote, beating the anti-U.S. president who scored around 49 percent support, election officials said early on Monday.
Used to winning national votes easily, Chavez conceded defeat but said he would “continue in the battle to build socialism.”
Chavez, a self-styled revolutionary and close ally of Cuba who wants to rule for life, also said the reform proposals remained “alive,” suggesting he might try to push them through later.
Caravans of opposition activists cheered, honked horns and waved flags out of car windows. Many said Venezuela had escaped the imposition of authoritarian rule.
“The reform would have made some frightening changes in our country,” said an ecstatic Astrid Badell, 18, pulling a plastic green whistle from her mouth to talk. “It would have practically been a copy of the Cuban constitution and that would have been a big step backward.”
Chavez remains in control of most Venezuelan institutions even after suffering his first ballot box loss since he swept into office in 1998 in the No. 4 oil supplier to the United States.
“This is not a defeat. This is another ‘for now,”’ Chavez said, repeating a famous quote when, as a red-bereted paratrooper in 1992, he acknowledged on TV he had failed to seize power in a coup attempt.
The folksy leftist leader was unusually conciliatory at his presidential palace. He told supporters not to be sad and wished all Venezuelans a merry Christmas.
“I have listened to the voice of the people and I will always be listening to it,” he said.
Nicholas Burns, U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs, said Chavez’ defeat showed Venezuelans wanted democracy.
“This was positive news to see this victory by the citizens of Venezuela because we felt that this referendum was a referendum to make Chavez president for life and that’s not ever a welcome development in a country that wants to be a democracy,” Burns told reporters in Singapore, where he was attending a seminar.
Students, rights and business groups, opposition parties, the Roman Catholic Church, former political allies and even his usually loyal ex-wife all lined up against Chavez ahead of the referendum vote.
They accused him of pushing the constitutional reforms to set up a dictatorship.
“Venezuela said ‘No’ to socialism, Venezuela said ‘Yes’ to democracy,” said Leopoldo Lopez, the popular mayor of a Caracas district.
A leading Venezuelan newspaper covered most of its front page with a huge red “NO.”
The United States says Chavez is a dangerous influence in Latin America, using Venezuela’s oil wealth to win allies and undermine democracy.
A fiery speaker, Chavez has called President George W. Bush “the devil,” capitalism “evil” and says his Venezuelan critics are traitors. But his tone was unusually conciliatory in conceding defeat on Monday.
He may have burnished his democratic credentials by accepting the result.
“This defeat has two sides to it for Chavez,” said Luis Vicente Leon of leading local pollster Datanalisis. “He came out the loser after a tough plebiscite campaign but he also gets rid of the accusation that he is a dictator.”
Admired as a champion of the poor in city slums and rural villages, the 53-year-old Chavez has said he wants to rule until he dies. But, without a constitutional reform, he will have to step down in 2013.
The loss was a shock to the government. Three ministers had said early on that Chavez was ahead by at least six percentage points, although his lead evaporated as more returns came in.
It was a major victory for Venezuela’s fragmented opposition, which had failed to beat Chavez in almost yearly votes or oust him in a brief coup in 2002, a national oil strike and a recall referendum.

TITLE: Former Pakistan PM Sharif Barred From Poll
AUTHOR: By Sadaqat Jan
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Opposition leader Nawaz Sharif risks disqualification from Pakistan’s crucial parliamentary elections after an official rejected his nomination papers on Monday.
The decision could deepen the political crisis that has engulfed Pakistan since President Pervez Musharraf imposed emergency rule one month ago.
Sharif was due to meet later Monday with fellow opposition leader Benazir Bhutto to discuss whether to jointly boycott the Jan. 8 elections.
Raja Qamaruz Zaman upheld objections from other candidates to Sharif’s candidacy.
A lawyer for Sharif said they were considering an appeal to a tribunal composed of senior judges.
“This decision has been made under pressure. This shows how free and fair the elections will be,” said the lawyer, Imtiaz Kaifi.
Sharif, a two-time former prime minister who returned from exile late last month, is pressing for the opposition to unite and boycott the ballot because of Musharraf’s use of emergency powers to purge the judiciary and secure his own continued rule.
Candidates seeking to contest the same National Assembly seat in Lahore had complained that Sharif was ineligible because of a conviction on charges related to the 1999 coup, in which Musharraf ousted his government.
A court convicted Sharif of hijacking and terrorism charges for trying to prevent a plane carrying Musharraf back from a foreign trip from landing in Pakistan, despite a shortage of fuel.
A year later, Sharif agreed to go into exile for 10 years to avoid a life sentence in prison.
Rivals also complained about Sharif’s alleged default on a bank loan and an incident in 1997 in which Sharif’s supporters stormed the Supreme Court.
Zaman said only that the objections were “accepted” and provided no details.
The opposition demands that Musharraf, a close U.S. ally, rescind the state of emergency, under which he fired independent-minded Supreme Court judges, muzzled the media and detained critics.
However, Bhutto’s party is reluctant to boycott the ballot, saying it would hand pro-Musharraf parties a walkover.
“The regime does not need to rig elections that are boycotted,” Bhutto told The Associated Press, forecasting that her party will win a fair election.
“But we still have the option later of protesting a rigged election, so we would rather all the political parties take part,” she said after talks with visiting Turkish President Abdullah Gul in Islamabad.

TITLE: Castro Nominated to Assembly
AUTHOR: By Marc Frank
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: SANTIAGO, Cuba — Ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro was nominated on Sunday for a seat in the National Assembly, leaving the door open for him to resume governing as he struggles to recover from a long illness.
Castro, 81, handed over power temporarily to his brother Raul 16 months ago after life-threatening stomach surgery and he has not been seen since in public since. To formally remain president he must have a seat in the rubber-stamp parliament.
To cries of “Viva Fidel!,” municipal councilors raised their hands and unanimously approved Castro’s name on a list of deputies to be put to the popular vote on Jan 20. Since 1976, Castro has represented Santiago, the cradle of his revolution.
Castro turned the island at the doorstep of the United States into a communist state after taking power in a guerrilla uprising in 1959.
His illness last year forced him to step aside for the first time since the revolution and allies say he was close to death at one point. But his condition then improved and he remains a power behind the scenes.
“During his convalescence he has continued to be actively involved in the country’s most important strategic decisions,” a biography attached to Castro’s candidacy said. Castro remains intellectually active, writing about the most pressing problems facing Cuba and the survival of the human species, it said.
In some 60 newspaper columns published this year, Castro never mentioned the country’s future with or without him.
At its first session in March, the National Assembly must ratify Cuba’s top political jobs on the 31-member executive Council of State, including the presidency, helping to settle speculation about Castro’s future.
Many Cubans expect Fidel Castro to retire to the role of elder statesman similar to that played in later life by China’s Mao Zedong. Other Cubans hope Raul Castro will be named successor so he can push through reforms to improve their standard of living.